Wii

Capucine (NoCulture) [Wii, PC – Prototype / Cancelled]

Capucine is a prototype for an action adventure that was created on PC (as a Far Cry mod) around 2007 by the NoCulture Team (composed of Supinfogame students), initially rumored to be released on Nintendo Wii. Players would have been able to use a ray of light to revive plants in a dead world, but when and object is lit up then a shadow enemy would appear behind it. This would create a gameplay loop in which your ability to generate life could also create enemies if you’re not careful.

As we can read in their old website:

“Capucine is an exploration / adventure game, formulated as a tale and based on shadow and light opposition. This game takes place in a fantastic universe where everything is dead. The player controls a child who holds a “capucine”. This flower enables her to survive in this desolated world. The little girl can hand on her own life to the surroundings thanks to a beam of light she can cast from her hand.

To maintain life, water will be vital. However, the player must be careful not to animate the shadows of the surrounding elements. Indeed, animated shadows will try to steal the flower in order to prevent the child from accomplishing her destiny: revive the World.

The main intention is to offer a quiet and disturbing gaming experience where the player explores the surroundings and solves riddles. During the adventure, we want the player to be fascinated by the world he discovers. We also want him to become attached to the main character. The gameplay and the interface must be easy to understand but not simplistic, in order to create an optimal immersion.”

Capucine was based on four fundamental principles:

  • Give life rather than take it.
  • A unique gameplay element: the beam of light.
  • Build your own path.
  • Players create their own enemies.

Some more details can be found in an old interview with Yohan Cazauk, lead designer of Capucine:

“My name is Yohan Cazaux and I’m 24. I’m a French student at Supinfogame ( a Game Design school). This is my last year of studies, and with 5 other classmates I’ve worked all year on Capucine, our final study project.

Capucine is an adventure game, but a quiet adventure. We favoured the exploration side rather than pure action. “Shadow and light” sum up the gameplay mechanics. Your only way to interact with the game is the lightbeam, and with it you’ve got to push back the shadow, but you also can create it : both notions are opposite but interdependent.

I was very inspired by the lyrics of a french song, “La fleur” for the original concept. It’s from this song that we came up with the flower concept; the “Capucine”. The team was also inspired by various movies, especially Pan’s Labyrinth by Guillermo Del Toro and all traditional tales. And as far as video games are concerned, we were inspired by Ico – by its poetry and its amazing graphics.”

“First, the flower is a part of the character – it’s her life. Without the flower, the child’s life starts to decrease. That’s why the shadows are trying to steal the flower. They can’t hurt the character directly.

Secondly, in order to preserve life in the game, the player has to make water circulate in the world. Without water, nature will die. The flower can serve as a substitute for water. If the player puts it down near a tree for example, the tree won’t die. But by putting down the flower, the child’s life starts to decrease… It’s a dilemma for the player, and it’s very interesting.”

“Well, the flower helps you to keep the world alive, until you “unblock” water to it. The light beam is the way for the girl to transmit her life to the environment. I say “transmit” because when she’s using it, her life decreases. But she can retrieve life by soaking the flower in water. The beam is the only way to interact with the world. Everything in the universe of Capucine revolves around light.

There are 3 ways to use the beam : continuous lighting, rhythm lighting and movement lighting. But if the player uses too much time of the light beam on an element, the shadow of this element will come alive and attack them.

We don’t know if a “final game” will exist one day. Capucine is just a prototype, and so it will stay on the PC with Wiimote/Nunchuk controls available. A few days after the (school) presentation, the game will be downloadable for free as a Far Cry mod on our website. For the moment, we don’t plan to make money with Capucine.”

As promised by Yohan, the Capucine prototype was released online at the time. Probably many gaming websites announced the project as a real Wii game because it was labeled as such on their “promotional” website, but as far as we know it was always meant to be just a school project. In any case, Capucine is still a fascinating prototype from the Wii generation, along with such cancelled games as Sadness and Project H.A.M.M.E.R.

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Frisbee (Creat Studios) [Wii – Cancelled Prototype]

In 2007 Creat Studios worked on a Frisbee game prototype for Nintendo Wii, developed to demonstrate their new tech (physics, impacts of wind and collisions with obstacles) and motion controls. The team is mostly known for Coded Arms: Contagion and Insecticide, but they also created a few tie-in games such as Aqua Teen Hunger Force Zombie Ninja Pro-Am and Biker Mice from Mars. This Frisbee game may have been pitched to some publishers as a cheap project for the casual market, but in the end it was never fully developed into a game.

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Barnyard [Beta – GameCube, PS2, PC]

Barnyard is an action game based on the movie of the same name, developed by Blue Tongue Entertainment and published by THQ for GameCube, Wii, PlayStation 2, Game Boy Advance, and PC. Footage of beta gameplay has been uploaded to the IGN youtube channel as a video titled “Barnyard GameCube Video – Clip Compilation 2”.

The main differences in this beta footage are:

  • animals could freely walk around the map
  • there was a life-counter (was completely removed in the final version)
  • players had “happiness level
  • the map was completely different
  • The mobile phone had a music player, battery energy, and an integrated camera that could take photos.
  • There was also a multiplayer mode for some of the minigames such as chicken coop (this minigame was heavily changed in the final version).

Besides IGN’s gameplay on Youtube there’s an official trailer where the Beta version was shown for the first time. It’s still not known if the version in this trailer was different from the one IGN previewed.

