Arcade

Ultimate Domain [Arcade – Cancelled]

Ultimate Domain was a 3D fighting game in development by Atlus for Sega’s Model 2 board around 1996. The game had 8 characters ( of which 3 were women ) animated with the aid of JAC ( Japan Action club ) for the motion capture sessions. One peculiar feature was the SOL-POWER where the characters can utilise the sun power to charge up super killing techniques ( just like Daitarn 3 ! ). Ultimate Domain doesn’t appear on Atlus or Model 2 release lists so we can conclude that it was never fully released in the arcades.

Scan from Computer & Videogames issue 181.

Images: 

Beavis and Butthead [Arcade – Prototype / Unreleased]

Alongside the SNES, Gameboy, Genesis and Game Gear versions, Viacom was set to release an arcade game based off of MTV’s Beavis and Butthead animated series. It was never released (and upon analyzing the videos and screenshots available, I could not make out a copyright date), but a handful of prototype cabinets are known to exist.

Post by Harley Schaffer

Videos of the prototype cabinet:

 

Bloodlust I.K.3 [Arcade PSX – Cancelled]

Bloodlust (aka International Karate 3) is a cancelled 2D fighting game that was in development in 1995 / 1996 by Atari for the Arcades and Playstation. The original International Karate was a 1985 title released for the ZX Spectrum, MSX, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC and Atari 8-bit family of computers, with a sequel called International Karate + released a year later. It seems that a Bloodlust prototype is in the hands of some collectors, but only few screenshots are preserved in the gallery below.

The arcade version was based on 64MB PC hardware (Cyrix Media GX PC), while the PSX conversion was going to have some graphical limitations. 16 playable characters were planned, that were inspired by RARE’s Killer Instinct.

Thanks to Celine, Ross Sillifant and Daniel Nicaise for the contribution! Scans from EDGE magazine #55

Images: 

Capcom vs SNK [Arcade Dreamcast – Beta]

Capcom vs SNK: Millennium Fight 2000 is a fighting game developed by Capcom and released for Sega’s NAOMI arcade hardware in 2000 and ported to the Dreamcast during the same year. When it was first announced, the characters of the Street Fighter series had the same graphic style as “Street Fighter Zero”, different from the style used in the final game. The scenarios were also quite different (with references to the latest Capcom games, as Power Stone).  In the gallery below you can see various screenshots from the beta version: if you can notice more differences, please let us know!

Thanks to Mestre Ryu for the contribution!

Images: 

The King of Fighters ’99 [Arcade – Beta / Concept]

As we can read from Wikipedia, The King of Fighters ’99: Millennium Battle is a 1999 head-to-head fighting game by SNK released for the Neo Geo arcade and home platform. The King of Fighters ’99 initially meant to remove Kyo Kusanagi and Iori Yagami from the series due to the introduction of the new lead character, K’. However, due to negative fan response in location tests, they decided to readd them.

The SNK staff wanted to create a Robo Army Team. However, this idea was abandoned but they later made it a tribute in The King of Fighters 2000 by introducing Rocky, a character from Robo Army as a striker for Maxima. The character from Whip was originally meant to star in The King of Fighters ’96, but due Leona’s introduction in that game, the staff decided to wait until K0F ’99.

Developers also found troubles with the large number of young characters appearing in the game; as such the staff also designed older character such as Maxima and Vannesa to balance the game. In contrast to this Bao was added to the game in order to reduce the average age from the Psycho Soldiers Teams. Bao had many different design before its final one, as you can see in the gallery below.

Here’s the final Bao sprite to compare it with its early designs:

Thanks to Saga Darvulia for the contribution!

Images: