Ragnarok Online is a MMORPG developed by GRAVITY and originally released in South Korea in 2001 for PC. While looking at some videos on Youtube, Sumikuroi noticed many differences in the alpha / beta footage:
Thanks to Sumikuroi for the contribution!
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Alone is a cancelled horror FPS that was in development by Red Paperclip Games for about a year. After they completed an alpha build, new funding caused Alone to go from the Game Maker Engine to the CryEngine2 Engine, but sadly after about three months work stopped abruptly.
Today Alone no longer exists and there is very little reference to it on the Red Paperclip Games website, but thanks to Archive.org it’s still possible to read an old page on the project:
ALONE was first going to be a test game to say that I could complete a game. Well through some thinking I came to like ALONE. At first I had no name so I came up with ALONE to describe your state. ALONE started to attach to me more until I put time and effort into the game. Now I am always working on ALONE wherever I go. I also managed to pick up a few people on the way.
Dr. Rick Hauss has performed biological test to create a new enhancement for the U.S. armed forces. The new enhancement is known as the HGE or Human Genetic Enhancement. In the process of making it, Dr. Hauss accidentaly created a new virus. This new virus was known as the Z Virus. This virus would take over dead cells and bring back their living properties. The effects on brain cells allowed the virus to control the body. Before Dr. Hauss realized it, he had already tested on five subjects. The first four died and were brought back from the virus.
The final experiment survived. After the four experiments killed everyone but Dr. Hauss in Bio Labs, they spread out to take over the Norton Military base. The effects of the HGE causes increase in strength, agility and intelligence. Although the subject also obtains permanent amnesia. The final experiment is Seth Thomas. His body has a natural immunity from the virus.
The player will play as Seth Thomas through the game ALONE as he uncovers the truth behind the HGE.
A very early Alpha of Alone was somehow leaked online: in this build there are many bugs and everything is a place holder texture: not much of the first area is in this, but it is all that is left. An interesting view on the early development of a lost game.
Hidden in the Alpha code it’s possible to find 6 levels:
Livello 1 = environment testLivello 2 = vehicle testLivello 3 = enemy test (same as lv 2)Livello 4 = full level test (same as lv 2)Livello 5 = secret boss (empty lv)
Livello 6 = cutscene test
Heist (HEI$T) is a cancelled action game that was in development by inXile Entertainment and would have been published by Codemasters for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC. The game was to be set in San Francisco, California, circa 1969, where the players would have been able to control a group of criminals as they perform various thefts. In January 2010 Codemasters announced that the game had been officially cancelled, as we can read on CVG:
“After a much extended development period, Heist has been terminated as a project and removed from our release schedule,” a Codemasters spokesperson told CVG.
“Codemasters is focusing its future portfolio on high quality titles that will, in the majority, be developed and produced by our internal studios.”
Some more info on Heist’s gameplay can be found in the original press release:
In addition to knocking off banks, each with their own set security precautions, throughout the city, players will be highly motivated to pull off further jobs. These include raiding bars, restaurants, strip clubs, armoured cars, and more in order to acquire the bigger and better tools needed to penetrate the increasingly more difficult banks.
Thanks to Robert Seddon and Landlock for the contribution!
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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!
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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:
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