Beta and Cancelled Video Games!

BETA AND CANCELLED VIDEOGAMES: UNSEEN64

This is the main section of Unseen64, our precious archive of videogames we’ll never be able to play (at least until they could be leaked!). When a game is created, it goes trough many development stages: it starts from an idea or concept, they create a playable version (often known as “alpha or beta version”) and if everything goes fine, the game keeps being developed and is finally published, so we can enjoy it.

But… why was the game different in its beta phase? What happens when a game is cancelled?

Beta games are not the same as the ones you’ve played. Cancelled games are lost. Gaming Philology (originated from classical philology) is the study of videogames, their early development and their unseen history. Here on Unseen64 you can find an archive with info, screens and videos to preserve the most interesting cuts and changes in videogames till the seventh generation of consoles.

We remember these unseen games for curiosity, historic and artistic preservation.

Find your favorite game you’ll never play

You can use the following filter to search for unseen games planned for a specific console / PC, genre of game, publisher or development studios. You can choose one option or a mix between the two: keep in mind that not every combination has a result (for example “N64 games by Nintendo” will probably have some results, while “N64 games by Sony” will probably be an empty search).

  • Consoles / PC

  • Genres & Developers

To see a complete list of the most popular beta and cancelled videogames currently archived on Unseen64, choose your favorite retro console or PC from the list below.

Complete list of beta & cancelled games:

NINTENDO

SONY

MICROSOFT

SEGA

OTHERS

Browse our archive by developers or genres:

If you prefer, you can also check all the unseen games from your favorite developers or gaming genre, here is a list of a few ones from the most popular. You can also search your favorite gaming series from the search field in the right menù, for example for all the proto and unreleased games in the Zelda, Metal Gear Solid, Halo, Crash Bandicoot, Metroid, Banjo, God of War, Monster Hunter or Half Life series.

Developers:

Genres:

What you can find in our archive:

Beta versions are not the only ones with interesting differences (and in theory beta games should have most of their final features and assets), but “beta” is usually the most known of all the different stages of development from a videogame and it’s what people usually search on Google when they want to find “videogames in early stages of development with many differences from their final versions”. It’s like when you are late with your assignments and search for someone else who can “do my computer science homework“: a simple concept to summarize what you are looking for.

So it’s easier to talk about “beta” to indicate those particular dissimilarity between final and still-in-development videogames, but in this archive you can find games with all kind of different stages of development: concept art, design documents, pitch presentations, prototypes, alphas, betas, demos.. and if a game never reaches its “gold master” stage and it’s never released in shops, then it could have been cancelled.

You should know what “cancelled” means, the game remains officially unreleased and in most cases, we will never play it.

Sometimes “beta” and even “cancelled” games are leaked online by collectors or former developers, and this means that people are able to play and preserve them so that they will not be lost forever. It’s a risky topic, because sometimes those games, even if never released, are still under copyright laws and publishers could not be happy if their “property” is shared without their consensus (while sometimes those leaked games are so old or obscure that no-one cares anymore about them).

In our humble opinion if a game was cancelled, to share it online should not be consideredpiracy because it would have never been sold anyway, but it’s a complex issue that goes through intellectual properties, business men and marketing strategies.. and a final judgment about this is not simple.

In any case, on Unseen 64 there are not roms or direct link to download games, just links to other websites where you could find them: we need to stay as clean as possible to be able to keep the site online and to keep saving more documents of these unseen games.

Just enjoy this archive and keep dreaming about how awesome those unseen games could have been!

Latest unseen games news:

Follow our twitter account for daily updates and news about lost videogames:

How you can help

There are many ways to help us to preserve screenshots, videos and information about unreleased and beta videogames, please check our “how to help Unseen 64” page to know how YOU, yes, even you can help to save lost videogames!


63 thoughts on “Beta and Cancelled Video Games!

  1. Eric

    Hi. I just visited your site, and while it’s cool that there’s a lot of information pertaining to unreleased/cancelled video games I find it odd that the Neo Geo consoles arent represented. Those being the AES/MVS, Neo Geo CD, the Neo Geo handhelds, and of course the ill-fated Hyper 64. Especially the Neo Geo handhelds. While the Neo Geo handhelds had a respectible game library it paled in comparison to other handhelds of that time. Which makes me think that there were a great deal of games planned to be put onto the system.

