Sphear was an action-adventure set in the Phillipines which was in development at n-Space in 2006/2007. Started after their GameCube title Geist, the studio worked together with Nintendo once again. However, Nintendo cancelled the game when they decided to focus on games with a broader appeal (for example Wii Fit). Other victims were Kuju London’s/Headstrong Games’ Knight Wars, a spin-off from the Advance Wars series, as well as Project Hammer, developed by NST.
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Wikipedia has some information about the beta version of MKT:
Top left: An UMK3-style menu.
Top right: An early version of the character selection screen. The screen used the UMK3 character selection screen as base, and Rain’s and Noob Saibot’s portraits are replaced by a pallete swapped version of Sub-Zero’s MKII portrait (Rain), and Reptile’s MKII portrait (Noob). Johnny Cage is not present.
Bottom left: Scorpion beats Smoke in the Portal arena. Note that Scorpion’s life bar text is different to Smoke’s life bar text (UMK3 Saturn, and later, MKT N64 didn’t remove this.) Also, the lightning all the way in the back of the Portal is viewed, but the PSX, PC, and Saturn version scrapped that. Only the N64 used it. And, the floor of the stage is crooked.
Bottom right: Baraka beats Raiden.
Originally there was another Logo they used but then replaced it with the current one. It had pieces of all the mortal kombat games before MKT.
More on Johnny Cage: He was the only character that wasn’t going to appear in MKT. The actor that did his MOCAP in MK2 was fired for advertising with another company, using his role as Johnny Cage. Midway then decided to use another actor for Johnny Cage, which would make him the only character in MKT to use new sprites.
At first there were only to be 29 characters and 26 backgrounds. In the end there were 30 characters and 29 backgrounds for the N64. More for the other systems, however.
Also, Rain was originally supposed to be a character called Tremor. In earlier versions of the game, Tremors bio would show from some sort of glitch only with Rains name.
His bio was:
Rain is an assassin working freelance. He was once a member of the Lin Kuei along with Sub-Zero, but left the clan under mysterious circumstances. Years later, Rain is found working for Shao Kahn as an assassin in the Outworld. Born a human, he finds himself questioning his loyalty towards Kahn after watching the invasion of Earth.
Thanks to Zero7 and Sir_Brando for the contributions!
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ENG: This entry in the archive doesn’t have a description yet. If you want to add some info about the beta / cancelled stuff that you see in these images, just write a comment or send us an email! We’ll add your info in this page and your name in the contributors list. Thanks a lot for your help! :)
ITA: Questa pagina dell’archivio non ha ancora una descrizione. Se vuoi aggiungere delle informazioni riguardo le differenze della beta o la descrizione di un gioco cancellato, lasciaci un commento o mandaci una email! Inseriremo le tue informazioni nella pagina ed il tuo nome nella lista dei collaboratori. Grazie per il tuo aiuto! :)
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Zero7 has brought to our attention some differences in the early version of Pikmin 2: “In one of the photos the white pikmins don’t have red eyes (looks like a palette swapped yellow in that little window on the bottom). In another screen there’s .. a yellow potion? Wasn’t it red and.. blue/purple? Yeah, top was purple, bottom became red. Olimar’s Health looks off. Same with purple, model is fine, picture on the bottom is missing their features. In another image there are almost 20 potions.. no way you can get that many so quickly in ANY area of the final version, also that area doesn’t exist in the final (99% sure).
In a scene the red pikmin was inactive, but still colored, probably not a beta problem and I’m just remembering wrong, but I could’ve sworn they become a little lighter when they’re inactive. In the beta both players are using Olimar as their health, one red and one blue, but Louie gets his own icon in the final. We can even see the “Debug mode” in some of the screens.. and still using yellow potions, which dont exist in the final; maybe it was planned to choose between 3 different potions. The thing that goes down into caves with you looks different, like a lot less detailed than the final. In general all the pictures pre MAY 4 2004 are missing the second health meter for Louie and they all had different numberings for the pikmin count in the HUD (Beta: 0043 – final: [space][space]43).”
Also, in the videos below there are yellow and blue bolborbs, which are different in the final version (they are orange with black faces and green eyes). As we can read in Pikmin Wikia:
Two Bulborb subspecies are known to have been cut from the final versions of the Pikmin games. Both colors match those of the three main Pikmin types. Along with the Red Bulborb, each basic Pikmin type would have a fitting Bulborb had these not been removed. Naming used in the game’s data makes it clear that these became the Dwarf Orange and Hairy Bulborbs in the game.
As we could see in Pikmin [GC – Beta / Prototype / Unused Stuff / Debug] page, the pikmins were supposed to be black in the first time, however, Shigeru Miyamoto didn’t liked it, due not having any facial features, such as nose and eyes. However, in the game data folder, mostly, or all the files, redirected to Purple Pikmin, are named as “Piki-Black” (configuration/models/textures), meaning that in the first states of the game, the black pikmin would appear in the sequel.
Screenshot of BMDViewer:
Thanks to Zero7, kieranmay, Foulowe 59 and gabrielwoj for the contributions & to Jay for the english corrections!
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Kid Kirby was meant to be a “prequel” of the series, a platform game with a younger Kirby (with hair?) that was in development at DMA Design, the makers of Uniracers, Silicon Valley and Lemmings. A little image from this game was already seen in an old magazine, but only recently we found more concepts from the project, thanks to a flickr account from an ex-DMA developer. From an article on Gamasutra we read that Kid Kirby “was to be a showcase for the SNES mouse, but the mouse did not sell that well and the game was not great when played with a joypad, so it never saw the light of day”.
Additional Kid Kirby renders were discovered on a 1995 Nintendo Source Book binder intended for retailers. These pictures were taken by Tomato and Heidi Poe of Earthbound Central.
You can find more about the Kirby series in the WiKirby!
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