Mer Wars

Mer Wars is an unreleased shooter game By Synergistic Software. A short demo exists that was released by Hidden Palace. By: Evan G Last updated: January 12, 2025

Mer Wars is an unreleased SNES game by Synergistic, that clearly did not get very far in development. It utilizes their in-house "VR7+" Mode-7 3D game engine. Little was known about it until famed prototype collector DreamTR put some cartridge shells on Ebay in 2012:

Spectre, Mer Wars, Thunder Hawk SNES Super Nintendo EMPTY DEMO PROTOTYPE CART SHELLS

I found these in my collection the other day. There are NO games in them, so please note these are being sold as collectibles only. Excellent condition. You can see the backs have holes cut out where EPROMs used to be but there are NO games, just empty shells.

Cart shells sold by DreamTR in 2012 (front)

Cart shells sold by DreamTR in 2012 (back)

Thunder Hawk was also unreleased (although it is possible that it became "Air Cavalry"). These shells were eventually part of some problematic grading by WATA, which I reported on back in 2020. That led to a new policy by WATA to partner with the Video Game History Foundation to verify prototypes. The shells were initially populated with boards from another game when sold on Ebay in 2019. That particular auction had a bunch of documents from Synergistic Software (I put these images at the bottom of this article).

These shells actually first popped up in a sales thread on the Digital Press forum in 2005 by the user "Goblin". They apparently got them in a trade.

About a year ago I got a pile of SNES EPROMs and boards as part of a larger trade.

There are just over 20 Eproms: All mixed - some 27c040, 27c1001,TC574000, 27C2001, various others.

A total of 6 boards:
(2) x SHVC-4PV5B-01- also have board diagram and build of materials.
(1) x SHVC-4PV5B-01 - U5 - SRAM marked as PAL.
(1) x SHVC-2Q5B-03
(1) x SHVC-2Q5B-03 -> Working Prototype, Believe the game is either Carrier Aces or Air Cavalry.
(1) x SHVC-4PV5B-01 -> Working Prototype, Don't remember the game.

4 Plastic cartridge casings:
(1) x New, no lables, no cuts, no screws
(1) x Spectre - Synergistic Software, cut out on the back to account for added height of 2 stacked eproms. 1/5/94
(1) x Mer Wars - Synergistic Software, cut on the back to account for the added height of 1 eprom and 1 digital chip.12/15/93
(1) x Thunder Hawk - Synergistic Software, cut on the back to account for added height of 1 eprom. 12/15/93

When I first got these I spent about a week trying to make heads or tails of it and to see if I could come up with any other working prototypes. I read in all the eproms and the majority appear to be various versions of Carrier Aces and Air Cavalry. A few were blank.

The cut outs on the plastic cases don't really mate with the boards I have and the titles don't match anything I was able to read off the chips leading me to beleive they were aren't connected other than both now being in the same box. From the online rarity databse it appears that Carrier Aces was never released outside of Japan. It looks like Spectre wasreleased in the US. Both were by Cyber Soft which is one of the names I found in the eprom codes, where as Synergistic Software is printed on all the labels.

The short of it is, I never really collected for SNES. I investigated this as a side project and then quickly lost interest. Everything has has been sitting in the box in the corner of my office for the past year waiting for a more deserving collector to take it home. As such I am looking to sell this as a lot. Make me an offer and we can go from the there. As I said the bulk of the chips appear to be various revisions of Carrier Aces and Air Cavarly. Both looked very similiar to me, and may even have turned into the same game. I make no promises and since I don't know very much about the SNES or it's history I'll let someone else verify/correct the details if they can. I may still have the binary files on my PC, if I can locate them I'll burn them to CD, otherwise you will need to redo that part yourself. I can include my rough notes which may be of some help to you.

This is the perfect project for a rabid SNES collector, at the very least you would get 2 prototypes and the opportunity to document various revisions of a game that appears to not have been released in the US.

At the time of DreamTR's auction, I was intrigued by this unknown game, so I contacted Robert Clardy, who founded Synergistic Software, if he remembered anything about these games.

Good to hear from a devotee of ancient history. The titles you were asking about were never games, but rather game proposals that never were picked up. At that time, Synergistic was a contract programming house that would make proposals to many publishers. Those that were picked up got funding for full development and were then released under the various publisher’s labels. Those proposals did not get funded and so were never really developed and never released.

After pointing out the existence of the cart shells:

Pretty funny. Whatever existed regarding those games was what I wrote and I never made concept carts. Perhaps somebody at a publishing house we submitted the proposals to thought they might get SNES code some day. But, nobody ever did.

