Beta + Cancelled Game Boy (+ Color) Video Games - Page 2 of 13

Rhino Rumble Puzzle is a cancelled puzzle-platformer featuring four playable characters and more than 60 levels (+ mini-games), that was in development by Formula Games / Lost Boys Interactive around 2001 – 2002, planned to be released on the Game Boy Color. Lost Boys was the original name of Guerrilla Games, prior to their acquisition by Sony and before creating such popular titles as the Killzone series and Horizon Zero Dawn. In particular Formula was Lost Boys’ internal team dedicated to handheld games, responsible for producing titles such as Rhino Rumble, and Tiny Toon Adventures: Dizzy’s Candy Quest for GameBoy Color.

Some details on Rhino Rumble Puzzle can still be found in an old preview by IGN:

“It’s a standard side-scroller, but the added challenge of protecting the water barrel changes the dynamics dramatically. And if that’s not enough puzzle madness for you, you can build your own stages in the game — a rarity in puzzle games and an unheard-of concept in side-scrolling games. Let your imagination run wild, then trade data with your friends via the Infrared link and challenge them to beat your tricky track.”

We can read the original game’s description on the archived Lost Boys website:

“The time has come again. Rhino has already eaten too many peppers! This time however, all the animals had foreseen this, putting all the available water in barrels and hiding on high ledges in labyrinth-like caves. Put yourself in the shoes of one of Rhino’s four best friends, and try to quench Rhino’s thirst by getting him the barrels of water. Using your own cleverness and objects scattered throughout the levels, your task is to jump and drill your way through the caverns. Dodge enemies, solve puzzles, and do it all within a time limit, without dropping the barrels! The animals will understand your actions, but they’d rather Rhino finally learn a lesson from his greed, so they’ll try to stop you. Crush, crush, drill and chop your way through over 60 challenging puzzle levels and earn a place in the hall of fame”

Rhino Rumble Puzzle was also mentioned in a 2011 interview by Gamasutra with Mathijs de Jonge (Game Director at Lost Boys / Guerrilla Games):

“I have very fond memories of a Game Boy Color game we made during the Lost Boys Games days, which we sadly couldn’t find a publisher for. Even though it was a Game Boy Color game, we had the same ambitions we had with Killzone 3, in a way. […] It’s a puzzle platform game but it has a level editor built in, and all the 80 or so levels in the game we made with the in-game level editor. If you remember it, the Game Boy Color had an infrared port, so you could submit the levels/puzzles you made to your friends that way.
That was already a big and ambitious project, and that was such a long time ago, and it’s really sad we couldn’t find a publisher for it — because back in those days publishers wanted licensed characters, and asked us to change the nice characters we created to well-known cartoon figures. We didn’t want to compromise our game, and sadly, that ensured that nobody wanted to publish it.”

At the time Lost Boys were also working on another cancelled Game Boy Color game titled “Knights”, originally conceived as a canned Dreamcast multiplayer brawler and later reworked as a Playstation 2 action platformer (also unreleased), before the team was sold to Media Republic and renamed Guerrilla Games.

Thanks to Squiddy Goat for the contribution!

Images:

Game Boy (+ Color), Nintendo

Radikal Bikers [Game Boy Color – Cancelled]

monokoma

19-01-2020

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The original Radikal Bikers was a pizza-delivery racing game for Arcades, developed by Gaelco in 1998 and later converted to PlayStation in 1999. A Game Boy Color port was also in development by Bit Managers, but it the end it was never released. Some years ago a prototype of the cancelled GBC port was leaked online, so you can play it on your favorite emulator.

Gameplay is similar to the original arcade version, but using a top-down, isometric view. Players race in different cities trying to avoid cars to delivery pizza to their clients as soon as possible. As we can read from the original press-release:

“Jump on your scooter and take up the challenge. Through the busiest streets in the world you’ve got to avoid trucks, cars, police, obstacles and people in a pizza fuelled dash for glory. Take the challenge and race your way across Paris, London, New York and the true home of Pizza – Italy!

Featuring:

Classic Arkade Mode.
Radikal Mode.
2 player dash for glory.
Numerous Characters and Scooters to suit your personal taste.
GET OUTTA MY WAY!
No speed limit. No seat belt. No air bag. No rules!”

A sequel to Radical Bikers was also in development by Gaelco, but also canned.

Images:

Videos:

Game Boy (+ Color), Nintendo

Towers II: Plight of the Stargazer [Game Boy Color – Cancelled]

monokoma

01-08-2019

5 Comments

Towers: Lord Baniff’s Deceit was a first-person RPG / dungeon crawler developed by JV Games (AKA JV Enterprises) and originally published on PC in 1993, with a Game Boy Color port published by Vatical Entertainment in 2000. A sequel titled “Towers II: Plight of the Stargazer” was later released in 1995: JV planned to also port this one to the GBC, but unfortunately the project was cancelled.