    The Neo Geo AES/MVS was also a good home console which mainly saw direct ports from it’s arcade counterpart, but I, and I’m sure others probably cant help but think that some games never saw the light of day. The same would go for the Neo Geo CD as it saw typically the more enhanced arcade games go to it.

    Then there’s the Hyper 64 which only saw 6-7 games total. I just cant imagine a game developer didnt at least attempt to code up something else. Sure the console wasnt due for it’s time, but the Hyper 64 and what may have been are truly mysteries. It would be intriguing to see any sort of indication of other games outside the meager 6-7 that were released.

    Anyways thanks for reading my comment, and hopefully these systems will earn a spot on the console list with information pertaining to games that have been cancelled or simply unreleased, or had a beta….Whatever the case may be.

    1. monokoma Post author

      Hi Eric! I’d like to add more cancelled / beta games for the Neo Geo consoles, but sadly i dont have much free time so it’s already hard for me to keep up with the updates for the “main” consoles :( If you would like to help and became an “editor” for the Neo Geo Unseen section, you are welcome! :)

  2. Nick12506

    So many games have died before there time, some of which were great, other that sucked balls, thanks to your site I have seen tons of unreleased games for ever console, the only thing that your site is missing is pc games, but I think that would be to much to ask for since the web is ever growing but if you ever add a pc section I have a few leaked versions of games that don’t look like what they are now, email me if you guys ever add a pc section I’d be glade to send you the files.

  3. terra's ultimate warrior

    Hi, I just looked at this coll website. I can’t find Pokemon Diamond, Pearl, Heartgold, and Soulsilver betas. Or a the legend of zelda: phantom hourglass beta. can you add pokemon beta information? pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty please?

  4. terra's ultimate warrior

    Also missing is an Emerald, Yellow, and Crystal beta page. If my parents let me, I will find information and become an unseen researcher. but, NOT YET! NOT YET! NOT YET! NOT YET! NOT YET! NOT YET! NOT YET! NOT YET!

  5. CrashAndSonicChao

    I got a problem.

    I’m trying to register, but the thing keeps making errors. It said something about an arcade.

  6. msg

    Thanks for bringing us this site, as a huge game fan I find it very interesting to learn about the games we never got.
    I’ve bookmarked you and already shared with my friends on other sites :)

  7. ultimateawesomeness333

    After Super man 64 titus decided to remake the game from scratch on the playstation. Sony even licensed the game and it was complete. It was even said to be a good game but by that point titus lost the license and the game was cancelled.

  8. William Powell

    There was a game called Roswell Conspiracies. While, it was not cancelled or unreleased. On the CD, there are depicted either two or three screenshots of levels that never showed up in the finished product. It was a good game, though I sometimes needed a walkthrough to get through some tricky part. But those lost levels would have made a good addition to the game. Sadly, they were not to be.

  9. William Powell

    Dear Steve S.,

    I believe that the site is still active but keep in mind it takes a lot of time keep it running, with the cost of servers and all that. We must thank the many people who run this site. Monokoma and others, thank you. I never knew they were so many cancelled games. Wow!

  10. Ken

    I was browsing the web and looking for gameplay of a game called Drakkhen which is mostly known for its SNES port. I skimmed through some footage and spotted something that was not present in the SNES version; the ending to the Amiga version advertising a “Drakkhen 2”.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebQBSZlI1KU 2:20

    The Drakkhen 2 that we received was on SNES known as Dragon View and done by a different developer. This led me to become very suspicious as to whether or not the original developers had worked on their own sequel.

    After much scouting I found this one and only resource talking about Drakkhen 2 and with some promising screenshots

    http://www.abandonware-france.org/ltf_abandon/ltf_jeu.php?id=1434

    Unfortunately it seems it never came to be.

  11. Timothy Eyton

    Makes you wonder what could have been with some of the games listed here… I’ve seen and played plenty of games that should be listed here instead. Oh the horrors.

  12. vintage machine

    Love this site, so I thought I would share some of the rare items I have. First up is Myth: Dawn of Steel for Super Nintendo. The prototype cartridge is from around 1993. I have two versions of this game.

    Version 1 – Myth: Dawn of Steel
    5-6 levels based on the Amiga game, never announced as far as I know maybe someone has further info?

