Beta + Cancelled Playstation 2 (PS2) Video Games - Page 4 of 86

Amon Ra is a cancelled adventure game developed by Widescreen Games around 2003, exclusively for the Playstation 2.

As we can read on the personal website of Franck Sauer, Widescreen Games had decided to mandate him and Yann Robert to work on this demo, just after the closure of their own company, Appeal Studios, following the cancellation of Outcast 2: The Lost Paradise and Tintin, using assets and technology previously created for those projects:

“After Appeal (our previous studio) went bankrupt (see Outcast II and Tintin stories) Yann and I kept working together on some work for hire while thinking about exactly what to do next.
During that time, Olivier Masclef who had been producer on Outcast came to us with an adventure game concept called Amon Ra. His studio (Widescreen Games) was busy on another production and he asked us to build an early prototype on Playstation 2 based on this concept.
As we had acquired the technology from Outcast II we had something to start with to quickly build the prototype. Yann started cleaning and enhancing the various unfinished technologies that would later serve as the basis for our FreshEngine.
To help me quickly edit the map, I used some refurbished assets from the defunct Outcast II and built some new stuff on top of it. My friend Francois-Xavier Melard worked on the character.
This was a short work of a couple weeks and after this prototype, the project never went further into development.”
Technology
“Some very advanced technologies for the time can be seen in action here (some of which were already implemented in the Outcast II prototype), such as realtime tesselation and vector displacement (water), radiosity and light probes (lighting of the character dependant on the environment, with light bouncing), soft shadows, dynamically rendered billboard (small vegetation), and pixel-occluded lens flares.
One of the amazing thing was the incredible amount of triangles the Playstation 2 was capable of pumping. Around 300k in a single frame, with the prototype running at 60 frames per seconds (…)”

Strangely enough, according to the now-defunct website of Widescreen Games, the game was planned for the PC, Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. Here was what we could read about the storyline and its features:

The 10 commandments meets Stargate
Amon Ra is a 3rd person action adventure game mixing action phases, social interactions and puzzles solving in the totally new and lifelike world, mainly inspired by the ancient Egypt period.
As the hero, you will interact with hundreds of locals, engage in plenty of combat against aliens and go on numerous adventure game quests.
Storyline:
The player is named Shail, a young slave who will meet his fate; he is the one chosen by the Ankh entity to perform the Prophecy : free the human race from the Seth’s domination. This extra-terrestrial race has dominated his folks over centuries due to its superior knowledge and advanced technology.
Throughout the game, the player will interact with human guilds as the merchants, priests, rebels and an ancient civilization. Obviously, each of them carries out different goals and interests.
Conspiracies, romance, twists and turns will drive the story.
Will Shail be able to achieve his own objective to overthrow the Seths?
Unique Selling Points
A cutting-edge in-house engine to serve the game.
The original universe of the ancient Egypt mixed with some sci-fi components.
Numerous “organic” and huge locations : from mysterious temples, overcrowded bazaars, resting oasis, frightening caves to gigantic spacecrafts!
Hundreds of hi-detailed character models suiting the period as well as fantasy ones.
A brand new system of quests layers which will confer to the player the feeling to manage his own and original quest in a live universe.
Breath-taking actions due to the use of ancient magic and high-tech weapons.
Enhanced AI system for the NPCs who manage their life according their own interests. Any action you take has ripple effects on the whole community.

During their 10 years of existence, Widescreen Games had a lot of numerous other canceled titles.

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Playstation 2 (PS2), Sony

Surface Tension (Krome Studios) [PS2 – Cancelled]

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28-01-2022

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Surface Tension is a cancelled Playstation 2 strategy / adventure game that was in early development by Krome Studios around 2008. Gameplay would have been similar to a mix between Pikmin and Populous, with players exploring an alien “non-Newtonian fluid” world commanding creatures to resolve puzzles and fight enemies. Krome worked on this prototype to try some new ideas but it was soon pushed aside to work on new projects for Xbox 360 and Playstation 3.

As we can read in an old article by GamesOn (now closed):

“[Surface Tension] was sort of a cross between Pikmin and Populous,” says Steve. “The surface of the world was this sort of non-Newtonian fluid, and you had to guide your creatures from island to island, but if you had too many in one spot, they’d sink.” The team worked on the game’s development for six weeks, creating a demo which allowed you to order your creatures around, drop markers to attract and repel enemies, and so on. The objective was to send your creatures to the end of the level, directing them to solve problems along the way – chopping down trees to serve as bridges across the water, and generally being completely adorable.
“It was never really meant to get shown,” says Steve. “It was more a test to see if we could do something different.” Developed on Krome’s PS2 engine, the game was abandoned when they began to migrate to the next-gen engines built for the Xbox 360 and the PS3, although they did discuss returning to it after the first episode of Blade Kitten was published – a dream that, sadly, may never be realised.

