The Action Gamemaster was a 16-bit portable game console announced by Active Enterprises, infamous for Action 52, in 1994 - it would've had a slot for games designed for it, as well as adapters that would allow it to play SNES, Genesis, NES, and CD-ROM games, alongside adaptors that served as a TV tuner and cigarette lighter.

The console never released due to Active going out of business, and if it were to release it is unlikely that it would have bared much resemblance to the overly-ambitious original plan due to emulation not being in an advanced state at the time and patents for the 3 game platforms still being active.

Notably, the Action Gamemaster is also the name of a character in the NES version of the Cheetahmen minigame of Action 52.

A promotional contest was planned in which anyone who completed level 5 of the game "Ooze" would be entered in a drawing for $104,000. However, the game locks up on level 2, making this impossible. The message can be seen through the use of hacking tools.

In Cheetahmen, each character has its own introductory cutscene. However, the cutscene for Apollo appears to have no text accompanied with the obligatory image. This is because Active forgot to put the alphabet characters next to the image tiles in the ROM. The unused text can be found in a memory viewer during the cutscene and Levels 5 and 6 of Cheetahmen, and reads:

"APOLLO IS THE MASTER OF THE CROSSBOW. USE THE CROSSBOW TO DEFEAT THE ENEMIES ON THE LAST TWO LEVELS AND GET DR. MORBIS"

There is evidence in the game's code that suggests that there was originally going to be 8 more games, making a total of 60.

Setting the value of the RAM address $338 to 02 (or using the Game Genie code ZAOEAPAA) at the Rocket Jockey game menu will bring the player to Level 3. This is a semi-playable level with a wrongly colored background, and sprites that glitch out when certain enemies appear. There are also mountains in the background that don't appear elsewhere in the game, as well as projectiles that spawn periodically.

Action 52 was developed by a team of three college students over the course of three months.

A SNES version of the game was planned for release in October of 1993, but was cancelled, most likely due to the game's poor reception.

Action 52 came with a leaflet explaining that the games Alfred and the Fetucini's[sic] and Jigsaw could only be unlocked by completing Ooze. In reality, the prior two games are not playable on NES hardware and the latter game is unwinnable.