Beta + Cancelled Dreamcast Video Games - Page 8 of 21

Cut Away is a cancelled videogame that was supposedly in development by Classified Games for the Sega Dreamcast. Nothing is known about this project, apart from a poster and few news on IGN.com.

The game was first reported by Anoop Gantayat, with a release date of Fall 1999:

Yes, it’s a poster for a Dreamcast game called Cut Away – a game about which I’ve heard nothing before today. Actually, I’ve never heard of Classified Games at all – pretty odd, since their first DC title is scheduled for a Fall release. Apparently, the company is also working on some Gameboy Color games, including The Mask of Zorro, Burgertime Deluxe Starring the Flinstones, and Magical Drop.
The promise of a photo realistic adventure set in San Francisco and involving terrorists and bombs sounds intriguing, and boy do we love that “Terror so real, you’ll feel the blast” catch phrase, but we hope that Classified Games has plans to at least show us a few screen shots before the game is released. We’ll be back with more information, assuming we can find anything.

Other details were pointed by Matthew Langan:

It turns out that Microsoft is the company behind the title, having formed a small development team called Classified Games to produce it. As a third person adventure, the gameplay will unsurprisingly be similar to both Capcom’s Resident Evil and Pulse’s Undercover. While specifics are still being kept under wraps, it’s clear that the story will take place in San Francisco. Plenty of CG movies are promised, as is an intriguing story to keep you on your feet. Speaking of which, bombs have been planted across the city by terrorists. As the hero, it’s your job to stop them from causing complete and utter chaos, whatever the cost may be!
A release date has yet to be confirmed for Cut Away, but we’ll be sure to keep you fully updated. Keep an eye out for an extensive preview in the upcoming weeks, right here at IGNDC.

Another tidbit was reported on the magazine Dreamcast Monthly (Issue 1), however nothing new was added:

If you try to search about “Classified Games” on the Internet very few informations come up, with the majority of them not even related to the Dreamcast. Classified Games was also supposed to publish the North American version of Bakuretsu Muteki Bangaioh (later released as Bangai-O by Conspiracy Entertainment), as reported by IGN. There is maybe a connection between Conspiracy Entertainment and Classified Games, if you know more informations about this game or you have worked with Classified Games drop us an e-mail, we are very interested to know more about this project.

Thanks to Chocomarker1 on the Assemblergames Forum for noticing this game!

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Magazine Scans:

Dreamcast, Others, PC / MAC, Playstation, Sega, Sony

Soul Reaver (Shifter) [ PSX / PC / DC ] Beta / Debug / Unused Stuff]

Gh0stBlade

15-06-2009

3 Comments

Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver is a third-person adventure game developed by Crystal Dynamics and published by Eidos. It was released for the PlayStation and PC in 1999 and for the Sega Dreamcast in 2000. Soul Reaver entered development alongside Blood Omen 2: Legacy of Kain in 1997 and focused on puzzle solving instead of Blood Omen 2’s action.

Initially, the game was set to be released October 1998. The secondary release date was then made January 1999. Due to the game still remaining unfinished. It was granted a final delay of approximately 7 months which then, the game went gold in July 1999 and subsequently got released August 1999.

Unfortunately, these delays occurred because the game wasn’t progressing quickly enough in terms of asset creation to fulfill their original vision for Soul Reaver. Several interviews suggested the designers noticed they had an overly designed game thus had no option but to remove certain areas of the game.

Some removed areas are known as:

Under City
“Turel’s Territory”(Must confirm the exact name)
Mountain Retreat

Amy Hennig stated that the development team split the original, much larger plans in two after realizing that they had “over-designed the game”. This decision explains Soul Reaver’s cliffhanger ending and the appearance of originally planned material in later games. Despite the split, Hennig explained that the team left unused components in Soul Reaver’s game engine to avoid unforeseen glitches that might have arisen from their removal. [Infos from Wikipedia] This is why certain reavers are accessible even though they are not actually obtainable on the retail version.

As we can read in this interesting article from The Lost Worlds, many items, weapons and areas were removed / not used in the final game, as the Amplified Force Projectile & Possession abilities, The Amplified Reaver and The Ariel Reaver weapons, Five additional Reaver upgrades and the The Mountain Retreat area. You should check the Lost Worlds article for more informations, it’s really well done!

Thanks to John Doom for the contribution!

