Active Enterprises, Ltd

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Active Enterprises was a small, short-lived company that only ever released two cartridges. Their warehouse was based in Orlando, Florida, but the company itself was based in the Bahamas, like many companies, to avoid paying American taxes. They disappeared in late 1993 after a short life in the gaming world, full of debts and outrageously wild dreams that were too big to handle. The company tried to make it big too quickly by only selling their cartridges to retailers in bulk packages to make a quick buck.

The company started out promoting their USA-made 52-in-1 game cartridge, Action 52, at the Consumer Electronics Show in 1991, where they convinced retailers and video store outlets to take notice of their product. The Action 52 cartridge was initially made for the NES and Genesis with a planned version for the SNES, which never happened as the company fell into debt.

But that was only a small part of their future plans that never occurred. Another cartridge for the SNES and Genesis, "Sport 5"; most likely to be a 5-in-1 sports cart, was planned. In the back of the Cheetahmen comic book that came packaged with Action 52 were some drawings of action figures from this game that were supposedly "Coming Soon".

There was also a Cheetahmen II game for the NES that was made, but never officially released. Apparently the distributor, who was never paid for the distribution of Active's carts, sold these unreleased carts to various collectors and some retailers, so there are a few floating around. And on top of that, a "Disney quality" Cheetahmen cartoon and a Cheetahmen mascot costume were among the list of plans. And now, the most outrageously high-pitched plan, the Action Gamemaster; a handheld console that could play its own cartridges (a planned Cheetahmen III) as well as the capability of attaching adaptors to play NES, SNES, Genesis and CD Rom games as well as a TV Tuner and more.

Sure, these ideas would have been really good if they'd turned out, but they didn't. At least they got out there and tried, you've go to hand it to them for that. But unfortunately, they failed because of spending too much money too fast as an attempt to make money. Perhaps if their marketing scheme had been changed and they eased into the game market at a more steady rate that they could handle, then they may have survived to deliver their promises.

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Active Enterprises, Ltd

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