    Version 2 – Blood Axe (Irem America)
    This version is the same game, but is at a more advance stage and has been renamed to Blood Axe. The title screen has been altered and mentions that it is a demo for Irem America, perhaps Irem licensed this title for North America?

    Anyway thought I would share this, I have a few more very rare unannounced games which I will be sharing very soon.

    Vintage Machine

    1. monokoma Post author

      Thanks a lot for sharing those photos Vintage Machine! I saved them, and one day i’ll add this prototype to the Unseen64 archive :) If you know more unseen games they are always welcome!

  13. RetroPlayers

    Fantastic resource guys, you really can get lost down the rabbit hole with this. I have never read anything more bizarre than the reasoning behind the cancellation of Glover 2! Crazy how a purchasers mistake / bad idea can ruin a games development, even more bizarre is how they were outed in that post.

  14. slade humphrey

    Please show video about grand auto thief 64 because I want see game and I am big fan of grand auto series. Any banned walking dead game and that series if banned game in walking dead series . I go mad because I want play every game in this series. I don’t care see rpg stuff because rpg game is kind suck to me ..

  15. Rembrandt

    Monokoma do you a website that focused or has some cancelled VR games because no matter how I tried I can’t find one.

    1. monokoma Post author

      it could be a nice idea, unfortunately we don’t have enough free time to cover newer cancelled games, so I hope someone else could create a website like that! :O

  16. pseudo3d

    Is there a way we can see an entire list of games on the site? I’m interested in cancelled first party Nintendo games but I don’t like wading 20+ pages to find something interesting. I’m surprised there isn’t one…or maybe I’m just looking in the wrong place.

    1. monokoma Post author

      It’s something we want to implement since years ago, but it’s a long process and we still did not have enough time to do it :( The quickest way for us is to add “Nintendo” as a developer TAG in each of their game, we did this for a few of the, but still missing a lot. For other developers we started doing it sooner so their list is almost complete, for Nintendo you could find a few in here:
      https://www.unseen64.net/tag/nintendo/
      https://www.unseen64.net/tag/nintendo-ead/
      https://www.unseen64.net/tag/nintendo-software-technology/
      we hope to add more and more of them in the future :(

  17. Rembrandt

    Unseen64(monokoma) i asked my uncle ( who worked on Sony Japan ) to do me a favor! I asked him to interview a person who worked on Sony’s prototype TV game machine, and he said yes! And for 3 months of waiting he finally replied to me! He interviewed Koromako Toki who worked on the console who told him a lot of tidbits! First, he said that the console was meant to be a pitch to Sony (that’s why there is no logo because it was a pitch by Sony employees) we were lead by Alexander Spencer White, an American electronics engineer! He donated it on a museum! They created it on 1977 but cancelled pitching to Sony because their console can only run a trivia game( kotaku’s speculation is right all along) and the other competiting consoles are more advance in games( and also the popularity of arcade games) they also worked a game on it ( they only programmed and planned one game because it was just meant to be a pitch ) called Eikzzmer, this is a trivia game w/ a gibberish name because you need to answer a gibberish question! So the only way to win is to lost first! You need to answer a gibberish question once you are wrong it will reveal the answer and you need to memorized it! But you need to start again from the start! That is only all he told to my Uncle! Hope this is helpful mono

  18. John C.

    There was a Xena: Warrior Princess adventure game by Titus (both developer and publisher) for Nintendo 64 in development. It apparently didn’t get far and was never released. By the time it would have released as planned, the Nintendo 64 would have been dead and the TV show would have been over by that point (probably would have been released in 2001).

    It was to be the final in a planned trilogy of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena:Warrior Princess games for the Nintendo 64. There was also a planned trilogy of these games for the Game Boy Color (all published by Titus). There was the Xena adventure game canceled for N64 and the Xena fighting game canceled on Game Boy Color. All the other planned games happened.

    There was never any screenshots released for the canceled Xena game on N64. All that was known is that it would have been a cross between Tomb Raider and Zelda, an action/adventure game with RPG elements. All six of these games were planned to have link-enabled abilities where you could transfer characters/items via the Transfer Pak. Though that ability apparently never materialized between the existing games despite it saying so on the boxes of the Game Boy Color games.

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