Every British kid who spent a wet August afternoon in a seaside arcade has a game like this. You played it once, maybe twice, on a cabinet next to the 2p pushers, and then went home and waited for the Mega Drive or SNES version that never turned up. Some of those games came home years later in odd forms: a plug-and-play mini cabinet, a download that vanished from the store, a full-size replica that cost more than a console. Others are still stuck in the arcade.
This is our list of the best of them, plus where things stand in 2026 and how to actually play each one now. Along the way we’ve corrected a few that keep turning up on other sites’ “never ported” lists even though they did make it home.
The reasons they didn’t make the jump are nearly always the same three. The first is licences: a game based on a film, cartoon or comic needed a second deal for home release, and that deal often never happened or has long since expired. The second is hardware, because 16-bit consoles simply couldn’t do what the boards were doing. The third is timing: by the time a home machine was powerful enough, the game was old news.
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A quick word on buying original boards
For most of these games, the only fully legal way to play the original is to own the original arcade board, the PCB. Most use the standard JAMMA connector, so you’ll need either a cabinet or a “supergun” (a box that runs an arcade board on a TV) plus an arcade stick. A few boards also came with a suicide battery, a security battery that wipes the game’s decryption key when it dies and leaves the board dead. Before you buy, check whether the seller says the board has had its battery replaced or the protection removed.
Emulation through MAME is how most people play these today. We don’t link to ROM sites. Downloading ROMs for games you don’t own is a legal grey area at best, so emulating a board you own is the clean option.
Still stuck in the arcade
Cadillacs and Dinosaurs (Capcom, 1993)
Capcom’s CPS-1 brawler is based on Mark Schultz’s comic Xenozoic Tales. It’s a Final Fight-style game where you drive a 1950s Cadillac through a world overrun by dinosaurs, and the dinosaurs attack the poachers as readily as they attack you. It’s one of the best beat ’em ups Capcom ever made, and it has never had an official home release of the arcade game. Even Capcom’s 2018 Beat ‘Em Up Bundle left it out.
The usual explanation is licensing, since the game involves a comic, a cartoon and a car brand. You’ll often read that General Motors wanted too much for the Cadillac name, but we couldn’t find anything official to back that up, so treat it as a popular theory rather than fact. (The Sega CD game Cadillacs and Dinosaurs: The Second Cataclysm is a completely different game from another developer, so don’t buy it expecting the arcade one.)
How to play it today: the original board, or a fan-made Mega Drive conversion that appeared in 2022. Cadillacs and Dinosaurs boards and marquees (eBay)
Asterix (Konami, 1992)
Most “never ported” lists are written in the US and miss this one, which is a shame for British and European readers. Konami of Europe commissioned it from Konami’s arcade team in Japan. It plays like a cartoon version of the Turtles and Simpsons games, with Asterix and Obelix smacking Romans across Gaul. If you went to French or British seaside arcades in the early 90s, you probably remember the sound before the cabinet.
It never came home. Asterix games were plentiful on consoles at the time, and one account says Sega held the console rights then, which would have shut Konami out. We haven’t been able to confirm that, so take it as a likely reason rather than the definite one. A fan SNES conversion was reported to be in the works in 2023.
How to play it today: the original board only. Konami Asterix arcade boards (eBay)
Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker (Sega, 1990)
Many people played Moonwalker on the Mega Drive or Master System and assume that was the arcade game too. It wasn’t. The arcade version, on Sega’s System 18 board, is an isometric beat ’em up for up to three players and a completely different game. Its board also had a suicide battery, so plenty of surviving cabinets have died over the years.
It has never been re-released in any form, and with the licence involved, it probably never will be.
How to play it today: a working original board, or an FPGA “core” (a hardware recreation of the board) for MiSTer and Analogue Pocket, released in 2024. You still need to supply the game data yourself. Moonwalker arcade boards (eBay)
Spider-Man: The Videogame (Sega, 1991)
Four players control Spider-Man, Black Cat, Hawkeye and Namor, fighting through Kingpin and Doctor Doom’s henchmen. It mixes side-on brawling with sections where the camera pulls back and it becomes a platformer. It ran on Sega’s System 32 board and never came home. Mega Drive owners got Spider-Man vs. The Kingpin, a different game.
(One recent list says this wasn’t a Sega game. It was: Sega developed and published it on its own hardware, as part of the Marvel licence it held at the time.)
How to play it today: the original board. Sega Spider-Man arcade boards (eBay)
Violent Storm (Konami, 1993)
Violent Storm was Konami’s last big arcade beat ’em up and arguably its best. It’s the third entry in the series that began with Crime Fighters and Vendetta, with huge sprites, a ridiculous sung soundtrack and moves borrowed from Final Fight. Unlike the licensed games on this list, it’s entirely Konami’s own, which makes its absence harder to explain. Vendetta got a Switch re-release through Hamster’s Arcade Archives in 2021, but as far as we can find, Violent Storm still hasn’t.
How to play it today: the original board. Violent Storm boards (eBay)
Jurassic Park (Sega, 1994)
Sega’s rail shooter sat you and a friend in a jeep-shaped cabinet with a moving seat, blasting dinosaurs off the back of the vehicle. Everything that made it special was in the cabinet, and with home consoles already well stocked with Jurassic Park games, it never came home. Its 1997 sequel, The Lost World, didn’t either: a Dreamcast port was planned and then cancelled.
