Projects, Unseen News

[Project] The Axel Project: Half Life 2 beta restoration

U64 Staff & Contributors
27-10-2010
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Founded in 2009, The Axel Project aims to recreate the original Half Life 2 beta leak story line as envisioned by VALVe circa 2003. Their upcoming binary patch features numerous fixes to engine stability as well as the addition of retail engine features (such as background maps, bloom). For a full list of features and fixes, see The Axel Project blog!

Some key highlights:

* Updated water shader

– Fixed blackness

– Improved refraction

* Fixed several engine exploits

* Improved rendering performance

* Updated VGUI (transition effects and improved stability)

* Added FP16 HDR

– With luminance-based bloom

– Controllable via ConVars

* Fixed terrain morphing

* Added background map support

* Updated post processing shaders

* Fixed all reproducible bug reports from Alpha 1

* Fixed BSP V19 and V20 loading algorithm

* Improved overall security of engine and closed several exploits

 
Mega Drive / Genesis, Sega

Dinosaurs for Hire [MD GEN – Beta]

monokoma
26-10-2010
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As we can read in Wikipedia, Dinosaurs For Hire is a run and gun / beat ’em up game published by Sega and developed by Malibu Interactive for the Sega Genesis / Mega Drive. The game is based on an american comic and features Archie, Lorenzo and Reese as the main playable characters while Cyrano (a pterodactyl) shows up from time to time to give mission briefings but is not playable. In the beta version Cyrano was available as a playable character, as seen in old preview screenshots, but for some reasons they decided to remove this option.

Thanks to Rod_Wod for the scan!

Images:
 

Nintendo, Nintendo 64 & 64DD

Like Thunder ‘Go’ [N64 – Cancelled]

U64 Staff & Contributors
26-10-2010
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Known in japanese as IKAZUCHI NO GO TOKU (or Kaminari no Gotoku: Choukousoku Igo) this was a simulation based on the ancient board game “Go” for Nintendo 64. Developed by specialist Toyogo Inc, that despite the name was an american company based in Lexington Massachusetts, the game title appeared in Edge magazine issue 41‘s japanese N64 release list with a planned release date for January ’97.

Seta Corporation, Like Thunder ‘Go’ publisher, never released it for unknown reasons thus negating to japanese N64 players the only Go simulation for the system.

Image taken from EGM issue 90, article written by Celine!

Images:
 

Game Boy (+ Color), Nintendo

Gekido [GameBoy Color – Cancelled?]

monokoma
25-10-2010
3 Comments

Gekido is a series of beat ’em up created by Naps Team, released on the Playstation and GameBoy Advance. A GameBoy Color version of Gekido was developed too, but the only proof of its existence is an old page on the official Naps team website and some lines in wikipedia. There are no cartdidges on Ebay, no ROM floating around the web, no review available, almost no screenshots… we can speculate that Gekido GBC was never published for some reasons.

Gekido for the PSP was also in development but never released.

Thanks to whitestrider for the contribution!

Images: 

Playstation 3 (PS3), Sony

Urban Smash (MotorStorm Apocalypse) [PS3 – Proto / Beta]

monokoma
24-10-2010
1 Comment

Developed by Evolution Studios for the Playstation 3, Urban Smash was going to be an original IP driving game set in real-life locations, but was put on hold during development of MotorStorm Pacific Rift. As revealed during a developer session at the Eurogamer Expo 2010 however, the project later evolved into MotorStorm Apocalypse and a prototype video that was shown during the presentation can be found below. You can read a preview of Apocalypse with more info about the final game at Gamer Limit.

Thanks to Martin Bigg for the contribution!

Videos: