Nintendo

Moon (Renegade Kid) [GBC – Cancelled]

Moon is a FPS developed by Renegade Kid and released in 2009 for the Nintendo DS, but originally the project was born as a 2D side-scrolling action adventure for the GameBoy Color. Moon GBC was revealed by Jools Watsham, game director at Renegade Kid, in a video from his Youtube Channel.

The GameBoy Color version of Moon was never released, but the scenario and the characters were later reused to create the DS version. Moon looked like an interesting adventure, similar to Metroid II, and it’s sad that it did not had its chance on the GameBoy Color.

Props to Jools Watsham for sharing these screens from the prototype!

Thanks to Celine for the contribution!

Images:

Videos (he talks about Moon GBC @ 3:30):

For comparison, here’s the DS version:

 

Wildwaters (Extreme Kayak) [N64 – Cancelled]

Wildwaters (also know as “Extreme Kayak” and “X-Stream”) is a cancelled racing game that was in development by Looking Glass Studios for the Nintendo 64 in 1998 / 1999. The project was announced at E3 1999 by Ubisoft (that was interested as a publisher) while the studio was working on Destruction Derby 64 (published in the same year), but sadly it was never finished.

Wildwaters 64 was very promising as Looking Glass were able to create an engine with real physics running for the waterflow through the river on an N64, but it needed more time and love which eventually ran out. Five different gameplay modes, including Arcade, Time Trial, Championship, Finals and Versus Battle were planned for the game.

Some months later, on May 2000, Looking Glass Studios went out of business during a financial crisis related to their publisher at the time, Eidos Interactive. Wildwaters / Extreme Kayak vanished forever, along with their other promising N64 racing game, Mini Racers.

There was another cancelled water racing game titled “Wild Water World Championships” that was planned for the Nintendo 64, but it should not be confused with this one as WWWC was developed by Promethean Designs.

Thanks a lot to Les Betterley for the help in preserving some images from this lost project!

Images (in-game):

Images (models):

Videos:

 

Sonic Rush [DS – Beta / Unused Stuff]

Sonic Rush is a platform game developed by Sonic Team and Dimps, published in 2005 for the Nintendo DS.  Various screenshots from pre-release versions of the game show slightly different areas, different HUD, slightly different gameplay and the first screenshot of Blaze the Cat shows a Sonic life icon while, in the final version, Blaze has her own life icon. We can also notice a different main menu screen.

The Beta version had a totally different  soundtrack for the main menu, for the Leaf Forest, for the boss stages and the end of an act. Also, some FX sounds are different from the final version (Sonic’s voice is different too).

In January 2007 DRX from the Hidden Palace released a prototype version of the game, that was shown at E3 2005. In the E3 version you were meant to play only one level, but Tanks from Sonic Retro has found out that there are 7 zones listed in the proto,  and 3 are playable via hacking. He also found an unused set of sprites  from Sonic Advance 3, but we don’t know how they were used in the development of Sonic Rush.

More info can be found at Sonic Retro and Sonic Retro Forum (this and this topics)

Thanks to Hiccup and YamiHoshi for the contributions!

Images:

Videos:

 

Radio Flyer [SNES – Cancelled]

Radio Flyer is a cancelled flying game that was in development by Ocean in 1992 for the Super Nintendo. It seems that the project was based on the film with the same name from Columbia Pictures, in which 2 young brothers escape their chaotic family life with dreams of flying. Inspired by a local legend, they attempt to build a working airplane from their ordinary red wagon.

Celine was able to find a couple fo screenshot from the game in Console Mania #13 (an italian magazine), PlayerOne #23 and EGM #25. Looking at those we can speculate that Radio Flyer could have been somehow similar to Pilot Wings SNES. The project was canned for unknown reasons but as Evan G from SNES Central has wrote, it could be because the movie was a flop / sucked.

Thanks to Celine for the contribution!

Images:

 

Rat Attack [N64/PSX – Beta]

Rat Attack! is a puzzle / action game developed by Pure Entertainment that was released in 1999 on PlayStation and in 2000 on Nintendo 64. The object of the game is to clear each level of a certain total of rats, without getting hit enough times to lose a life, or ensuring the room wasn’t destroyed, which would also kill you. [Info from Wikipedia]

LavaWave has found some beta Rat Attack screenshot with removed levels , high quality models (instead of the low quality ones in the final game) and a boss stage with the scorpion king totally revamped (probably a target render). Also, the official site of the game surprisingly is still alive since 1998 or so, in which we can read an interesting “the making of rat attack” section.

Thanks a lot to LavaWave for the contribution!

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