SNK

The King of Fighters ’99 [Arcade – Beta / Concept]

As we can read from Wikipedia, The King of Fighters ’99: Millennium Battle is a 1999 head-to-head fighting game by SNK released for the Neo Geo arcade and home platform. The King of Fighters ’99 initially meant to remove Kyo Kusanagi and Iori Yagami from the series due to the introduction of the new lead character, K’. However, due to negative fan response in location tests, they decided to readd them.

The SNK staff wanted to create a Robo Army Team. However, this idea was abandoned but they later made it a tribute in The King of Fighters 2000 by introducing Rocky, a character from Robo Army as a striker for Maxima. The character from Whip was originally meant to star in The King of Fighters ’96, but due Leona’s introduction in that game, the staff decided to wait until K0F ’99.

Developers also found troubles with the large number of young characters appearing in the game; as such the staff also designed older character such as Maxima and Vannesa to balance the game. In contrast to this Bao was added to the game in order to reduce the average age from the Psycho Soldiers Teams. Bao had many different design before its final one, as you can see in the gallery below.

Here’s the final Bao sprite to compare it with its early designs:

Thanks to Saga Darvulia for the contribution!

Images:

 

Neo Geo Battle Coliseum [ARC PS2 – Beta]

Neo Geo Battle Coliseum is a 2 on 2 tag team fighting game developed by SNK Plyamore and released in 2005 for the Atomiswave arcade board, with a Playstation 2 port in the same year. Mikel noticed some beta differences in a trailer from the JAMMA/TGS 2004:

At 0:20, you’ll see Mai do her trademark Super Deadly Ninja Bees move, you may notice that when she starts the move, you will see that the Desperation Move Sparks are The King of Fighters XI, the Desperation Move sparks in the final version of Neo Geo Battle Coliseum are different, and the Desperation Move sparks you see later made it to The King of Fighters XI.

At 0:24, you’ll see Asura (From Samurai Shodown 64-2 (The 64 doesn’t mean that it’s for Nintendo 64, it’s for an old, abandoned Arcade Board by SNK named the “Hyper Neo Geo 64”)) preform a Double Assault, the Double Assault spark was later reused for the Leader Despeation move spark in The King of Fighters XI, and the Double Assault background is somewhat absent.

At 0:31, you’ll see Yuki doing a strange pose while K’ does some Light Kicks then K’ later taunts, the sprites for the pose Yuki was doing were absent in the final game.

At 0:33, you’ll see Fuuma doing a weird taunt that has him spinning his head around holding a folding fan, then he opens the folding fan (i.e. Mai Shiranui) at the end, I am not too sure if that taunt is in the final.

At 0:41, you’ll see that Hanzo’s stance is different, that stance was replaced with a new stance in the final game.

At 0:42, you’ll see that when Ai walks backwards, only one sprite shows up, she gets sprites when she walks backwards in the final game, and Ai’s taunt is also different.

At 0:47, you’ll see K’ preform his double assault with Tung Fu Rue, you’ll see that the background is black.

At 1:21, you’ll see Asura preform one of his moves, you will also see that the background doesn’t fade to black when he does the move (I forgot the name of the move, if you know the name, tell me right away).

Thanks to Mikel for the contribution!

Video:
 

Viewpoint 2064 [N64 – Cancelled]

Viewpoint 2064 is a cancelled shoot ‘em up that was in development for the Nintendo 64. The original Viewpoint was also an isometric shmup with an incredible difficulty released in 1992 by SNK for the Neo-Geo arcade platform. After Sammy published a port of the original game for the Playstation and Saturn, in 1998 they started to work on a true sequel for the Nintendo 64, that looked somehow similar to StarFox 64 (Lylat Wars).

True to its title, Viewpoint 2064 was going to have multiple points of view, with the classic isometric view and a “behind the spaceship” view. The game had a really good graphic for its time and it had a lot of potential to be a fun shooter, but sadly Sammy had some development problems and Viewpoint 64 was cancelled only a year after his presentation at the Space World 1999.

A playable prototype was found and sold on ebay in September 2015, you can see a video below that shows about 7 minutes from the game. It seems that this version of Viewpoint 2064 was almost finished as you can play all the level trough the end. There are multiple secret paths to discover that unlock different levels: there is a total of 15 areas but to finish the game you have play trough 5 of them, somehow similar to StarFox 64.

Images:

Videos: