Beta + Cancelled PSP Video Games - Page 3 of 12

Duke Nukem: Critical Mass is a run & gun shooter game, released on the Nintendo DS platform in 2011 by Apogee Software. The game was originally intended to also come out as a Playstation Portable game but was later cancelled for unknown reasons. Rumours on the game started early as the beginning of 2008 and were later in July of that year confirmed when Apogee Software announced a completely new Duke Nukem adventure: a Trilogy which would be developed for both systems in cooperation with publisher Deep Silver and which would be developed by Frontline Studios. After being rebranded to 3D Realms this would also be the revival of the Apogee brand in game development and publishing. The trilogy would consist of three separate games with Critical Mass being the first; its original release date set in the fall of 2009 and would be followed by the other chapters Duke Nukem: Chain Reaction and Duke Nukem: Proving Grounds.

Besides the storyline the games on DS and PSP would however be completely different from each other; the Nintendo DS version would be more of a side scroller while the Playstation Portable would be more of a third / first person shooter. The game would have on both platforms a multi-mode where players could easily switch between third person, first person, isometric and side scrolling views including some extra options as a sniper mode, a jetpack mode and different boss battle modes. The Critical Mass chapter would have 9 areas to complete, divided into 27 missions and the player was promised 15 different types of weapons, multiple and secret ways to achieve in-game points and on top of that both platforms would have cinematic rendered cut-scenes between levels. The huge difference between the Nintendo DS and the Playstation Portable, being two complete different machines can be seen in the two screenshots below which I took out of a promotional video released by Apogee in March 2009 made specially for the Game Developer’s Conference; the promotional video was cut in two pieces and showed screenshots of both systems. Funny thing was that the PSP version was rated Mature and the DS was only rated Teen. So two complete different games carrying the same story.

In the first chapter of the trilogy some Earth Defense Organization had been sending out special agents on missions into the future to ensure the safety of the Earth; none of the sent agents however reported back and our hero Duke Nukem is sent into that same future to figure out what is going on. In that future Duke Nukem finds a ruined world in complete chaos and disaster, mankind is almost entirely wiped out and the remains of it are reigned and controlled by aliens. Duke then discover that things might have gone wrong because of him; the moment he left the earth for the future it was attacked by those same alien forces. In the second chapter “Chain Reaction” Duke heads back to the present time in hope of fixing things in the present and thus also in the future. In the third chapter “Proving Grounds” Duke would see things getting worse and ends up being involved in a new World War.

So the DS version was released, being it much later then planned: what happened to the PSP version of the game? In March 2009 Apogee Software confirmed that the release date of both versions was still set for September of that year. They then went a bit silent and rumors about Apogee’s mother company 3D Realms closing its doors start to spread; everybody expected that the same would also happens to Apogee Software. Apogee however denied all rumors and stated that the company under no circumstances would be affected by the 3D Realms situation and that the development of the Duke Nukem Trilogy was going according plans. 3D Realms was at the time also working on Duke Nukem Forever. In May of the same year Take-Two, who was at that moment the holder of the publishing rights for Duke Nukem, filed a law suit against 3D Realms, stating that 3D Realms failed to deliver the game. In 2010 Take-Two announced that Forever had been shifted over from 3D Realms to Gearbox and that it had sold all the rights and the intellectual property to that same company. It was later announced that Critical Mass could no longer carry the Duke Nukem license. They decided to change the game with replacing all traces of Duke Nukem like player models, logos and even voice-overs. The name of the main character was also changed and replaced by a new hero called Cam Nash. Frontline Productions even had a new name for the game, “Extraction Point: Alien Shootout” and decided that the new game now would be released on the Playstation Network. Their biggest problem now was that they faced having to deal with a complete new IP, without a well-known and thus easier selling IP like Duke Nukem.

