Arcade

Judge Dredd [Arcade – Cancelled]

 

Judge Dredd is a cancelled Beat ’em up brawler game developed and published by Midway Games on the arcade, around 1992-1993. It featured digitized graphics and was based on the comic book serie of the same name.

The game reached a near-complete state, with 3 stages finished, and 3 bonus stages after each ‘main’ level. Each stage was different in some way, such as the first being a normal scrolling brawler-style stage, the second being closer to a platform game, and the third being a unique concept, where Dredd has to fight off waves of ‘block warriors’, making sure that the two ever-decreasing bars never reach the bottom- if one of them is emptied, the stage is over and has to be repeated. After the final level is beaten, the game ends with a preview for the next level, apparently featuring the character Judge Death from the comics.

Gaming Hell managed to get in touch with Jake Simpson, former programmer on Judge Dredd, and former artist Erik Kinkead. Both shared details about the development of the game and why it was ultimately cancelled:

So, after the success of Terminator 2 – The Arcade Game, Midway were looking for another movie license to make an arcade game out of, and since the Judge Dredd movie had been announced at the time, they decided to grab the license and beat the cinemas to it. Utilising a slightly-better form of digitised graphics than the original Mortal Kombat (pioneered in this game) it was planned for release in 1993. The inspiration came from a different source.

Jake Simpson: The actual premise of the game was it was supposed to be a cross between Mortal Kombat and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – we literally had one in my office to play, the 4 player version…

It’s a scrolling brawler! You should be familiar with what’s gonna go down by this point- just fight through waves of enemies, and beat the boss character at the end of the stage. In fairness, it’s a rather sophisticated one for its time, as each stage is different in some way, be it the controls or the mission objective. It’s definitely a different approach than the norm.

Jake Simpson: We wanted each level to have a different mechanic (although not too different) because at the time, no one else had done that, at least not in a brawler.

The layout is actually recycled from NARC, Williams‘ ultra-violent run-and-gunner.

Jake Simpson: The control panel was used because ‘everyone else said it had worked out well with Narc. This was my first game, so I just let it go. (…) The jumping level with the robots literally went in about a month before test. It was only because Eric had done some renders of robots and we looked at it them and went “What can we do with this?” – Eric and I built that alone very quickly… I’d never even attempted to code a platformer before and had no real idea what I was doing. (…)

Yes, some of the levels were too hard. They were absolutely designed to be quarter suckers. The trouble with games like this – story games – is that most of the time people will only play through once. This isn’t a sports or combat game where you play to test your skills against another player, so you replay. This is a once through kind of game, so we needed to take as many quarters as we could without pissing off the player, so things were definitely harder than they should be for playing for free on Mame.

After the third shooting gallery, the game abruptly ends and you’re greeted by this screen, which promises that “DEATH IS COMING….”. Obviously, the next stage would’ve involved Judge Death somehow, but how?

Jake Simpson: The last level was basically Judge Death in Resyk – he was reanimating corpses that were rolling out on a conveyor belt at the back of the screen and you were shooting them and him – you’d have your gun but it could be knocked out of your hand and you’d be manno e-manno until another one dropped into the level. The Judge Death stuff was about 60-70% done. We had Judge Death leaping around and attacking you, that much I do remember. I don’t remember if he was reanimating corpses though, even though I knew that was the plan.

Also, in case you’re wondering why Death looks so crazy-awesome here, it’s because he was a mannequin, much like Leglock and Goro from Mortal Kombat. Eric Kinkead was particularly impressed with it.

Erik Kinkead: Oh man, that Judge Death model was so awesome. At least, if not as cool as Goro. I would go into either Tim Coman or John Vogel‘s office and look at that thing constantly. Although that close up picture of him… Doesn’t do the model justice.

However, it was never released. Hell, it wasn’t even completed, but was playtested in Chicago. Unfortunately, the locaction test didn’t quite go to plan, so the plug was pulled on the project.

