Kyle Petty’s No Fear Racing is a racing game developed by Leland Interactive Media and published by Williams Entertainment for the Super Nintendo in 1995. When Nintendo announced their Ultra 64, Williams created a Nintendo 64 tech demo based on Kyle Petty’s No Fear Racing, with the “same” Silicon Graphic Workstation power that the U64 would have used. In the end Williams never released any game for the Nintendo 64 and only few screens (found on Cd Consoles issue #4) remain from this interesting N64 demo.
Banjo Kazooie: Grunty’s Revenge is the third instalment in the Banjo-Kazooie series, and the second in chronological order (in terms of the point of the beginning and end of the game – in fact, as time travel plays a significant part in the plot, most of the action takes place decades before Banjo-Kazooie). Developed by Rareware and published by THQ, it was the first Rare game released after being purchased by Microsoft from Nintendo. [info from Wikipedia]
Banjo Kazooie: Grunty’s Revenge was originally announced at E3 2001. Initially, it was conceived to be a “What If?” story, taking place in an alternate timeline where Grunty’s sisters do not come to rescue her and thus Banjo-Tooie does not happen, with Grunty’s Revenge taking place instead. This idea was dropped some time before the game was released, and it was instead placed as a side-story in the Banjo timeline, between Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie.
Grunty’s Revenge is notable in that it is the only of Rare’s initially-announced Game Boy Advance titles to be released without any major changes due to the buyout of Rare by Microsoft, unlike Diddy Kong Pilot, which became Banjo-Pilot and Donkey Kong: Coconut Crackers, which became It’s Mr. Pants. [info from The Rare Witch Project Wiki]
Thanks to YouTube user transparentjinjo, that uploaded 7 videos from the Banjo Kazooie: Grunty’s Revenge beta, we can see a few differences to the final version of the game. For one, the textures and graphics are significantly less-developed in the beta footage. In addition, the layout of the worlds appears different, with several areas sporting different names to those in the released version (for example, Freezing Furnace is split into two separate worlds, Freezing Fjord and Fiery Furnace).
The introductory sequence is missing in the beta version, which also uses the “down” arrow to advance in-game text, as well as a few other small changes. You can view the videos, and other interesting development footage, at transparentjinjo’s YouTube channel.
Also, some concept arts and a couple of screenshots from the “3D collision preview tool” are preserved in the gallery below. Quite a lot changed through the development of Banjo Kazooie: Grunty’s Revenge. The game was reduced from 8-10 levels down to 6, and the story was cut down too.
The mad cow was the original boss on the farm level
The large mountain on the Fjord was removed when flying was removed from the game, and the remaining Fjord & Furnace sections were combined into one large level
The machine seen in “FURNACE_scene” was also lost when the 2 levels were combined
As can be seen from the Mecha Grunty pics, she was to have many transformations (tank, bazooka, drill etc) which were removed to save cartridge space
“Monster Kazooie” was a concept, but a decision was made to not implement it in the game
Swamp monsters (scorpion & spider) were not in the final game, the main swamp monsters were Bogfoot (Bigfoot with a different colour palette)
Klungo’s UFO was also too big to fit on cartridge, and replaced with Gruntilda’s ghost floating out of the rock & into the Mecha suit
As we can read from The Rare Witch Project Forum, you went to fight grunty through the lair entrance in the beta, there was a Baby Boggy.
As we can read on Wikipedia, a video game based on the popular Devilman manga / anime series was developed by ISCO and published by Namco in 1989 for the NES / Famicom. The game is an action RPG where players take control of Akira Fudo and the objective is to follow clues that will lead the heroes through a ruined city, into underground caves, around a hidden military base and finally into a confrontation with Zenon.
John Doom discovered that in the game’s code are some hidden images, taken directly from the comics, which were not used in the final version. It’s possible that these scenes were meant to be used during the fights against the various demons (Silen, Agwell, Ghelmer, etc.). Another shot shows a dying Miki (as in the comics).
Thanks to John Doom for the contribution and to Jason for the english corrections!
The Virtual Boy was released in July 1995 in Japan and August 1995 in USA. It was met with a lukewarm reception that was unaffected by continued price drops. Nintendo discontinued it the following year. Due to the short lifespan of the system, only 22 games were released. Of them, 19 games were released in the Japanese market, while only 14 were released in North America. [Info from Wikipedia]
Celine found some images from early Virtual Boy Tech Demos / Target Renders in Super Power magazine issue #34. Most of them look like early visualization of released Virtual Boy games, such as Golf and Mario Clash. We can also notice the “Sample Demo” that came with the VUE Debugger software, in which you can move a ball around a three-dimensional field.
Also, Grooveraider preserved some videos of the demos shown at the Winter CES 1995 in his Youtube Channel!
Sonic Heroes is a platform game in the Sonic the Hedgehog series, developed by Sonic Team USA and released in 2003 for the GameCube, Playstation 2 and Xbox. Kieranmay linked us to many beta videos from the game, as you can see below! Many cutscenes were still unfinished and the songs were changed for the final version.
Also, as we can read at Sonic Retro, various Sonic Heroes betas were leaked online:
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