Sega

Monster Hunter [MD/G – Cancelled]

The Menacer is a wireless lightgun created by Sega for the Sega Mega Drive / Genesis in 1992, as a response to the Super Scope by Nintendo. Sega and third-party developers did not develop many games for the Menacer and one of these projects, know as “Monster Hunter”, was cancelled before being finished.

In Monster Hunter the story involves the player as a premier big game hunter, in search of the ultimate catch. The scenarios range from safari lands to exotic ranges not from our world

There are not many info or media remained for this game, but Celine was able to find a screenshot of MH in EGM #51.

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Road Riot 4WD [MD/G – Cancelled]

A Genesis / Mega Drive version of Road Riot 4WD was in development at Tengen in 1993, but it was later cancelled. The game is an arcade racing game somehow similar to Mario Kart. A SNES (1992) and an Arcade (1991) versions do exist, but while the SNES version doesnt look that good, the Genesis one seems to have been graphically more similar to the Arcade game. It’s currently unknown if the canned game would have had new tracks. Some images were found in Joypad magazine #7, EGM # 40 and # 41!

Thanks to Celine for the contribution!

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Interplanetary Lizards [MD/G – Cancelled]

Interplanetary Lizards is an action game that was in development by Tengen for the Sega Genesis / Mega Drive. In may 2009, Rod_Wod from the Assembler Forum shared various scans from old gaming magazines, and in one of these images we can see a screenshot from IL. The game was cancelled for unknown reasons.

Second screenshot from GameFan 2-3. Thanks to RetroGameFan9000 for the contribution!

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Mega Man X4 [PSX/Saturn – Beta / Unused Sprites]

Mega Man X4 (aka Rockman X4 in Japan) is the fourth game in the Mega Man X series, released for the Sega Saturn and PlayStation in July 1997. Kei was able to find an old preview/trailer of the game from an equally old April 1997 Multiple Option CFC (Capcom Friendly Club) Style videotape from Japan. As Kei has wrote in the U64 Forum:

While this preview may not include much immediate beta/pre-release differences, there is one particularly noticeable element that can be heard in this video. For one, X sounds completely different as you see him jump and shooting out charged buster shots in the video; we’re talking about a pre-release video of the Japanese version here. Apparently, he had a different voice actor, as he sounds like a girl, much like he does in the English final version of RMX4. Zero also sounds slightly different as well, his Saber slashes are odd too.

Also, Bowserenemy and Protodude noticed some more differences in the same beta trailer:

Enemies are in different spots; Zero’s missing a few frames in his mid-air slar, and the hit detection is a bit off here and there. […] it’s the same as the third slash in his 3 hit combo, so just compare the two.

Hidden in the game’s code, Ace Spark from The Mechanical Maniacs has found some unused animation frames for Double, that could be from removed dialogue sequences [UPDATE: The running animation for Double is actually used in the game, but you only see it for a split second after you select a stage in the game. Thanks to OKei!]. An unused mugshot is in there too.

MMX4mys-doubleMMX4mys-mug

Some beta screenshots are available too, in which we can notice that the intro stage had a drill enemy in the beta, that was removed from the final game. When the place starts blowing up there are even more drill enemies. You can read more info on the beta at The Mechanical Maniacs!

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An even later beta build than the one above with many more differences can be seen below:
 

Monika no Shiro (Faradoon) [Saturn – Cancelled]

Originally titled “Faradoon: The Legend of Dragon Castle”, Monika No Shiro (Monika’s Castle) is a cancelled RPG that was in development for the Sega Saturn in 1996 / 1997, by Pioneer LDC. The game could have been almost completed, as they had a final box art and various ads on magazines, but for some reasons it was never released in the end.

It seems that a playable demo of Monika No Shiro was available at the Tokyo Game Show 1997 (?). Thanks to Raizing from Sega Saturno we can take a look at a trailer and many images from the game! You can find more info on the  game (in spanish) in the Sega Saturno Forum.

Thanks to Celine for the contribution and to Rod_Wod for one of the scans!

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