Dreamcast

Glover 2 [N64/PSX/DC – Cancelled]

Glover was a 3D platformer game developed by Interactive Studios Ltd and released for the Nintendo 64 and Playstation in 1998. A sequel was announced for Nintendo 64, Playstation and Dreamcast with a launch originally slated for mid 1999, but was later cancelled.

In 2010, NESworld recovered a playable beta of the Nintendo 64 version of Glover 2 and by October 2011, the ROM was leaked online.

Thanks to Nesworld and Goomther for the contributions!

The Bizarre Story Behind Its Cancellation

On February 25, 2015, James Steele, a programmer formerly of Interactive Studios, released a blog entry detailing the unusual circumstances which led to the cancellation of the game. According to the developer, a huge misstep at Hasbro involving one worker severely over-estimating the amount of cartridges required for the game blemished the Glover name at the company, ultimately resulting in the discontinuation of its sequel:

“…as far as we were told, Glover 2 had been canned because of Glover 1. Now this seems strange, because the first Glover has sold fairly well for a non-Nintendo N64 title. And it was on the back of those sales that Glover 2 had been given the go-ahead at Hasbro in the first place.

But Hasbro had messed up. They had screwed the pooch big time. You see, when ordering the carts for the first game, the standard production run was something like 150,000 units. And this is what the management at ISL had advised Hasbro to order – because the N64 wasn’t really fairing that well compared to the PS1 at the time and non Nintendo titles tended to sell poorly. They thought that Glover was a good game in its own right, and a moderate 3rd party success would sell around 150,000 units. And that is exactly what happened. Hence the go ahead for the sequel.

So Glover was a money maker for Hasbro, right? Right? Nuh-uh. As it happened, Nintendo had a special on N64 carts at the time the game was being schedule for production. Some bright spark at Hasbro thought it would just be absolutely SUPER to order double the normal amount – so they put in an order 300,000 units at a slightly reduced cost.

The problem was that none of the retailers wanted to take that stock off Hasbro’s hands. The game had been moderately successful, but the demand just wasn’t there. And thus Hasbro was left with 150,000 or so copies of Glover for the N64 that nobody wanted. That’s something like half-a-million dollars worth of stock that they can’t shift. And with Hasbro Interactive not being in the best of financial shape Glover became a dirty word around the company, as it became apparent over the course of Glover 2 development that they were stuck with all those carts.

Of course, the blame was put on the game and brand itself rather than the idiot who ordered the extra 150,000 carts from Nintendo. And that ladies and gentlemen, is why Glover 2 had been cancelled.”

According to Steele, who we later caught up with, the game was around 80-85% complete at the time development ceased.

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Omikron: The Nomad Soul [ Beta – PC Dreamcast – Unused Character / Concept]

Omikron: The Nomad Soul (also know as “The Nomad Soul” in Europe) is a PC and Sega Dreamcast 3D adventure game, developed by Quantic Dream and published in 1999. Thanks to the Omikron Game Blog, we can see some interesting screentshots from an early (1997 / 1998) version of the game, with different character design, HUD interface, color of hair, missing transport, some removed NPC, removed street combat and flying-moto racing. Thanks a lot to UL from the Omikron Game Blog for all these informations and huge props for all the Quantic Dream media that he has archived in his blog!

Thanks to Unclejun for the video and some more screens!

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Omikron 2 Nomad Soul Exodus [Dreamcast/PS2 – Cancelled]

Omikron 2 Exodus was meant to be a sequel for Ps2 and Dreamcast of the game Omikron: The Nomad Soul. The title was later changed to “Omikron 2 Karma” and the development was moved to XBOX 360 and PS3. There are not many informations about the project, but thanks to the Omikron Game Blog we can finally see some concept arts and read more about the game!

