In the August issues of British publications Sega Power and Mean Machines Sega, three different prototype versions of Earthworm Jim 2 for the Mega Drive were previewed. Each of them have some minor yet interesting changes compared to the final product, including a lot of material cut from the game.
![Super Metroid [SNES – Beta]](https://www.unseen64.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/super-metroid-beta-670x300.jpg "Super Metroid [SNES – Beta]")
Super Metroid was the third game produced in the Metroid series. Metroid producer Gunpei Yokoi oversaw the project, but owing to him being busy with designing the Game Boy Pocket and Virtual Boy, Super Metroid was produced by Makoto Kanoh, who had devised the original game’s storyline. The game’s early planning began in 1990 with Nintendo’s Nintendo Research & Development 1 (R&D1) headed by Yoshio Sakamoto. [Info from Wikipedia] Looking through old screens from the game’s previews, we can notice some interesting changes made in the game while in development.
Secret of Mana, known in Japan as Seiken Densetsu 2, is an action RPG for the Super Nintendo developed and published by Square. Secret of Mana is the sequel to Final Fantasy Adventure for the Game Boy and the second installment in the Mana video game series. The game was originally going to be a launch title for the SNES CD add-on. After the project was dropped, the game had to be altered to fit onto a standard game cartridge. [Infos from Wikipedia]
Robert Seddon has made us to notice that according to this article, Square was intending to port the game to the Wonderswan. Given that their Romancing SaGa port featured material cut from the original, it’s a shame the Seiken Densetsu 2 port didn’t happen. You can also read more about he beta differences of Secret of Mana on ManaRedux!
In the gallery below you can see various beta screenshots from that Luis has shared with us: there’s an early version of Potos and Pandora Village, different World Map, many unknown locations, the characters that walk in a river (that is not accessible in the final game), an unused character with pink hair, different HUD, beta Gaia Navel (if you have more infos on the differences in these screens, please let us know!), the hero in a weird place in Water Palace and much more! Also, as you can read in the scan the original title for the english version of the game was going to be Final Fantasy Adventure 2.
In the video below the gallery, recored by Shernoubi, we can notice various unused sprites and a debug room!
Thanks a lot to Luis & pantalytron for the contribution!
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Killer Instinct is a fighting game developed by RareWare and published by Midway and Nintendo. Initially released in arcades in 1994 it was later ported to the Super Nintendo. In the gallery below you can notice some early character designs for B.Orchid and Glacius. As they wrote at the Killer Instinct Arena, the earliest version of Black Orchid was a blonde amazon, but a later version of her featured a black outfit. In the final game Orchid wears a green and yellow dress.
Also, thanks to Lucazz we found out that a beta Killer Instinct ROM was somehow leaked online, and it contains many differences from the final version:
Thanks to Robert Seddon and Lucazz for the contributions!
In a promotional video of Killer Instinct, embedded below, we can see an early version of the coin-op with some differences:
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Thanks to “hacking” softwares, it’s possible to find a few beta things left in the memory of Super Mario World. There are some unused levels and sprites [like the Flying yellow mushroom (gives 1-up), the flying red coin (Gives 5 coins) and the vertical pirhana plant up (Though the upside down pirhana plant was in, this one wasn’t], a castle that has slight differences from the one in the final game, a random castle entrance with woking pipe (that just sends you to an endless bonus game most likely). It’s even possibile to fix the removed “super mario bros”