Only a few tiny screenshots for Surface Tension were published on GameOn, if you know someone who worked on this lost game who may help us preserve more images, please let us know!

Thanks to Maik for the contribution!

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Playstation 2 (PS2), Sony

Hateful Chris: Shoot the Moon [PS2 – Cancelled]

monokoma

07-11-2021

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Hateful Chris: Shoot the Moon is a cancelled action game that was in development by Furious Entertainment and Ubisoft, planned to be published on Playstation 2. As described on its old official website the game was meant to be “a unique blend of cultural satire, outrageous violence and toilet humor that bridges the gap between interactive platform-based action and arena fighting intensity”.

“Hateful Chris will soon be making his 3d debut! Armed with an extensive arsenal garnered from his interactive environments, HC must fight to prevent Dollar Bill from using the moon as a giant, 24-hour billboard! This proposed game from Furious Entertainment is in the design stage check out the site for a detailed story overview, gameplay description and loads of cool concept art!”

Shoot the Moon was actually a 3D sequel to Hateful Chris: Never Say Buy, an anti-capitalism parody PC title conceived by Chris Bourassa and Dana Fortier in 2000:

“Sworn to destroy advertising and consumer culture in all its incarnations, Hateful Chris is the icon of brand resistance! He trashes malls, he burns billboards, he berates boy bands AND he flosses regularly! What more could you want in a protagonist? Using everything from fire hoses to chainguns, Hateful Chris works to change the world into an unbranded paradise – albeit through ridiculously violent and exaggerated means! […] With over 200,000 downloads and steady cult support, Hateful Chris is easily the world’s favourite little cartoon anarchist!”

When released Hateful Chris became a hit and noticing this success Ubisoft approached Chris and Dana to propose a collaboration for a 3D version of the game. As we can read on Ookpixels:

“Released in June of 2001 as Hateful Chris: Never Say Buy, the game developed a loyal cult following and piqued the interest of Ubisoft, who hired both Bourassa and Fortier right after graduation. Furnishing them with a full team, the massive publisher gave them the freedom to expand on their original game and take it to epic new heights.
Their follow-up – slated for release on Sony’s PlayStation 2 – would feature a total 3D graphical overhaul, and centre around Dollar Bill’s plan to extend his commercial grasp to outer space. Dubbed Hateful Chris: Shoot the Moon, it was set to be Bourassa’s big debut in the industry. Then, in a move his own character could have seen coming from a mile away, Ubisoft canceled the game.”

We don’t know how much of the game was completed before its cancellation, but some pre-rendered videos created for the project are still available online. Even if Shoot the Moon was never released, Many years later Chris Bourassa and Dana Fortier worked together on another idea that later became the indie-hit Darkest Dungeon.

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GameCube, Microsoft, Nintendo, Playstation 2 (PS2), Sony, Xbox

TY the Tasmanian Tiger 4: GUNYIP! [Cancelled – GameCube, Xbox, PS2]

monokoma

23-04-2021

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GUNYIP! Is a cancelled dogfighting shooter set in the TY the Tasmanian Tiger universe, focused on flight missions using TY’s mecha-airplane (the Gunyip, as seen in Ty 3). It was initially conceived for GameCube, Xbox and Playstation 2 as the official 4th chapter in the TY series but gameplay would have been similar to titles such as Crimson Sky, Ace Combat and Star Fox’s all-range mode. The game was in development by Krome Studios around 2005 – 2007, started after the release of Ty the Tasmanian Tiger 3: Night of the Quinkan. While the team was pitching the idea to publishers they were hired to work on Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and GUNYIP! had to be canned.

Most of what we know about this unreleased project was revealed by Krome Studios’ artist and TY co-creator Steve Stamatiadis on his Tumblr account:

“Here’s the promo trailer we put together to pitch Gunyip to publishers. It starts with stuff from TY 3 minigames, then has some early test capture footage then ends with some rendered stuff from the TY 3 trailer.”

“There was the whole first version of TY 4: Gunyip which got shelved to make way for Star Wars. There’s a whole book just of stuff from that.”
“Flashback to the unmade TY 4: Gunyip which was Star Wars AF. The Frills were Scout Frills (the best of the bucket heads!), there were all these Star Wars style flight suits and there was even a Wookiee like character called Po (he’s a Kakapo)
If you thought the 2D game was a departure you would have hated this version even more – it was a flight combat game. Where you flew around doing missions on Gunyips. Basically Ace Combat in the TY universe. The best bit was that it was all told as a story being recounted by Lenny. Also you got to play through the “story” mode 3 times as different factions unlocked and you got more of the full story. It was ambitious to say the least.
Also I do enjoy the irony that the game was dropped mid production so that we could work on an ACTUAL Star Wars game.”

