Alan Wake is an action adventure game developed by Remedy Entertainment, the Finnish company behind the Max Payne games. It is due for release on Xbox 360 in March 2010 and plans for a Windows release have been shelved indefinitely. Alan Wake was originally announced at E3 2005 and in 5 years of development the team decided to change Alan’s appearance since the first trailer. Let’s see those changes throughout the years:
Alan’s First Design (2005):
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2008:
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Created by Pandemic Studios, Specwarrior is a cancelled third person shooter set in the Vietnam War that was in development in 2002 / 2003. After some time the game was cancelled by its publisher, Midway. About a year later Pandemic released Full Spectrum Warrior (published by THQ), but it’s not clear if the published game used some assets from the unreleased project. Specwarrior was the reasons that lead Pandemic to file a lawsuit against Midway, because they cancelled the game to avoid payment.
The lawsuit claims Midway’s move was unwarranted, and says Midway owes money for services Pandemic completed during its months of work on the project. Pandemic is seeking damages of more than $4 million and some $750,000 in fees, according to a Reuters report.
Thanks to Hey Hey for the contribution!
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ToeJam & Earl III: Mission to Earth is an action video game released in October 2002 for the Xbox, and is the third game in the ToeJam & Earl series. It was originally developed for Sega’s Dreamcast before being ported to the Xbox after the Dreamcast’s commercial failure. You can find more screens and videos from ToeJam & Earl III Dreamcast in our Unseen Archive.
Phugolz was able to find some unused cutscenes hidden in the final game, as he wrote in the U64 Forum:
I began to dig through the files. I found what appears to be a set of hot tub cutscenes that were never used! On top of that, there seems to be a video capture test video lost among them that has footage of what appears to be the grass level, with a hot tub! The hot tub is -kinda- used in a secret area linked from the grass area.
You can find some videos of the unused scenes at X-Cult!
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Aliens: Crucible (also know as Project Connecticut) is an RPG based on the Aliens films franchise that was in development by Obsidian Entertainment for the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. The game was going to be published by SEGA, but after some economic problems, it seems that they decided to cancel all their Aliens games. Probably Aliens: Crucible gameplay could have been similar to KOTOR II and NeverWinter Nights 2, two other RPGs developed by Obsidian.
Thanks to Dominus Elf for the contribution!
Here are some more info about Aliens Crucible by a former developer, that were shared in the RPG Codex Forum:
I’ve talked about this game before…
There is a lot of could-ofs, should-ofs, and all that.
The problem with making successful horror games with the Aliens franchise is that the Aliens have been revealed… a lot. There is no mystery with them anymore. After 4 movies, countless comics and novels, countless video games – where the Alien and Alien variants have been killed multiple times, you have to tread new ground if you want to do something original. The horror with the Aliens no longer lies in the unknown, so we were going for the environment.
For example, the second or third time you watch Alien, it is no longer scary. My second playthrough of Amnesia was easy and scare-free.
NOT COUNTING JUMP SCARES! Jump scares are not true horror, though they can be used to effectively alter the tension temporarily.
Josh did have some ideas though on how to add horror and tension, and we had several scenarios into the game. Most of us were or had played SS2, Amnesia, and Call of Cthulu, but horror was not the goal of the game, survival was.
This was a game of limited resources and perma-death. If a party member got face-hugged, your choices were to mercy kill them, put them in a sleeper and wake them sparingly if you need them, or let them pop – but the bottom line was that once they got impregnated they had an expiration date.
As for the Alien variations, there are things that are simply expected by publishers and the fan base. The xenomporph variations also have a history in the aliens universe anyway. The first thing Josh and the concept artists did was to create the lifeforms the xenos would impregnate first. We also used some insect themes for the various xeno roles, from drones and scouts, to soldiers and queens. As covered in countless comics, novels, and films, the xenos take traits from their host, the idea being it would better enable them to survive in a dangerous habitat. One of the big mysteries Josh and the writers were exploring was what the caldera and how were the engineers (space
jockeys) doing with the xenos.The goal was not to kill all the bugs, but to simply escape from the caldera where you were trapped. Don’t get me wrong, there was still a lot of killing of both xenos and humans in the game. Combat was real time – but we had a companion wheel to context system so that you could issue commands to your squadmates. For example, you could highlight a door with your reticule, and then based on what your squard could do, it would show you your options, like weld door, open door, or if you had a bomb, plant bomb on door.
As far as tech goes, we were using an earlier version of Onyx – which would later be used to create DS3. Our tech was stable, but we had pipeline issues to resolve but by milestone 25 or so were in pretty good shape.
Anyway, it is what it is at this point.
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Far Cry 2 is an open-ended FPS developed for Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC by Ubisoft Montreal and published in 2008 by Ubisoft. Crytek, the developers of the original game, were not involved in the development of Far Cry 2. A pre-alpha video of the game, showcasing the visuals and 13 minutes of gameplay with developer commentary, was presented in Leipzig in August 2007. [Info from Wikipedia]
In the Pre-Alpha demo Slayermaggot81 noticed various differences:
Thanks to Slayermaggot81 for the contribution!
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