Valerian is a cancelled Playstation game that was in development in 1998 by Virtual Studio, a french team owned (?) by Infogrames. There are not many info on the project but thanks to Daydi we found out that the game was based on a french comic, "Valérian and Laureline". The character model that can be seen in one of the images, it's identical to the comic's male protagonist. As we can read on Wikipedia: The series centres around the adventures of the spatio-temporal agent, the dark-haired Valérian, and his redheaded female companion, Laureline, as they travel the universe through space and ...
Ambrosia Odyssey is a cancelled Action RPG with online multiplayer that was in development for the Playstation 2 in 2003 by Rocket Studio with help from KAI Graphics (for CG movies) and Supersweep (for music), meant to be published by Square Enix. The game had a multiple branching storyline in offline mode, in which you were able to create towns and foster their development to follow different plots, then connect online to share your game world with other players and visit their own towns and stories. It seems that a video of the game was shown at the Tokyo Game Show ...
Red Dead Revolver is a western third-person shooter published by Rockstar Games and developed by Angel Studios, a team that is now known as Rockstar San Diego. The game was released in May 2004, for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox, but its development begun 3 years before (2001 / 2002) and the project was originally meant to be published by Capcom. In 2002, Angel Studios were acquired by Take Two Interactive and Rockstar Games purchased the rights of the title and expanded on it. The original version of Red Dead Revolver had a more arcadish and fast gameplay, while the final ...
Before being cancelled, a version of Metal Gear Solid was in development for the ill-fated Game.com, a portable console released by Tiger Electronics in 1997. It seems that the game was going to be a port of Metal Gear Solid PSX, but there are just few info on the project. At one point, a gameplay video of this game was distributed among group members of the now-defunct America Online account "TigerGcom", but sadly this footage seems to have been lost forever. After many researches, Celine was able to find a screenshot of Metal Gear Solid Game.com in Console Plus magazine issue ...
Did you enjoy all those differences that can be noticed in the Super Mario World beta screenshots? What if Nintendo had stuck with some of their original material while creating the Super Mario World we know and love today? Well, this SMW hack will let you play the game how it may have been in its beta version! Yoshi Master (AKA Randy from the U64 Staff) has finally released his beta remake of Super Mario World. This hack is based and inspired by all of the pre-release screenshots, unused materials, ancient interviews, and some minor assumptions revolving around SMW, and it's ...
by monokoma In: SEGA| mega drive & genesis
9 Feb 2010Nuclear Rush is an unreleased shooter that was in development in 1993 for the Sega VR, the canned “virtual reality” accessory planned for the Mega Drive / Genesis. Four games were apparently developed for the system, each using 16 Mb cartridges that were to be bundled with the headset. One of these was Nuclear Rush, in which the players were able to fly with an hovercraft to fight in a futuristic war.
Thanks to Sega Forever we can read the original Sega VR press release that was published in Sega Visions magazine, August/September 1993:
From the moment you strap on the headset, you know that your gaming life will never be the same again. The world you see through the twin eye-pieces of the virtual reality (VR) headset responds as if it were another world, one you can explore by moving around without leaving your chair. [...]
You are playing Nuclear Rush, the game that will be bundled with Sega VR, Sega’s new virtual reality headset. [...]
Welcome to the year 2032. Get ready for a cataclysmic trek into a post-nuclear gold rush, where low-level nuclear waste is bartered as an energy source. You are posing as a nuclear pirate, piloting a hovercraft through radioactive wastelands guarded by heavily armed robots and drones.
As Iron Hammer, it’s possible that Nuclear Rush was playable even without the VR accessory. From an interview with Kevin McGrath at Sega 1 6, it seems that Nuclear Rush was completed before the Sega VR was cancelled:
My first project, called Nuclear Rush was to design and code one of the games that was going to be released with the SEGA VR Headset. It was a simple 3D shoot-em-up kind of game, but with the VR Headset it became an intriguing experience. We had concerns about creating nausea for the player, which could happen if the graphics are just slightly out of sync with the actual movement of the players head. Anyway, I spent a year on this project, and although SEGA paid us in full and we completed everything, the hardware never made it past prototype stage.
