Patapon is a music / strategy game developed by Pyramid and produced by Japan Studios, presented in a cartoonish, silhouetted two-dimensional environment designed by Rolito, and features the player acting as a deity who commands an army of caricatured miniature tribal creatures by beating traditional talking drums. Patapon was released in Japan in december 2007, but when the beta version was first shown at E3 2007, it had some interesting differences. As we can read from the description of the beta video uploaded on Youtube by Nymo:
This is an EARLY version of the game and thus different aspects in this video, like (lack of) music, text, interface, additional units, characters, etc. does not represent the final game.
In the beta version of the Mine Tree mini-game, the tree says “Listen to my song god dammit!!!” but in the final version he says “bon bon bo bon here goes” before the mini game starts. Check the beta video below and compare it to the one from the final game.
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:
Test Drive Cycles is a cancelled motorcycle racing game that was in development in 1998 / 1999 by Accolade’s San Jose studios, the same studio responsible for Test Drive Off-Road 2 and 3. Infogrames wanted to expand their Test Drive series (Test Drive, Test Drive Off-Road, Test Drive Rally and Test Drive Le Mans) to focus solely on motorcycles with licensed manufacturers such as Harley Davidson, BMW, Moto Guzzi, and Bimota, but in the end the project was never released.
Up to two players can go head-to-head on 12 tracks from locations all over the world, including the streets of Washington DC, the beaches of Bali, the canyons of Utah, the Alps, Amsterdam, Hong Kong, the French Riviera and even the historic site of Mount Rushmore in South Dakota.
Players choose from three game modes: Quick Race, Championship and Head-to-Head (two players). In addition to five opponents racing to win the cup, players must also deal with traffic, oil slicks and unpredictable weather conditions. Smashing through certain obstacles will open up new track paths and shortcuts, while trophies, new bikes and upgrades are won along the way. Infogrames even went the extra mile to get the licenses for real manufacturer upgrades, giving each bike its own upgrade pack.
According to some sources within the studio, a major setback occurred when the lead programmer left the team. Coupled with Infogrames’ desire to close the studio, TDC was forever cancelled.
A Dreamcast version of Test Drive Cycles was cancelled too, while GameBoy Color and PC versions were released in 2000.
As we can read on Wikipedia, Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep is an action RPG developed and published by Square Enix for the PSP. The game was released in Japan on January 2010 and it is planned to be released in North America and in Europe on September 2010. Development of the game began in June 2005 and was originally intended for the PlayStation 2 with Sora as the prototype protagonist of the game.
Birth by Sleep was developed by Square Enix’s fifth Product Development Division, based in Osaka, the same team behind Kingdom Hearts Re: Chain of Memories, and uses the same graphical engine as Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII.
The plot was completed for the PS2, but development was halted six months after it began due to development of Re: Chain of Memories. The development team changed the platform to the PlayStation Portable so as to make use of the PSP’s functions such as co-operative and competitive multiplayer gameplay.
In August 2009, new Famitsu scans revealed a revamped User Interface (having been revamped twice before) as well as new worlds after a lack of news for close to a year.
As posted by Granville in our U64 Forum, hidden in the final game’s code there is a very cool secret world that was cut, but that you can still access via hacking! It’s a world based off the classic movie The Jungle Book.
The first area is in the Monkey Temple of the orangutan Louie. The other areas are your basic jungle type areas, although they are all clearly incomplete and lack a lot of their texture work. I’d say the Temple is the only complete area. The only way to access these areas is via hacks, they were never used in the main game and no images were shown in prerelease photos. It’s a pretty interesting find actually. A hack hasn’t been released yet, but i imagine it will soon.
On Youtube we can also see a video of Keytotruth, who managed to hack his/her way into the data and play around in it.
Chrono Cross is a RPG developed and published in 1999 by Squaresoft for the original PlayStation. As we can read on Wikipedia, Square began planning Chrono Cross immediately after the release of Xenogears in 1998. Chrono Trigger’s scenario director Masato Kato had brainstormed ideas for a sequel as early as 1996, following the release of Radical Dreamers.
Developers brainstormed traits and archetypes during the character-creation process, originally planning 64 characters with unique endings that could vary in three different ways per character. As production continued, the length of Cross increased, leading the event team to reduce the number of characters to 45 and scrap most of the alternate endings.
More info about the Chrono Cross beta can be found in the Chrono Compendium:
Before the official release of Chrono Cross, Square Enix marketed a PlayStation release of Chrono Trigger and attached a demo of the game to it and Legend of Mana.[…] This demo has allowed a short look into the late stages of the development of Chrono Cross, offering a few prizes such as a scrapped facial portrait of Kid and missing playable characters.
Serge’s Swallow is tinted green and looks like the Mastermune.
Once the Fort Dragonia sequence is concluded, Serge wakes up in Arni and is instructed to find Leena as usual. Una has no portrait, hampering the suggestion that she was once planned to be a playable character.
The most glaring difference is the presence of a seemingly new character in Pierre’s slot. Since Pierre’s dialogue icon was already in its final state, it’s probable that this was an earlier design for Pierre.
There’s a different Viper Manor Study window.
There’s a different Lucca drawing.
Yasuyuki Honne is the artist of the Chrono series, and made some background art that was never used in the final game.
There’s also an incomplete debug room in the beta demo and some unused characters can be seen in the Chrono Cross artbook.
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