Others

Street Fighter 1 [Arcade – Beta / Proto]

The original Street Fighter made its debut in the arcades in 1987. It was designed by Capcom’s Takashi Nishiyama and Hiroshi Matsumoto. The player took control of martial artist Ryu, who competed in a worldwide martial arts tournament, spanning five countries and ten opponents. [Info from Wikipedia]

Street Fighter 1 went through some changes between the prototype and the final, some of the more notable changes is the main character Ryu’s victory pose has changed from prototype to final, some of the characters not programed into the game, and no voices for the game. Below is a list of noticeable changes, with the help of  Torentsu who was kind enough to do a little digging into the coding, so please if you see him on the U64 Forums, please give him a pat on the back.

The prototype version:

* No Demo Mode, goes to high score table and then back to the title screen
* There are different colors used in the high score table.
* Title Screen animation is different
* Is buggy
* No voice samples.
* Characters share stage music.
* Ryu’s victory pose is different.
* Every sound effect is different from the final.
* Different intro/outro music.
* Instead of best 2 out of 3, you must win a best 3 out of 6
* There is a typo on the victory screen, “Rut Don’t Forget…” instead of  “But Don’t Forget…”.
* There’s no level select, it just goes down a list of fighters.
* The Hurricane Kick isn’t in the game.
* The Build Date is earlier than the final, possibly a demo version of the game
* Enemies are missing from the beta, but the stage maps are there, and there are some differences between the beta and final.

Below is a video comparing gameplay from the prototype build to the final, note some of the changes are shown. If you have any information about this prototype, let us know in the comments.

Videos:

 

Joe [PSP/N-gage – Cancelled]

Joe is a cancelled action game that was in development by HumanSoft in 2003, for the N-Gage and PSP. Originally the studio produced a Renderware tech demo to pitch Joe for the N-Gage, but a PSP version was also planned. The 2 screens preserved in the gallery below are probably target renders for the N-Gage version and it’s unknown how much the game was progressed before being abandoned. Probably HumanSoft never found a publisher interested in their project and Joe had to be canned.

As we can read from the original press-release on IGN:

Joe is a “commando-type action-platform game”, Joe will boast four single-player missions with up to eight different levels per stage. Throughout the course of his adventure, Joe will make use of his hand-to-hand combat skills as he battles it out against a group of terrorists who have overtaken military bases, invaded important office buildings, and hijacked various trains, boats, and airplanes.

[…]

Additional details are still forthcoming, though it has been confirmed that Joe will utilize the PSP’s linking feature and support up to four players at the same time. A publisher has yet to be named.

Thanks to Userdante for the contribution!

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Dealer: Chronic, Pills & Coke [XBOX/PS2/PC – Cancelled]

Dealer:  Chronic, Pills & Coke is a cancelled action game / third person shooter that was in development by Nagual Games in 2004, for Playstation 2, Xbox and PC. As we can read in the original press release, the game was set in a huge metropolis, with a lot of driving and shooting,  a gameplay similar to GTA, in which the player was able to take part in the bloody and amusing adventures of a drug dealer.

The main object of Dealer was to build up a prosperous, illegal distribution network with one of the four characters available: the player had to expand the business by buying a drug lab, a cellar to grow mushrooms or even a marijuana plantation. The extra money were used to buy extraordinary cars, weapons , whore houses and luxurious properties.

Some of the unseen features:

  • Drugs, weapons, and sex – unpredictable and explicit story + free game course;
  • Prevention – the game demonstrates the effects, traps and dangers of various drugs;
  • Adult content – Night clubs, junkie prostitutes and sexy women;
  • Completely lifelike, enormous and elaborate city (Ghetto, Harbor, Downtown, Beach, Suburbs, Hills, Luxury seashore etc.)
  • Different drugs – different effects (Depending on the type of drug and consumption and use: morphed tracks, +/- health, speeding up/slowing down time, +/- susceptibility to injuries, freshness/tiredness, bent walking, falling asleep, addiction etc. – even lethal overdose).
  • 60 different NPCs;
  • 40 different controllable vehicles, controlled by AI;
  • 20 complex missions from the storyline +10 hidden or optional missions;
  • Multi-play
  • 40+ hours game play

The game was developed on the BioGraphic Inc. Gamebryo engine, a 3d-game engine used for other titles as “Morrowind”, “Dark Age of Camelot” “Axis & Allies”, but sadly there are no in-game screenshots from Dealer:  Chronic, Pills & Coke preserved yet, only few artworks in the gallery below.

The game was cancelled for unknown reasons, but we could speculate that Nagual never found a publisher interested in the project.

Thanks to Userdante for the contribution!

Images: 

Saint Row 2 [X360/PS3/PC – Beta]

Saints Row 2 is a sandbox / action game game developed by Volition Inc and published by THQ for PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in 2008. James Tsai,  SR2’s Lead Designer, in and interview with IGN revealed that some content had to be removed from the game before it was published:

JT: In the early stages of development we had some really crass stuff in the game, the kind of things that put you in that weird place where you’re laughing and squirming uncomfortably with guilt at the same time. One prototype had you driving a truck full of smuggled underage foreign prostitutes across the city while rival pimps rammed into you, knocking the girls out and cutting into your human trafficking profits. Another had you using a high pressure fire hose to wash homeless people off the street and into the gutter. Not exactly Nobel Prize material.

There was a lot of stuff we had in that didn’t register very high on the human decency scale, so we dialed some things back. For instance we changed the gender of the first character you encounter, since beating a female doctor to death with an IV stand wasn’t the impression we wanted to leave with the very first player action in the game. Instead, we have you beat a male doctor to death with an IV stand, to ease you into the killing.

From the early screens we can also notice various beta differences:

  • You can not customize characters in youe crib in the final
  • There was a different looking crib
  • Hideout has a different appearance
  • A pic shows  a cutscene that was removed

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