Before Ensemble Studios was closed, they worked on serveral prototype games, such as Nova, Sorcerer, Wrench and Phoenix, an RTS which featured humans fighting aliens (which later evolved into Halo Wars). Another protype was known as “Bam” which Ensemble describes as a “Ratchet & Clank-Style Platformer”. As seen on various images posted by the company’s employees , in the game you would have played as Sprocket and the levels had a cartoony look to them.
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Loadstar II: Showdown on Phobos is a science-fiction action game for the Mega / Sega CD, that was in development in 1995 by Rocket Science Games, but then cancelled for some reasons. As Tim Stoddard has commented “chances are that this was cancelled because Rocket Science Games decided to move away from the FMV game genre (their reason for scrapping Wing Nuts) and since the system was almost dead in late 1995”. Loadstar II would have became the sequel of Loadstar: The Legend of Tully Bodine, released in America in 1994.
Thanks to Celine for the contribution!
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Originally released in Japan as Aigiina no Yogen: Balubalouk no Densetsu Yori for the Famicom, Aigina’s Prophecy is a platform with RPG elements that was supposed to be published for the NES in USA in 1988 by Vic Tokai. As we can read on Strategy Wiki:
The goal of the game is to kill enough enemies to make progress through six dungeons, each of which contains a hidden portion of the Aura Star which has been broken into five pieces. The final dungeon contains the kidnapped princess who knows how to restore the Aura Star, which will allow you to complete the game. While most exits from a room become visible when enough enemies are defeated, the entrances to the rooms which contain pieces of the star are hidden from sight until the player jumps three times in the correct place to make the entrance appear.
Some days ago Tootai was able to buy the USA prototype, that was found by an user of the RacketBoy Forum, and he confirms that Aigina’s Prophecy seems fully translated in english, but somehow it was never officially released. The previous owner has put a video of the game in his Youtube Channel, so we can have a look at it
Thanks to Tootai for the contribution!
XFire was a PC action RPG similar to Diablo, that was in development by SirTech Software, but sadly it was never released.
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Knuckles’ Chaotix, is a platform game in the Sonic the Hedgehog series, developed by Sonic Team, and published by Sega for the Sega 32X. The project was build on the Sonic Crackers prototype as the concepts, engine and various other materials of Crackers were almost the same (in Chaotix you can even find some unused Sonic & Tails sprites from Crackers). When Sega decided to create Chaotix, initially Espio the chamaleon was meant to be the star of the game: also in some early screens we can notice a different select screen, there were no objects in the special stages. Various beta builds of the game were released by DRX during the February 23rd, 2008 proto release.
You can find more info on X-Cult and Sonic Retro!
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