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Rayman 2: The Great Escape [Beta]

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The_IT_08 has wrote a topic in our forum with some beta-screens and a video from Rayman 2 that shows a series of differences. As he says: “Alright in the first picture  there is a level called The Minhir Hills, it is a beta version of it, and this takes place in the second section of this level I think (because the walking shell’s starting point which is now the doghouse is close to the thorn pit). The differences are that there wasn’t a giant orange mushroom in there and the place where the walking shell comes from was not a doghouse. And there was a purple  

Phantasy Star Online (PSO) [Beta – Dreamcast]

In one of the first PSO videos, which showed the forest stage, there were four characters in front of a kind of locomotive on rails. A similar object, activated  by using the usual  pressure pads, could be found in a PSO Vr2 challenge, but in the PSO beta this was far more interesting, because the characters moved it themselves. It’s a pity that these puzzles were removed from the final version.

You can select the FOmar class from the beginning in PSO Ep. I&II, but with the gameshark you can unlock it in PSO vr2 for the Dreamcast too . Maybe it is just a leftover from the planned unified servers for PSP Ep. I&II and PSO vr2, because they were required to have the same features.

In these screenshots, we can see the beta central zone of the Pioneer 2. On the left we can see some kind of palace, which in the final version became the entering point of the ships and the meeting place for the Quests. There were many advertisement signs, but the holograms with the various sentences were still absent. In one of the screenshots we can see, other than the three main characters, some hunters in the background, gathered at what looks like a fire. In the original design of the Pioneer 2, it seems that there was another path under the city, maybe for other sections of the mothership.

In these screenshots of the beta Forest we can see many features that were removed from the final game, like wood stairs, fences and underpasses. In another video, we can see that the dragon originally made his entering through the rock wall. Another series of screenshots shows the beta version of the ships, even if on the left side of screen it is possible to see, to the contrary of the released version, the other character’s bars. Moreover, some warps are different in the Online Lobby.

In the concept arts of the Book of Hunters : PSO Settei, there are drawings of many classes (HUmarl, HUnewmn..) and mags not found in the final version of game. Some of these later resurfaced in PSO for Xbox and Gamecube, like HUcaseal, FOmar e RAmarl. Also, the beta mags could be equipped even on arms and feets.

386 Wren is a unused character, so described in the Book Of Hunters: “The character called Searren is a battle robot who was introduced in Phantasy Star III: Successors of Time (Megadrive/released 4/21/1990). According to comments made by a member of Sonic Team, “This got drawn for me when I said, ‘What if Searren appeared in PSO?’. We couldn’t use him due to time constraints. It’s a pity for it go to waste, so we’ll publish it.” Searren is a robot, borne of an ancient culture possessing extremely advanced science; as such, he differs from androids in that he lacks emotions. Programmed to obey orders only from Orakio’s people, he assists the human heroes across all three generations.”

Some more details regarding the beta video shown below were noticed by Leonkh:

  • The title screen of the game indicates “Auto Demo”, which implies that, much like the found Sonic Adventure “Auto Demo”, the game is on auto play with various areas being loaded after a set amount of time.
  • Also on the title screen, we can see a sort of opening FMV prior to the title screen of which the final game has no such thing. In particular, the final game simply fades from the opening splash screens to the the static image title screen whereas this demo has the FMV’s final shot be that of what the title screen’s static background is (albeit with a strange “water transition” effect from the final shot to the static title screen).
  • This “Auto Demo” contains the beta town location / hub “Pioneer 2” shown in some of the screenshots in the Unseen64 article.
  • As the games are Online Multiplayer games, the video shows four screens each showing the game from another players’ perspective. This is a fact that I bring up as this prototype has a completely different loading screen from the final game which also shows the artwork of the character used on that particular screen.
Furthermore a known public beta for PSO named “Network Trial Edition” was released some months before the final game. A forum post detailing some of the differences can be found here.

[Original intro in italian by monokoma, english translation by Yota]

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Phantasy Star Online Gameplay Phantasy Star Online Gameplay (02)