An early prototype of an unreleased Mega Drive RTS game developed by SEGA Technical Institute has now been preserved thanks to the efforts of STI artist Craig Stitt and the Hidden Palace team. This early prototype build of the game is from December 1991 and was reportedly shelved due to Mark Cerny wanting developers to focus on character-driven titles.

You can download the rom dump by heading over to the Dark Empires entry on Hidden Palace, and you can also watch the game in action via the below video from Hidden Palace contributor MDTravis:

You can learn more about the development of Dark Empires in an extensive interview with Craig Stitt that Hidden Palace have also published.

[Source: Time Extension]

sonicyoda

Webmaster and lead writer at SEGADriven. Likes old games, heavy music and too much pizza. Follow on Twitter @kronkblats

Tags: craig stitt, dark empires, hidden palace, mega drive, prototype, rom dump, rts, sega genesis, sega technical institute, sti

This entry was posted on Monday, November 3rd, 2025 at 13:14 and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.