2008 - Page 101 of 259 - Unseen64: Beta, Cancelled & Unseen Videogames!

In 2002 Team ICO began to work on Shadow of the Colossus, initially with the WIP name of “NICO“. The NICO concept can be seen as an early design of the final game, were some of it’s core gameplay ideas were already exposed. You can read more about the NICO Concept in here. After Shadow of the Colossus was officially announced, various trailers and screens were shown during the development of the game, and in these media we can still notice many differences from the final version.

In the gallery below you can see some of these screens and videos with early versions of the colossi that you can fight in the final game. Also, you can notice some colossi that were never used in the game, probably because Team ICO did not had enough time to finish them all.

Thanks to Team Ico Gamer Blog we found out the “official reasons” why some of these colossi were removed:

Unused “Bird” Colossus: it was too similar to Colossus #5 and Colossus #13, also the team encountered difficulties with collision detection.
Unused “Phoenix / Ostrich” Colossus: it turned to be way overpowered and it had to be fight in an huge arena, because of its attacks.
Unused “Spider” Colossus: Team ICO was not able to implement a good way to let the player to hit the legs of the Colossus with the sword while guide the horse between them.

The “Bird Colossus” was seen in the desert, maybe it was an early version of the one that we can fight in the lake in the final game. Another unused colossus had a “worm-alike-mouth” that maybe we had to enter into to find the sigil. In a screen we can see a beta version of the flying colossus (the 13th), with red stripes on his wings, that are not in the final design. There was also a removed “spider-alike” colossus, somehow similar to the aliens from “War of the Worlds” or some enemies in Half Life 2. Other colossi that were never used in the final game looked like a “dragon”, a “boar”, a “bull” and an “ostrich”. We can feel that Team ICO spent a lot of time to design the colossi and created many versions of them before to chose the final ones.

The video of the “Secret Garden” was taken from a beta demo: you can notice that the garden design is different from the one in the released game. Also, Pikol was able to pass across the broken bridges and closed passages in the same PSU demo, to find more interesting differences! Check the 5th video to see all his finds! Also, umjammerlammy and wwwarea modded Wander in this version to see if the temple was solid and had a nice trip at the top of the beta “Secret Garden” (check the 6th video).

Even Wander / Wanda, the protagonist of the game was changed through the development: in the original NICO concept, it looked more like the character from ICO, but while the game evolved in SotC, Wander became more and more like the final design. Some beta designs of Wander show him with horns, yellow pants and a blue shirt. This beta model was still a WIP, probably used just to test the gameplay before the final design was chosen.

In February 2009, Pikol from the Team ICO Gamers Blog was able to find an unused area in the Eastern section of the world that is still hidden in the final game. This area remains hidden by clouds on the game map and usually it’s not possible to reach the place without any GameShark codes. This zone was probably meant to be used as the “arena” for one of the removed colossi.

Also, originally there was meant to be a “secret alternate ending” in the game, that would play if an Ico save was on the memory card. This alternate ending was scrapped because Team ICO felt it would be unfair on those who never played ICO to never be able to see this different epilogue. You can read what happened in the removed ending at Team Ico Gamers Blog!

Thanks a lot to Robert Seddon and CoalarDrake for the contributions and props to TIGB for all their researches on the game! HUGE props to Unclejun for sharing various demos of the game, that were an awesome way to explore its early versions and learn more about their differences!

Some more info can be found in our old Forum (saved in the Web Archive), in the Shadow of the Colossus Topic.

Images:

Videos:

Playstation 2 (PS2), Sony

NICO: Shadow Of The Colossus [PS2 – Proto]

U64 Staff & Contributors

19-04-2008

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With a team of thirty-five people, Shadow of the Colossus began development in 2002 under the project name “Nico” and was intended to be a direct sequel to Ico. The name “Nico” itself is a portmanteau of the Japanese word ni (“two”) and “Ico”. An early technology demo for the project shown at the DICE Summit in 2003 depicted a group of masked, horned boys riding horses while attacking and defeating a colossus. However, Fumito Ueda expressed that, at the time, it was simpler to reuse the character design of Ico’s protagonist, and that he never explicitly desired a sequel to Ico. Japanese pre-orders of Shadow of the Colossus later included a bonus DVD with the concept video, a trailer describing Nico’s plot, and an introduction the development team states they wanted to use in Shadow of the Colossus. [info from Wikipedia]

If you are interested, you can read more about Shadow of the Colossus Beta and see some of the removed colossi that were created during the development of the game.

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Video:

Microsoft, Playstation 2 (PS2), Sony, Xbox

Daredevil: The Man Without Fear [XBOX/PS2 – Cancelled]

Liam Robertson

19-04-2008

1 Comment

Daredevil: The Man Without Fear was a third person action game developed by 5000 Ft Inc. with the backing of publisher, Encore. It was being made for Playstation 2, Xbox and PC. The game was cancelled in 2004 following a slew of creative disagreements over its direction both internally at 5000 Ft. and between two of the project’s integral parties, Marvel and Sony.

