
After the success of Sonic The Hedgehog back in the day there was a flood of animal mascot platformers on every system imaginable, trying with varied degrees of success to cash in on the overnight popularity of the genre. French developer Titus Software was one of many companies all over the world giving the genre a spin, with moderate success in the form of the developer's very own mascot "Titus The Fox" and "Oscar" among their finest efforts.
Added in 1994 to the euro-platformer long list of candidates was "Quik The Thunder Rabbit", developed by Stywox and published by Titus for the Commodore Amiga and CD32. An MS-DOS conversion followed and that was that, another solid if unremarkable platform game added to the rather huge pile of them in the '90s.

That is until Assembler Game's user The Real Phoenix posted a prototype build of "Quik" for the Super Nintendo. It is a rather curious prototype that, despite having no sound at all (you already clicked the video below and was wondering if your speakers were busted, didn't you?), it clearly shows an impressive amount of parallax scrolling in the background that wasn't available on the previous versions of the game, something the Super Nintendo was well known for.
Adding to the mystery here is a functional horizontal shmup section that sees you avoiding attacks from a giant enemy in the background, and even some sort of one-on-one fighting stage! You can check out our run of the prototype (that works on real hardware) in the footage below.
Sadly the prototype crashes once you reach the one-on-one level, leaving us wondering if there are more levels beyond. There was also no information given on how the game ended up with The Real Phoenix, leaving us to speculate that it must have in the works around 1994 or 1995, as a pitch to Titus to publish the game on the Super Nintendo. With tight controls, multiple game genres and some impressive sprite work, "Quick The Thunder Rabbit" might have turned out as a surprise hit that would have surely joined late European Super Nintendo releases from the publisher, like "Realm".
As more of these prototypes surface we can't but wonder how many more games are still out there, waiting to be preserved for future video game historians.
Comments 22
It's "Quik the Thunder Rabbit".
And it wasn't very good on the Amiga.
Nope, Quik.
@Floof_Cat Sorry I edited my post! (Originally thought it was "Qwik". Anyway, definitely not "Quick").
Titus, eh?
Those are the guys who made the Gameboy Herculese theme song sound like knives running up and down rusty garbage bins.
After watching the video, I think I would have LOVED this game! Granted, the guy playing was making me cringe a little with his constant deaths. The level with a giant Not-Vision in the background was totally sick, too! SOMEONE go finish this game!
The backgrounds in this are lovely.
Erm...Titus made naff games.
Very few entries in the history of video games have been as thoroughly "Amiga" in appearance as this game.
From the the psychedelic gradient sky, over the multiple scrolling background layers without considering a foreground layer, to the kinda-like-Sonic-here-but-kinda-like-Mario-there design. It's a pure joy to watch.
@Azikira Hey! The guy playing was me! Y_Y
Quick the thunder rabbit huh.. Somebody that would've given Sonic the hedgehog a "run" for his money.. Get it!
Anyways,looks like the guy playing kept his finger on the jump button for too long lol.he stayed High jumping in the air..it annoyed me lol.
Ah Titus, they made a bunch of ok but forgettable late releases for snes. Part of the problem was the late release and low print runs on their games, making many of them rare and expensive now for collectors, like Incantation, Oscar, and Ardie Lightfoot. They weren't bad games, just were competing against a lot of other solid and higher print platformer on the SNES
Pfft, Jazz Jackrabbit laughs in Quik's puny face.
@Shiryu Sorry man! It's just painful to watch all those deaths. Though the dripping acid junk was pretty stupid IMHO. Such a tiny thing to try and avoid.
Do you have like, a repro-cart of this?
BTW if you wanna throw a barb or two at me, you can always watch my Battle Kid: Fortress of Peril playthrough! I cannot tell you how many times I've died (and raged) and died s'more.
@BionicDodo Jazz. Takes me back.
I always wondered where Titus was based, and now I know. Automobili Lamborghini was one of my first 64 games after launch (early '97?) It was underwhelming and empty, but nice to look at for its time. It was either buy that, or MRC Racing. Right decision.
Sorry, that is all Amiga that game.
Looking forward to grabbing the ROM. Another file to be preserved.
@Azikira No problem. no cart here, I threw the ROM image at BSNES+ and my Super Everdrive to see if it ran on real hardware (it does). The controls are actually spot on, but since it was my first time playing I was going into this blind.
Immediately made me think of Bubsy.
When I heard the name "Quik" and the word "rabbit," I immediately thought of this guy:
Mushroom Hill zone much? 😂
@Shiryu I know that feeling. I go into most of the games I play on my YouTube channel blind, and I'm sure I'd have died a lot too. It just LOOKS like so many games I've played, so it's like a pseudo confidence. Too bad it wasn't finished.
Show Comments
Leave A Comment
Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...