Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep [PSP – Beta / Unused]

As we can read on Wikipedia, Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep is an action RPG developed and published by Square Enix for the PSP. The game was released in Japan on January 2010 and it is planned to be released in North America and in Europe on September 2010. Development of the game began in June 2005 and was originally intended for the PlayStation 2 with Sora as the prototype protagonist of the game.

Birth by Sleep was developed by Square Enix’s fifth Product Development Division, based in Osaka, the same team behind Kingdom Hearts Re: Chain of Memories, and uses the same graphical engine as Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII.

The plot was completed for the PS2, but development was halted six months after it began due to development of Re: Chain of Memories. The development team changed the platform to the PlayStation Portable so as to make use of the PSP’s functions such as co-operative and competitive multiplayer gameplay.

In August 2009, new Famitsu scans revealed a revamped User Interface (having been revamped twice before) as well as new worlds after a lack of news for close to a year.

As posted by Granville in our U64 Forum, hidden in the final game’s code there is a very cool secret world that was cut, but that you can still access via hacking! It’s a world based off the classic movie The Jungle Book.

The first area is in the Monkey Temple of the orangutan Louie. The other areas are your basic jungle type areas, although they are all clearly incomplete and lack a lot of their texture work. I’d say the Temple is the only complete area. The only way to access these areas is via hacks, they were never used in the main game and no images were shown in prerelease photos. It’s a pretty interesting find actually. A hack hasn’t been released yet, but i imagine it will soon.

On Youtube we can also see a video of Keytotruth, who managed to hack his/her way into the data and play around in it.

Thanks to Granville for the contribution!

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Guardians: Agents of Justice [PC – Cancelled]

Guardians: Agents of Justice is a cancelled superhero squad tactics game developed by Simtex in 1996 / 1997, that would have been published by Microprose. The project was supposed to play like X-Com, but with superheroes. As we can read on Wikipedia, Simtex created a number of well-known turn-based strategy games for the PC, most notably the first two Master of Orion games, but the company closed in 1997 for economic problems. Guardians: Agents of Justice vanished forever with the closure of the studio.

Derboo was able to find a some screens of this game from a 1997 PC Champ issue and other korean magazines. RADIX also found some more screenshot in Computer Games Strategy Plus. If you have more images from Guardians: Agents of Justice, please let us know!

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Popeye [GEN MD – Cancelled]

A platform game based on the Popeye character was in development by Technos Japan for the Genesis / Mega Drive, but in the end this project was cancelled. A Super Nintendo Popeye game was also developed and released in 1994 by Technos, but the sprite of the main character is much different from the one seen in the few Genesis / MD screens, so we can assume that these are 2 different games. As far as we know, Popeye for the Genesis / MD was never released in any territory.

Thanks to Celine and John Doom for the contribution! Scans from Console Mania #28, Game Fun #94 and Mean Machine #17

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Phase Zero [Jaguar – Cancelled]

Phase Zero (also know as “Hover Hunter” in early previews) is a cancelled first person shooter developed by Hyper Image for the Jaguar. A playable demo was somehow leaked online and many videos and reviews of the game can be found on Youtube. Phase Zero looked really nice and it was fun enough, but something went wrong during the development and Hyper Image were not able to finish their project.

Thanks to Celine for the contribution! Scans from Cd Consoles magazine, issues #4, #5, #8 and #13.

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New Unseen Interview: Grant Kirkhope

Unseen64 has recently been given the opportunity to interview the legendary audio designer Grant Kirkhope, most notable for his work with Rare (GoldenEye 007, Banjo-Kazooie, Grabbed by the Ghoulies, Viva Piñata and more), he is currently Audio Director for Big Huge Games. As we can read on Wikipedia, before joining Rare in October 1995, he played for two bands called Syar and Maineeaxe where he played guitar, and already knew Robin Beanland, another Rare composer. Read the full interview with  Grant Kirkhope to know more about his memories about the development of the Banjo series and other unseen Rare tales!