“The original TY 4 was not going to be a 3D platformer – it was a story driven air combat game in the TY universe. It was put to rest when we had the chance to make a Star Wars game and it’s probably for the best. While the game was looking pretty hot I know now that TY fans would have lost their shit because it was different. You only need to look at the reaction to the Win 8 game with it being 2D – even though everything else is pretty much exactly the same.
Anyway apart from flying around in cool transforming Gunyips the game featured a story mode that let you play through as three different factions each with their own sets of Missions. There was TY and Bushrescue, Cass and his Cold Blood Empire and finally a new group the Metalskull pirates led by Ginger Knut the flying fox.”

TY the Tasmanian Tiger: Gunyip! – The Gunyips

The gunyips are the top level of air combat machines. Each faction would have it’s own unique design that the player would control when playing their missions. They were also designed to show your pilot character flying them. This was so players could have something ‘human’ to relate to and so that they could respond to the surrounding events much the same way TY sat in the back of the Fourbie and Crabmersible.

Bush Rescue: The Woomera class Gunyip.

Design wise the BR Gunyip has elements of both the plane version from TY 3 and both the unused designs for the Jet Bunyip. It had a variable geometry that would allow it to take different forms depending on it’s flight mode. And yes it was meant as a homage to Macross’ Gerwalk mode.

Cold Blood Empire: The Raptor

This one was designed to look like a bird of prey. I used the head of Cuddles (Fluffy’s mech from TY 3). The wing “feathers” would change shape based on its speed and the tail would look nice reacting to the physics of Gunyip flight.
It’s pilot is another Thorny Devil called Lizzy. She was going to be Fluffy’s replacement for this game. When you first saw her inthe game she would appear as Fluffy but as the game progressed you’d quickly learn that it was Just Boss Cass – who was now just a little bit more unhinged – seeing her as Fluffy.

Metal Skull Pirates: The Pteropus

A flying fox flown by Ginger Knut, who is also a flying fox. This is the first pass at the Pteropus and It’s a little more basic than the others but I really liked the feel of it being a big powerful motorbike with wings.
“This is Liz, she was going to be Fluffy’s replacement in TY: Gunyip! The way it was going to work was that you’d see her in cutscenes with Cass and she’d look exactly like Fluffy. But then we’d reveal that she actually looked like this and it was just Cass who had gone a little loopy from guilt seeing her as Fluffy. “

“Here’s the look of the Frills for TY: Gunyip! They were called Scout Frills because they are meant to look like my favorite Imperial troops, the Biker Scouts. I tried a few color variations but I was going to stick with the white version.”

“Po the Kakapo – I love the idea of flightless New Zealand birds piloting stuff in the TY universe (Duke the Kiwi) so the Metalskull pirates get Po – he’s sort of Chewbacca to Ginger’s Han Solo.
Fluffy Destrofluffy – A callback to the boss from TY 1 except this time you have Harpoons and Tow Cables. I wanted to name a level the Battle of Mount Hotham – for obvious reasons.
Robot Destrofluffy – what it’s like underneath when you burn the fake fur off them.
Young Tiberius – I never quite worked out how this would fit in the game if it even could but I wanted to have a flashback element where you’d play as Tiberius the Thylacine hero in a 1920s steampunk TY world. Maybe some other time.”

In 2013 Krome released a different Ty the Tasmanian Tiger 4 on PC, but maybe the idea of a flight-combat TY game could be resurrected in the future.

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Microsoft, Playstation 2 (PS2), Sony, Xbox

Zombies Ate My Neighbors 2 [PS2, Xbox – Cancelled]

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02-04-2021

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The original Zombies Ate My Neighbors was developed by LucasArts and published by Konami for the SNES and Mega Drive in 1993. A “sequel” titled Ghoul Patrol was released in 1994, but it was originally conceived as a different game. Many years later a true Zombies Ate My Neighbors sequel was pitched for Playstation 2 and Xbox, but unfortunately it was never fully developed. This project was never officially announced, but in 2020 Daniel Ibbertson (Slopes Game Room) shared a couple of screenshots from this cancelled project, sent to him by a former developer:

“A good few years ago I was contacted by one of the lead devs of the original Zombies Ate My Neighbours game. He was a fan of the channel and thanked me for making a video on the franchise :)
If that wasn’t cool enough he then went on to explain that a TRUE sequel was pitched but sadly not successful. Here are a couple of pics he showed me from that original pitch. The plan was that I would interview him and show off more, but sadly that never happened :(
We have lost contact over the last couple of years now and I have been sitting on these images for a long time not really knowing what to do with them! So, before I accidentally delete them I feel it is best that I share them with the world :P”

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