2010 - Page 83 of 93 - Unseen64: Beta, Cancelled & Unseen Videogames!

Nuclear Rush is an unreleased shooter that was in development in 1993 for the Sega VR, the canned “virtual reality” accessory planned for the Mega Drive / Genesis. Four games were apparently developed for the system, each using 16 Mb cartridges that were to be bundled with the headset. One of these was Nuclear Rush, in which the players were able to fly with an hovercraft to fight in a futuristic war.

Thanks to Sega Forever we can read the original Sega VR press release that was published in Sega Visions magazine, August/September 1993:

From the moment you strap on the headset, you know that your gaming life will never be the same again. The world you see through the twin eye-pieces of the virtual reality (VR) headset responds as if it were another world, one you can explore by moving around without leaving your chair. […]
You are playing Nuclear Rush, the game that will be bundled with Sega VR, Sega’s new virtual reality headset. […]
Welcome to the year 2032. Get ready for a cataclysmic trek into a post-nuclear gold rush, where low-level nuclear waste is bartered as an energy source. You are posing as a nuclear pirate, piloting a hovercraft through radioactive wastelands guarded by heavily armed robots and drones.

As Iron Hammer, it’s possible that Nuclear Rush was playable even without the VR accessory. From an interview with Kevin McGrath at Sega 1 6, it seems that Nuclear Rush was completed before the Sega VR was cancelled:

My first project, called Nuclear Rush was to design and code one of the games that was going to be released with the SEGA VR Headset. It was a simple 3D shoot-em-up kind of game, but with the VR Headset it became an intriguing experience. We had concerns about creating nausea for the player, which could happen if the graphics are just slightly out of sync with the actual movement of the players head. Anyway, I spent a year on this project, and although SEGA paid us in full and we completed everything, the hardware never made it past prototype stage.

Thanks to Celine for the scan! (found in GamePower #21). You can also see Nuclear Rush in motion from the video below (thanks to Grooveraider YT channel!).

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Nintendo, SNES + Super Famicom

Cooly Skunk [SNES – Cancelled]

monokoma

08-02-2010

4 Comments

Cooly Skunk (also known as “Punky Skunk” in USA) is a platform game that was originally in development by Visit for the Super Famicom / Super Nintendo. The game was never released for the Nintendo console, but the title was somehow resurrected (by Ukiyotei?) with some graphical changes for the Playstation and later published in Japan by Visit and in America by Jaleco.

In Cooly Skunk the player takes the role of an anthropomorphic skunk and the game plays much like other side-scrolling action games, featuring a set of special tools including a skunk spray, parasail, a pogo stick, inline skates, digging claws, and a snowboard.

The project was probably canned for the 16 bit system because of the new Playstation and Saturn consoles, that “killed” the SNES / Mega Drive (Genesis) market. Although released for the Playstation, it seems that the game was “not finished to completion” (at least from what we can read on Wikipedia, does anyone know more about this?). Cooly Skunk remains a collectors curiosity due to the generally unfinished nature of the game and its Super Famicom origins.

Celine was able to find some screenshots of the Super Famicom / Super Nintendo version on Super Power magazine issue 41. A playable demo was found and released online in January 2019!

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Microsoft, Xbox 360

GoldenEye 007 Remake [Xbox 360 – Cancelled]

monokoma

07-02-2010

6 Comments

A remake of GoldenEye 007 (codenamed “Project Bean”) for Xbox Live Arcade was in development at Rare Ltd. during 2007 and 2008. Goldeneye 007 was a critically acclaimed FPS for the Nintendo 64, originally published by Nintendo in 1997 and still loved by many fans. Although Microsoft, Activision (current owners of the game rights to the James Bond franchise)and Nintendo were said to have agreed upon a licensing deal for the title initially, Nintendo Japan allegedly refused to grant their permission at last minute. Therefore the remake had to be canned only months before completion.

Much like the original Goldeneye for the N64, the developers who were involved in the making of this XBLA remake had their faces scanned and implemented into the game (as enemies / civilians / scientists / naval officers). In the game we would have been able to change the HD converted graphics to N64 graphics, an online multiplayer mode was planned, along with the traditional split screen mode. Goldeneye XBLA would had over 200 point’s worth of achievements and a time trial leader boards.

Some more info can be found at Mundo Rare:

[…] the game was developed in just one year by just 8 people; Dam, Depot and Frigate levels are selectable as multiplayer arenas (even the fabled Citadel was considered just “for the fan reaction”) and the N64 version isn’t technically a port, but a rather smart graphic filter use that makes the new game look the old-fashioned way.

It’s possible that the engine used for this Goldeneye remake was later reused for the Perfect Dark XBLA Remake. Some images in the gallery below are from XBOX Magazine. In August 2016 Rare Thief uploaded on Youtube more than 30 minutes of footage from this lost game, you can see the video below! Some more details were also shared on their website:

Throughout the video the player uses the rumored feature of switching the game’s graphics between the original Nintendo 64 textures and the remake textures on the fly. The switch between the two appears to take zero effort or time, and can be done whenever without having to pause the game.[…] After the tour of some select missions, the video presents a few of the multiplayer options. On top of the expected multiplayer levels are three news ones including Dam, Frigate and Depot. Something even more interesting than that is the option to set all character heights to be equal, meaning Jaws and Oddjob would no longer have their advantages.

Thanks to DCodes7 for the contribution!

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32X / Mega CD, Sega

Aftershock [Sega 32X – Cancelled]

monokoma

06-02-2010

No Comments

Aftershock is a cancelled shoot ’em up that was in development by Sega Midwest for the 32X. A short video (just a couple of seconds) of the game was seen in the episode #70 of the ROX TV Show, when they visited the SM studio. As we can read from a GDRI interview with Jim Reichert, former Sega Midwest designer, the project was canned because of economic problems:

JR: Aftershock got beyond the proof of concept stage, and we were developing the game when I left. I remember that Aftershock got rave reviews as a product pitch at SOA, but by that time, Sega Midwest had pissed away so much money (with little ROI [return on investment]) that nobody trusted them with SOA cash — and Sega itself was totally floundering (32X?!?). It was too bad because that game actually had some legs, and the whole studio was excited about it — and I was the lead designer. I still have all the videos and game assets associated with it — I even have a cartridge with the prototype on it. We had a professional cartooner design all the characters for the game, and the images were completely awesome.
[…]
JR: Essentially, it was Jungle Strike set in a post-apocalyptic world where you could fly, drive, and cycle around.

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Unseen News

Denjin Makai [SNES – Not Cancelled?]

monokoma

05-02-2010

4 Comments

Denjin Makai is a series of beat ’em up developed by Banpresto and released for the Arcade from 1993 to 1995. A Super Famicom / Super Nintendo version was planned too, but it seems that it was never released. It’s currently unknown if the SNES Denjin Makai was going to be a new game or a port of the first chapter already released in arcades.

Thanks to Celine for the contribution! (Scans from Super Power magazine issues #20 and #22)

Update: Celine later found out that this game was indeed released in japan under a different name: Ghost Chaser Densei.

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