Beta + Cancelled Nintendo Video Games - Page 112 of 207

Development on EarthBound took place as a joint effort between Ape, Inc. and HAL Laboratory, Inc. and was designed by Shigesato Itoi. The total development time for the project was five years, much longer than was initially expected. The first design concepts for the HP boxes were to make them like pachinko balls and have them fall off the screen whenever a character was damaged. However, this was later changed to the “rolling counter” HP boxes because the pachinko balls did not work so well when characters had large amounts of HP. [Infos from Wikipedia]

In the video, subtitled by the lovely Starmen crew, we can see a collection of beta scense, in which Ness has no backpack, and we can read some interesting facts about the development of the game. In the image gallery there are some unused sprites, like Everdred’s ghost, a climbing King, a Starmen Capsule, an unknow flag and a red beating heart. You can read more about these unused sprites in here. From the various concept arts that were in the MOTHER 1+2 Art Book, we can notice some nice differences from the same scenes in the final game, like a fortress on top of Dungeon Man’s head, a giant elephant that keeps up the Dalaam city, early design of Dr. Andonuts’s lab and missing snow in some areas. You can read more about these concept arts in here.

Also, some unused animations from the opening were found in the rom.

Thanks to Gabriele for the contribution! (scans from Japanese magazine ‘Game Peer – vol. 4’)

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Arcade, Dreamcast, Nintendo, Nintendo 64 & 64DD, Others, Playstation, Sega, Sony

Mortal Kombat 4 [ARC DC N64 PSX – Beta]

U64 Staff & Contributors

17-12-2008

No Comments

Mortal Kombat 4 is considered the 4th intallment of the Mortal Kombat series, 6th if you count MK3U and MKT. Released in 1997, it was the first MK game to use 3D graphics. It was first released in the arcade version and it would be the last arcade MK made. It was released on the N64, Playstation and PC in 1998, ported by Eurocom. An updated version was released on Dreamcast in 1999 called Mortal Kombat Gold, which was identical with the exception of better graphics, added players and a few more stages.

A new character named Belokk was intended to appear in Mortal Kombat Gold, but was cut from the released game. The developer of the game, Eurocom, sent information about the game with Belokk to Game Informer, and as a result, six screenshots of him were published. According to Ed Boon, Belokk was cut due to time constraints during development. Despite the mention of Belokk’s scrap, he was still rumored to appear as a secret character. [Infos from Wikipedia]

Actual secret characters can be accessed via rotating a specific box for a normal character, however when a player do this to Tanya’s box a question mark that was rumored to unlock Belokk appears, but it unlock nothing.

Since it was the first Midway 3D fighting game, the staff had many difficulties while in development, partly due to the fact the staff had doubled in size. Which means many changes were made and many interesting aspects were taken out.

Differences from the arcade version to the N64 version would include: Lower pixel rate and additions such as Goro being a playable character, extra costumes, and another arena called Ice Pit.

Pre-release trailers show Reptile and Fujin with God-O-Mite as their name in the lifebars. More then likely this was before they got to the name detail.

Kitana, Noob Saibot and Kano were orignally going to be in MK4. Kitana was then changed to Tanya. Noob saibot was taken in and out many times and replaced with Reiko. Jarek replaced Kano and for some reason was left with Kano’s moves, which caused many fans to complain because Jarek was hardly original. Noob Saibot can be accessed in the N64 version by a cheat, but was never in the Arcade. These characters were taken out mainly because Midway wanted more new characters in the game.

The hidden character Meat was originaly intended for testing.

Thanks to Pachuka and Sir_Brando for the contributions!

Images:

Nintendo, Nintendo DS

Mario Kart [DS – Beta / Kiosk Version Comparison]

U64 Staff & Contributors

16-12-2008

21 Comments

Mario Kart DS have some interesting beta differences. This game was going to include a few more tracks, such as Mario Circuit from Mario Kart: Double Dash!! (no obstacles etc.), which was probably replaced by GCN Luigi Circuit, a Koopa Beach-type track (nokonoko_course), and Mario Kart: Double Dash’s Block City battle area, which is unfinished. There was also an mysterious “Dokan Course” stage, as well as a simple, circular test area (test_circle) smaller than Baby Park; both of these (and the latter one for sure) could’ve been debugging stages not planned for inclusion in the final game. These areas can still be accessed using Action Replay DS (No textures) or ROM Hacking (with textures.)

Waluigi Pinball was also very different in betas, with fairly different music and no pinballs, and the objects looked very different, albeit probably a programming error. Demo copies of the game actually showed it with quite a few object differences (such as more bumpers and a less direct launch towards the beginning). The demo version also had a DK Pass-like course with a grassland theme rather than a snow one, with a lone Thwomp near the finish line, as well as many other small differences mostly regarding walls and jumps. It was replaced with the above course in the final.

Finally, demo version released for stores by Nintendo depicted the Chain Chomp (which could not actually be retrieved in the demo version itself) as an item; it is presumed that this Chomp munition would work in a manner similar to that of the Chain Chomps in Mario Kart: Double Dash!!, making it likely that Chain Chomps were removed from the game in favor of Bullet Bills. The item roulette actually used placeholders from MKDD as their icons, so it could have just been carried from there.