In 2021 more beta gameplay footage was found with other differences from the final version:

  • The NPCs still had an AI
  • currency was different
  • the models of the trees and of the fences were different
  • map still had some difference, but it’s pretty close to the final appearance
  • minigames with up-to 4 players multiplayer were still there.

This gameplay was found on a Spanish website named 3DJuegos. The released Barnyard seems to have been built from a canceled, unannounced game in which all NPCs could interact with each other, build relationships and more. This is why the beta version of the game had more advanced NPC AI, but it’s still not known why it was later removed.

Article by InfiniteC0re and @longhorn#5853

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Legend of Zelda: Sheik (Retro Studios) [Wii – Cancelled Concept]

In May 2020 Shinesparkers published a series of links to the online portfolio of Sammy Hall, former Retro Studios contract artist who worked on concept art for a cancelled Zelda game based on the Sheika tribe. This unreleased, darker view on the Zelda timeline would possibly explore what happened to the last male Sheik after Ocarina of Time’s “Bad Ending” in which Link does not succeed.

These drawings were noted as being used for pre-production of Retro Studios’ Sheik Zelda project between 2005 and 2008 (the same artist also worked on Metroid Prime 3: Corruption and Donkey Kong Country Returns), so we can assume it could have been planned to be released on Nintendo Wii or WiiU. As we can read on their original page:

“Old storage hard-drive diving! (2005 – 2008) More stuff from a long lost cancelled Zelda (Sheik) action/jrpg that never went beyond pre-production. Really want to return to these some day to finish a few. Zelda games have wacky weird stuff, and this game was setting out to be ten times weirder.”

“Fun pre-pre-pre-production origin story of the Master Sword. Within the bad ending of “Ocarina of Time” exploring the last male Sheik’s (after a genocidal ethnic-cleansing) journey transforming into the Master Sword. All while the Dark Gerudo are giving their 100 year birth to Gannon.”

After these images were found by fans and gaming journalists, the artist just deleted his whole ArtStation account. IGN was able to get in contact with him, asking about this Zelda project and another canned Nintendo DS Boo game:

“Speaking to IGN, ex-Retro Studios concept artist Sammy Hall explained that both games were in pre-production when cancelled, and “I doubt many at Nintendo proper saw much of any of this stuff. I was mostly put into a room like Milton from Office Space and tasked to brainstorm between other projects.”

According to Hall, the ideas for both games came from ex-Retro leads Mark Pacini, Todd Keller and Kynan Pearson, but were “cancelled the week they went to create their other studios.”

Around 2008 – 2009 many video game websites published rumors about a Retro Studios Zelda game featuring Sheik, so it seems those rumors were true but the project was already cancelled at the time.

Unfortunately today some of these fascinating Zelda artworks seem to have been lost, as other websites did not save them all. We’d like to preserve them in the gallery below, to remember the existence of this lost video game. If you saved concept art from Retro Studios’ Zelda that are missing from this page, please let us know in the comments below or by email!

Thanks to AvenPlainstrider for the contribution!

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American Pool Deluxe (Blade Interactive) [Wii – Cancelled]

American Pool Deluxe is a cancelled pool simulation game that was in development by Blade Interactive in 2008 and would have been published by Gamecock Media / Navarre / Upshot Games on Nintendo Wii. The game was planned during the “casual games” Wii craze, but possibly canned when even publishers understood it was not going to sell enough on the market.

Some details on the game can still be found on Amazon even if it was never released:

  • Authentic Billiard Games-Variety of game modes including 8 Ball, 9 Ball, Rotation, 3 Ball, Billiards and even Bar Billiards. Polish your skills and impress opponents with Trickshot Challenge mode
  • Precision Motion Controls – Use the precise motion controls to line up the perfect shot every time. Tap in a bank shot with a gentle push or scatter the break with a powerful move
  • Career Mode – Create your own pro and work your way up from humble beginnings in local pool halls and become a global billiards icon
  • Tournament Style Presentation – Experience a life-like pool tournament setting, including professional commentators and audience interaction
  • Multiplayer 1 – 4 players

Also on IGN we can find the original press release hyping up the game:

“With superior graphics and incomparable gameplay, American Pool Deluxe is as authentic as they come,” said Eric ‘The Preacher’ Yow, World Pool-Billiard Association Masse World Champion. “For years the gaming industry has attempted to duplicate the complex physics and geometry of cue sports into a lifelike rendition for families to enjoy. Finally, a game captures the beauty of the sport and allows you to perfect your skills! Run a rack without ever leaving your chair!”

American Pool Deluxe is the first game to come out of Upshot Games, the casual games division of Gone Off Deep Inc., whose other brands include video game publishing company Gamecock Media Group. “

Upshot Games even announced a “professional cue peripheral” that would have been launch with the game, as we can read on IGN:

“Upshot Games announced today an elegant, yet ruggedly built, “RealMotion Pool Cue” companion accessory for their upcoming professional pool game for Wii, American Pool Deluxe. This is not your average controller peripheral – it is a meticulously crafted cue built specifically to take advantage of the Wii remote’s accelerometer technology for real precision and fun.

“It is the dedication to realism that led to the development of the RealMotion Pool Cue for American Pool Deluxe,” said Eric ‘The Preacher’ Yow, World Pool-Billiard Association Masse World Champion. “Tested extensively by real billiards pros like me, you can be assured this is the only real pool game for Wii.”

A prototype of American Pool Deluxe is in the hands of game collectors.

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