Beta + Cancelled Nintendo Video Games - Page 142 of 206

Turrican was released in 1989 for the Commodore 64 and 1990 for the Amiga and Atari ST. It was Programmed by Rainbow Arts and Factor 5. Then Accolade made a port to the Sega Genesis, GameBoy, and Turbo Graphix 16. The Accolade Ports were a huge disaster. However, Accolade wanted to do the same thing with Turrican 2, which is known to be the best Turrican game and in general one of the best games ever made. They screwed up a classic and they wanted to screw up another.

However, the members of Accolade wanted to make their new port into a game based off of Universal Soldier to make more money. Universal Soldier was released for the Sega Genesis and Game Boy and was given horrible reviews. It’s a shame they took such a great game and turned it into a mess. There was going to be a Super Nintendo version but Nintendo didn’t license it despite the message on the title screen.

The Super Nintendo version was even worse than all of Accolade’s previous ports! The controls are messed up, the music sounds good at first but it becomes a mess. For example, one of the best songs in Turrican 2 is “The Wall” but in the SNES Universal Soldier version you can’t even hear the song because the beat is too loud. The Sound effects are annoying, the graphics are obviously ripped from Turrican, and the collision detection is beyond terrible.

If it was released, it would probably be called one of the worst games ever made. If you want to try this disaster a ROM of it was leaked on the internet.

Thanks a lot to Edward Morley for the description / info and to SNES Central for these images!

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Nintendo, SNES + Super Famicom

Wile E’s Revenge [SNES – Unreleased]

U64 Staff & Contributors

14-04-2008

2 Comments

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! :)

Thanks to SNES Central for these images!

Thanks to Haydn Dalton for the graphic blocks for Snow & Perù levels!

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Mega Drive / Genesis, Nintendo, Sega, SNES + Super Famicom

Socks the Cat Rocks the Hill [SNES/MD/G – Cancelled]

U64 Staff & Contributors

14-04-2008

16 Comments

Socks the Cat Rocks the Hill is an unreleased video game for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and the Sega Genesis. It stars Socks, the pet cat of 42nd US President Bill Clinton and his family, in a platforming adventure in which he has to make his way past spies, crooked politicians and the media to warn the White House of a stolen nuclear missile. Scheduled for a release in the Fall of 1993, the game was complete and ready to be shipped to retailers, but was suddenly cancelled following the closing of publisher Kaneko’s US branch.

It has been speculated that its subliminal political themes may have also had a hand in its demise. The game’s bosses were made out to be caricatures of former Republican leaders such as Richard Nixon and George H. W. Bush. Also, Nintendo’s own censorship policies during the late 1980s and early 1990s condemned games that had “subliminal political messages” or “overt political statements”. As well, it is assumed that it is unlikely that Sega would had allowed such content into the game.

In a pre-release review of the game, Nintendo Power openly questioned the reason that such figures were in the game, and deemed the title as politically controversial. This, coupled with the fact that Kaneko’s US branch was closing down, prevented Socks the Cat Rocks the Hill from ever being shipped, and no known ROM has been found on the Internet. – [info from Wikipedia]

Thanks to MathUser and DDobson from www.gamingafter40.com for some of these scans!

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Nes / Famicom, Nintendo

Mii [NES – Prototype]

U64 Staff & Contributors

14-04-2008

8 Comments

The development and history of the Mii avatar was a long and arduous process, taking about 20 years to reach fruition. Famed video game developer Shigeru Miyamoto revealed information regarding such a process during his keynote speech at the Game Developers Conference in 2007. He stated that the current Mii design is based on traditional Japanese wooden dolls (known as “Kokeshi”), and also highlighted several stages of the Mii’s development process. The idea first appeared for the Famicom Disk System, but confusion over how the idea could be a game halted development. The idea appeared again with the Nintendo 64DD, where the player could edit a 3D character with a wide variety of clothes. Again, however, the project was never furthered. With the release of the Nintendo GameCube the idea was incorporated into Stage Debut, an unreleased game which planned to make use of the e-Reader and a camera attachment, but this idea was also canceled, as those at Nintendo feared there was not really a game to make out of it. The build Miyamoto showed during his conference showed a virtual Miyamoto dancing with some Pikmin upon a stage.

Around the time of the development of the Wii, a separate team at Nintendo were working on a friend registering software for the Nintendo DS. Within the software they were also developing a program where, in a manner similar to the Japanese puzzle game Fukuwarai, the player had to place the different parts of the face onto a drawing of a face. This team, however, was completely unaware of Miyamoto’s Mii concept. Eventually the software evolved to allow the player to edit the parts of the face in terms of size and position, in order to make the character look more like a specific person, and was soon shown to Satoru Iwata, president and CEO of Nintendo. The software was then shown to Shigeru Miyamoto as soon as possible, and eventually the team working on it moved to work with the Nintendo division EAD on the development of the Mii Channel. – [info from Wikipedia]

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Nes / Famicom, Nintendo

Super Mario Bros 3 [NES – Beta / Concept / Unused]

U64 Staff & Contributors

14-04-2008

19 Comments

There were going to be two new enemies called Gold Cheep Cheep (a golden version of a Cheep-Cheep), and Green Parabeetles (green colored Parabeetles). The Gold Cheep Cheeps would come in groups and swim faster than regular Cheep-Cheeps and the Green Parabeetle is a green Parabeetle that flies faster than normal ones. The game coding reveals an item-sized Toad icon among some of the game’s suits; this is interpreted by several as a sort of “Toad Suit”, although it makes no changes to gameplay when granted to Mario. This is likely due to it being scrapped early and never given any purpose. Designers also considered a power-up to turn Mario into a Centaur (half-man, half-horse), although this was rejected (Tilden 1990, 21).

Koopa Troopas and and Hammer Bros. were going to host the mini-games. They were replaced by Toad. However, it could also be possible that they were all around at the same time, but all got scrapped except for one due to memory size. There were also different kinds of mini-games, similar to the ones in New Super Mario Bros..

Finally, fifteen extra levels exist within the coding of Super Mario Bros. 3. Some of these are strange and unique, while others bear much resemblance to levels in the final version and were very likely redone as those. Also, the back of the box of some copies of Super Mario Bros. 3 depicts Mario traversing a hilly grassland stage with tons of Parabeetles and two Note Blocks about. This particular stage is not any of the lost ones present on the cartridge, nor is it in the final game. It could even be a press mock-up from Nintendo. Reports say it might be in the Japanese version either hidden ingame or in code, but there is no proof of it’s existance on the American Version. The “special” boxes also feature a beta map of Grass Land. [Info from Mariowiki]

In december 2008, Linkin800 found some unused sprites in the game code and posted them in the Mushroom Kingdom Forum:

I found some unused Mario overworld sprites.
It seems like Nintendo was originaly going to have it so that mario could walk in all derictions instead of just facing the screen all the time.
some beta buildings I found. (palletes could be wrong): the first one looks like some kind of wooden toy block fortress thing, the second im not sure what it is and the last one looks like a factory to me, or it could be a beta fortress, the thing underneath the 3rd building is it crushed after you beat the level.
I also found something small but intresting. (palletes are also wrong) its the mario that appears in mini games, but there are 2 bodys found in the game, one is fatter then the other, the fat body is used in the game but the skinny one isn’t, I think originaly Nintendo was going to make a diffrent sprite for luigi but never did, not sure.

Thanks to Linkin800, Keith Sass, Inferno and Luiszena for some of these images!

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This Famimaga video shows the various differences of this early version to the final that the annotations go over. For one, none of the levels are recognizable (except perhaps one particular part), and the HUD is different.