Beta + Cancelled Xbox 360 Video Games - Page 52 of 76

A remake of GoldenEye 007 (codenamed “Project Bean”) for Xbox Live Arcade was in development at Rare Ltd. during 2007 and 2008. Goldeneye 007 was a critically acclaimed FPS for the Nintendo 64, originally published by Nintendo in 1997 and still loved by many fans. Although Microsoft, Activision (current owners of the game rights to the James Bond franchise)and Nintendo were said to have agreed upon a licensing deal for the title initially, Nintendo Japan allegedly refused to grant their permission at last minute. Therefore the remake had to be canned only months before completion.

Much like the original Goldeneye for the N64, the developers who were involved in the making of this XBLA remake had their faces scanned and implemented into the game (as enemies / civilians / scientists / naval officers). In the game we would have been able to change the HD converted graphics to N64 graphics, an online multiplayer mode was planned, along with the traditional split screen mode. Goldeneye XBLA would had over 200 point’s worth of achievements and a time trial leader boards.

Some more info can be found at Mundo Rare:

[…] the game was developed in just one year by just 8 people; Dam, Depot and Frigate levels are selectable as multiplayer arenas (even the fabled Citadel was considered just “for the fan reaction”) and the N64 version isn’t technically a port, but a rather smart graphic filter use that makes the new game look the old-fashioned way.

It’s possible that the engine used for this Goldeneye remake was later reused for the Perfect Dark XBLA Remake. Some images in the gallery below are from XBOX Magazine. In August 2016 Rare Thief uploaded on Youtube more than 30 minutes of footage from this lost game, you can see the video below! Some more details were also shared on their website:

Throughout the video the player uses the rumored feature of switching the game’s graphics between the original Nintendo 64 textures and the remake textures on the fly. The switch between the two appears to take zero effort or time, and can be done whenever without having to pause the game.[…] After the tour of some select missions, the video presents a few of the multiplayer options. On top of the expected multiplayer levels are three news ones including Dam, Frigate and Depot. Something even more interesting than that is the option to set all character heights to be equal, meaning Jaws and Oddjob would no longer have their advantages.

Thanks to DCodes7 for the contribution!

Images:

Videos:

Microsoft, Others, PC / MAC, Playstation 3 (PS3), Sony, Xbox 360

Saint Row 2 [X360/PS3/PC – Beta]

U64 Staff & Contributors

26-01-2010

6 Comments

Saints Row 2 is a sandbox / action game game developed by Volition Inc and published by THQ for PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in 2008. James Tsai, SR2’s Lead Designer, in and interview with IGN revealed that some content had to be removed from the game before it was published:

JT: In the early stages of development we had some really crass stuff in the game, the kind of things that put you in that weird place where you’re laughing and squirming uncomfortably with guilt at the same time. One prototype had you driving a truck full of smuggled underage foreign prostitutes across the city while rival pimps rammed into you, knocking the girls out and cutting into your human trafficking profits. Another had you using a high pressure fire hose to wash homeless people off the street and into the gutter. Not exactly Nobel Prize material.
There was a lot of stuff we had in that didn’t register very high on the human decency scale, so we dialed some things back. For instance we changed the gender of the first character you encounter, since beating a female doctor to death with an IV stand wasn’t the impression we wanted to leave with the very first player action in the game. Instead, we have you beat a male doctor to death with an IV stand, to ease you into the killing.

From the early screens we can also notice various beta differences:

You can not customize characters in youe crib in the final
There was a different looking crib
Hideout has a different appearance
A pic shows a cutscene that was removed

Images:

Microsoft, Others, PC / MAC, Xbox 360

Division 9 [PC/X360? – Cancelled]

U64 Staff & Contributors

18-01-2010

1 Comment

What we have here is an unreleased game by Irrational Games, known as Division 9. The premise for this game is similar to the Left 4 Dead franchise, it featured a co-op survival style gameplay, in a mass city with Zombies as the main antagonists. It also featured complex FPS elements such as game changing missions, one instance being a situation where you could turn on a power generator that would give you light for any night time mission.

It began as a joke amongst the developers, having just finished SWAT 4, this game would be like a Swat 5, jokingly referred to as the Zombie Swat. Sadly, the company, going through some trouble at the time was unable to pitch the idea to the buyers in time, having only a week to prepare a demo. They did well, and were ready to sell it to Vivendi but they had just sold the company to Take-Two. Other concerns were the assumption that the zombie genre wouldn’t be as popular as it was in the target year.

If production had gone as planned it’s release would be around the same time as Bioshock. Thanks to Irrational games for this news (more info on the project can be found at Game Informer)

Images:

Video:

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

Darkwatch 2 [Cancelled – Xbox 360 / PS3]

monokoma

18-12-2009

4 Comments

Darkwatch 2 is the cancelled sequel of the 2005 FPS that was developed by High Moon Studios and published for the Playstation 2 and Xbox. Few months after the release of the first game, High Moon started to work on Darkwatch 2, following the same gameplay and scenario of the original title but now with the graphic power of the PS3 and Xbox 360. The project was shown at the GDC 2006 with a beta build as the studio was trying to pitch the game to a new publisher, but it seems that they did not have any luck and Darkwatch 2 was never finished.

Thanks a lot to Dave Wilkins for his artworks!

Images:

Video:

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

Crude Awakening [X360/PS3 – Cancelled]

monokoma

17-12-2009

No Comments

Crude Awakening (aka The Crib) is a cancelled action / driving game that was in development by Pseudo Interactive in 2007 / 2008, planned to be released for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. The project was meant to be a “next gen” Carmageddon with a different graphic approach: the idea behind it was to make it stylized, like Team Fortress 2, with a crazy cast of characters and a weird city to explore.

As in the original Carmageddon, the player had to race a vehicle against a number of other competitors with a certain amount of time to complete each mission. More time may be gained by collecting bonuses, damaging the competitors’ cars or by running over pedestrians.

The Crude Awakening concept was quite funny (in a gruesome way), there would be different objectives and sometimes the objective was to hit only one type of pedestrian and avoid others. Crude awakening was basically Carmagedon HD including some reworks of old characters.

The game was going to be published and funded by SCI / Eidos (the original Carmageddon publisher, now known as Square Enix Europe), but later they changed their mind and canned the development. As Crude Awakening was a major project for Pseudo Interactive, its cancellation became one of the causes for the studio’s economic problems and the following closure. In april 2008, Pseudo was officially shut down and all their WIP projects vanished with them.

As we can read in an old article at Gamespot:

However, whatever plans SCi had were subject to change once investors called for a change in upper management. Longtime CEO Jane Cavanagh resigned shortly thereafter, and the following month the new regime announced some drastic changes, including layoffs of 200 workers and the cancellation of more than a dozen games.

Only some artworks, concepts and few screens remain from Crude Awakening, preserved in the gallery below.

Thanks a lot to Roberto Robert, David Wu, Kay Huang, Heidi Klinck, Albert Alejandro, Bronwen Grimes and all the former Pseudo Interactive artists that helped us to preserve info and media from their lost project!

Images:

Videos: