Cooly Skunk

Cooly Skunk (クーリースカンク) is an unreleased platform game that was in development late in the life cycle of the Super Famicom by publisher Visit. A demo of the game was broadcast on the Satellaview. By: Evan G Last updated: January 7, 2021

Cooly Skunk (クーリースカンク) has a long history. It originally was in development as "Metamoru Kid Guumin", before shifting to a animal mascot skunk character. The game eventually was refashioned as a PS1 game, and released as Punky Skunk. A demo of the first three stages of the game was broadcast on the Satellaview service, and an 8M cart with it was discovered in Akihabara in 2019, which was purchased and dumped. I won't give too more many details here, as there is a thorough article by my friends at Gaming Alexandria. The original dump can be found on Hidden Palace.

The Satellaview game is a demo, but the rest of the levels are in the binary. A hacked version which unlocks the levels and makes the game playable to the end on a normal SNES is available here. The game has also has fan translations to English and German.

Note that although this game is fairly close to completion, there are some signs that this is not a finished game. The demo does not have the password functionality, even though you can get passwords between each set of stages. The game is quite punishing, giving you only two hits before death. Considering that there is space for additional hit icons, I assume the final game would have been more forgiving. I would also assume that the final game would have more polish. In particular, the autoscrolling roller skating level where it is really easy to accidentally go backwards to your death, I assume there would have been refinements. Anyways, this game is a cute mascot platformer, and probably would have been an above average game if it was released.

Digital Foundry produced an excellent video on this game, check it out:

Screenshots

Satellaview loading screen	Title Screen

Badora, the main villain of the game	Cooly Skunk, attacking with his tail spray move.

There are several powerups in the game, like this pogo stick.	And a snowboard.

The first stage boss. Each boss has a unique setup.	The map screen, which is only seen after completition of the first set of stages.

Clearing a stage.	After clearing a stage, it is possible to get a password, but the functionality is not present on the Satellaview demo.

The roller skating level, by far the most frustrating level in the game.	The mole level.