Active Enterprises

Active Enterprises

Industry	Video games
Founded	1992 (1992)
Founder	Vince Perri
Fate	Exited video game market
Headquarters	Miami , United States
Products	Action 52

Action 52 is an unauthorized multicart video game collection created by Active Enterprises for the Nintendo Entertainment System and by FarSight Technologies for the Sega Genesis. The NES edition was released in 1992, followed by the Genesis version in 1993. This multicart contains 52 titles spanning multiple genres, predominantly vertical shooters and platform games. The highlighted game, The Cheetahmen, was part of Active's unsuccessful attempt to establish a franchise similar to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Sales of the NES version were disappointing, and it gained notoriety for its poor-quality games, frequently appearing on lists of the worst video games ever made. Although the Genesis iteration is regarded as an improvement, it still falls short in quality. Nevertheless, Action 52 has become a sought-after item among collectors due to its scarcity and infamous reputation. Upon release, it was priced steeply at US$199 (1991).

NES

The NES edition of Action 52 includes a diverse array of game types, with a focus on space-themed vertical shooters and platformers. Many titles are plagued by significant programming issues such as freezing, crashing, incomplete or endlessly looping levels, unclear design choices, and sluggish controls. The centerpiece game is The Cheetahmen, which appears as the 52nd title and features characters from other games as adversaries.

Brief summaries for each game are provided in the manual; however, some descriptions correspond to early development stages and differ markedly from the final versions. For instance, Jigsaw is described as a puzzle game but actually plays as a platformer where the player controls a construction worker dodging tools.

Active Enterprises organized a contest linked to Ooze, the fifth game on the cart, offering $104,000 in cash prizes and scholarships to those who could complete Level 6. Unfortunately, Ooze consistently crashed on Level 2, making progress beyond that point impossible without using an emulator. After the contest was canceled, a Revision B cartridge was released that resolved this and other bugs.

The opening sequence of the NES version features the recognizable "Yeah! Woo!" drum break sampled from Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock's song "It Takes Two."

Sega Genesis

Only a few titles from the NES Action 52 appear in its Sega Genesis counterpart; while many games were retained in concept, most were completely redeveloped. For example, Haunted Hills on Genesis presents a male protagonist exploring an outdoor environment, whereas on NES it features a female lead inside a haunted house. In the Genesis version of The Cheetahmen, players control characters rescuing cheetah cubs from Dr. Morbis and his henchmen.

Numerous technical problems found in the NES release were addressed for the Genesis edition, which also benefited from more advanced hardware capabilities. The menu categorizes games by difficulty using color codes: "Beginner" (green), "Intermediate" (purple), "Expert" (yellow), "Challenge" (white), and multiplayer (blue). The final game, titled "Challenge," consists of a randomized series of demanding single-player levels. Additional options include a Randomizer feature and a music demonstration mode.

Development

Action 52 was the brainchild of Vince Perri, a Miami-based entrepreneur and founder of Active Enterprises. Motivated by an unauthorized Taiwanese multicart his son had played, Perri sought to create a legitimate multicart featuring 52 unique titles. He connected with Mario González, a sound engineer from Miami, who introduced him to game developers Javier Pérez and Albert Hernández. The team developed a Tetris-style game called Megatris as a demonstration of their capabilities. Perri assembled a team including these developers plus Raúl Gomila and an additional unnamed programmer; Hernández took on lead programming duties, González was responsible for composing music, while González, Pérez, and the fourth programmer managed the visual assets.

The development team received one week of training on an NES development kit in Salt Lake City, supplied by Sculptured Software. Working on an Atari ST, they were given three months to complete the entire project, which severely limited time for playtesting and debugging. González acknowledged Perri’s enthusiasm but remarked that his unfamiliarity with the gaming industry caused several missteps. Most of the original soundtrack, including the theme for Cheetahmen, was composed by González; some audio tracks were borrowed from Ed Bogas’s sample library for The Music Studio on Atari ST. The cartridge was designed with capacity for 60 games, leaving unused tiles and eight additional game slots unfilled.

In 1993, Perri presented Action 52 at the International Winter Consumer Electronics Show, announcing that $5 million had been secured from private investors in Europe and Saudi Arabia. The technical development was outsourced to Cronos Engineering in Boca Raton, a company with IBM experience. González created The Cheetahmen as part of an effort to establish a multimedia franchise intended to compete with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which included a promotional comic by Joe Martinez. However, planned merchandise such as an animated series, comic book line, apparel, and action figures were ultimately cancelled.

The Sega Genesis edition was produced by FarSight Technologies under Jay Obernolte using a Macintosh LC. Programmers Pérez and Hernández returned for this version (González did not participate), completing the project within one year and conducting thorough playtesting that significantly reduced bugs. Mark Steven Miller and Jason Scher composed new music specifically for this release. Active Enterprises also planned versions for the SNES as well as a sports-themed multicart called Sports 5, but the company exited the video game market soon afterward.

Reception

Action 52 has been met with overwhelmingly negative reviews from critics. Skyler Miller of AllGame described it as an "unlicensed but legal multicart" containing "NES games of extremely poor quality." The website Destructoid condemned the collection by stating "there's nothing worth playing in the lot." A retrospective published in 2019 by Rock Paper Shotgun labeled the games as "creatively bankrupt rush jobs," with even the best titles functioning merely as simple minigames.

In 2010, independent developer Arthur Lee organized a game jam called "Action 52 Owns," which aimed to unofficially recreate as many games from the compilation as possible. This event produced 23 remakes, including Lee’s well-known adaptation of Streemerz.

Legacy

The 2024 release titled UFO 50 was inspired by the idea of a compilation featuring multiple games, comprising 50 retro-inspired titles created by developers known for popular games such as Spelunky and Downwell.

In 2010, YouTube content creator James Rolfe, portraying the Angry Video Game Nerd, produced a review of Action 52. This critique emphasized persistent issues like frequent crashes, severe bugs, and deceptive game titles, highlighting the compilation’s substandard quality despite its humorous delivery.

See also

• List of commercial failures in video games
• List of video games notable for negative reception
• Asset flip
• Caltron 6 in 1
• Cassette 50
• Don't Buy This

External links

• Complete list of Action 52 games — comprehensive details on the 52-game collection.
• Exposing Active Enterprises — insights into Action 52 and its publisher.
• Official site for The Cheetahmen.
• Developer’s narrative on the development and prototype cartridge of Action 52.