Clockwork Knight is a side-scrolling platform / action game that was developed and published by Sega in 1994 for the Saturn. The game was shown in some magazines and VHS videos before the release of the console, and in this early beta version Clockwork Knight had some big differences, as noticed by Ritz in the Sonic Retro Forum:
Clockwork Knight looks completely different here; 92% of the levels’ foreground content was stripped from the game, the animations and movement physics are noticeably unrefined, Pepper has a different attack animation, the Toy Can has a fucking whacky damage routine (also with an unused animation), and the Lubancy character that wound up totally absent from the actual games is a functional enemy. And it’s all set to an original rendition of the game’s theme!
Spearhead is a cancelled action / puzzle game that was in development by Scavenger for the Sega Saturn. There are not many info available on the project, but it seems that players would had take control of a “sphere suit” to explore 7 levels / mazes in the same vein as Marble Madness / Spindizzy Worlds / Super Monkey Ball. Sadly Scavenger had to close down in 1997 for economic issues and most of their games were never released.
Wipeout is the first in a series of futuristic racing games developed and published by Psygnosis in 1995 for Sony PlayStation and PC, in 1996 for the Sega Saturn. Wipeout was designed in part by The Designers Republic, while the game’s vehicle designs were based on Matrix Marauders, a 3D grid-based strategy game whose concept was developed by Psygnosis employee Jim Bowers. Nick Burcombe, the game’s future designer, was inspired to create a racing game using the same types of vehicles from his experience with Powerdrome, F-Zero and Super Mario Kart. [Info from Wikipedia]
In the gallery below you can see a couple fo screens from a beta version and what is seems a FMV / target render.
As for the “Inspiration” the original game was very much “Mario Kart” to techno music. Nick Burcombe and Jim Bowers had designed the game from those beginnings; and an early concept video was made.
Wipeout Target Render / Concept Video:
Thanks to Rod_Wod and Celine for the scans! Thanks to Ross Sillifant for the interview!
The 4th Unit is a series of “point and click” graphic adventures published by Data West in Japan for CD-Rom PCs and Fujitsu FM-TOWNS. It seems that athe sixth chapter called “Merry Go Raund” was also planned for the Sega Mega CD, but it was never released for some reasons. Thanks to Myfishbone we were able to save a promo page about the cancelled Mega CD version, a translation of the main plot and a list of the developers!
As we can read on Wikipedia, Elite is a space shooter / trading game written and developed by David Braben and Ian Bell, originally published by Acornsoft in 1984 for the BBC Micro and Acorn Electron computers. The game’s title derives from one of the player’s goals of raising their combat rating to the exalted heights of “Elite”. Elite was one of the first home computer games to use wireframe 3D graphics with hidden line removal. Another novelty was the inclusion of The Dark Wheel, a novella by Robert Holdstock which influenced new players with insight into the moral and legal codes to which they might aspire.
Despite being ported to virtually every home computer of that time, there is just one version available for a console and that’s Imagineer NES port, released only in Europe in 1991 ( the NES port is considered the best 8-bit version by the authors). However there were various attempts in early nineties to bring this milestone title to other Sega and Nintendo systems.
In fact Nintendo Magazine System issue 9 revealed how Hybrid Technology (developer of the Archimedes version) was developing the ultimate version of Elite using the Super FX chip. However , as Stern correctly noticed, the screenshots in the article were probably taken from the Amiga version. In the next issue ( #10 ) NMS unveiled ( this time for real ) the first official pics for Super Nintendo. Contrary to what they wrote in the previous issue, Elite for SNES wouldn’t utilize the SFX chip and despite that the game was said to have smooth framerate and Mode 6 ( SNES hi-res mode ). Super NES Elite had additions compared to the original title like a “planet buster” bomb and a more console-friendly interface that use icons ( like the NES version ) .
Those two article made clear how Hybrid Technology had yet to found a publisher for their project at the time so that’s likely the reason why it never come out.
Later on , in 1994, Hybrid Technology created two small tech demos as a pitch to port Elite to Genesis / Mega Drive and Game Boy however nothing came out from them. The two tech demos are available on Ian Bell ( Elite co-author ) ‘s website (backup at elitehomepage.org). You can watch two short videos about them below.
Article writteb by Celine, thanks to Steven for the contribution!
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