UNDERCOVER

Macau, November 1993. A harbor exchange goes wrong, a blue diplomatic suitcase disappears, and two people who were told the wrong story go looking for it with their fists.

Two ways to throw a punch

UNDERCOVER plays like the side-scrolling brawlers that filled the 16-bit years, and it chooses its two heroes carefully. Jack Wong is the undercover cop: slower on his feet, heavier with his fists and his grapples. Mei Lin is the former smuggler: quicker, with faster combos and a kick to finish them. Both can punch, kick, grab and throw, pick up a metal pipe or a six-round pistol, and save up for one special each. Jack's Gun Dive sends him through the air firing. Mei's Spinning Fury clears everyone standing around her.

Three nights in Macau

The surviving demo has three stages, and each one has its own light.

Dead Drop is the harbor at night: cargo, crates and wet concrete, and Dockmaster Kong waiting at the end.
Red Lotus moves into neon streets and a nightclub, from the door to the dance floor, where Mr. Lau has his own ideas about the evening.
The Last Hand is the casino of Hotel Imperador: the lobby, the gaming floor and the high-roller suite upstairs, where broken tables spill chips across the carpet.

It is crime cinema at 320×240, Hong Kong action films compressed into sprites and a breakbeat soundtrack.

The cartridge

According to the bundled README, a six-person Hong Kong studio called Jade Circuit made the game in 1993 as the pack-in for the Dragon-16 II, an unlicensed clone of a 16-bit console. An anti-smuggling raid and a warehouse fire in early 1994 reportedly destroyed the studio's computers, its source disks and the cartridge stock before anything shipped. One EPROM test cartridge, marked only ACTION / SAMPLE, is said to have surfaced at a flea-market stall on Apliu Street in 2025. No credits on it name the people who made it.

The copy carries small scars of its own. The build is version 0.3, yet its page header still reads V0.2, and the title screen says V0.2 RED LOTUS.

Playback error

Then the tape runs out.

Up in the high-roller suite, with the conspiracy almost in view, the picture starts to tear. VHS noise rolls across the screen. A playback error. Then three words: DEMO VERSION END. Victor Leong never appears, and the true ending is not on the cartridge.

Nobody has found the rest of the tape.