Jiku no Tsubasa (時空の翼, translated as Space-Time’s Wing) is a cancelled fighting / RPG hybrid that was planned for Famicom / NES by G.Amusement Co., a rather obscure Japanese company which published a few different games during the ‘90s (such as Final Stretch).
Unfortunately there are not many details available on this lost game, but thanks to Heimao we know it was going to offer two main modes: a “battle” mode and a “scenario” mode. Battle mode would have probably been similar to other 1VS1 fighting games, but the scenario mode would have been structured like a role-playing game.
As it often happens with old, cancelled Famicom titles, we’ll probably never see much more from Jiku no Tsubasa, nor know what really happened to it.
Drakkhen is an early-3D western RPG originally developed by Infogrames in 1989, published for Amiga, Atari ST, MS-DOS and Super Nintendo. In 1994 Kotobuki System / Kemco developed a spiritual successor for the SNES, published as Super Drakkhen in Japan and released in North America as Dragon View.
However in 1991 Infogrames was already working on an official sequel by the same team, planned for PC, Amiga, SNES and FM Towns. While this lost version of Drakkhen 2 is now forgotten by everyone and not many details are available, Youloute was able to find an article with some screenshots, published by french magazine Generation 4 (Issue 38 and 41, November 1991 / February 1992).
Thanks to Olivier, who translated the main details in these pages, we know more about the project:
“Game would be released for PC 256 colors, Amiga, FM Towns and Super Famicom. Cartridge would of course feature a battery to allow in-game saving. There’s only one warrior and animations are more detailed. More beat em up phases where each gamepad button would be used in the Super Famicom version. Moving across the world will be in 3D, except Super Famicom where game will use its specific hardware. Release still being planned for Q1 1992.”
“To learn a bit more about Drakkhen II, we asked project manager Philippe Agrpnidis: video games production is slowly getting close to movie production, visual quality with VGA and MCGA, sound with Roland and Sound Blaster, and new CD platforms such as CDI, CD-ROM, changed the landscape within six months. Hence, like a movie production, the game requires multiple people: Philippe Agipnidis as project manager, François Marcela-Froideval for scenario, Etienne Guerry for story-board, Guy Selva for production and, of course, another one for graphics, plus one for sounds.”
Rest of the text mentions there would have a been a small book included with the game box to help gamers.
Also, as mentione by Julien, Drakkhen II would have been more like an action adventure than a RPG.
Eagle Summoner is a cancelled puzzle – RPG hybrid similar to Puzzle Quest, that was in development by Sensory Sweep Studios around 2008. Following Puzzle Quest’s progression, in Eagle Summoner players would move their character around the world while encountering enemies to fight in puzzle-battles to gain experience and acquire treasures.
Some more details and images for this lost game were shared online thanks to former Sensory Sweep developer Christopher Enderle and artist Jenna Kemker:
“After the successful completion of My Spanish/French Coach, two coworkers, Peter Anderson and Niel Westover, began development of the prototype to this game. Upon completion of the prototype I involved myself in the creative process and began exploring puzzle designs and game play concepts. The prototype was shown to the company committee who received it favorably and green lit its development. While the game’s primary focus was always on puzzles, various other features, such as minigames and RPG elements, were explored for game play purposes. These additional features fell in and out of favor of project management at various stages of development.”
“Each puzzle has a set number of Eagles placed on a grid against a dragon of certain power. The goal of the game is to combine a number of eagles until their power equals the power of the dragon. The catch is that all the eagles move together at once, thus if an eagle is moved to the right, they all move to the right simultaneously. Players must be careful to not touch a fireball or a powerful dragon before their eagle is of equal strength or the Eagle dies and the puzzle must be restarted. To line up two eagles together, a player must push their eagles against a neutral object, such as a cloud. If an eagle pushes against a cloud, it will not move. A player must use this mechanic to safely maneuver his eagles to combine their strength. Hundreds of puzzles each with a different twist will challenge players as they try to save the world.”
“Upon selecting adventure mode players will be taken to an over world map of the kingdom of Earth on the bottom screen. This map will contain the locations of the major cities and areas that they will visit on their adventure.
NPC interaction will be represented by houses or other icons, pertaining to the situation. When selected dialogue boxes will pop showing a detailed image of the characters in one box and an image of the NPC in another. Basic information can be gained this way as well as story progression and side quests. Players can choose to do optional quests for rewards such as items or to increase their gold token count to unlock story progression.”
The game was cancelled when Sensory Sweep finally closed for bankruptcy, with employees working without being paid for months. As we can read on Mobygames:
“The company filed for bankruptcy in September 2005, but kept all projects going with two name changes (including Fooptube). In early 2008 the employees stopped receiving contributions, even though their paychecks were still deducted for the next few pay periods. Soon after that the paychecks bounced and Sensory Sweep lost Brash Entertainment as a big client when it folded at the end of 2008.”
Some images are preserved in the gallery below to remember the existence of this lost game.
The original B.O.B. was a run ‘n gun platformer developed by Gray Matter Inc. and Foley Hi-Tech Systems, published in 1993 by Electronic Arts for SNES and Mega Drive (Genesis). A sequel titled “B.O.B. II” was also in development not long after the first one, but in the end the project was canned and never officially announced by EA.
There’s not much remaining from this lost game: just some concept art and its logo. We don’t even know if one of the two original teams developed an early prototype for EA. We can assume it would be hard to see more from BOB 2: it’s the cancelled sequel of a mostly forgotten run ‘n gun.
Maybe one day someone who worked on the project could help unveiling more, but for now these images are the only proof it was once in development or at least conceived as a possibility.
This canned project was in development using the same GBA engine they created for the Devil Children titles, as much as it reused many assets from Devil Children: Fire Book. However it seems Project Alpha was planned as a different, original game. In early 2019 YT channel Hard4Games made a video about this prototype and sometime later Kuriatsu acquired the same proto, doing more research on its content. As wrote on Reddit:
“For those that are unaware, Project Alpha, is a game prototype that first appeared on Hard4Games about a month ago. In these videos, they covered a few things that are and are not relevant to the game series Devil Children on GBA. Project Alpha uses the exact same game engine to a T that Devil Children: book of fire uses, to the point that it even uses book of Fires internal designation. (so basically Atlus rom hacked Book of Fire) A lot of the assets, such as music, some visuals, a LOT of Debug, and so on, are from Book of Fire, but Project Alpha is its own game, and at one time, was supposed to be something, but noone knows what. In my experiments with this game, there’s not even a single trace of its original name that I’m seeing thus far.”
The japanese prototype was translated thanks to RetroTranslator and Kuriatsu made a video showing off more of what can be found in this early demo:
As wrote in the video description:
This game is not even 1/50th complete, but it is an interesting game.
This game is not a Devil Children game, despite using the DC3 Engine. project alpha is the same for devil children as Guruguru Garakuta-zu is for devil children on the Gameboy colour. Devil children on the GBC actually took a LOT of resources from Guruguru Garakuta-zu. In the same way, project alpha took a LOT of resources from Devil Children Flame Book. In fact, all of the music that we’ll hear from this game is actually from Devil Children Flame Book.
This game is highly unusual in comparison to other prototypes, and is likely the equivalent of a pilot TV show thats testing the waters, as a result, it’s not incredibly detailed, but the back story is clear as crystal.”
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