Video:

PSP, Sony

Traxion [PSP – Cancelled]

monokoma

19-04-2008

No Comments

Traxion was a rhythm game for the PlayStation Portable by British developer Kuju Entertainment. It was scheduled to be released in Q4 2006 by LucasArts, but was cancelled in January 2007. The game was to feature a number of minigames, and would support imported songs from the player’s own library as well as the game’s bundled collection. [Info from Wikipedia]

Original Press Release: Gaming and music combine like never before on your PSP in Traxion — where your tracks drive the action. Loaded with dozens of minigames and a variety of music from leading artists — and fully compatible with every music file on your memory stick — Traxion sucks you in as the music not only provides the soundtrack, but also changes the way the games are played! Imagine the rocking guitar chords of heavy metal, the strong beats of rap, the smooth tones of jazz, or even the crazy pace of polka — all impact gameplay in a different way. Traxion’s unique music analysis tool allows for your favorite tunes to drive the gameplay, resulting in a dazzling visual and sensory experience that is different every time you play. And because you control the music, infinite possibilities for personalized gameplay experiences exist. Change your tune and change your game when Traxion, developed by Kuju Entertainment, releases this fall.

Video:

Unseen News

Unseen Changes

monokoma

18-04-2008

1 Comment

Unseen does not stand only for the differences between the beta and the final release of a videogame, but even for changes from different region versions too (usually from Jp to Usa, or viceversa) . It is not unusual, in fact, for a game converted for another market to be different from the original title. Here you will find small articles with comparison shots for these differences.

HELP! Do you like these articles? We are searching for a new U-Changes Editor to search comparison screenshots with the differences between the Japanese and American / European versions of released games. Are you an expert about imported games? This is your dream role! Send us an email and we’ll be happy to hire you in the U64 staff :)

Comparison list:

Pikmin VS Pikmin: Pikmin is an Real-time Strategy game created by Nintendo. Pikmin was one of the first Gamecube games, as well, using some concepts from Mario 128 (one of the first Gamecube Tech Demos). The Japanese version of Pikmin has some differences with the American one. Also some options are only available in the Japanese version.

Wario Land: Shake It Vs. Wario Land: Shake Dimension: Wario Land Shake It is the 5th installment of a Wario Land game, released in the console called Nintendo Wii in the year of 2008. Many miscellaneous stuff in the European version is different from the Latin America version, and also sometimes is different from Japanese version.

Wonder Boy in Monster World VS Monica’s Gang in Monster Land: This article lists the differences between one of the 3 games, and it’s original counterpart, which are Turma da Mônica na Terra dos Monstros (Monica’s Gang in Monster Land) and Wonder Boy in Monster World. Aside from a graphical change, the games are nearly identical.

Super Mario Bros. 2 VS Doki Doki Panic: Super Mario Bros. 2 (known as Doki Doki Panic in Japan) is little more than a port of a game that had no relation to the famous plumber at all. In the original version of the game, it actualy had an opening scene.

Zettai Zetsumei Toshi VS Disaster Report: Disaster Report (known as SOS: The Final Escape in Europe, Zettai Zetsumei Toshi in Japan) was released in Japan for the PlayStation 2 in 2002 and in 2003 was released in North America and Europe. When they ported the game for the US and PAL market, they decided to change the hair color for the main protagonists.

Street Combat VS Ranma: Street Combat is the american version of a japanese beat’em up dedicated to the famous anime Ranma 1/2. Because the manga series was not yet released in the USA, they completely changed the characters, the title screen and the introduction, but the animations and the special moves were left basically the same.

Team Fortress 2: is a team-based FPS multiplayer video game, developed by the Valve Corporation. In Germany the game was censored, but in a funny / interesting way: the blood and gore are replaced with random objects and plastic-alike characters.

Street Of Rage 3 VS Bare Knuckle 3: While translating this game from Japanese to American and European audiences, Sega of America altered it significantly. The most notable changes were that the miniboss character Ash was removed because he was a stereotyped homosexual

Soldier Of Fortune 2 in Germany: To avoid being banned in Germany, the German version of the game had all in-game violence and gore removed and placed the story in a parallel universe which was populated by cyborgs. These changes were not accepted at all by the players’ community, and the game was unsuccessful.

Contra vs Probotector: Even though the arcade version of Contra was distributed in Europe under the title of Gryzor with its graphical content unchanged, Konami were forced to changed the in-game graphics for the NES version, replacing the human characters with robotic counterparts, when it was released in the PAL region

Power Blade VS Power Blaze: Power Blade was a NES video game that was released in America in 1991, by Taito. The game was released a year before in Japan (1990), with the name “Power Blazer”: the style was really different from the USA version… [Article by monokoma]

Fatal Frame VS Project Zero: In the japanese edition of Fatal Frame (Project Zero), the protagonist, Miku, was a schoogirl. In the American version, she is more mature and with casual clothes, as a way of making her seem more ‘appropriate’ for the American Audiences. [Article by yota]

Perfect Dark Usa VS Japan: When Perfect Dark for the Nintendo 64 was released in Japan, they changed Joanna’s face, to match a more oriental one. If you have more images from the Japanese version, please send us an e-mail or join our forum, it would be really appreciated! [Article by monokoma]

Wario Ware Twisted VS Mawaru Made In Wario: “Unseen” does not simply mean that which was never released as a complete game, but it often also refers to graphical and textual changes in during the process of translating titles for the western market from Japan. These things are never seen in the west! This artticle, dedicated to Wario Ware Twisted begins a new section of Unseen 64, which is meant to observe what changed have been made in the localizing of a game, be they cultural or simply accidental. [Article by Ultraman82]