In the website of ATMachine we can read an interesting series of articles about the old Lucas Arts adventures and between them, we can even find a wonderfull page with informations and screens for the beta version of Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge! Various differences like an early Guybrush sprite, changes in the backgrounds, are show in those screens.
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Our nice friends Robert Seddon and Batzarro have linked us to an intersting news that was spotted on Game Set Watch and Gamasutra, that talks about the find of some screenshots from “Titan Project”, an HALO inspired Massive Multiplayer Online game that was in development at Ensemble Studios, but was cancelled in 2007.
Ensemble Studios has recently closed (for financial problems?) after they had finished to work on Halo Wars and a supposed former employer of the team has started to share screens and some infos about the cancelled games that he worked on. On his Flickr Account we can see a wonderfull collection of images from Titan, and on his blog we can read that: “In 2005 Ensemble Studios completed Age of Empires III. Following that, several game prototypes (a major one was ‘Wrench’, more at a later point) were developed. One of them was a Halo inspired MMO codenamed Titan; cancelled after around two years in June 2007.”
X-COM is a series of computer games, started by Mythos Games and MicroProse in 1993. The first three titles were tactical games while the fourth was an action-based space combat/strategy game. The first installment, UFO: Enemy Unknown in Europe (also known as X-COM: UFO Defense in North America) was written by a team led by Julian Gollop. MicroProse quickly had an internal team create the sequel X-COM: Terror from the Deep. Subsequently, the Gollop brothers went straight to work on X-COM: Apocalypse, which would end up being the third in the series when released in 1997. Soon after Apocalypse, MicroProse was bought by Hasbro Interactive. All titles were developed for the PC, with a few ports to the Sony PlayStation and Amiga.
The Dreamland Chronicles: Freedom Ridge was a cancelled game by the authors of the original game (Mythos Games), claimed to having been “essentially a remake of the first X-Com with 3D graphics”. [Info from Wikipedia]
For more informations, you can check this site: www.commanderx.xcomufo.com
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In the website of ATMachine we can read an interesting series of articles about the old Lucas Arts adventures and between them, we can even find a wonderfull page with informations and screens for the beta version of Monkey Island! Various differences like removed puzzles, changes in the text and missing dog closeup are show in those screens.
Robert Seddon has linked us to an interesting article at Grumpy Gamer, in which Ron Gilbert has posted some reminiscences about developing the game:
My brain is filled with a lot of old adventure game puzzles, most of which never made it into a game. DeathSpank actually has a couple of puzzles ideas that we talked about for the original Monkey Island.
Originally, I wanted the Grog Machine to be a Coke Machine, baring that, I wanted it to look like a Coke machine. It originally had the “Coke Wave” on it, but said “Grog”. The Lucasfilm legal team came back and said it was too close to the real trademarked Coke Wave.
The key to the Monkey Head used to be called a Q-Tip(tm), but in my second legal lesson of the project it was changed.
Elaine Marley was just called “The Governor” until the scene in the church was written. Dave Grossman wrote that scene and put in the gag dialog choice where Guybrush shouts “Elaine!”, which is from the movie “The Graduate”. I liked that, so it became her name. In the original design, Elaine was a more ruthless Governor, but she softened up and became a true love interested as the project processed.
There was supposed to be ship combat during your voyage to Monkey Island. It would have been done top-down view with you controlling the ship and firing a cannon. It was right to cut that. Never be afraid to cut.
Also, according to Kotaku, the dog will be in the Monkey Island remake that is going to be released for PC and Xbox 360 Live Arcade.
Spiffy, the dog at the Scumm Bar, showed up on the back of the original box, but had to be cut from the actual game due to space. Now he’s back, though mostly as decoration.
In november 2009, an article on the Workshop blog revealed some unused dialogues that are still hidden in the game’s code:
One thing I quickly noticed was that Ron and Tim had left a lot of notes in the code, explaining why things were the way they were, or putting a date when a certain bug was fixed. This was fascinating to see and read. The other thing I noticed is that when they made some changes, they left the original versions of the code in there, but commented out, so that it wouldn’t be used.
Thanks to Robert Seddon for the contribution!
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Darknet (sometimes written Dark Net) was given a tiny preview in the August 1995 issue of Sega Power, in “Video Games The Ultimate Gaming Magazine” (Issue 90 July 1996) and in EGM 83, and aside from a small screenshot and some concept art, very little is said about the game. From the lone screenshot, it seems to be an isometric adventure game, similar to Diablo, but with a fairly unique plot, with four students being sucked into the internet itself and fighting against the titular Darknet. The game was developed by American Softworks for PC, Playstation and Saturn, scheduled for ‘some yet-to-be-decided date’ and never released.
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