Airs Adventure is a RPG developed by Game Studio in 1995 / 1996 for the Saturn. The game use a mix of pre-rendered characters and polygon backgrounds: even if the game is not that good, it has an interesting look at least. Celine was able to find an old news about this game (from Cd Consoles magazine #8), when it was still called “Sega Adventure”, in which they show a pre-rendered dragon that probably looks much better than anything in the final game.
We can assume that this shot was took from a tech demo or a target render. You can compare the scan with the video below, from the final version of the game.
Converse Hardcore Hoops (also know as Converse City Ball Tour) is a cancelled basketball game that was in development by Virgin Interactive Entertainment for the Genesis / Mega Drive, Super Nintendo, Playstation and Saturn. It was based on street basketball and there were 10 cities in which to play in 3vs3 half court matches. Converse Hardcore Hoops was shown at E3 1995 but after a while it vanished from release lists and it was never released on any console.
It’s unknown if the project was somehow connected to the Converse brand of shoes or why the game was cancelled. Celine was able to find some screens from magazines GamePro #72 and CD Consoles #8.
Burning Fist (also known as Force Striker in its early alpha build) is a cancelled fighting game that was in development in 1994 by Sega of Japan for the Mega CD. As we can read at Sega Base, both the Force Striker alpha and the Burning Fists beta were leaked rom a former SoJ employee and sold on eBay some years ago. Burning Fist was never officially released, but in 2006 those alpha / beta builds were re-sold to Good Deal Games.
GDG worked in collaboration with J2 Games to finish Burning Fist and published it in their online shop. In an interview that Sega 16 had with GDG’s Michael Thomasson we read that
The game was about 80% complete. It was missing the final boss, the full-motion video was running at about four frames per second, had several bugs, the menu system was corrupt, and the one-player computer artificial intelligence was quite, well, stupid. We were able to get the FMV running at a respectable rate […]. We also completely reworked the menu system. We made the artificial intelligence on the one-player game a decent opponent.
In the gallery below you can check some screenshots from the game and a scan that Celine found in EGM #49.
Mega Man 8, known as Rockman 8: Metal Heroes in Japan, is the eighth installment in original Capcom’s Mega Man series, and was originally released in Japan on the Sony PlayStation on December 1996. The following year, Mega Man 8 saw a release on the Sega Saturn and was localized for both consoles in North America and the PlayStation in PAL regions. Director Hayato Kaji revealed that he initially designed Duo as robot created by the Mega Man 4 character Dr. Cossack. When it was decided that Duo would instead come from outerspace, his appearance changed but still retained remnants of Russian traits, such as his headware. [Info from Wikipedia]
Thanks to Proto1, we found out that MegaphilX uploaded an interesting video from a Mega Man 8 beta in his Youtube Channel.
Everything is practically unused in the footage. The background, the effects, no bolt item, Mega Man’s got a strange running animation and towards the end of the video, you can see early footage of the stage select screen. The bosses have not been made yet, so their Metools act as their temporary icons. Also, a sprite of Duo appears here as well, something that isn’t in the final at all.
– Completely unused BGM – The background for the stage is unused and unfinished. – Mega Man has an odd running animation. He’s very stiff in comparison to his final running animation – His color when using the MegaBall is Green and Yellow instead of Pink and purple. – Enemies appear at places they don’t usually in the final. – Big yellow blocks have a blue streak through them. In final, they’re solid yellow. – at one point in these videos, there’s an elevator lift moving downwards. In the final, elevators never go down, only up. – No enemies in elevator portions. – No hit detection with Whale Airship enemies. – Bolt items weren’t implemented yet – Beginning at 5:04 in this video, you can catch a quick glimpse at a work-in-progress stage select. Mettools represent stages under construction, and the Duo character is shown as the boss for the Island stage. Duo isn’t a boss in the Island stage, so perhaps he was in this particular build. – Also at the stage select, Tengu Man’s mugshot appears on the top right column where Frost Man should be. In the final, he’s on the top left.
Thanks to Proto1 for the contribution!
Videos:
For comparision, here’s the final frost man stage:
Here’s an update showing the beta in more detail by DeGamer (aka Henger83)
Two more additional stages in this version seen above are covered here by JosephCollins
An even later beta build with many more differences can be seen in action here:
A platform game based on the Popeye character was in development by Technos Japan for the Genesis / Mega Drive, but in the end this project was cancelled. A Super Nintendo Popeye game was also developed and released in 1994 by Technos, but the sprite of the main character is much different from the one seen in the few Genesis / MD screens, so we can assume that these are 2 different games. As far as we know, Popeye for the Genesis / MD was never released in any territory.
Thanks to Celine and John Doom for the contribution! Scans from Console Mania #28, Game Fun #94 and Mean Machine #17
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