Also, DRMARIOX and Falcon88 made us to notice about some other differences:

GCN Mario Circut has no hazards (ex. No Trees or Chain Chomps)
Chain Chomps have no mouth animation

On DSHack.org Forum has shared the “Mario Kart CW Tri” hack, with most of the Beta tracks playable with textures. Also at www.mariokartcw.org you can read all the Beta info that they found with hacking. Thanks to DSHack.org / Mario Kart CW Project we also know about the Beta Character and Cups:

E.Gadd was planned for MKDS.
The Retro GP used to be called SNES Cup, N64 Cup, GBA Cup and GCN Cup.

First, what means a Kiosk game?

A Kiosk game are the free distributed games in such in conferences, stores or promoted places.

Mario Kart DS Kiosk have been released on the download station, 4 cups to play (2 from DS and 2 from Retro). And the classic characters to play.

But, Gabrielwoj have found some miscellaneous stuff that probably have been cut from the game:

Exploring the game, there is some Japanese menus. Which seems to be an old main menu to the game. The menu also illustrates Karts from Mario Kart Double Dash, it’s still unknown if the mechanisms of the game should be like Mario Kart Double Dash:

*Click it for enlarge*
Translated: (Thanks to Susumu for translating!)

*Click it for enlarge*

Probably, a minigame could be unlocked when progressing the game, Mario Bros. sprites are still banked in the game:

*Click it for enlarge*

There is even the pause:

Susumu’s translation:

Unknown:

Comparison:

Analyzing the game sprites of Kiosk and Final version, we can see little differences, such as in menus, in the physics, on the musics and others.

Item comparison:
Beta/Kiosk

Final

In the Kiosk version we can see some different styles in the icons. But we can notice too that they are sightly more shaded, or flipped.

Map Icons comparison:
Beta/Kiosk

Final

In the Kiosk version, there is some other effects, such as crashes (which sent the player diagonally to the side.), turbo in the game (which didn’t have a blue effect near the tyres)

In the Final version, the counter goes to 3x to 1x, in the Kiosk version, it only shows 3x and 1x

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Thanks to Borman for some of the videos and to UltimatePisman/YamiHoshi(.nl), DRMARIOX / Falcon88 and Gabrielwoj for the contributions!

GameCube, Nintendo, Others, PC / MAC

Trium Planeta [GameC / PC – Cancelled]

monokoma

14-12-2008

1 Comment

Trium Planeta was a prototype for a game in development for PC and Gamecube at F4 (formerly known as F4-Toys), a French video game developer based in Paris composed of former staffers from Adeline Team and No Cliche, including Frederick Raynal. From what we can see in the screens and learn from the little information available on the project, Trium Planeta was going to be an action adventure / brawl fighting game, but not much more info is available. Trium Planeta was officially cancelled in 2005.

Thanks to Robert Seddon for the contribution & to Jay for the english corrections!

Images:

Game Boy Advance (GBA), Leaked, Nintendo

Fire Emblem: the Sacred Stones [Beta / Debug – GBA]

U64 Staff & Contributors

13-12-2008

No Comments

Recently a beta version of Fire Emblem the Sacred Stones has been found. It is a very early version of the Sacred Stones and contains many differences. This pre-alpha ROM uses many things from the previous game as placeholder; even the title and menus from the Blazing Sword are still there. The game opens up with a debug menu that is identical to the one from the Blazing Sword prototypes. Although the game does have some of the stages programmed in it many of these still need much work. Some do not yet have enemies and have a level two Cavalier as the only enemy. The game’s own music has not been implemented and certain moster enemies are missing battle artwork. Many character portraits are absent; those that do exist were changed in the final. These alterations are mostly minor but some characters were changed quite a bit. Also Ephraim’s name was originally Izark.

Alpha on the left. Final on the right.

Debug Title Screen

Additional information from Serenes Forest:

Amelia has Tana’s role; her class was planned to be a flying Trainee.
L’Arachel has a variation of Tana’s portrait, while Tethys has a variation of Neimi’s portrait.
There was a Wyvern Rider called Nate planned Ephraim’s name was planned to be Irzark (seen in the debug menus).

These characters were changed drastically in the final.

Many of the World Map locations have different names. Some of the battle map layouts are slightly different.
In Chapter 6, after Eirika hands over her bracelet, the Grado soldiers kill the civilians in front of her eyes.
At the end of Chapter 6, Saleh appears and kills the boss with a critical attack. Chapter 6’s battle map is the same as Chapter 11’s (Eirika’s route) in the retail version.
The boss of Chapter 8 is Dyude Rubarth, one of Grado’s Seven Generals, also known as the Black ?-stone.

By using the debug options one can remove an enemy’s weapon. This shows sprites that are not viewable in normal gameplay.

Eirika promotes at the beginning of Chapter 17 The Final Chapter is comprised of just one map.
The Tower of Valni has two extra stages- seen in Floor 2 and 3.

You can find even more infos at Serenes Forest! Props to them

Below you can see a bunch of scans from Fire Emblem: Sacred Stones beta, before it came out. You can see its earliest scans (first reveal scans) where the first couple chapters are different and there are different animations and mugshots for some characters. The stolen prototypes (they were stolen from Intelligent System’s network) seem to have some content from this earliest version, but also content that wasn’t present in the earliest OR the final version.

Thanks to Iven Allen for the scans!

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