Serious Sam is a FPS created by the Croatian development team Croteam. originally released for the PC in 2001. My friend Optik found an interesting video from the SS beta in Shadow1665’s Youtube channel, in which we can notice various differences from the final game:
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The Last Guardian and previously referred to by the working title “Project Trico”, is an upcoming adventure game developed by Team Ico, to be published for the PlayStation 3. Existence of the game was first hinted in a January 2008 job listing on Sony Japan’s corporate website, which depicted a single screenshot of the upcoming third Team Ico title for the PlayStation 3 and advertised open positions for the development team. A video released via the PlayStation Lifestyle blog in May 2009 shows early footage of the game with its working title, Project Trico, reportedly from a proof of concept trailer that had been circulating internally at Sony for over a year. [Info from Wikipedia]
At E3 2009, Sony unveiled the latest version of the same trailer, that is somehow similar to the early one, but with various differences: the boy has a different character design, the details in the scenario are improved and the exterior of the palace that they explore was changed. Thanks to Pikol’s Youtube Channel we can see a nice comparison between the beta trailer and the “final” one!
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The original Unreal is a FPS developed by Epic Games and Digital Extremes, released for PC by GT Interactive in May 1998. A playstation port was in development by Pterodactyl Software with new exclusive levels and weapons, but it seems that Infogrames decided to cancel the project for some reasons.
In may 2009 Leo from the Beyond Unreal community was able to get in contact with Kagle, a developer that worked on Unreal PSX: Kangle decided to share some unfinished maps from this unreleased game and Leo edited the original files to make them to work with Unreal PC. Those files can now be downloaded in here, to be preserved and played by the fans!
Here’s a little description of the 2 beta levels:
In the first level, you break into an archaeological excavation where they are digging out a giant alien ship that was buried millenia ago. In part 1, you run across to the ship and turn on its main generator. The generator activates a laser that was removed from the ship and lets you blast through to the elevator shaft to the lower level. In part 2, you have to activate an umbilical tube to connect to the ship, which lets you reach the bottom of the excavation, where you can get inside.
In part two, you enter the ship, which is an alien universe, to contact the alien (I think his name was J’Rath). In part 1, you find yourself in a 3D maze. You have to travel to the end of the maze by removing the barriers blocking you. Each barrier can be removed by going to one of the small pocket worlds and throwing a switch. In part 2, you have to reach the heart of the ship, a pulsing sphere. You follow a short path, fighting tiny monsters and turning switches, until you can get inside. Inside the heart is a series of chambers you have to swim through until you get to J’Rath’s chamber (he appears as a giant eye). The second set of levels is rougher than the first.
These two missions (broken into two pieces each) were set to be played at the end of the second of three acts in the game. Since these levels were so late in the game, they were designed to be difficult for the player to complete.
Since these levels were designed for the PlayStation 1, the levels had to be scaled down to fit into the existing hardware. The limitations placed on the levels were quite draconian and included: a maximum of 3000 polygons per level, low number of visible polygons per room (STAT FPS), a maximum of 3 monsters per room and fewer in rooms with high polygons.
With such restrictions in place, I agreed to create levels with a less combative and more puzzle-oriented approach. In order to avoid large-scale combats, emphasis was placed on jumping puzzles. Levels were organized so the player would have to return to the same locations repeatedly to save space and give the impression of longer gameplay.
Huge props to Leo and Kagle for preserving these lost levels and sharing them with the community!
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Bionicle: Legend of Mata Nui is a cancelled PC game based on the Lego Bionicle franchise, that was in development at the Lego Software division. The project was officially cancelled in 2001, because of some quality issues and too many delays. It seems that a playable beta demo does exist somewhere out there.
Thanks to Lord Deathsaur for the contribution! You can find some more infos on the game at the Mask of Destiy website.
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This game developed by Silicon Knights was released in June 2002 only after a long and troubled development. Full of unseens like few other games, Eternal Darkness was first announced for the Nintendo 64 at E3 1999 and then moved to the GameCube. The original project was changed many times during its development: in addition to the transition from one console to another, at least a couple of chapters were removed and the story was shortened when Silicon Knights realized that it would not be possible to finish the game before the release date. >> Read the full article.