Things then got even weirder when later in 2011: Apogee Software stated that they did not lost the license for Duke Nukem and that the release date for Duke Nukem: Critical Mass was set for June 2011, but just the DS version. A PSP version was no longer spoken off and was said to be cancelled when developer Frontline was taken off the project; the real reason behind this decision still remains a bit vague but the confusion on loosing or not loosing the original license must have been a large part of that decision. Apogee Software denied that the decision to cancel the PSP version had something to do with the loss of any rights and they even said to have submitted a complete build of the game to Sony for final approval. Unfortunately Apogee declined all comments when asked why the game never got a PSP release.

The Nintendo DS version came out as scheduled in 2011. It was labeled as the worst handheld game ever and received some very hard and killing critics when reviewed. End of story? No not at all. There is a complete version of the PSP version of Duke Nukem: Critical Mass. Leaked? Nope. Later release? Nope. Port of the game? Also nope.

The Library of Congress in the United States is probably the biggest library in the world. It archives besides just books also things as magazines, comics and yes, also video games. Through the copyright registration process the library receives roughly 400 games in a year. About 99,99% these games are physically released and published computer games. In 2014 a technician of the library was performing an inventory of acquired video games and he stumbled upon a DVD-R labeled Duke Nukem: Critical Mass (PSP).

Most of the time however these DVD’s contain footage of gameplay of a game. The technician was however triggered by a line of text in the copyright database record: Authorship: entire Video Game, computer code, artwork, music. He put the DVD in his computer and discovered a file directory with the source code of a complete PSP game; a game of which he later found out to be an unreleased Playstation Portable Game. All the contents of the found disc are however copyrighted material and the disc will be stored in the digital archive of the library. Unfortunately it seems that its content cannot be shared. According to Apogee the disc is an early alpha version of the game and it was submitted to the library as required for the copyright process. Duke Nukem: Critical Mass will probably remain another cancelled PSP game that will never be released.

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Leaked, PSP, Sony

Saints Row: Undercover [PSP – Cancelled]

monokoma

25-01-2016

3 Comments

Saints Row: Undercover (also known as Saints Row: The Fall in its early phase) is a cancelled chapter in the popular over-the-top open world series by Volition, planned to be released for Sony’s PSP. This game was meant to be the first entry of Saints Row for portable consoles and while a 3DS version was also announced many years ago (titled Saints Row: Drive-By), neither of them were ever released.

Development on Undercover was originally started by Mass Media Games (that already worked with Volition on the PS3 version of Saints Row 2) and then transferred to Savage Entertainment (the same team that ported Star Wars: Battlefront II and Medal of Honor: Vanguard to the PSP). Initially Volition wanted to simply port Saints Row 2 to the PSP, but after a while the project became a new, original sequel, with its own story and characters.

Saints Row: The Fall was to be set between Saints Row 1 and 2, but thanks to the success of SR2 they later decided to create a sequel to the second game, to expand its story and making it more interesting for the fans. In Saints Row PSP the city would have been split as a result of a civil war within the Saints. The Third Street Saints, who the player would have joined, possessed only a little area in the middle. We would have took the role of an undercover cop, charged with investigating the civil war within the Saints, and at the end of the game we could have decided to join them and betray the police.

The plan for Undercover was to create something similar to the GTA games for the PSP, keeping the core gameplay of the series, with crazy gameplay, a fun world to explore, character customization and coop multiplayer. The game would have had 20 main story missions to complete, along with the usual SR side activities to earn respect points.

Savage Entertainment developed a short playable prototype, but unfortunately after multiple reviews Volition decided that Undercover just wasn’t meeting the standards of what they thought a Saints Row game should be. The game was cancelled and the PSP dev kit on which the project was created was hidden away in one of Volition’s storage rooms.

Only many years later Saints Row: Undercover was found again thanks to Josh Stinson (Associate Video Editor at Volition), that stumbled upon that PSP dev kit while looking around their office. After talking about it with colleagues and with the support of Alexander Mejia (Video Producer at Volition) and Mike Watson (Community Manager at Volition), they were able to convince their bosses that such a lost games should have been shared with the fans, as an interesting curiosity and a piece of gaming history to preserve. During Volition’s stream on Twitch on the 22January 2016 they officially shown Saints Row: Undercover to the world and this Thursday (Jan 28) they will do a dedicated stream around 4pm CST.

