It is not at all uncommon to see a Capcom action game rated “Game of the Month” in a major publication. It is, however, an oddity to see such a highly praised game go unreleased! California Raisins: The Grape Escape, planned for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1991, fits this description precisely.

Because of its extensive coverage and praise in Game Player’s Magazine, California Raisins has been a hot topic of discussion and speculation among hobbyists for over twelve years. We’ve often wondered what the game was like, and why we didn’t get to play it. Most of us all but gave up entirely on knowing even a shred of detail on the game.

And then there was Lost Levels.

-By Frank Cifaldi

The California Raisins Band and their music have been kidnapped! It is suspected that their rival band, The Wild Bunch, are holding them captive at the Penthouse at the top of Sky High Records (The Wild Bunch's label I presume). Only you can save them by collecting the four golden notes that will unlock the Penthouse!

My god what a story. But before you fall asleep remember, this game wasn't even released! So how good can it be? Actually, quite good. When I first played it I was suprised at how fun the game actually is. The sprite is a huge raisin, that alone is priceless! And I hate the California Raisins, I hated them in the 80's and early 90's, and yet the game is fun. That alone says something, doesn't it?

There are four levels in the entire game, which is a bit short, but they are long levels that are difficult, even in normal mode! Sadly they have anti-raisin enemies in them to make it hard (and all games should be easy, right?), I don't know how they figured that raisins should be attacked by spear weilding baddies, but they did. Besides all the crazy things like climbing grapevines and conveyor belts I thought the actual gameplay was good, the sprites were very large and I enjoyed that feature very much.

As for controls I was impartial. They were adequate enough but not so good that you could actually play well (kidding). I found that it was a bitch to jump accurately but for generally moving ( what else are you going to do?) it was fine.

There are only a few things that I didn't like about the game. Jumping mainly, but there was no Game Over screen whatsoever and the music, which I didn't even notice it was there! Overall, I enjoyed it alot and have a new found worship of TheRedEye.

I give it a 9/10 - It was unreleased!