How to play it today: find one in the wild, at a museum, an arcade bar or a retro event. Flyers and marquees do turn up for collectors. Sega Jurassic Park arcade memorabilia (eBay)
Star Wars Trilogy Arcade (Sega, 1998)
This is Sega’s Model 3 Star Wars game, with Hoth, Endor, the Death Star trench and a lightsaber duel, played with a flight-yoke cabinet. A home port was reportedly planned and then dropped. It’s also one of the hardest games on this list to emulate well, so in practice you need to find a real cabinet.
(Don’t confuse it with Sega’s earlier Star Wars Arcade from 1993, which did come home. See below.)
How to play it today: on a real cabinet, at an arcade bar or a retro event.
Ninja Baseball Bat Man (Irem, 1993)
Irem’s game is a four-player brawler starring baseball-playing ninja robots, about as early-90s as arcade games get. It has never been released outside arcades. That’s about to change, in a way: City Connection and Irem are releasing an HD remake, Ninja Baseball League-Man: Bases Loaded, on 10 December 2026 for Steam, PS5, Xbox Series and Switch 2. It’s a rebuilt version with new modes and a fifth playable character. We haven’t seen confirmation that the untouched arcade original is included, so if that’s what you want, check before buying.
How to play it today: the original board, or wait a month for the remake. Ninja Baseball Bat Man boards (eBay)
Came home eventually, just about
These three still turn up on “never ported” lists. That was true for decades, but it isn’t any more. Each one did come home eventually, though only in a narrow way.
Golden Axe: The Revenge of Death Adder (Sega, 1992)
The proper four-player arcade sequel to Golden Axe was the only game in the series never to come home, until 2020. It was then released twice in the same year: on Arcade1Up’s Golden Axe replica cabinet, and on Sega’s own Astro City Mini plug-and-play console. The Astro City Mini version only supports two players, so the Arcade1Up cabinet is the only official way to play it with four. We covered the original in Looking Back: Golden Axe.
Sega Astro City Mini (eBay) · Arcade1Up Golden Axe cabinet (eBay)
Alien vs. Predator (Capcom, 1994)
Capcom’s three-player CPS-2 brawler is the game most often named as the one fans want back. A Sega 32X port was rumoured and never released. Its only home release so far came in 2019, as one of the games on Capcom’s Home Arcade, a large two-player arcade stick with the games built in. A Switch version was planned after that but cancelled when the licence with Disney ran out. So it did come home, but only on one plug-and-play device.
Original CPS-2 boards were battery-protected too, so check before buying one.
WWF WrestleFest (Technōs Japan, 1991)
Four-player Royal Rumbles with Hulk Hogan, Mr. Perfect and the Legion of Doom made this a bowling-alley staple. WWF’s console games were licensed elsewhere at the time, so it never came home in the 90s. A loose smartphone remake appeared in 2012. The arcade original finally got an officially licensed home release in October 2025, as a home arcade cabinet sold under the current WWE name. There’s also a core for the Analogue Pocket.
WrestleFest home cabinets (eBay)
Some sites say these never came home. They did.
These games keep appearing on “never ported” lists, including recent ones, but every one of them did reach home in some form. Some of those releases have since disappeared, but they did happen.
- The Simpsons (Konami, 1991): it got cut-down versions for the Commodore 64 and MS-DOS at the time. A proper port then came out on Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network in February 2012, and was quietly delisted at the end of 2013, probably because the licence lapsed. Arcade1Up released a four-player cabinet in 2021. Arcade1Up Simpsons cabinet (eBay)
- X-Men (Konami, 1992): it reached Xbox 360 and PS3 in December 2010, then iOS and Android, before being delisted at the end of 2013. Arcade1Up included it on a Marvel cabinet in 2021. Arcade1Up X-Men cabinet (eBay)
- Star Wars Arcade (Sega, 1993): Sega’s Model 1 game was a launch title for the 32X in 1994. It’s a rough conversion, but a real one. The game that never came home is the 1998 Trilogy Arcade. Star Wars Arcade for 32X (eBay)
- Primal Rage (Atari Games, 1994): it was ported to almost everything, including SNES, Mega Drive, PlayStation, Saturn, 32X, 3DO, Jaguar CD, Amiga, Game Boy and PC. Most versions were compromised, but there were plenty of them. Saturn is generally reckoned the closest to the arcade. More on Atari Games in Looking Back: Atari Games. Primal Rage for Saturn (eBay)
Why it matters
A film can turn up on a streaming service decades later. A licensed arcade game often can’t, because the rights to the game, the characters and sometimes the music all sit with different owners, and every one of those deals has to be done again. The Simpsons and X-Men show that even a successful re-release can disappear when a licence runs out.
That’s why the strange, expensive half-releases matter: the mini consoles, the replica cabinets and the FPGA cores. They’re the reason Revenge of Death Adder and Alien vs. Predator can be played at home at all. Cadillacs and Dinosaurs and Asterix are still waiting.
Which one do you still want back? If there’s a seaside-arcade favourite we’ve missed, tell us.
All game titles, characters and logos mentioned are trademarks of their respective owners and are used here for identification only. PC Play isn’t affiliated with or endorsed by any of the publishers, developers or rights holders mentioned. eBay is a trademark of eBay Inc.
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