Playstation 2 (PS2), Sony

Ambrosia Odyssey [PS2 – Cancelled]

monokoma
23-01-2010
No Comments

Ambrosia Odyssey is a cancelled Action RPG with online multiplayer that was in development for the Playstation 2 in 2003 by Rocket Studio with help from KAI Graphics (for CG movies) and Supersweep (for music), meant to be published by Square Enix. The game had a multiple branching storyline  in offline mode, in which you were able to create towns and foster their development to follow different plots, then connect online to share your game world with other players and visit their own towns and stories.

A video of the game was shown at the Tokyo Game Show 2003, but it only has some characters creation footage, blurred combats and a pre-rendered FMV (thanks a lot to CRC for preserving this video!).

An online beta testing was planned for spring 2004 (?), but we are not sure if it really happened before the cancellation. Ambrosia Odyssey was soon removed from Square Enix release list, maybe because of the popularity of their other online game, Final Fantasy XI.

Thanks to Userdante for the contribution!

Images:

Videos:
 

Mega Drive / Genesis, Sega

Monster Hunter [MD/G – Cancelled]

monokoma
22-01-2010
4 Comments

The Menacer is a wireless lightgun created by Sega for the Sega Mega Drive / Genesis in 1992, as a response to the Super Scope by Nintendo. Sega and third-party developers did not develop many games for the Menacer and one of these projects, know as “Monster Hunter”, was cancelled before being finished.

In Monster Hunter the story involves the player as a premier big game hunter, in search of the ultimate catch. The scenarios range from safari lands to exotic ranges not from our world

There are not many info or media remained for this game, but Celine was able to find a screenshot of MH in EGM #51.

Image:

menacer-monster-hunter-genesis-mega-drive 

Microsoft, Playstation 2 (PS2), Sony, Xbox

Red Dead Revolver [Beta – PS2, XBOX]

monokoma
21-01-2010
No Comments

Red Dead Revolver is a western third-person shooter published by Rockstar Games and developed by Angel Studios, a team that is now known as Rockstar San Diego. The game was released in May 2004, for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox, but its development begun 3 years before (2001 / 2002) and the project was originally meant to be published by Capcom.

In 2002, Angel Studios were acquired by Take Two Interactive and Rockstar Games purchased the rights of the title and expanded on it. The original version of Red Dead Revolver had a more arcadish and fast gameplay, while the final one had a more “open world realistic” approach. The “Angel Studios Version” was played more like an “on rails” shooter (but with free movements), instead the “Rockastar San Diego Version” is more like an action adventure.

Chek the trailers below for a comparison. If you played the game and can help us to notice more differences, it would be appreciated!

Thanks to BemaniAK for the contribution!

Images:

Beta Videos:

Here’s the final version of the game for comparison:

 

Unseen News

RS Links: the unreleased Burnout Paradise’s content

monokoma
20-01-2010
5 Comments

Over at the official Burnout / Criterion blog, they wrote a post about planned Download Content that was meant to be released for Burnout Paradise, as new tracks, modes and vehicles, but for some reasons they never finish them.

We were very interested in the whole concept of downloadable content, and we knew that we wanted to approach it very differently and push it as far as we could. A downloadable Island was started almost immediately after the main game was built.

[…]

We did have ambitious plans for a series of Islands. One was going to be purely off-road based. Hence we created the ‘Dust Storm’ dune buggy in anticipation for that. Our original dreams for Paradise were to create a series of Islands, all connected to Paradise City and each would focus on a different style of racing game. One Island was going to be completely circuit based – and be all marked up like a modern Formula One circuit!

[…]

Planes. A lot of Burnout fans already know about this – as we showed flying around in a live podcast. It was really cool to be able to see Paradise City from the air. It did not happen because of the way the game world was built. The city was never meant to be seen from such viewpoints. Think of it like a film set, a very big film set – meant to be seen from certain camera angles and not others.

[…]

The Moon! Again, completely true. Someone on the team said that ‘players want the moon on a stick when it comes to DLC’ We thought that was funny and thought we’d do it. The actual surface of the real Moon was modelled and it was drive-able. Lunar Challenges would have been totally unexpected – as would have been zero gravity Takedowns and Challenges.

[…]

Time Travel – Not many know about this, but it was discussed. On a certain day, a time portal would have opened on the Island. When you jumped through, you would have found yourself on Big Surf, at another point in history. Maybe the Wild West…you could have done some Challenges and then jumped back.

Thanks to Robert Seddon for the link!