Kaboom!: The Mad Doctor’s Revenge

Kaboom!: The Mad Doctor’s Revenge was an unreleased sequel to the original 1981 game for the Atari 2600. Thanks to Frank Cifaldi from The Video Game History Foundation for sending me some of these scans. By: Evan G Last updated: February 19, 2017

Kaboom! was a popular game on the Atari 2600, and with the resurgence of older video game properties in the mid 1990s, Activision decided to capitalize. They had sequels to games like Kaboom, River Raid and Pitfall in development for the SNES, but only Pitfall actually made it out. This game was shown at the 1993 Summer CES, and covered in the EGM 1994 Video Game Preview Guide. Ken Love, who worked at Activision in the early 2000s, made a post on the Atari Age forum confirming that a prototype of the game existed there:

All,

Just a quick email to let you know that I happened to find the prototypes of Kaboom and River Raid 3 for the SNES.

Kaboom! is at best... "OK"

Anyway.. "There ya' have it!" They do in-fact exist.

As for Kaboom Gensis, It look's to pretty much to be a "Technology Demo". Good at best. Very repetetive. There's some-sort of mad doctor on a flying carpet, throwing down bombs to a kid who runs back 'n' forth trying to catch them. Not very impressive and very slow.

The graphics are .. again.. OK at best. This version look's as though it was done by High Voltage Software. I'm sure you poeople out there in the Jaguar world have heard of them.

From the above post, it is not clear if he means that there is a Genesis version of the game that he was looking at, as there is no other indication that this was in development for the Genesis. Alas, since he was working at Activision, he felt that he would be unable to release the binary or even screenshots of the demo.

Preview shown in the EGM 1994 Video Game Preview Guide, page 4. Scan courtesy of Retromags.

Frank Cifaldi sent me some scans from an advertisement that was given out at this event. It includes a mock up of the final box artwork.

Box art

Close up of some artwork for the game

Screenshot from what is presumably a Hollywood themed level

Screenshot from a clock level

Bibliography

• EGM 1994 Video Game Preview Guide, CES overview, Publication date: 1994, Volume: -, Pages: 4
• Kaboom! on Unseen64 (link)
• Thread describing the existence of the prototype on Atari Age (link)