Robert was able to get in contact with Vince Valenti of JV Games, who shared some details and screenshot from their cancelled game:

“We estimated it would take 3-4 months to convert. It took about 6. We took the Towers I game code we wrote for the GBC and improved on it to lay out the Towers II game. Came out nice, we thought. Too bad it never made it out to market.
Towers 2 – Plight of the Stargazer, picks up a couple of months after their initial landing. The crew is discovering that there is something very strange in the land of Lamini. There is no outside trade or information, and the locals seem only interested in the current affairs of Lamini.
During this time repairs have been made to the ship, which is almost complete, and the crew is more then anxious to leave the island. This is when the new sheriff requests our audience. Lord Daggan, one of Lamini’s highest council members appears to have gone mad. The council’s elite guards and mages were sent in to stop Daggan, but none have been heard from since.
According to the sheriff, you are Lamini’s best chance. It seems that the only people that have been able to enter the Towers and escape have been individual or small groups of thieves. Several thieves were questioned, and their confessions were amazing. They spoke of large eyes with wings, men made out of metal, and living fire. It is now up to you, with a companion if you choose, to enter Daggan’s towers, and unravel the mystery.
In this game, the mysteries of the island of Lamini start to unravel as well as the deceit of the council.

New & Improved Features:

Approximately 6 minutes of vocal conversations.
Larger view screen.
changing dungeon graphics, by level.
Teleporters.
Visual graphic spell selection.
Improved AI, the intro of friendly characters.
Improved story line integration.
Spell effects
More puzzles
American-style, full featured RPG
2 player linkable option (co-operative mode)
15 levels to explore”

Thanks to Robert for the contribution! A playable prototype was found and shared online by Gaming Alexandria in January 2020.

Game Boy (+ Color), Leaked, Nintendo

FGB [Game Boy Color – Cancelled]

monokoma

25-06-2019

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FGB is a cancelled action RPG / hack ‘n slash in development between 1999 and 2001 by Plasma Works, planned to be published on the Game Boy Color. You could imagine it as a mix between Gauntlet, Robotron and Zelda, featuring coop multiplayer (using GB’s link cable), 128 Levels and 50 different Monsters to kill during your adventure.

In 2000 IGN wrote a preview of the game with their impressions:

“To add to the gameplay, you will be able to play through the game with different characters, each with their own abilities and attributes. Playing the game as one character will key different conversations than another character, so half the fun is discovering how each character handles the same situation.
The look of FGB is very old-school, but very appropriate. Instead of focusing on detail of characters, the artists instead made basic shapes to represent enemies and heroes. What’s more, the programmers have made an engine that can push an amazing number of sprites without flicker the Game Boy Color has a 10-sprite-per-line limitation, but through a bit of programming trickery Plasma Works was able to get around it. According to the company, up to 256 enemies, bullets and explosions can be on-screen at once in FGB. Not too shabby.
Plasma Works is currently looking for a publisher for the game”

In the end Plasma Works did not find a publisher interested in funding FGB’s development and the project was cancelled. A few years later, the team released their own prototype online, to be preserved by the community.

As we can read in the description file shared among the ROM:

“Hi there! You hold in your hard drive a great Game Boy Color game called FGB (the name doesn’t stand for anything). It is a weird and wonderful game that combines elements of an adventure/RPG like “Zelda” with those of an action/shooter like “Gauntlet“.
FGB was developed by Plasma Works over a period beginning December 17, 1999, and ending May 16, 2001. That’s about a year and a half, if you’re counting. Being a small, independent developer, we approached quite a few publishers over that time but were unable to come to an agreement. Game Boy Advance was just around the corner at this point and everyone was slobbering over it, so sadly we decided to terminate FGB and move on to other stuff.
So it was that the adventures of Captain Flour and his merry crew went unheard of and unplayed… until now. To ring in the New Year, we are releasing the final build of FGB to be freely distributed. The game is 100% complete in terms of programming and locations, and 50% complete in terms of quests, conversations, and upgrades – don’t worry, there’s still lots to do, and the game plays through to a definite ending that’s just shy of reaching the grand finale that was originally planned.”

Images:

Game Boy (+ Color), Nintendo

Metro Panic (Nichibutsu RPG) [Cancelled – Game Boy]

monokoma

11-02-2019

1 Comment

Metro Panic is a cancelled RPG that was in development by Nichibutsu (Nihon Bussan) for Game Boy in early ‘90s. From the only screenshot found by Celine in Famitsu (Issue from 92/09/18) we can speculate it was some kind of adventure game set in subway stations?

It may have been somehow related to Nichibutsu’s Tube Panic, a 1984 shooter that seems to have been the first “3D game” (it used tubular vortex levels) developed in Japan. Or maybe they just use a similar / same title because they already own the copyright for it.

This could have a been a lost masterpiece for the GameBoy, or just another forgotten RPG. We hope someone could find more details still hidden away in some old japanese magazines.

“Metro panic (provisional)
A thrilling and suspense chase over Tokyo’s subway! This is also a Game Boy but the title has been discontinued.
The stage is a complicated Tokyo subway.
Children who come to play from the countryside get lost on the Tokyo subway. Players act as runners or chasers. Runners find the children and get away to the target station. Chaser will help you chase it. As a rule, it seems to be something like a tag game. Of course, it seems that communication battle was also possible.
You can confirm that the actual route and station name appear in the screen picture. According to the description, it seems that there was also a mode that can actually search the subway map.
Was it a problem that Tokyo local was, I do not know if I did not get a subway permit, It is a pity that it has been discontinued for interesting content as a plan.”

Thanks to A for the contribution!