Click on almost any of these images for a bigger version. For a more detailed comparison of the preview screens compared to the final game, check out this page. And a big thanks to the users of RetroCDN, as most of these magazine scans are from there.

MAGAZINE PREVIEWS

The November 1992 issue of Beep! Mega Drive featured a preview of the game, stating it was 50% complete. However it also shows the game looked completely different at this point! The screenshots showing gameplay show levels not seen in the final version, along with a different sprite for Annet. This version's HUD is also different from the final version, featuring a magic attack not seen in the final game, along with an EXP scoring system -EXP was in El Viento, but in the end, was removed from this game, and replaced with a standard scoring system. There were seemingly no enemies implemented in this version yet as the score is at zero in both screenshots, and Annet is the only character on the screen.

There are also images from the game's cutscenes, which it appears a lot of effort had been put into already. Every cutscene image shown is different in the final version, with them being re-drawn (see the page linked above for more details). The image showing Zigfried does not seem to appear in the final version, as it might have been changed to a different shot of him, like this one. The second page of the preview also shows some sketches of the game's cutscenes, most of these match up with the final version apart from one -there is a sketch of Annet and Kirke in a car, in the final version, Earnest is also present.

This was the first time the game was featured in Beep! Mega Drive, and it was the November issue. The game was released in March, and given these screenshots Wolf Team started over again from scratch! This pretty much confirms the game had a very rushed development and why it turned out like it did.

From issue 2 of Marukatsu Mega Drive, which was published in November 1992. It features the same images from Beep! Mega Drive's preview.

This scan is from issue 41 of Electronic Gaming Monthly. It features screens that were featured in the Beep! Mega Drive preview. EGM may not have been told anything about the story and simply made stuff up to fill space, but if they were telling the truth, then the original story for the game was very different, as it would have been about a second battle against Hastur. The final game's story is all about the Nexus Army and Zigfried's plans, whilst Hastur only gets mentioned once.

This preview is from volume 1, issue 2 of Gamefan. The screenshots their preview has were seen in Beep! and Marukatsu Mega Drive's previews. It also states the game will be out in January, but in reality it wasn't released until March 1993.

A small preview from issue 18 of Console Mania. The screenshots here have been shown in other magazines.

This preview is from Supergame issue 22. It again features screens shown in Beep! Mega Drive. Unrelated, but the preview also mentions Power Drift for the Mega CD, which was never released.

Beep! Mega Drive's December 1992 issue contained another preview of the game. Despite there only being a month between this issue and the last one, the game had completely changed at this point, and was looking a lot more like the final version. The first page shows a few stills from the cutscenes. There are some minor differences with these, such as Annet having red fingernails. There are also a few gameplay shots, showing a scrapped level! The two screens on the left show an early version of the third level, which has a different floor design than what's in the final version, plus the enemies shown don't appear here either. The two screenshots on the right show a level set in what appears to be a dungeon. Annet does end up here in the final game, but only in a cutscene. The robots seen in these images have bronze palettes, in the final version they were change to silver. They also appear to have appear to be missile launchers on their backs, these were removed from their sprites for the final game.

The second page has even more cutscene images. The most notable difference is that Princess Aisha has blonde hair in this preview, this would be changed to red for the final version. Annet and Earnest have goofy looking faces in the top screenshot, and in the bottom left, the shot of Richtenreich shows him having a pont tail, something he lacks in the final game.

This issue of Beep! also features the first of several "Aneko Land" comics, if you want to read them in English, visit the odds and ends page.

Beep! Mega Drive's January 1993 issue featured a one page preview. Unfortunately, it doesn't show any screenshots of the levels, instead only showing cutscene images. Some of these look slightly different to the final version, and the one at the bottom middle showing Annet dropping down was redrawn entirely. The Aneko Land comic features a guest appearance of Reika from Time Gal, which Wolf Team handled the SEGA CD port of.

The largest image shows a picture of what would be used on the game's front cover, but it's larger and shows there are more characters -you can see Zigfried and the level 3 boss to the right, these guys are cut off from the box's cover.