Well, perhaps it was bad memory, but a demo was definitely made. It was created by Robert Clardy and Kirt Lemons. The 2019 auction with the cart shells included documentation and concept art of the proposed game, and the address shows that it came from Synergistic Software. I have transcribed the first page, which describes the gameplay:

Mer Wars
Demo Instructions - December, 1993

The Mer Wars demo is provided on a standard IBM-PC format diskette containing a file called MERWARS.B0. This is a ROM image that can be used to burn an EPROM for a standard Super NES game cartridge.

When You plug Mer Wars in and turn on your Super NES, you will see a brief intro screen, after which a demo of the second level of the Mer Wars game will start. Refer to the game proposal for more background information on the Mantar vehicle which is shown. To operate it, however, all you need to do is press:

START BUTTON	Pause.
UP ARROW	Push forward on the flight control joystick, causing vehicle to drive.
DOWN ARROW	Pull back on the joystick, causing vehicle to climb.
RIGHT ARROW	Steer right.
'A' BUTTON	Shoot your beam weapon. Aim weapon by aiming your vehicle.
'Y' BUTTON	Sprint. Swim fast.
'B' BUTTON	Shields. Nothing can damage you while your shields are up, but you cannot shoot either.
'X' BUTTON	Shoot your electrical effects weapon.
'R' BUTTON	While turning right, press top right button to turn faster.
'L' BUTTON	While turning left, press top left button to turn faster.

Explore the waste-land between Merlandia and Atlantis. Watch out for the mutated monstrosities from the Atlantean genetics labs. The Blaster Sharks and Eletrafish (they look somewhat like Jelly Fish) are all about and eager to stop you. The Poisonous Sea Worms and Sea Snakes haunt the upper waters. There will be no safe place to cruise. Since the Anti-air Crabs that will keep you away from the sea floor are not in at this time, you can cruise safely near the bottom for now.

You will need to maintain both your life force and your weapon energy. Watch for the green spheres. They will recharge your weapon energy. Wenever you destroy a shark, it will release a life-force recharger. Whenever you destroy a Sea Snake or Sea Worm, they will release a cube that will recharge both life-force and weapon energy.

For now, there is nowhere to go in the demo. Cruise around a bit and see the sights. Attack and be attacked. Get a eel for the game's controls and look. With the art, the sounds and music, and even the controls, we have tried to use a style that hasn't been over-used yet on the Super NES. Attractive, unusual, perhaps even a bit exotic, Mer Wars is certainly different from the run-of-the-mill.

If you are looking for something different such as Mer Wars, or are interested in some other concepts that might benefit from Synergistic's VR7+ Super NES arcade game engine, call now.

The demo

A prototype containing the demo was revealed as part of a large lot of game materials that belonged to former Nintendo of America Game Master, Howard Phillips. He ended up selling this in 2012 to fund a video game project he was working on (see here for an archive of the thread on Nintendo Age).

Howard Phillips prototype collection, which included Mer Wars (I am not sure which PCB is Mer Wars).

The prototype was purchased by video game preservation enthusiast, Steve Lin, and was eventually released as part of Hidden Palace's New Years 2022 releases, along with the Video Game History Foundation. Please check out the page for Mer Wars on Hidden Palace for more!

There is not much to the demo. It is a Mode-7 shooter with a behind-the-ship view. As might be implied by the name, this game takes place underwater. The ship resembles a manta ray, and the enemies are worms, jellyfish and robotic sharks. The controls appear to be fully fleshed out, and as mentioned in the proposal document, there are a couple of types of attack, and the enemies drop power ups.

Synergistic logo	VR7 Plus logo

Using the shield	Sea snakes and power up

Shark and worm	Using the "electrical effect" weapon

Death	Shark from the side

Concept art

As mentioned above, the 2019 auction also included a bunch of documents related to Mer Wars and Thunder Hawk. A description of the gameplay and a number pieces of concept art were included. The seller took some pictures of them, but not all of the documentation was displayed. I have removed the address of the recipient.

2019 Auction Images: View of the front of the carts, the envelope with the documents, and the front pages of the documents.

2019 Auction Images: View of the back of the carts. Note the added PCBs that were added after DreamTR's auction.

2019 Auction Images: closeup of the carts.

2019 Auction Images: Merlandia concept art.

2019 Auction Images: Merlandia concept art.

2019 Auction Images: Grotesques Grotto concept art.

2019 Auction Images: Artwork of an enemy with the top body of a man, and a bottom body of an octopus.

2019 Auction Images: Artowrk of Princess Glariana.

2019 Auction Images: Artwork of the entrance of a dungeon.