Thanks to Celine for the scan! (found in GamePower #21). You can also see Nuclear Rush in motion from the video below (thanks to Grooveraider YT channel!).
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A remake of GoldenEye 007 (also know as “Project Bean”) for Xbox Live Arcade was in development by Rare in 2007 / 2008, but the project could not be released on the Xbox 360 since Microsoft, Activision and Nintendo couldn’t agree on the financial side of things. Goldeneye 007 was one of the best multiplayer FPS for its time, originally published in 1997 for the Nintendo 64 and still loved by many fans. A Goldeneye remake would have been a hit among Xbox 360 owners, but sadly due to license issues, it was not possible to complete the project.
While the original game was published on a Nintendo console, Goldeneye’s developer Rare is now owned by Microsoft and the video game rights to the James Bond franchise are held by Activision, so the release of such remake would be a difficult task. [Info from Wikipedia]
Much like the original Goldeneye for the N64, the developers who were involved in the making of this XBLA remake had their faces scanned and implemented into the game (as enemies / civilians / scientists / naval officers).
In the game we would have been able to change the HD converted graphics to N64 graphics, an online multiplayer mode was planned, along with the traditional split screen mode. Goldeneye XBLA would had over 200 point’s worth of achievements and a time trial leader boards.
Some more info can be found at Mundo Rare:
[...] the game was developed in just one year by just 8 people; Dam, Depot and Frigate levels are selectable as multiplayer arenas (even the fabled Citadel was considered just “for the fan reaction”) and the N64 version isn’t technically a port, but a rather smart graphic filter use that makes the new game look the old-fashioned way.
It’s possible that the engine used for this Goldeneye remake was later reused for the Perfect Dark XBLA Remake. Some images in the gallery below are from XBOX Magazine.
Thanks to DCodes7 for the contribution!
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by monokoma In: 32X / Mega CD| SEGA
6 Feb 2010Aftershock is a cancelled shoot ‘em up that was in development by Sega Midwest for the 32X. A short video (just a couple of seconds) of the game was seen in the episode #70 of the ROX TV Show, when they visited the SM studio. As we can read from a GDRI interview with Jim Reichert, former Sega Midwest designer, the project was canned because of economic problems:
JR: Aftershock got beyond the proof of concept stage, and we were developing the game when I left. I remember that Aftershock got rave reviews as a product pitch at SOA, but by that time, Sega Midwest had pissed away so much money (with little ROI [return on investment]) that nobody trusted them with SOA cash — and Sega itself was totally floundering (32X?!?). It was too bad because that game actually had some legs, and the whole studio was excited about it — and I was the lead designer. I still have all the videos and game assets associated with it — I even have a cartridge with the prototype on it. We had a professional cartooner design all the characters for the game, and the images were completely awesome.
[...]
JR: Essentially, it was Jungle Strike set in a post-apocalyptic world where you could fly, drive, and cycle around.
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by monokoma In: UNSEEN NEWS
5 Feb 2010Denjin Makai is a series of beat ‘em up developed by Banpresto and released for the Arcade from 1993 to 1995. A Super Famicom / Super Nintendo version was planned too, but it seems that it was never released. It’s currently unknown if the SNES Denjin Makai was going to be a new game or a port of the first chapter already released in arcades.
Thanks to Celine for the contribution! (Scans from Super Power magazine issues #20 and #22)
Update: Celine later found out that this game was indeed released in japan under a different name: Ghost Chaser Densei.
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U64 is an archive with articles, screens and videos for cancelled, beta & unseen videogames. Every change & cut creates a different gaming experience: we would like to save some documents about this evolution for curiosity, historic and artistic preservation.