A two page preview from issue 3 of Marukatsu Mega Drive, which was published in January 1993. Most of the screenshots are zoomed in, but you can see the spinning robot enemies in the first level here. These enemies don't appear until the third level in the final version of the game. The cutscene images on the second page are mostly different in small ways, and some of them were also featured in Beep! Mega Drive's December '92 issue.

There is a single gameplay screenshot on the second page which shows the second level. Annet is fighting three enemies at the same time here, but in the final version, she only has to fight three enemies one at a time. The HUD is also different, featuring a different font for the scoring text.

A small preview from the January 1993 issue of Mega Play. It features the same screenshots shown in the above magazines, and also says the plot is about a fighting Hastur.

A brief mention from issue 15 of SEGA Pro, a UK magazine. According to this the game doesn't even have a name yet, but it does have the words "Annette" and "Again" at the top.

Beep! Mega Drive featured yet another preview in their February 1993 issue, this time having three pages. Page one features the winner of some kind of event that was featured elsewhere in the magazine. I'm not sure what it's about at all, but it appears several women entered a contest and the winner got an Annet outfit -quite possibly the only Annet cosplay in the world. Congratulations to lady no. 5 anyway. The gameplay screenshots look fairly close to the final version, but Annet is using a magic attack on a boss -in the final game you can't do this. The boss sprite is also red in this preview, the final version changed this to green. The background for the level 1 boss is also slightly different.

Page two features a few cutscene images, a few of these have some differences that were cleaned up for the final version, such as Annet's creepy eyes on the bottom row screen of her. There's some stuff about the voice actors and actresses on the bottom half of this page.

Page three shows off Annet's moves, there don't appear to be any differences here.

A two page preview from the February 1993 issue of Mega Drive Fan. Oddly, despite the cutscene images being from different levels, all of the gameplay screenshots only show the game's first level. These first level screens have the same differences the Beep! previews showed, such as the boss having a red sprite.

Several of the cutscene images are not quite final -a few of them were changed for the final game in really minor ways, such as the forest background behind Kirke. The bottom left image of Annet was arguably made worse for the final game.

This preview is from the February 1993 issue of Dengeki Mega Drive. The images mostly look the same as the final game, and there are even a couple of screens from the ending. However, on the second page, it shows the first boss having a red sprite. What's unique about this preview is the boss is in a different place -Annet is seen fighting him in a location seen earlier on in the level. This is the only preview to feature this, all of the others show the boss at the correct area.

This preview is from issue 17, February 1993 issue of French gaming magazine Consoles +. The screenshots look like they were taken from a very late or final build of the game.

The game had a brief mention in the the issue 16 of SEGA Pro. The screenshots are from the cutscenes, it looks like they got these images from Beep! Mega Drive's January issue. One thing worth mentioning is that this magazine refers to the game as "Earnest Evans 3: Annette Again", which is the only mag I've seen to use that title. And if Wolf Team really did claim there was over an hour of animated sequences, they were lying.

The March 1993 issue of Beep! Mega Drive had another preview, this time being two pages. At this point almost everything appears to be identical to the final version, other than the first boss still having a red sprite, and magic attacks could still be used on bosses in this build.

The bottom of the second page features a small preview for Arcus I-II-III, a collection of three Wolf Team games on one disc.

A preview from issue 4 of Marukatsu Mega Drive, which was published in March 1993. From what I can tell, the screenshots show here match up with everything in the final game. The art of Annet and Earnest featured on the first page would be used in the manual, however, it was slightly altered to make part of Annet's clothes less revealing.

Issue 17 of SEGA Pro, which was published in March 1993, had another small preview. It features the same screenshots used in Mega Drive Fan's February issue. The text claims Annet can pick up weapons to use, but that's not the case.

These two pages are from the April 1993 issue of Beep! Mega Drive, which is the same issue they reviewed the game (see below). One screenshot shows the game paused, with the pause text covering up the score. In the final version, pausing the game removes all character sprites from the screen, and the pause text is appears in the middle. The only other differences I can find is that the first level boss still has a red sprite, and it was still possible to use magic attacks on bosses in this build.