Please join their stream on Twitch the 28th of January to see more from this lost game and to ask every questions you have directly to Volition! This is really important as if this stream will be successful Volition will release even more info on other cancelled games!

Below you can download Saints Row: Undercover walk through, design doc and fully playable prototype, also shared by the lovely people at Volition. Huge props to them!

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PSP, Sony

Distrust (Danganronpa) [Beta – PSP / PSvita]

monokoma

19-01-2015

5 Comments

Danganronpa is among the best hidden gaming gems for the PS Vita. Originally released exclusively in Japan as two PSP games in 2010 (Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc) and 2012 (Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair), it was thanks to the release of the PS Vita collection with both episodes in USA and Europe, that western gamers were finally able to enjoy this bizarre visual novel. However, before it gained its final name that we know today, “Danganronpa”, the project was first in development for the PSP under another title; Distrust.

The story behind the development of Distrust is more complex than you might think. Despite Spike Chunsoft releasing many images from the beta version of the game, they did not explain why the project was so heavily changed. Nor did they elaborate on why some features from the original Distrust project were reused not only for Danganronpa, but also for another popular visual novel.

Danganronpa was originally published in late 2010 by Spike, just a year after they released 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors for the Nintendo DS, developed by Chunsoft. 999 was released in English in 2010, where it soon became a cult hit among american visual novel fans, thanks to its gloomy and mysterious plot. Unfortunately, in Japan, it was not quite as well received. When it was first shown, Distrust received better feedback from Japanese gamers; but it seems that in its early days of development, the game shared many more similarities with 999.

PSP, Sony

Galaxy’s End [PSP – Cancelled]

monokoma

11-04-2013

No Comments

Galaxy’s End is an unreleased science-fiction RTS developed by Tiki Games for the PSP. The game received Stage 1 Approval from SCEA but they did not found a publisher interested in releasing the project. With the introduction of the Playstation Store for the PSP, Galaxy’s End could be completed at some point. As we can read on Joystick:

“When we started Galaxy’s End we absolutely needed a publisher at some point – not just for the financial aspect but to get it into stores. Now that the PLAYSTATION Store has been added for the PSP we have the opportunity to finish the game and release it as a digital download (like NOVASTRIKE).”
“Quite frankly we don’t have the finances to finish Galaxy’s End right now. So we’ll likely have to look for another loan. And I’ll need to convince my family (who are presently self-funding Tiki Games) that there’s a large enough audience that would be willing to purchase a downloadable real-time strategy game for the PSP.”

In the gallery below you can see work-in-progress screenshots and a gameplay movie. If you are interested in learning more about Tiki Games, the team members and Galaxy’s End, you can check their website at www.tikigames.net

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PSP, Sony

Star Trek: Tactical Assault [Beta – PSP]

U64 Staff & Contributors

25-03-2013

No Comments

The only Star Trek game on the PSP, Star Trek Tactical Assault featured two mission campaigns based around the original Star Trek films era. However, there were a number of elements left out of the main game, but which remain accessible.

The first is a debug mode, where the player can select any ship on a particular level to play. It also includes a camera function to look at ships from different angles. Debug information such as FPS could also be seen.

The E3 demo is hidden in the game’s content and can be accessed through CWCheat codes. It is very similar to the first mission in the game.

There are two other unused missions (one Federation, one Klingon), as well as a “combat test”. This seems to be a Skirmish mode mission with a set number of ships.

The game has a number of unused models, which seem to be from the original TV show rather than the films. The main one is a planet killer from The Doomsday Machine. It is not to scale, though.

There are two shuttle models (albeit without textures), one from the original show and one from the first film. The models can be flown like any other ship in the game, although the animation is jittery at times.

There is more information at Edward Kirk‘s website:
http://zenade.angelfire.com/STTA/debug.html