Saga Darvulia has found an old magazine with an article about a misterious action RPG called “Midland”, that was in development by “Future Soft” (??) sometime in 1996. From the look of the only screen available, the game should have probably been for the Playstation or Saturn. There are basically no other info on this project, so we can assume that it was cancelled, but it could also be possible that it was relased under a different name in Japan. If someone recognize this game, please let us know!
Dyno Blaze is a cancelled beat ’em up that was in development by Bonsai Entertainment for the Genesis / Mega Drive, Mega CD and 3DO in 1994 and it would have been published by Virgin. A playable prototype of the game was somehow leaked online in 2008, in which you can try a series of (almost empty) levels where to move your rollerblade-dinosaur to fight enemies with an hockey stick. The levels are incomplete and bugged but it’s possible to go trought them waiting for a bit at the end of the area and pressing the jump button.
The original press release for the game:
Today, Virgin Interactive Entertainment and Bonsai Entertainment Corporation signed a multi-SKU development contract for DYNOBLAZE®, an original game for SEGA CD and SEGA GENESIS.
Bonsai Entertainment will develop the original game based upon designs previously developed. “It’s a game about ‘Teenage Mutant Ninga Dinosaurs’, that play street hockey on the streets of New York”, said Joseph Moses, President of Bonsai Entertainment. He added, “Teaming up with Virgin, already a key player in this industry, is a major step for Bonsai. We intend to make them very proud.”
“DynoBlaze” is scheduled for Christmas 1995 release across multiple platforms.
A weird Dyno Blaze proto was seen at the Video Game History 2008 expo in Monza (Italy), organized by our friends at Games Collection. In the VGH2K8 proto you can just see a rolling demo of the game’s menu (without any gameplay) and a strange graph for a medicine know as “Lotensin” by CibaGeneva pharmaceuticals. We dont have any clue about what this all means, so if you have a good explanation feel free to share it!
The 3DO version was in development by Alexandria Inc but sadly after some months of work the lead background artist died from an illness and the game was soon canceled not long after. The 3DO port had better graphic (as you can see from the scans below, found by Celine in Game Fan #95 and Cd Consoles magazines) and animations, almost like a cartoon.
Thanks to Jean-François Thébé and Scott Rogers for the contributions!
Beyond Oasis (aka Story of Thor in Japan/Europe) is an action rpg developed by Ancient and published by SEGA in 1994.
Alert reader Servbot01 found a beta version of the game (check the video below):
It’s a strange version of Beyond Oasis for Mega Drive/Genesis, probably an early beta. It comes on an old Smash Pack collection for Dreamcast. Features a new enemy (it shows blood when defeated), new (but locked) items like a spear, a teleport system, different music, and other things.
The beta is freely available on the internet. Also, there are some sound effects from Streets of Rage (Yuzo koshiro scored both games).
It’s a very interesting build, so let’s have a little look at the most important changes:
The three different title screens. The EUR version is the same as the japanese one (minus the ideograms of course)
Interestingly, the final debug shows 28 areas compared to the 27 of the beta build.
The spear was completely removed from the final game. Unfortunately it’s just an icon, we can’t use it in the beta.
The guy with the horns is nowhere to be found in the final version.
In the beta we can find some random items in the field. Probably they are there just for testing purposes.
In the beta every building lacks a door and we can’t talk to anyone.
I wonder why they changed the position of this character.
Originally the elder was outside his house. Probably he was there just because the developers were still creating the inside of the building.
In the final version they added a fire and some enemies near the bridge.
Some small changes to the area around the bidge.
In the final version there is a trap room where we have to jump over waves. In the beta this room is still empty.
In the final room of the beta temple the water spirit is nowhere to be found.
No door and no siren statues in the upper floor of the royal palace.
The village is still empty and it lacks some objects
The beach
The mountain
The marshes
The castle on the summit of the mountain became much bigger in the final version. They added an elegant set of stairs too.
Now the sky looks much more realistic with those nice clouds.
I wonder why they changed the sea, in the beta it looks much better. Maybe the developers encountered some technical issues when they were testing the enemies in the water ?
The crater
As always, if you know more about this beta let us know!
B-Bomb is an unreleased action game that was in development by Sega in 1993 for the Genesis / Mega Drive, in which players had to fight enemies using their characters’ butts (yeah, really) in 5 worlds. There was meant to be a 2 player mode to cooperate against the CPU. The concept could have been fun, but something went wrong during the development and the project was cancelled.
The Simpsons: Virtual Bart was released for the Super NES and Mega Drive / Genesis in 1994 by Acclaim. KeijiDragon (Kei) has recored some videos from an interesting prototype of the game, that is somewhat different from the final version. You can check the annotations in the videos for more details:
Japanese Super Famicom (the Japanese Super Nintendo) pre-release prototype of The Simpsons: Virtual Bart game. Why is it Japanese? The ROM header states that it’s “run” on Japanese systems, or something like that. There are lots of differences in this prototype that are between large and small, and this video goes into detail what’s in the prototype.
Thanks a lot to KeijiDragon / Kei for the contribution!
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