Day of the Tentacle [PC – Beta]

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In the website of ATMachine we can read an interesting series of articles about the old Lucas Arts adventures and between them, we can even find a wonderfull page with informations and screens for the beta version of Day of the Tentacle! In those images we can see different animations and unused items. Also, as we can read on Wikipedia, the game was originally intended to resemble Maniac Mansion more closely, with the player allowed to choose from among six characters who would have included a male poet named Chester, a female hippie named Moonglow described as “a New Age girl with sandals”, and Razor from the original game. This idea was dropped in preproduction to simplify the project. The art created for the character of Chester was eventually adapted for the characters of the sculptor twins in the final game.

Thanks to Celine for the contribution!

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Mortal Kombat [MD/G – Beta]

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MathUser has made us notice that he has posted lots of scans with beta and cancelled games in the Hidden Palace Forum and between those, there are these screens from an early version of Mortal Kombat for the Genesis, with a strange color palette and a exhibition mode that was removed in the final version. Thanks to MathUser and sorry for the delay!

Also in a video documentary that you can see below, Ed Boon talks about the early development of the game, with some interesting unseen info!

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Donkey Kong Country 3 [SNES – Beta / Unused Stuff]

Robert Seddon has linked us to another topic at the DKC Atlas Forum, where The Kirby has an interesting theory about an unused DKC3 SNES sprites for an enemy that was later used in the DKC3 GBA port. The Kirby writes: “My theory is that the TNT Knocka, is actually an enemy that exists in DKC3 SNES’s coding, but was never used, and when the developers for the DKC3 GBA port discovered this enemy (among other things) they decided to save themselves the trouble and use all of these new gameplay elements to create Pacifica, where a few of the new levels contained something that didn’t previously exist in any of the DKC3 SNES levels. It was probably a way they could rehash the old as new.” You can read the full topic in here! Props to The Kirby for the find!

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Qyzbud has noticed that the following rendered background level with the KREM Co. sign (click on it for a bigger version) was never used in the final game, but in DK64’s factory level (Frantic Factory) had that name “KREM Co.” in it, on a clock somewhere and the world map for ‘Mekanos’ in DKC3 features KREM Co. written on the roof of the building where you fight the boss, KAOS.

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Zero7 has made us to notice another topic from the DKC Atlas Forum, where Kiddy14 has found a video with beta DKC3 scenes! Here’s a list of differences that you can see in the video:

1- The game’s subtitle was “Dixie’s Double Trouble”.
2- Arich’s Ambush doesn’t have a little branch in the right tree.
3- There aren’t any “happiness” indicators in Swanky’s Sideshow game.
4- The brother bear featured in the video moves weird, plus he’s gray. (The Brother Bear is gray because he is Blizzard)
5- No little boxes in the top-right part of the screen when visiting the brother bear.
6- Apparently Funky still wasn’t a mechanic, he’s still air-boarding!
7- Mechanos has no factories in it (in the world map).
8- Dixie stays in place.
9- Kiddy’s Idle is the same as his when winning a bonus for the first time.
10- There’s an odd dock level. To the left there’s a Y banana formation, a buzz and a steel barrel. Probably an early design from Lakeside Limbo.
11- Ellie in a snow level!
12- There are Neeks! In Doorstop Dash, Squeals on Wheels and Lakeside Limbo.
13- Dixie isn’t shaded.
14- THERE IS A RIPSAW IN BARREL SHIELD BUST-UP!
15- Bananas aren’t animated.
16- A banana bunch over the first Neek in Squeals on Wheels is missing.
17- A DK Barrel is missing in Barrel Shield Bust-Up.

More differences were found thanks to Discrosh:

  • The mice gauge is missing on Squeals on wheels.
  • The entire world map is different.
  • A mice is missing in Barrel Shield Bust-Up beginnig (below the missing DK barrel).
  • The Minkys and the barrel Shields are missing in Barrel Shield Bust-Up.
  • The “house area” in Skidda’s Row is different from all “house areas” in the Skidda’s Row final version.

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Gabrielwoj have found a game problem which seems that RARE Ltd. removed a Barrel Sprite but didn’t removed on it’s configurations. The problem is similar to MissingNo, the sprite have been removed in the game, but the configurations haven’t.

Kvinxx has made us to notice a topic from DKC World Club, where he found another ad of DKC3 but from USA. There are no noticeable differences.

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Mission Impossible [SNES MD GEN – Cancelled]

Before being released on the Nintendo 64, Mission Impossible was in development for the Super Nintendo and Mega Drive / Genesis, but soon the 16 bit versions were cancelled, to shift resources to the Ultra 64 one. The game was going to be similar to Flashback by  Delphine Software, as a side-scrolling action game with puzzles and gun fights. Currently we dont know which studio was working on Mission Impossible 16 Bit, but it should have been published by Ocean, as the N64 version.

If you have more info or screens about this lost game, please let us know!

Thanks to Robert Seddon and Celine for the scans! (Magazines: Joypad #44, Top Consoles #4, Console Plus #45)

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[Update] New beta video for Silicon Valley

Longuist has linked us to an old music video by Mouse on Mars, that uses scenes from what it looks like a beta version of Silicon Valley, one of the most interesting Nintendo 64 games. The major differences in this video should be:

  • power gems & flowers look different
  • no hud
  • trees now have a texture?
  • unknow level the video starts with?
  • the “green” levels have now much more steel plates (remember: its a space station) (see level 7 for instance)
  • and… no juggling disco bear ^^

Maybe some of these look different just because of the video montage, but its definitely newer than the e3 1997 version. Can you find more differences in here?

Unfortunately nothing is known between the collaboration of the Band and DMA. (Rumor: MoM did the score of the game). Thanks a lot to Longuist for these informations!