Included in this post are high-quality scans of all pages contained in an original 1995 Coconuts Japan Entertainment Press Kit, which I bought off of eBay recently. While the seller of this item believed this came from the 1995 Consumer Electronics Show, which was held in Las Vegas Nevada in 1995 from January 6th to the 9th, the details found in the Press Kit itself indicate otherwise. While I am convinced that this is, indeed, a genuine press kit released by Coconuts Japan Entertainment, it seems that it would have been presented at some tradeshow of sorts held somewhere in Japan around the time of May 1, 1995. As evidence for this, the front cover page as well as the first black and white page shows that this press release was shown to certain parties on May 1, 1995. In the “For the Publishers” section of the first black and white page, it can be seen that Coconuts Japan Entertainment at the time of this press release was seeking new business relationships with publishers who might be able to publish their Japanese games in foreign countries, such as throughout Europe and America. This explains why this press release would have been published in English, though it was shown in Japan, since people from different countries would have come to the exhibition, and English would have been the common language known to most visitors. Thus, Coconuts Japan was likely hoping to find a publisher or publishers who would be able to publish their Virtual Boy games in North America, but as we all now know, that never came to fruition. The 4th black and white page confirms that Coconuts Japan did not at that time have a publisher who would be able to publish their games outside of Japan, since no foreign location is provided for the planned Virtual Boy titles in the “Territory” column. I conclude that the “War Simulation” title on that same page was a working title for the unreleased game that we also now refer to as “Star Seed.”
Since it is evident that the English article for Proteus Zone on the last black and white page isn’t written in the best of English, showing strong evidence that it was written by a Japanese writer who wasn’t a master of the English language, I have created a “cleaned up” version of the article as best as I could figure out, which is as follows:
Proteus Zone
1. SELLING POINTS
The player finds himself in a realistic shooting game with three-dimensional graphics. In order to complete a stage, all enemies on the screen must be wiped out. You can enjoy impressive visuals by using the Virtual Boy’s functions, such as zooming in and zooming out. Besides the “ORIGINAL MODE,” in which the player is expected to complete each stage in order, the “TIME ATTACK MODE” lets a player compete for a high score against other players’ scores within a certain duration of time.
2. GAME CONTENT
Every enemy character has certain connections with each other. And for this reason, the player can wipe out a group of enemies just by killing their leader. The more the enemies are killed as a group, the more points are given to the player, which is sure to give the player a great sense of satisfaction.
3. PLATFORM
NINTENDO VIRTUAL BOY/ 8 Mbit ROM
4. GENRE
Shooter
5. NUMBER OF PLAYERS
Exclusively for one player
6. RELEASE DATE
September ’95
