Jelly Boy

This is a prototype of Jelly Boy, which has a few differences from final. Thanks to Hard4Games for getting this and dumping it! By: Evan G Last updated: May 1, 2021

Tony from Hard4Games recently purchased this prototype of Jelly Boy, a European exclusive game that is in no way related to the Game Freak developed Jerry Boy. This game was developed by Probe Software in the UK, and published by Ocean. Electronic Arts was also involved.

The game itself appears to be in a near final state. As shown in the video, the password system is not exactly the same as the final version, and the default password will not trip an error if you do not change it. The high score list has much higher scores in the prototype. The end-game credits are also missing a few people compared to the final version. In the final version, some testers from EA were included.

Prototype	Final

Besides the changes that Tony found, I looked at the game in a hex editor, where the in-game text can be found. Looking at the text, there are a couple of grammar errors in the prototype that were fixed in the final version. This game is incredibly hard, and the short time I tried searching for the text was not successful (though presumably the craters text is somewhere in the space area stages).

Prototype:

HERES BOSSY

Final:

HERE'S BOSSY

Prototype:

DUCKING IN A SOME CRATERS WILL LET YOU TELEPORT!

Final:

DUCKING IN SOME CRATERS WILL LET YOU TELEPORT!

Ocean prototypes are always really neat, because they created their own PCB boards. The PCB for this game is different than the other prototype documented on this site. As noted in the video, this prototype has a date of "1992" in the internal header. The date stamp on the CIC on this PCB dates to 1992, compared with the 1994 dates on the other prototype. This provides some support that this game may have been essentially complete in 1992, and delayed indefinitely until its eventual release in 1995. My own Ocean prototype PCB for Rock 'N Roll Racing is the same, but it has a date stamp on the CIC of late 1993.

Jelly Boy prototype PCB

Download here