PSP

Ushiro [PSP – Cancelled]

Ushiro is a cancelled horror-themed, turn-based rpg that was being developed for PSP by Level 5. The game was officially announced and showed in 2008. Nothing much is known about this game apart from brief informations that appeared on 1up:

Ushiro (PSP) is a first for Level-5 — a horror RPG. You play Reiichiro Ushiro, a newly-minted shinigami spirit who has the power to give people near the brink of death a single wish in exchange for their lives. Whether listening in on conversations in spirit mode, possessing the living to do your bidding, or fighting personifications of the evil in man’s heart, you can be sure that being a not-so-friendly ghost is nothing if not hectic.

The game went dark shortly after the initial reveal, with no new developments on the title up until mid-late 2009, when Level-5 removed the game from their corporate website. It’s not clear why the game was eventually cancelled, but it’s possible that Level-5 decided to focus on their new ROID service, a smartphone app that launched exclusively in Japan in 2009 to help the studio break into the lucrative mobile market.

From the assets that did get released, we can see that the game appears to be in a working and playable state, though it’s not quite clear what percentage of the game was fully developed before Level-5 axed the project.

News of the game’s potential return began to circulate after Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu reported that Level-5 were considering bringing the project back from the dead, although this has yet to see any tangible results as yet. It’s possible that they were not referring to bringing the game back, but instead hinting towards the manga released in 2015, which is currently still active.

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Final Fantasy Type-0 (Agito XIII) [Beta – PSP]

As we can read on Wikipedia, Final Fantasy Type-0 is an RPG published by Square Enix for the PSP and developed by the company’s 1st Production Department. The game was originally announced at E3 2006 with the name Final Fantasy Agito XIII for mobile cellphones, but even though the game no longer has “XIII” in its title, the final PSP game still uses the Fabula Nova Crystallis mythology.

Thanks to Dreams and anony we can archive some beta screens, videos and info from Final Fantasy Type 0: there are 14 playable characters in the final game, with a couple of non playable guests.

The pic above show kurasame, type 0 teacher as playable character. It seems that the guest plus one more were supposed to be playable in the beta version, even supposed to have their own dogde animations, but most likely cut for space problems, as type 0 is already packed with a lot of content. So, through hacking, it shows kurasame, Joker, Gilgamesh (not playable only has the name).

In the gamefaqs forum we can read that there is a FF Type 0 Artbook that has some unused content in it. Does anyone have some scans of the beta / unused content? Plus somewhere in the web there is art/model of phoenix as an unused summon (but we can’t find it).

In the released game, modders have found 3D models for summons that don’t appear in the game: Pandemona, Phoenix and Typhoon. There is also a hidden unused video which has live actors doing motion capture for the game. It’s not used in the game, and it has a blue overlay with three kanji, the first meaning “temporary”. It also has mono audio, unlike all other videos in the game.

If you notice more differences in the old beta screens and videos below, please let us know! Thanks to Dreams and anony for the contribution :)

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Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 2 [Debug / Beta – PSP]

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 (GRAW 2) is a shooter developed by High Voltage Software and published for the PSP in 2007. Edward Kirk found out that in the final game there are still some unused options that are usually hidden.

This game contains a number of debug options and a level select which, when enabled, turn it into a “Pre-Certification” version. The released game contains a file called Game-txt, which can be edited to enable the debug menu and other options used to test a game.

The debug has a number of different options which affect the game, such as …

… wireframe mode. Although the Game.txt file does identify the enabling of cheats, the features found so far are definitely for debugging and testing, rather than just making it easier to get through the game.

More on Edward Kirk’s website: http://zenade.angelfire.com/GRAW/debug.html 

echochrome [Beta – PSP / PS3]

As we can read from Wikipedia, Echochrome  is a puzzle game created by Sony’s JAPAN Studio and Game Yarouze, which is available for PlayStation 3 and PSP. Gameplay involves a mannequin figure traversing a rotatable world where physics and reality depend on perspective. The world is occupied by Oscar Reutersvärd’s impossible constructions. This concept is inspired by M. C. Escher’s artwork, such as “Relativity”. At Siggraph 2007 Art Exhibit Sony shown a beta / concept version of Echochrome, with a nice level-debug editor.

Post by The Monokariba (AKA Monokiba), thanks to bruto77 for the video below!

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Crash Tag Team Racing [Beta – PS2 / XBOX / GameCube / PSP]

Crash Tag Team Racing is a racing game developed by Radical Entertainment and  published in 2005 by Sierra Entertainment for the PlayStation 2, Nintendo GameCube, Xbox and PSP. A beta E3 demo of Crash Tag Team Racing was shared online by ePiX in april 2012 and Stranno posted an interesting comparison between the final version and the beta.

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