Racing

Arc Angel (Rare Ltd) [Xbox – Prototype]

Arc Angel is a cancelled futuristic racing game prototype that was in development in 2003 for the Xbox, by a team lead by Chris Seavor at Rare LTD. There are just a few info about this lost project as a nice article at Pure Rarity:

Chris said that for the record Conker 2 was never scrapped; he just didn’t want to do it at the time and that was how Arc Angel was conceived. A nice easy racing game, or so he thought. During the four months he headed it a fair amount of design was nailed down but it eventually proved to be too ambitious. Also, some team members left the company or moved to other projects leaving Arc Angel with a lack of resources. Eventually the game was cancelled and Chris was put on Quest as lead artist.

Some more info can be read in another article from the same site:

He told me Seavor was initially on Conker 2 but then moved onto a racing project which was cancelled. Supposedly he is now on something MMORPG. This was some really interesting stuff but I wanted to find out more about it so I asked Tony Wong as well. He hadn’t heard about the racer but confirmed that the Conker team has been disbanded. As for the MMORPG, he said he couldn’t comment on it since it was not official.

I remembered a post in the FatBabies forums about Nintendo cancelling a futuristic racer and asked Martin if this was the same game. He told me it was the Rare management — not Nintendo — that had cancelled it and that it probably was futuristic. He explained that Nintendo always leave people alone if they produce good work.

Sadly there are no preserved images or videos about Arc Angel. If you know someone that worked on this prototype, please let  us know! We would love to save some screens in the archive. 

Konami Rally [PSX – Cancelled]

Konami Rally is a cancelled racing game planned for the origina playstation. Konami output on MSX platform was legendary, loved franchises as Metal Gear and Parodius moved the first steps on it. At E3 ’99 Konami announced that one of his glorious MSX games, Konami Hyper Rally, was getting new outings on GameBoy Color and Playstation. This racing game however had a different fate compared to Metal Gear Solid, because it vanished after that show.

The GBC rally game was renamed as Cross Country Racing and released in 2000 .

Scan from PlayMag issue 37.

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Cruis’n Exotica [Beta – N64 / Arcade]

As we can read on Wikipedia, Cruis’n Exotica is the 1999 sequel to Cruis’n World and the third entry in the Cruis’n series by Midway Games. The levels take place in exotic locations in the universe, such as Las Vegas, Thailand, and even the surface of Mars. The game also allows a player to choose a driver visible onscreen during races, including a martian, a baby, a clown, and a cowboy. The game was ported by Gratuitous Games and released on the Nintendo 64 in 2000.

Butterhands found some beta screenshots, that you can see below. There are 2 cars that are missing from the final version, and the car with the 2 girls is the Modbuggy, but is not faithful to the final versions. Also in the Ireland track there were cows are in the street! You could certainly have been able to hit them.

If you know someone that worked on this game or if you have a prototype with these differences, please let us know!

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cruis'n exotica beta
cruis'n exotica beta
cruis'n exotica beta
cruis'n exotica beta
cruis'n exotica beta 

FX Trax (Stunt Race FX) [SNES – Beta]

Stunt Race is a racing game for the Super Nintendo that used the Super FX chip to create 3D polygons for the cars and tracks. FX Trax is the original name of the project  (aka Wild Trax in japan), from when it was still in early development by Nintendo EAD and Argonaut Software. In the gallery below you can see various images from the beta version, with different HUD and WIP graphic! If you can notice more differences (removed tracks?) please let us known!

Scans from Banzzai #14, Super Power #12, australian Nintendo Magazine System from October ’93 (very early screens!) and April ’94 (showing a game much closer to the finished product but still with many differences).

Thanks to Celine and ezri85 for the contribution!

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Project Velocity (Octane) [Xbox – Cancelled]

Project Velocity (aka Octane) is a cancelled racing game that was in development by Visual Science for the original Xbox (and maybe for the Playstation 2?). It seems that this prototype would have been a new title in the Need for Speed series, but there are not many info about it.
As we can read at Past to Present:
Way back in 2007, Gamerfreak1727 leaked a title he found on a debug Xbox called ‘Project Velocity.’
It seems to be an early version of one of the Need for Speed Underground games, with references to the ‘Underground’ race style. The issue being, the build date seems to be around January 20th, 2006, almost a full year after Need for Speed Underground 2. It is possible that it is a prototype for an unreleased sequel, or even one of the other spinoffs like Need for Speed Carbon, but I am not 100% certain where it would fall. Any NFS fans who want to chime in, feel free!
Thanks to Megamoto85 and Borman for the contribution!

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