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Videos:

Alpha: July 1998

Alpha: January 1999

Beta: 12th May 1999

Beta: 28th June 1999

Dreamcast, Sega

Hellgate [Dreamcast – Cancelled]

monokoma

16-02-2009

9 Comments

Developed by Horny Dog and published by Jester Interactive, Hellgate was going to be a third person shooter for the Dreamcast, where to kill demons and going around for the levels with a motorcycle. Sadly the game was cancelled, as we can read on the old Horny Dog website: “The Sega announcement that they were ceasing production of Dreamcast hardware wasn’t much of a help, as well as the fact one or two members of our team didn’t have the game’s best interest at heart. […] We had spent 15 months developing the title, and although many of us felt we achieved so much, it wasn’t enough to save the title.”

Our friends at SuperiorVersion have found some nice screens from this project, you can check them all in here. A video from the intro of the game was later found by Dreamcast.es!

From the old developers website we can still read some interesting informations about the game:

magine a crossover between Quake and WipeOut. Got that image? Hellgate meshes these two genres, with high speed at your fingertips, as well as some meaty weaponry! There will be four gigantic realms to conquer, as well as ten formidable weapons to defeat the many demons and monsters lurking within Hell.
We will also be supporting Dreamcast’s online capabilities with online Deathmatch, Capture The Flag, Sumo and Time Trial modes, and also feature offline 4 player Deathmatch and link-up Deathmatch modes. The exciting thing is, Hellgate could well be the first Dreamcast game to support 12 – yes – 12 people.

In March 2009, a playable beta was somehow leaked and now you can download it and try Hellgate on your Dreamcast! Thanks to X-Cult for the file mirror

Thanks a lot to Borman & Dreamcast.es for the contribution!

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Videos:

Dreamcast, Leaked, Sega

Redline Arena [Dreamcast – Cancelled]

monokoma

24-01-2009

2 Comments

Redline 2 (also know as Redline Arena) was the sequel of Redline, a post-apocalyptic combination of FPS / Car Combat game that was released in 1999 for the PC. Redline Arena was going to be developed for the SEGA Dreamcast: a small team from Beyond Games worked on a playable PC prototype for about 6 weeks, starting with an updated-port of the first game. New features and improved AI were added, with more vehicles and weapons.

An online multiplayer mode was expected too, but it seems that “the Dreamcast’s networking setup was not in sync with the Redline networking code. Lag and latency were going to be serious buzz-kills. Addressing this incompatibility was going to be a monumental task, and ultimately, the project was dropped”.

Even if the game was cancelled for the Dreamcast, somehow the development was shifted to the PS2: the project would eventually become Motor Mayhem, a game that was released in 2001. Early prototypes of Motor Mayhem were built to run in the Redline Arena engine, and so would be its best and last innovations.

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Arcade, Dreamcast, Nintendo, Nintendo 64 & 64DD, Others, Playstation, Sega, Sony

Mortal Kombat 4 [ARC DC N64 PSX – Beta]

U64 Staff & Contributors

17-12-2008

No Comments

Mortal Kombat 4 is considered the 4th intallment of the Mortal Kombat series, 6th if you count MK3U and MKT. Released in 1997, it was the first MK game to use 3D graphics. It was first released in the arcade version and it would be the last arcade MK made. It was released on the N64, Playstation and PC in 1998, ported by Eurocom. An updated version was released on Dreamcast in 1999 called Mortal Kombat Gold, which was identical with the exception of better graphics, added players and a few more stages.

A new character named Belokk was intended to appear in Mortal Kombat Gold, but was cut from the released game. The developer of the game, Eurocom, sent information about the game with Belokk to Game Informer, and as a result, six screenshots of him were published. According to Ed Boon, Belokk was cut due to time constraints during development. Despite the mention of Belokk’s scrap, he was still rumored to appear as a secret character. [Infos from Wikipedia]

Actual secret characters can be accessed via rotating a specific box for a normal character, however when a player do this to Tanya’s box a question mark that was rumored to unlock Belokk appears, but it unlock nothing.

Since it was the first Midway 3D fighting game, the staff had many difficulties while in development, partly due to the fact the staff had doubled in size. Which means many changes were made and many interesting aspects were taken out.

Differences from the arcade version to the N64 version would include: Lower pixel rate and additions such as Goro being a playable character, extra costumes, and another arena called Ice Pit.

Pre-release trailers show Reptile and Fujin with God-O-Mite as their name in the lifebars. More then likely this was before they got to the name detail.

Kitana, Noob Saibot and Kano were orignally going to be in MK4. Kitana was then changed to Tanya. Noob saibot was taken in and out many times and replaced with Reiko. Jarek replaced Kano and for some reason was left with Kano’s moves, which caused many fans to complain because Jarek was hardly original. Noob Saibot can be accessed in the N64 version by a cheat, but was never in the Arcade. These characters were taken out mainly because Midway wanted more new characters in the game.

The hidden character Meat was originaly intended for testing.

Thanks to Pachuka and Sir_Brando for the contributions!

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