Issue 47 of Electronic Gaming Monthly featured this this very small preview, with just two screens. Amusingly they took their two screenshots from the Beep! Mega Drive April issue -the top screenshot has a graphic covering up part of the life and magic bars. The most important thing about this scan is that it confirms that this game was meant to have an American release, under the name of "Annet Again". Renovation, who published El Viento and Earnest Evans for the SEGA Genesis, are listed as the publisher. However the American version of the game would never be released.

The text mentions that Annet is in another time zone -this is wrong, but then you can't blame them for putting this, as a lot of the enemies in the game include stuff like robots -a little advanced for what's meant to be 1930s technology!

A small preview was also featured in Electronic Gaming Monthly's SEGA Force supplement magazine, featuring two screenshots. The first image is from a late build of the game, but the second image, which was shown in several other magazines, was scrapped and redrawn for the final version.

This is a small preview from volume 1, issue 3 of Gamefan, which refers to the game as "Annette Again". Just about every screenshot from the game differs from the final product. Nearly all of the enemies shown in the pictures are not in those locations in the final game. The image of Annet is from one of the game's cutscenes, but it still looks different to the final version. The bottom image of Earnest was featured in earlier Gamefan and EGM previews.

I cannot help but laugh at the writer's comments -what version of the game were they playing? This game is certainly not something special.

Volume 1, issue 5 of Gamefan featured a two page preview of the game. The first page features a lot of cutscene images, the second page is all gameplay screens, many of which feature different enemies to what's see in the final version. This version is said to be 60% complete and by the looks of it, the only magic attack implemented at this point was the first one. Kind of a shame that Gamefan were hyping the game up so much (masterpiece? really?) when the final product turned out so badly, and wasn't even released outside Japan.

This was taken from issue 14 of UK SEGA magazine MEGA. Not much info at all really. The image of Annet has been seen in the early EGM and Gamefan previews. Like the earliest EGM preview, this claims that the plot is about Hastur, but the final game's plot has little to do with that God. I do find it a little interesting that MEGA had Virgin Interactive down for publishing this. Just like how it was never given an American release, Annet Futatabi never made it to Europe, either, like all of the other games in the series.

This was from an issue of Retro Gamer magazine, but I don't know which issue. The game was featured in the "minority report" article, which recommended several Mega CD games to try. I thought I'd include it here as it's by far the nicest thing any magazine has ever had to say about this game.

REVIEWS

A review featured in issue 223 of Famitsu. The four reviewers gave the game scores of 6, 4, 6 and 4 out of 10.

Beep! Mega Drive's review of the game, which was featured in their April 1993 issue. One reviewer gave it a 7 out of 10, whilst the other three each gave it a more accurate 4.

Consoles + reviewed the game in their 19th issue, which was out in April 1993. Given a review score of just 35%, the magazine also had the game featured as its number one flop of the issue, beating out G-Loc Air Battle and Cool World. This is probably the only time Annet Futatabi has won an award of any kind so congratulations Wolf Team! For some reason the title screen was flipped on the flops mention.

The review features screenshots from a not quite final build of the game -the first boss has a red sprite instead of a green one, and the pause text appears in the top right corner rather than the middle of the screen, and the game doesn't remove character sprites when paused. This build is similar to the one featured in the Beep! Mega Drive previews.

This review is from issue 18 of UK magazine Mega Tech.

A review from issue 11 of Mega, a UK magazine. Given the cover of this issue is dated August 1993 it's kind of surprising they bothered reviewing this so late, or even bothered giving it page space at all given that the game was never released in the UK. Can't argue with the review score though.

ADVERTISEMENTS

A two page print ad that was featured in magazines like Beep! Mega Drive. It lacks any screenshots from the game, but instead mentions a couple of other titles that Wolf Team had in the works.

A one page ad, featuring the title in purple rather than the usual red. Again, it lacks any screenshots, but instead devotes a third of itself plugging Devastator and Arcus I-II-III.