Microsoft

Microsoft, Xbox 360

Cascade [Xbox 360 – Cancelled]

U64 Staff & Contributors
19-11-2011
2 Comments

Cascade was an unreleased fantasy Massive Multiplater Online game in production at British software house Rare Ltd. The project started after Perfect Dark Zero by Mark Edmonds and Chris Tilston, it built upon early work from a post-Perfect Dark 64 prototype titled Quest. In 2007, Cascade was cancelled and the team started to work on an unreleased HD port of their N64 classic GoldenEye foy XBLA.

Jeton Grajqevci from Pure Rarity was able to talk to Mark Edmonds about this project:

He [Mark Edmonds] said Quest was a side project as MMOs are a big interest of his. It supposedly went through several variations and names over the years. No finished game ever came from it but it did lead to the networking code that was used in Conker: Live & Reloaded and Perfect Dark Zero. He also gave me a detailed timeline of the MMO:

Quest started around 2000 after Perfect Dark N64 as a mixed fantasy MMO. One name it had for a while was Elements of 3 Powers but it wasn’t related to Kameo (the other team probably took over the name when it was abandoned). Around 2001 Quest was a space shooter for the Gamecube and in 2002 it was converted to the Xbox and shortly thereafter put on hold. After Perfect Dark Zero a fantasy MMO version came back, this time titled Cascade. It was however cancelled in 2007 when the team did GoldenEye 007 for the XBLA instead. As you all know, the latter was finished but never released.

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Microsoft, Playstation 3 (PS3), Sony, Xbox 360

Deadly Premonition [Beta – PS3 / Xbox 360]

yota
15-11-2011
5 Comments

Deadly Premonition (aka Red Seed Profile in Japan) is a survival horror created by Access Games and released in 2010 for Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. Originally conceived as a PSP adventure game in the vein of “Flower, Sun and Rain”, Deadly Premonition became a next-gen title only in 2005.

Not surprisingly, Sweary65 said in a interview with Destructoid that combat sections were a publisher’s idea added only at the alpha stage of the development cycle. Probably in the earliest builds the player could only hide or escape from enemies. The “useless” garbage containers scattered around which York can use to conceal himself are likely alpha leftovers.

In 2007 a beta version of the game, tentatively called Rainy Woods, was finally showed to the public but, due to the many similarities with the TV series Twin Peaks, notably the dwarf twins and the protagonist, the publisher decided to postpone Deadly Premonition in order to change the appearance of the characters. All the voice acting was completely reworked too. We’ll probably never know how the original story would have unfolded.

York now looks like the main character of a 1970’s exploitation film.

The sheriff wasn’t changed that much.

In the released game “the red room” is located outdoor in the forest.

This pic is strange. It shows beta York without his jacket in the prologue, but in the final version this happens only at the end.

You can also read this topic at Assembler Games for more info and theories about the differences in the beta version of Deadly Premonition!

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Microsoft, Playstation 2 (PS2), Sony, Xbox

Underground [PS2 XBOX – Cancelled]

monokoma
07-11-2011
No Comments

Underground is a cancelled action / open world game that was in development by Volition for the Playstation 2 / Xbox. The game was set in england and players would have took control of a thief, free to explore the city and to decide what and how to steal. Undergound was in development for about a year, but after the release of GTA 3, Volition though that their project’s quality was not up to the expectation that gamers had from an open world game and decided to stop working on it.

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Microsoft, Xbox 360

Avatar Sports [Xbox 360 – Prototype]

U64 Staff & Contributors
18-10-2011
No Comments

Avatar Sports was a sports game in development at Rare Ltd. in 2007 / 2008 before Kinect development started. It used an unpublished motion controller that can be compared to the Wii Remote. Little is known about this title apart from the use of Microsoft’s Avatars and the inclusion of tennis. Development was halted when the motion controller was abandoned and first Kinect/Natal prototypes emerged. Rare then started to create their Kinect Sports, released in november 2010.

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