Jake Simpson: We were still relatively early in development to be testing – normally the game doesn’t go out on test till it’s 100% complete and we weren’t – but we were starting to get glimmers of the fact that this wasn’t going to be great and we wanted to know early so we could just put a bullet in it and stop wasting our time, if that was the case.

I think part of the reason we did abandon it was because it *was* such a labor of love, and it just wasn’t living up to our expectations, either in what the game was or how it was doing on test.

We never finished it because we put it out on test and it just didn’t do great numbers… I remember having a bug that crashed the game in the block wars and that totally destroyed our on test numbers. I remember at the time NBA JAM was out, Mortal Kombat was out, and our numbers were no where near theirs, so we all got very demoralized and just gave up. In retrospect we _should_ have finished this – Midway paid for the license and we should have completed it. We probably could have in a month. I remember the meeting where we all sat there and looked at each other and just shrugged and said “What were we thinking?”. We were young and stupid. Enough said.

Both Jake and Eric remember a different level that was cut- a Spy Hunter-esque racing stage using Dredd’s Lawmaster.

Jake Simpson: There was another level we had which got cut – the motorcycle chase. It was a top down thing, where you were on his bike and you had to chase a car on a high ramp over the city. The ramp was damaged so you had to jump sections… We cut it because honestly, it was no challenge. A few jumps, some left and right and that was it. Looked gorgeous though, but all that really nice Mega City At Night imagery took up way too much image space, so we cut it entirely.

Sadly, the Lawmaster chase stage was gutted from the location test version to make space for the Death stage.

Jake Simpson: The code for the Motorcycle was there, but none of the graphics were.

Fortunately, the game was preserved, to an extent- although only four boards were ever made, a version of the game slightly older than the version play-tested was dumped and is available to play in MAME.

Jake Simpson: Only 4 machines were made. I had one, that went to my sisters pub in the UK and was destroyed when that burnt down. One went to Tim Coman, one went to Mark Penacho and I’ve no idea where the last one ended up. I also have no idea how the roms got out into the world – I will say that they weren’t the final ones we put out in the world though.

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Punky Doodle (Sunsoft) [Cancelled – Arcade]

Punky Doodle is a cancelled action / tower defense game that was in development by Hudson around 1993, planned to be available on coin-op arcades to “lead the industry back to the era of PacMan”. Players would have to protect pumpkins against monsters in “31 levels with more  than 150 rounds”, possibly with the help of a friend in coop-mode. Its main gameplay mechanic was to draw doodles on the screen (probably with the joystick), then link a pumpkin to the line so it could move and attack enemies.

A preview of the game was published in Electronic Gaming Monthly magazine (issue 55, February 1994):

“If you’re tired of blood, shooting, fighting and all that other gore, give Punky Doodle by Sunsoft a couple of quarters. Odds are you’ll be instantly hooked by this brain teaser! Punky uses his magic crayons to stop the different meanies who attack him. Help Punky save the world’s pumpkin patches from the bad guys of the night. No shooting? No fighting? No fatalities? What kind of game is this?

It’s Punky Doodle by Sunsoft and it is as addictive as any game out there! Punky and her pal Curly are in charge of protecting Farmer Jones’ pumpkin patch. The pumpkins are under attack by the creatures of the night, and it’s up to Punky and Curly to save the pumpkin patch and the rest of the world’s pumpkin crops.

Our awesome twosome uses the Doodle Defense System by leaving a trail of doodles with their magical crayons. When a pumpkin is attached to a trail, it searches out an enemy along the trail and clobbers the enemy with a Pumpkin Power Punch! Kabam!

Even though Punky Doodle is easy to learn, it is not easy to master. There are 31 levels with more  than 150 rounds. Whew, that’s a lot of playing time! Punky Doodle will definitely appeal to a  broad range of age groups. The graphics, while not too complex, are clean and colorful. The sounds are also above average. All of the playing elements, including the 50 or so enemy characters, come together. Punky Doodle may look easy, but it requires a good deal of skill to play. With over 30 levels, Punky Doodle should keep you busy for a long time!

