Nintendo

Nes / Famicom, Nintendo

Rygar [Beta – NES]

U64 Staff & Contributors
13-02-2012
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Rygar is a 2D side scrolling action game created by Tecmo in 1986 and originally released for arcades in Japan as Argus no Senshi. An home-version for Nintendo was released on April 1987 in Japan for the Famicom as Argos no Senshi and later that year in the United States for the NES. A European release came in 1990.

Yes, a beta version of this horribly under rated classic exists somewhere out there in the world. However all we have to acknowledge its existence with are screenshots. The following screen shots were scanned from the back of the American, European and Japanese boxes as well as a Japanese magazine ad for the game.

The quality is not that great but these were not photoshopped at all.

This was taken from the back of the Japanese box. It shows the first stage. Notice the mountains are not purple and the trees have branches.

Here we see Garloz. Notice the shrine on the right not present in the final version of the game?

Here we see the very top of the Gran Mountain. Just before you travel to the Tower of Garba. Notice that the tree stumps that you use the cross bow on are thinner than they appear in the final version of the game? Also notice that the ropes are attached to different platforms than shown in the actual release?

Last but not least, the Japanese advertisement shown in magazines back in the day. MANY screenshots of an obvious beta are shown. Notice the Hermit’s room has no platform to the left or door to exit? Notice that the boss of the Tower of Garba is being fought on the first floor? Also notice that the world of Lapis is shown with Rygar crossing a rope on cliffs not seen in the actual game?

December 14th, 2012, another screenshot from the beta has been found. This time, a moon seems to have been removed from the background of the Gran Mountain stage. It seems that there was supposed to be some transitioning from day to night in this game that was scrapped.

A beta must exist somewhere and hopefully some day, someone will find it.

Post by Casey Strain

Images: 

Nintendo, Nintendo 3DS

My Garden [Nintendo 3DS – Cancelled]

monokoma
12-02-2012
2 Comments

My Garden is a cancelled “garden simulator” that was in development by EA Salt Lake in late 2009, for the Nintendo 3DS. The game was nearly complete graphically, but it seems that the gameplay was not very good and it wasn’t very intuitive at all. The gameplay involved a mascot named Tanooki watching over you as you plant different color seeds that did different things. You could also spruce up your garden with objects like pinwheels. The My Garden beta had still no music, only sound fx. Some parts of the in-game text had dialogue dubbed, but only a few screens had spoken dialogue.

Some more info from IGN:

Players will be given six unique gardens to play, grow, and nurture. In order to advance, you must collect 300 unqiue plants with the help of the game’s guide and aid, Tanuki.

Tanuki will help you grow your plants by unlocking different suits that can attract certain animals to your garden. Shaking the 3DS will cause animals to leave while whistling can attract them.

There are also photo challenges in My Garden that players will need to complete to progress. Photos can be saved and shared with friends.

Thanks a lot to Gary for the contribution!

Images:

Videos:

 

Nintendo, SNES + Super Famicom

Killer Instinct 2 [SNES – Cancelled]

U64 Staff & Contributors
12-02-2012
7 Comments

Killer Instinct 2 is a fighting game developed by Rare, licensed by Nintendo and manufactured by Midway in 1996.  A modified version of KI2 appeared on the Nintendo 64 as Killer Instinct: Gold, but a SNES version of KI2 was also developed and completed but never released. [Info from Wikipedia]

As noticed by Molasar:

On twitter in 2015 Tim Stamper shared a photo of his old gaming stuff with a KI2 SNES development cart pcb on it.

Post by Justin Fowler

Videos (from the arcade version):
 

Nes / Famicom, Nintendo

Cheetahmen 2 [NES – Cancelled]

U64 Staff & Contributors
11-02-2012
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Cheetahmen 2 is a cancelled side-scrolling action game developed by Active Enterprises for the NES back in the early 1990’s.

History:

Cheetahmen 2 was going to be a sequal to the original cheetahmen that was released with Action 52 in 1991 on the NES and Genesis back in 1993. The game itself was never released for unkown reasons, perhaps due to poor sales of Action 52 and the backlash it recived from critics.

In the mid 1990’s the games cartriges were obtained legally from the warehouse and were sold to the public.

Nowadays the game has already been dumped onto the net and can be played using an emulator, while the cartriges, although rare, can be bought online.

Story:

The story of cheetahmen starts with an opening cut scene stating that Doctor Morbis (the Antagonist of the story) creates a new creature known as “Ape Man”. He then uses ape man to destroy the cheetahmen (Aries, Apollo, Hercules) and the player must stop Dr. Morbis.

“Full” Game and Level Design:

Most of the game has orignal levels – except for the last two levels, witch were imported from the orignal cheetahmen on the NES (the last two levels can only be played via moding the cheetahmen image file) . There are several new bosses and one new attack for the cheetahmen that is seen in this sequal but not seen in the orignal game.

Notes about Cheetahmen 2:

  • The Cheetahmen 2 cartridge reuses the NES Action 52 cartridge with just a gold with black lettering Cheetahmen 2 sticker.
  • The sounds, sprites, animations were reused from the orginal Cheetahmen on the NES.

Videos:
You can view the entire game below:

Credit goes to cheaterdragon1 for correcting many mistakes in this article. 

Game Boy (+ Color), Nintendo

Katakis 3D [GBC – Cancelled]

Celine
10-02-2012
3 Comments

In 2001 legendary programmer Manfred Trenz (idea, design, program, graphics), Andreas Escher (design, graphics) and Tufan Uysal (sound effects & music) completed  a sequel to the old Katakis C64 shooter for Game Boy Color. Contrary to the original game (an horizontal scrolling shooter) Katakis 3D adopted a forward-scrolling perspective akin to Star Fox or Iridion 3D thus the “3D” suffix.

Development took 5 months that sadly were unfruitful because the completed project couldn’t find a publisher interested to shipping it so from 2001 the game gather dust in a safe. Quite unfortunate cause it would have been very interesting to witness what Manfred Trenz amazing low level programming skills could have produced on the weak Game Boy Color hardware.

Thanks to Collect-Thor for the contribution!

Images: