Martin Konrad has more contributions for U64 on the way: today he has shared two scans from two different german magazines, with screens of the GameGear version of Road Rash 2, which hasn’t been released. As he write in his email “Unfortunately the street isn’t as complex as in Road Rash 1 on GG/SMS. It’s very flat in these screens and with not much detail. But there is something interesting: there’s another motorcycle-game on the GG called “Kawasaki Superbike Challenge” and when you look into the rom-dump, there is a text that says “Road Rash 2 conversion by …”. I haven’t found this out myself, it’s from a post in the SMSpower Forum. I think it’s possible that Road Rash 2 was changed into Kawasaki Superbike Challenge. In Kawasaki SC, the streets does also not have much detail or hills like in these RR2 screenshots (advantage is that the game runs much smoother).”
Thanks a lot to Martin Konrad for these screens and info!
Soulstar was a Mega-CD game created by Core Design, and after its release, two seperate conversions were planned. One was a port to the Jaguar CD, under the same name, whereas the other was an updated version for the 32X, under the name Soulstar X. In the end, neither of them were released.
Although it seems to start out as something completely different, this is a promotional video for Earthworm Jim, mostly focusing on the Mega Drive version. As well as some insight into the design process of the game, it shows a lot of footage from an earlier version of the game. Unfortunately, the way the video has been edited together means that picking apart all the differences between the early version shown and the final game is very difficult, but some parts are clearer than others.
Some of the highlights include:
1:13 – Completely scrapped level, with a suitless Jim wandering around on spikey platforms.
3:40 – Concept art, including a scrapped Psycrow encounter
5:05 – 5:30 – Shows a slightly different HUD (different Atom icon), different opening segment from New Junk City, and different looking segment from What the Heck level
6:09 – 6:30 – Glitchy segment of Who Turned Out the Lights (you can see a giant 10 for some reason) and another completely scrapped level- first shown with Jim alone, then with him fighting Psycrow
Video:
From some beta screenshots that were published in Nintendo Power, we can notice various differences. On the new junk city images the background art design looks different and there’s also a moose head in everyone of them, but those are normally only used to swing from. The wheel monster has a completely different design in the final game. On the screenshots for What The Heck the design looks different and the backgrounds are different in at least one of the screenshots. On the screenshot of For Petes Sake everything about that level is different in the final game: the asteroids, the background, and the ground. Jim’s models also seems to be different maybe even better looking than in the final game. Also, in the last screenshot we can notice a weird looking enemy to the left of Jim which isn’t in the final game.
Also, thanks to Rocketworm.com we can see many concept arts from the development of the game, showing an early design for Intestinal Distress (the falling columns of fat aren’t in the final game, and the idea for the villi was later used in Earthworm Jim 2), early concept art for Buttville and New Junk City (with some gameplay ideas that would’ve probaly been impossible to pull of on a 16 bit console), a concept of a level based off of Bob the Goldfishes world which didn’t make it into the final game and various character designs.
Thanks to Earthwormjim, Lemm and retroguy205 for the contribution!
Rayman is a video game designed and published by Ubisoft. It was originally released in September 1995 for the Atari Jaguar and MS-DOS, and in November 1995 for the Sony PlayStation and Sega Saturn. A port of this game was to be released for the Sega 32X, but when the system died off due to low popularity, the port was canceled. Rayman is a traditional side-scrolling platform game which revolves around the titular character’s quest to save his world from the evil Mr. Dark.
Early in its development, Rayman was going to be about an eleven-year-old boy named Jimmy. Jimmy takes advantage of the realms that he discovers within his computer to create a fantasy world called Hereitscool. When evil invades Hereitscool, Jimmy turns into a superhero named Rayman to save Hereitscool. This idea was scrapped, and Rayman is his own being in his own world in the final version. There were a few comments in the story, such as “Sorry folks, this apparently can’t last. Do you want to play or what?”, but they were cut for the final version.
In these old screens from the back of the box from the Jaguar version, we can see some beta-differences.
beta rayman video: there is no sound and also the life icons are different. The life is in the top middle along with 8 life dots and instead of the orbs count you have a blue guys count but in the final version life count is in top left at the edge of the screen and the blue orbs in the top right rayman can also walk on his hands in this video (not sure about the final version).
Thanks to The_IT_08 and kieranmay for the contributions!
This little-known game appears as a ‘work-in-progress’ in the September 1994 issue of Sega Power, it was developed by DICE (originally for the Amiga) but it doesn’t have a decent description. According to the article, Hardcore was a typical run-and-gun platformer, similar to the Turrican series or Super Star Wars, with many different enemies to destroy. The press release for the game boasted that ‘you are able to shoot almost everything, even if it’s not necessary’. There was also a Mega-CD version to be released, which was to include a driving segment at the end of each level, similar to Batman Returns. Although planned for a November 1994 release, both versions of the game were seemingly cancelled.
Little else is said about the game in the article, which is a common trend for previews in Sega Power… They seem to have spent far more time writing the amusing captions, which you can see in the article scan.
It seems that the original Amiga version of Hardcore only got half-finished. Then they decided to do it on Megadrive instead; the MD cartridge version was 99% finished (just a bug or two in the game logic, and highscores aren’t saved) when Psygnosis decided not to publish it. The MD-CD version did not get very far in development.
Thanks a lot to Repi for the contribution! Thanks to DarkFalzX for the video!
Images:
Thanks to Grzegorz here are some screenshots from when Hardcore was developed for Amiga by Digital Illusion:
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