Acclaim

100 Bullets (by Acclaim) [XBOX/PS2 – Cancelled]

Acclaim announced plans to release a video game based on 100 Bullets. However, following the collapse of Acclaim’s publishing house, the game has essentially been cancelled. It was intended that the player would be either Cole Burns or Snow Falls (a completely original character) and play in a third person view. The plot was generally unknown, aside from a supposition that it followed the plot of the comic book.

Later D3Publishing obtained the rights from Warner Bros. to publish a 100 Bullets game. They intend to make a video game completely independent from Acclaim’s aborted vision, but still heavily reliant on input and plotting from Brian Azzarello. Not much it currently know about the D3 version and it could have been cancelled too. [Infos from Wikipedia]

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Emergency Mayhem [XBOX/PS2 – Cancelled]

Emergency Mayhem was first announced for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox at the 2004 Electronic Entertainment Expo, published and developed by Acclaim. However, the game was canceled when Acclaim filed for bankruptcy in September 2006. In May 2007, Warner Bros. purchased the rights to the game. Warner Bros. announced the game would be released for the Wii and they would publish the game, while Codemasters would develop the game. Then, in December of the same year, Codemasters announced they had taken over the publishing rights, and Supersonic Software Ltd took on developing the game. In the end the game was released for the Wii in 2008, even if there are probably some differences from the original XBOX and PS2 versions. [Info from Wikipedia]

A playable prototype of the Xbox version was leaked and it’s currently in the hands of some collectors. Stone from the Assembler Forum has one of these protos and he shared some screens and videos from his build!

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South Park [GBC – Cancelled]

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A South Park videogame was planned for the GameBoy Color and was in development at Acclaim studios in 1998, but sadly the project was soon cancelled by the shows creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone due to them feeling that the game isn’t right for the Game Boy Color as children were the main demographic for the system. There are not many info on this game and only a single screenshot was published in an old Nintendo Power magazine (issue 114). The prototype cartridge now belongs to Trey and Matt, commemorating the very first South Park game ever created.

It seems that after the South Park game was cancelled Acclaim didn’t want all their investment in the project to go to waste so it was changed to Maya the Bee and published in Europe. After a little more tweaking it also became the New Adventures of Mary Kate & Ashley and published in the US. If you check videos of these 2 games, you can see that the HUD is basically the same, the platforms and the ladders are similar

If you worked on this game and have some more info or screens on the project, please let us know!

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Turok: Dinosaur Hunter [N64 – Proto / Beta]

Published in 1997, Turok has been one of the first Ultra 64 titles to be developed for the console. The game is based on the homonymous comic series, about a native american and his fights between evil cyborgs and dinosaurs. Thanks to its famous fog effect, which covered almost every part of the immense game levels, the game became an icon of the “fog problem” but it surely marked the hearts of many Nintendo 64 owners for its fun gameplay.

Proto / beta:

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Final Version:

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Before the release, the game has been shown in magazines with some pics taken from the early prototype. One of the images show a very raw 3D model of a T-REX: this enemy should be the “alpha” version of Thunder, a genetically modified dinosaur, which later has been used as a boss. The proto differs from the final version by the absence of the metallic parts covering the head and the foot of the dinosaur. Also, the polygonal model was less detailed. At any rate is difficult to note any other details, due to the blurryness of the image. The prototype colors are less shiny and “realistic” than the final version. It’s interesting to note how the fog effect was allready present: this makes us to wonder if Acclaim really intended to use that effect in the game and not just to cover eventual pop-up problems.

Surely the images in the gallery below represent an early beta stage of development, in wich they were still creating the 3D models and the scenario with not much gameplay finished. Do you know if some of these models were not in the final game? Acclaim begun to work on Turok in 1995, initially thinking to make a third person shooter, but later they chosed a first person view, in order to make it more involving.

Thanks to Linkx111 for the contribution!

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Turok 2: Seed of Evil [N64 – Beta]

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Turok 2: Seeds of Evil is a FPS developed by Acclaim for the Nintendo 64, released in 1998. It was one of the first Nintendo 64 games to allow use with the RAM Expansion Pak. The game was announced even before Dinosaur Hunter was released, under the title Turok: Dinosaur Hunter 2. The game was completed in 21 months with a team comprising of roughly the same size as that who worked on Dinosaur Hunter, which was composed of 18 people. During development, more staff were brought onboard to assist in completing the game. Reportedly, over 10,000 hours of game testing was conducted during its creation. The game was originally designed with a 12MB cartridge in mind. When cartridges prices fell, the storage was increased to 16MB allowing the team to add a multiplayer mode. Eventually, the cartridge size was increased again, and was finalised at 32MB.

The base idea for the Cerebral Bore weapon was created during a brainstorming session concerning weapon design. The original concept had the weapon “being slow and agonizing”. An artist suggested a Leech gun, which was rejected by project manager, David Dienstbier: however, a “Vampire Gun” was eventually added to the sequel, Turok 3. Iguana, having received Nintendo 64DD development kits which included the 4MB Expansion Pak, added a high-resolution mode to the game early on in the development timeline. This was demonstrated to Nintendo at E3 98, running at a resolution of 640 x 480, a technical accomplishment for the Nintendo 64 at the time.

In the gallery below we can notice some early screens of the game, with some removed areas and beta versions of some levels. The graphic in the first screens released was much more definite than the one in the final game. Some of these images could have been taken from early tech demos and target renders. It seems that there were many concepts for Turok 2 that were scrapped before the final one was chose, but sadly there are not many info about these lost versions, but a single pic of an unknown enemy that was never used anywhere in the game.

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