Nintendo

River Raid [SNES – Cancelled]

River Raid: The Mission of No Return (aka River Raid 3) is a cancelled shoot ’em up for the Super Nintendo, based on the original River Raid released in 1982 by Activision for the Atari 2600. The game was going to be published by Activision but it was later cancelled and only few screens remain preserved in the gallery below. Celine was able to find some of these images in Banzzai magazine #14 and Super Power #13.

The source code of River Raid SNES was found in 2001 by an user of the Atari Age forum:

I can tell you, that what I have of River Raid SNES, is mainly a source code dump from August of ’93. You’d have to recompile it in order to view it. I had one of my programmers do so just we could figure out what exactly we have on the floppy.

Some other info were found by Zwackery from the Atari Age Forum, in VideoGames magazine (vol. V, no. 11, Nov 1993). As we can read from the VGM article, “River Raid: The Mission of No Return”  was shown at the summer CES  1991 in Chicago, along with the cancelled Kaboom:  The Mad Bomber Returns.

It seems that “both got killed because the developers couldn’t push the SNES boundaires with either one” as noted by Klove in the Atari Age Forum.

Images: 

Mountain Sports [SNES – Cancelled]

Mountain Sports (also known as Rocky Mountain Sports) is a cancelled action / sport game that was in development by DTMC for the Super Nintendo, in 1993. The player would have been able to try different activities as mountain climing, kayaking and ATV racing. It’s currently unknown how the game would have progressed or why it was cancelled. You can read some more info at SNES Central! A screenshot of the game was found in Banzzai magazine issue 14.

Thanks to Celine for the contribution!

Images:

Mountain-Sports-Snes-Banzzai14 

Mario vs Donkey Kong 2 [DS – Beta]

Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2: March of the Minis is a Puzzle Game developed by NST as a sequel to the GBA MvsDK, a follow up to the Game Boy Donkey Kong game. A playable beta demo of MvsDk2 was available at various gaming conventions, from where it was saved on the DS and then shared online.

Upaluppa noticed many differences in this beta demo, as wrote in his videos on Youtube:

– The music sounds quite different

– There are hearts instead of big coins

– The small coins are rotating

– Mushroom Mayhem is called Mushroom Kingdom

– The status screen is completely different

– There’s a level map available by pressing Select

– The map looks VERY incomplete…

– The first level is completely different

– Later levels have some minor differences

– Some sound effects are different

– There is no time limit

Thanks to Hiccup for the contribution!

Videos:

 

Akira [SNES MegaDrive/Genesis – Cancelled]

Rod_Wod from the Assembler Forum has posted various scans from the cancelled Akira games (based on the manga / anime with the same name) that were meant to be released by THQ for the Genesis / Mega Drive, Super Nintendo, Mega CD and Game Gear. Probably the screens published in the magazines were all from the same version, as the graphic looks almost the same for all the various consoles. Some more screens were found by Celine in Player One #44, Console Plus #44 and #35. Thanks to Sketcz from the Hardcore Gaming 101 blog for the other scans!

From an interview at Hardcore Gaming 101 we can read a lot of interesting info about the development of these unreleased Akira games:

“It was not so much cancelled or scrapped as it fell into neglect. Larry transferred rights to THQ and we couldn’t get clear agreement on the game elements with the project manager. They didn’t understand the limitations of the SNES. The project was then victim to a number of disasters including the lead programmer leaving, and other work being more pressing.”

A short video from the game was recorded at CES in summer 1994, you can see it below (it looks like the game crashes / freeze at some point). Thanks to Brian for the link to the video!

Images:

Akira SNES

Videos:

 

Metamor Kid Goomin [SNES – Cancelled]

Metamor Kid Goomin (Goromin) is a cancelled platform / action adventure game that was in development for the Super Famicom / Super Nintendo by BPS (Bullet Proof Software?). There are not many info on the project, but from the title and the few scans preserved in the gallery below, it seems that the main protagonist was able to morph into different forms (the italian magazine wrote about 8 different forms, as a dragon and a mole) to resolve puzzles and to reach new areas.

Celine was able to find some Metamor Kid Goomin screens in SuperPower issue #19,  Console Mania #28 and EGM #59, while a couple of screens were posted by Moosmann in the Assembler Forum.

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