Dead Rush was a cancelled video game that was designed by Treyarch and would have been published by Activision. The game would have taken place in the town of Eastport where a massive earthquake has destroyed most of humanity. As Jake, a character suffering from memory loss, the players job was to try and find out exactly what happened in Eastport, which is now overflowing with zombies.
The game’s main claim to fame was the fact that as Jake players could operate one of several vehicles scattered around town. Not only would this provide the player with a means of transportation but it would also serve as armor of sorts. The zombies in Eastport would try to wreck whatever car Jake was driving. Luckily the player could create new vehicles out of parts of previously demolished cars.
The game would have featured few load times, as after an initial boot up the game would never pause to load data from the disc again. The game was announced at E3 2004 and set to be released in 2005. It was cancelled shortly thereafter. [Info from Wikipedia]
Gaming Conviction did an interview with Gideon Emery who was the voice of Dead Rush’s main character Jack:
GC: I read that you did the voice of a character named Jake in a cancelled game in 2005 called Dead Rush. Do you remember any details about the character? GE: It was the lead character in a game and I was thrilled to book it. Don;t recall much. I had one recording session, then heard nothing. Later I learned the game was shelved as it wasn’t developing to the level or speed that they wanted. What I do remember was being very disappointed, as it would have been my first true lead.
BattleBots is an American company that hosts robot competitions. BattleBots is also the name of the television show created from the competition footage, and a nickname for the combat robots which compete. In a BattleBots event, as in other combat robot competitions, competitors bring remote-controlled, armored and weaponed machines which they have designed and built, and put them in an arena to fight in an elimination tournament. The purpose of the fight is for one robot, or “bot”, to dominate or disable the other. [Infos from Wikipedia]
In 2002 THQ was working on a game based on the BattleBots TV series, that was in development for the GameCube and Playstation 2. It was going to be a brawl fighting game, with mini robots to customize. After a couple of years, the game was cancelled. A GBA version of Battlebots was released in 2003 by Majesco.
Extreme Pool is a cancelled pool and snooker game that would be released for the PlayStation 2, Xbox and GameCube. The developer Graphic Stateon already finished the game, but they didn’t found a publisher to be released, so the developer had to cancel it.
The formula setup by Super Mario Bros. 3 established the foundations for the SNES successor Super Mario World. Thanks to these uncovered beta photographs, the evolutionary connections from Super Mario Bros. 3 to Super Mario World are a bit more apparent. Interesting enough is that “World” once started out as simply Super Mario Bros. 4. Its “World” subtitle did not come development had actually progressed into planning and pre-production stages.
The images in this article represent a starting point as Nintendo journeyed from Super Mario Bros. 3 on the NES to what would eventually become World. The structure of the geography, different icons, alternative floor on the castle entrance and castle texture, the flying fortresses and even mushroom houses show some serious evolutionary ties to its Mario Bros. 3 roots.
[Original description in italian by Sig. Bakke, english translation by MajorTom]
Thereʼs very little to say regarding the over world map. The beta version seems to have accommodated a much smaller adventure than what was produced in the final version. In this article, there are two opening screens. One of which shows “Super Mario World” against a “beta” world map. This opening showed a very muted color scheme and a 1989 copyright date. This opening screen could have been one of the earliest known builds Nintendo made during its transition from the NES to SNES hardware. The second title screen does not show any copyright date but what is notably different from the final version is that Nintendo excluded “Super Mario Bros” from the title in the final build.
On screen elements during game play have changed. Notably, there used to be Yoshi sign that disallowed the usage of a Yoshi (or specific colored Yoshi) after the player walked past that sign. Signs similar to these would reappear in the semi-sequel Yoshiʼs Island (with signs limiting Yoshiʼs power-up as it walks past them). In the Donkey Kong Country 2 & 3 games (which share various similarities with SMW), silimar signs appear for animal buddies – a possible influence for Rare.
Other small differences to note are beta sprites. Mario and the Koopas look slightly different from how they turned out in the final release. Mario tends to look more like his “Mario All-Stars” Super Mario Bros. 3 counterpart. The Koopa shells have a more rounded look to them. Some coins also had a look slightly larger and more oval (maybe they were a beta version of the Yoshi’s coin).
Raccoon Mario, who debuted in Super Mario Bros. 3, was either a place holder for the eventual cape/feather power-up or the concept of Cape Mario never came to fruition until much later in development. For a time, the leaf and resulting Raccoon Mario may have been the “de-facto” flying power-up for Mario in “World”. There are many screenshots that show Raccoon Mario in various parts of the game. For readers that frequent Unseen 64, you might want to check out the “SNES Hardware Test” in the SNES section. One specific image from that section has a Mario sprite that appears to be from “World” but with what appears to be ears on top of his head that look VERY similar to the raccoon ears similar to those in Super Mario Bros. 3 and beta shots of “World”.
As Sammy has noticed, there was a Sears commercial that showed 3 Super Nintendo games; they were Super Mario World, F-Zero, and Pilotwings. On that commercial, it showed the title for SMW but with a little difference. Right next to the little beta “Super Mario Bros.” text of the beta title, there was a blue “4″ on the right of the text. You can check the video below thanks to Youssef!
Thanks to Jamie and Assjerk for the contributions!
As we can read on Wikipedia, the Satellaview (also know as BS-X) was a satellite modem add-on for Nintendo’s Super Famicom system, released in Japan in 1995. The first game on the system was Zelda BS, a “remake” based on the original Zelda for the NES. The gameplay was identical to its predecessor, but a few differences exist which make the experience distinctly different. The overworld was altered from an 8 by 16 map to an 8 by 8. As in the The Legend of Zelda’s Second Quest, dungeons are again completely different.
Some years ago, a mysterious scan from an unknown Japanese magazine was found, and on it there was a screen that showed what it looked like a 16bit version of Zelda 2:
Images:
Thanks to Chris Covellon the Assembler Forum, we finally have some more informations about this assumed BS-X remake of Zelda 2: “Here’s my webpage which has pictures from the Famicom Tsushin special on the Super Famicom announcement in 1988 with that picture. That particular section in the Super Famicom article explains the graphical capabilities of the SFC, including a large number of on-screen colours, and large memory addressing, allowing for Kanji text display. That mock-up pic of a recoloured Zelda 2 with kanji text is all that was ever seen of a SFC ‘Zelda 2′. It’s just a single-screen mockup shown during the SFC’s tech demo showcase.”
“The text (in both magazine pictures) writes to the effect: The pixel-addressing capabilities of the SFC are so high that Kanji text can easily be displayed. This allows game like RPGs, for example, to display easy-to-read Kanji messages”
So, the presumed Zelda 2 BS-X was nothing more than a 1988 “tech demo” to show the SNES power to the press.. well, it was more fascinating to think about a SNES remake of Zelda 2, but we are happy to finally have an answer! Props to Chris Covell for these informations! You can read the original Assembler topic in here or take a look at Chris webpage in here. We can still wonder about the meanings of this image, as it could be seen as an early “concept” for the third Zelda game, but maybe it’s a bit too vague..
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