Sega

Saffire Young Olympians [GC – Tech Demo / Proto]

Originally announced as an adventure game, “Young Olympians” (also known as Saffire, from the name of the developers) was one of the first games shown for the “Project Dolphin” console, today known as the Nintendo GameCube.  After the original announcement the game disappeared,  it was postponed several times and then it was back in the form of a fighting game with RPG elements, but then it vanished again for months until it was finally changed into Barbarian, an hack ‘n’ slash released for GameCube, PS2 and XBOX. This is approximately the troubled development of Young Holympians. The Saffire team had some fame because of their tech demos for the Dolphin, with impressive graphics for their time, but once released, as it happened with Young Olympians, the gameplay proved to be somewhat disappointing and even the graphic was not that good. Of course this tech demo remains one of the most interesting piece of the GameCube development history.

italian_flag.jpg [spoiler /Clicca qui per la versione in Italiano/ /Nascondi la versione in Italiano/]Annunciato sotto forma di adventure game, questo Young Olympians (conosciuto anche come Saffire, nome del gruppo di sviluppatori) fu uno dei primi giochi esibiti per il “Project Dolphin”, ormai noto come GameCube. In seguito scomparse per qualche tempo, tornò alla luce in forma di Fighting Game con elementi RPG, poi di nuovo disperso per mesi, fino a quando si trasformò in Barbarian, uscito finalmente per GameCube, PS2 e XBOX. Questa all’incirca la travagliata storia dello sviluppo del gioco. Il team Saffire, fece parlare molto di sé nell’ambito Nintendo, a causa di queste loro tech demo, dalla grafica impressionante per il periodo, che fecero fantasticare alle potenzialità del successore dell’N64. Ma una volta usciti, come questo Young Olympians, si rivelarono piuttosto deludenti. Di “Saffire” non rimane altro che l’interesse come vera e propria beta leggendaria.[/spoiler]

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Picassio [Cancelled – PS2, GameCube, Dreamcast]

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Picassio was a stealth / thief game that was in development at Promethean Designs, in which the player would have had to steal artworks  to “win” a bet with another thief. The project had a long development cycle: it started as a Dreamcast game, then it was postponed and passed through PS2 and GameCube. In all that time the only playable build that was made was a very basic one, and is the one  that you can see in the video below: basically the character creeping about and some very basic AI. Most of the gameplay ideas did not get implemented at all. It seems that they started the game with a man protagonist in mind, but in later screens we can see a woman as the main character, so it could have been changed to appeal more to the young public.

The project got radically changed halfway through development when the company boss saw the then newly released Shenmue and basically decided to copy it. Picassio then turned into a half adventure, half stealth type game but didn’t get any further than some character/level designs before getting canned. The company fell into severe financial difficulty and employees weren’t being paid for months. Subsequently they all left to work elsewhere and Promethean Designs went bust.

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Videos:

Picassio Beta Trailer

 

Virtua Hamster [Sega 32X – Cancelled]

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Virtua Hamster is an unreleased racing game that was in development for Sega’s 32x, designed and produced by Eric Quakenbush. The player would have controlled a series of rodents on wheels, to race in 3D mazes, trying to avoid an huge Mechanical Snake. The project was cancelled when Sega discontinued the 32X before production could be completed. Some playable prototypes of the game still exist and they were sold in various auctions on ebay. An early alpha of Virtua Hamster was finally released in August 2009 by SEGASaturno.

The game was  later ported to Saturn but cancelled again when the game was almost complete. Sega still owed payments to the developer of Virtua Hamster, David A. Palmer Productions. David A. Palmer revealed to Unseen64 that “the entire intellectual property of this game and code” was signed over to his company as part of a legal settlement.

As we can read from the original pre-production design document:

High Concept: A maze game in which the player assumes the role of a rocket-powered hamster test pilot who must navigate a gigantic habitrail from hell in order to thwart the plans of an evil scientist and regain his rodent freedom.

Hook: The look and fast paced action of Virtua Racing and Virtua Fighter combined with an amusing puzzle strategy game and an unlikely group of heroes and enemies.

Setting: The majority of the game takes place in a mad scientists lab facility. The scientist has assembled a truly humongus habitrail-type maze in order to test his rocket powered rodent experiments.

Characters: Player One is a test pilot hamster from a rival lab and was stolen by the mad scientist. Player One’s goal is to retrieve all of the stolen blue-print pieces and escape from the lab. The hamster pilot has to navigate the complicated maze as well as fend off evil rocket riding rodents, a mechanical snake, and the scientists voracious cat.

Thanks to Ryan Jacques and David A. Palmer for the contribution!

You can read more info on Virtual Hamster at Sega 16.

Disclaimer: We are not responsible for any content of any website we have linked to.

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Scan from SEGA Visions - May 1995

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Barbie Super Model [GG – Unreleased]

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[ENG] This entry in the archive does no have a description yet. If you want to add some info about the beta stuff that you can see in these images, just write a comment or send us an email! We’ll add your info in the page. Thanks a lot for your contribute! :) [ITA] Questa pagina dell’archivio non ha ancora una descrizione. Se conosci bene questo gioco e riconosci le differenze delle immagini beta rispetto alla versione finale, lasciaci un commento o mandaci una email! Inseriremo le tue informazioni nella pagina. Grazie per il tuo aiuto! :)

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Thanks a lot to SMS Power for the contribute! 

Pac-In-Time [GG – Unreleased]

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[ENG] This entry in the archive does no have a description yet. If you want to add some info about the beta stuff that you can see in these images, just write a comment or send us an email! We’ll add your info in the page. Thanks a lot for your contribute! :) [ITA] Questa pagina dell’archivio non ha ancora una descrizione. Se conosci bene questo gioco e riconosci le differenze delle immagini beta rispetto alla versione finale, lasciaci un commento o mandaci una email! Inseriremo le tue informazioni nella pagina. Grazie per il tuo aiuto! :)

Images:

Thanks a lot to SMS Power for the contribute!