As wrote by the Los Angeles Time in 1993, a playable demo of Punky Doodle could have been featured at the Amusement and Music Operators Expo ’93:

“SunSoft of America Inc., which left the competitive arcade business to focus on home video games, is making another stab at arcades with a new game aimed at leading the industry back to the “era of PacMan.

Though the arcade game, called “Punky Doodle,” isn’t totally nonviolent, SunSoft has high hopes that simple, back-to-basics action will make the game successful in arcades. In “Punky Doodle,” the heroes guard a pumpkin patch from alien invaders intent on destroying crops. The heroes zap the invaders into oblivion, but not in a graphically violent way, Siller said.

The game will be featured at the Amusement and Music Operators Expo ’93 at the Anaheim Convention Center later this month and is scheduled for release in December.”

In the end the game was never released in arcades, but a prototype could still be somewhere out there.

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Wonder Momo 2 [Arcade – Cancelled]

Wonder Momo 2 (ワンダーモモ2) is a cancelled sequel to Namco’s 1987 cult classic beat ‘em up, that was in early development by the company around 1993. It seems this time players would have been able to choose between 2 super heroes / magical girls protagonists, and possibly a multiplayer coop mode could have been available.

As far as we know the game was never officially announced, but as noticed by VGDensetsu former Namco artist Tatsuya Ishikawa shared his Wonder Momo 2 some details and concept art on Twitter:

“In 1993, there was a time when we proposed a project called Wonder Momo 2 and proceeded to the p1 prototype, but at that time many VS development personnel were introduced to Tekken and it became a phantom project due to various circumstances.”

“One of the reasons for the Wonder Momo 2 project was that after the development of Newman was completed, there was a talk about whether to do Newman with Tekken’s polygon technology, but he refused to make girls cute with Poly at that time.”

Many years later a sequel to Wonder Momo titled “Wonder Momo: Typhoon Booster” was developed for Android smartphones and MAC by WayForward Technologies and published by ShiftyLook in 2014. A PC version was also planned but then cancelled.

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World Heroes 64 [Cancelled – Hyper Neo Geo 64]

World Heroes is a cult-classic series of fighting games developed by Alpha Denshi (ADK) and released in the early / mid ‘90s  for the Neo Geo MVS arcade cabinet. In 1997 SNK released the Hyper Neo Geo 64 arcade system as the successor of the MVS, a new 3D arcade board to play such games as Road’s Edge, Samurai Shodown 64 and Buriki One. It seems Alpha Denshi was planning a 3D “World Heroes 64” for the Hyper Neo Geo 64, but after some time it became clear the HNG64 would have not been able to compete with the more powerful Capcom, Namco and Sega 3D arcade boards so the project was canned.

As far as we know this “World Heroes 64” was never officially announced by the company, but it seems Japanese Neo Geo fans were able to get in contact with a former Alpha Denshi developer (?) who shared an early 3D model of Hanzo that he made for the game. If you know something else about this cancelled game, please let us know!

“I dared to make it so that the (Alpha Denshi) president would give up (this project).”

 

Technic Beat [Beta – PS2, Arcade]

Technic Beat is a music rhythm game developed by Arika for Arcade and Playstation 2, as a sequel to their title Technictix. Sossigu64 found some beta screenshots and videos on the old Arika website, using WebArchive. Here’s a list of the main differences found in these images / footage:

  • The tension gauge is different from both the arcade and playstation releases.
  • The intro is a lot shorter and very similar to Technictix’s intro.
  • Hassy (platypus) and Willie (giant stuffed bear) in the video are too fast. Both characters are considered slow characters and their speed is on the level of Bot (robot) and Cart (human glasses man, kinda resembles Klug from puyo puyo and Jeff from earthbound.).
  • The sets for each “session” are identical from Technictix but have a bit more going on (more visual effects) and the sets look a lot more cleaner (better refined)
  • Concept art found on the Omake page for Technic Beat also shows concept art for Technictix.

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