Nintendo

Super Mario Bros. 2 [NES – Beta]

The game was originally set to have batteries for save the game’s progress. This was probably changed because the beta game was just 1 MB rather than the final version’s 2 MB. The story originally had more orange characters, background and text, a yellow frame a light yellow “painting” and a red logo. Originally, it was ellipses between “Extra Life” and the number of lives, something that was restored in Super Mario All-Stars. The characters didn’t change much, however, Princess Peach, Mario and Luigi didn’t have  

Three Tribes [GBA / DS – Cancelled]

Three Tribes was announced in November of 2004 in a press release by its Dutch developer Two Tribes as an action puzzle game in an overhead perspective designed for all ages. I could only retrieve the Dutch version of the announcement, archive.org unfortunately didn’t cache a page of the English version. The game was designed for the Gameboy Advance and possibly the Nintendo DS; no release date is given for the game and the company had no publishing partner for the game at the moment of the announcement.

Three Tribes sets the player in control of a shaman whose purpose is to help out the natives he meets with their problems. Interaction between the characters, animals, objects and tools found in the game and with the environment itself would be a central part of solving the various puzzles. The game would be set in the same visual perspective as the 2D Zelda games but with a lot more freedom allowing the player to climb, swim and fly anywhere they wanted to. The game also promised a wide variety of mission objectives. The NDS version would differ from the GBA version in having a multiplayer game editor. The editor would allow players to design their own multiplayer levels and create their own objectives and later share them with friends.

Unfortunately Three Tribes was quietly cancelled; the company never found a publisher for the game. The main cause could have been the declining GBA market but I also cannot retrieve how far development of both versions was. I could find only a couple of GBA screenshots and two promotional videos (see below) and absolutely no information on the Nintendo DS version. On the current site of Two Tribes the game is briefly mentioned:

„In the meantime, we’d spent two years developing a physics puzzle adventure game called Three Tribes for Game Boy Advance, though it turned out to be impossible to find a publisher for such an ambitious concept.

The game was stated way into 2010 on the Two Tribes website as a Gameboy Advance title “In development”. After a refreshment of the website later that year the game vanished of the radar and was no longer mentioned. The game still hasn’t vanished completely as its promotional website is still (partly) online. But I think we can consider it cancelled.

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Two Tribes teaser trailer – 2004 – GBA:

Three Tribes – GBA video: 

Secret Of Mana / Seiken Densetsu 2 [SNES – Beta / Unused Stuff / Debug]

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Secret of Mana, known in Japan as Seiken Densetsu 2, is an action RPG for the Super Nintendo developed and published by Square. Secret of Mana is the sequel to Final Fantasy Adventure for the Game Boy and the second installment in the Mana video game series. The game was originally going to be a launch title for the SNES CD add-on. After the project was dropped, the game had to be altered to fit onto a standard game cartridge.  [Infos from Wikipedia]

Robert Seddon has made us to notice that according to this article, Square was intending to port the game to the Wonderswan. Given that their Romancing SaGa port featured material cut from the original, it’s a shame the Seiken Densetsu 2 port didn’t happen. You can also read more about he beta differences of Secret of Mana on ManaRedux!

In the gallery below you can see various beta screenshots from that Luis has shared with us:  there’s an early version of  Potos and Pandora Village, different World Map, many unknown locations, the characters that walk in a river (that is not accessible in the final game), an unused character with pink hair, different HUD,  beta Gaia Navel (if you have more infos on the differences in these screens, please let us know!), the hero in a weird place in Water  Palace and much more! Also, as you can read in the scan the original title for the english version of the game was going to be Final Fantasy Adventure 2.

In the video below the gallery, recored by Shernoubi, we can notice various unused sprites and a debug room!

Thanks a lot to Luis & pantalytron for the contribution!

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Videos:

 

Polygo Block [VB – Unreleased]

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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Paper Mario [N64 – Debug Rooms / Unused Stuff]

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FullMetalMC has sent to us a mail with some interesting images and infos: “These are debug rooms from the original Paper Mario, taken by me using various codes found by others. You can see different rooms:

but dont save or your stuck there
– a strange forest debug that seems to have been used to test the camera: moving around will make the camera move around.
– a mirror debug room.
– a really weird room: when you first enter, theres a bunch of Koopas in a line, but when you talk to them they change into your helpers while a circular wave continues to form around Mario.
– a pipe debug room: none of them work.
– a room with a big purple circle in the back that was originally used to test Goombarios out of battle skill but the message was later changed to the mini game thing. Goombario tells you information about places and enemies but he has no info on all debug rooms except this one.
– the strangest one out of all of them, has a MARIO RPG text on the floor, that might be an extremely early logo. For some reason the screen kept flickering while i was here, only stopping at certain times. If you have a helper out, instead of following you he begins to fly around the room. Theres some numbered exits that use a font that reminds me of Super Mario 64 and i dont think that font was used anywhere else in Paper Mario. These exits (well at least the ones that work) will take you to different periods in the story.”

Thanks to Jose Felipe Riveros Navarro that has sent to us even more images from the debug rooms, we can see a “Pow Block” unused in the final game, another debug room with some strange wooden platform, an hidden star-piece in the Forest debug room and the Koopa Tropas queue!

Hackers also managed to find two enemy names that went unused, D. Paratroopa and Albino Dino. D. Paratroopas moved to the game’s sequel, Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, and while Albino Dinos did appear in one room of Paper Mario, you never actually fight them. Even more weird, Goombario even has Tattles for these unused enemies:

Dark Paratroopa
– This is a D. Paratroopa.
D. Paratroopas are Para-
troopas who live in the
Toad Town Tunnels.

Max HP: 8, Attack Power: 3,
Defense Power: 2

Hammer attacks won’t work
because they’re airborne.

They’ll lose their wings if
you jump on ’em.

They’ll become Dark Koopas
when they fall, but be careful!
They’ll do a dizzy attack
once they’re grounded.

Albino Dino
– This is an Albino Dino.

Albino Dinos are the guards
of this frosty place.

Max HP: 8, Attack Power: 4,
Defense Power: 4

Fire attacks won’t work.

Their defense power is huge,
so let’s reduce their HP
steadily using our strongest
damage-dealing attacks.

Goomther managed to find their battle data using a battle modifier code, and the enemies seem to be fully functional! Check the video below to see them.

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