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Painkiller: Hell Wars [PSP – Cancelled]

Painkiller: Hell Wars is a cancelled FPS that was in development in 2006 by czech studio Mindware Studios (which also developed Painkiller: Overdose and a spiritual successor, Dreamkiller), that would have been published by DreamCatcher Interactive for the PSP. The original Painkiller was released in 2004 for PC and in 2006 a port titled “Hell Wars” was published for the Xbox, but the PSP one would have been different from the other versions. As we can read in a Gamespot preview from E3 2006:

The game’s content appears to be mostly new, with new monsters, weapons, and levels, as opposed to Hell Wars for the Xbox, which was mostly a port of existing PC content.

Sadly Painkiller Hell Wars was never released for the PSP: only few images  and a trailer are available, but the ingame scenes dont seem to be from the PSP version. It’s currently unknown how much of the game was completed before its cancellation.

Thanks to Userdante and Jaxx for the contributions!

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Rat Attack [N64/PSX – Beta]

Rat Attack! is a puzzle / action game developed by Pure Entertainment that was released in 1999 on PlayStation and in 2000 on Nintendo 64. The object of the game is to clear each level of a certain total of rats, without getting hit enough times to lose a life, or ensuring the room wasn’t destroyed, which would also kill you. [Info from Wikipedia]

LavaWave has found some beta Rat Attack screenshot with removed levels , high quality models (instead of the low quality ones in the final game) and a boss stage with the scorpion king totally revamped (probably a target render). Also, the official site of the game surprisingly is still alive since 1998 or so, in which we can read an interesting “the making of rat attack” section.

Thanks a lot to LavaWave for the contribution!

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Knights [XBOX/PS2/GC – Cancelled]

Knights is a cancelled car combat game that was in development by Eden Games for the Xbox, Playstation 2 and GameCube. The project would have been published by Atari but in May 2002 the company was sold to the Infogrames Group and Knights vanished without any traces. In 2003, Eden Games released V-Rally 3 and Kya: Dark Lineage. Only some artworks remain to preserve the existance this car combat project.

Thanks to Hey Hey for the contribution!

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Explodemon [PS3/Wii/PC – Prototype]

Explodemon! is an upcoming 2.5D side scrolling platform game in development by Curve Studios for PlayStation Network, Microsoft Windows and WiiWare. The project is described as “what Treasure would create if they mixed Yoshi’s Island with Half-Life 2”, and is inspired by elements from games as diverse as Street Fighter II, Halo, Super Metroid and Bangai-O.

In the personal blog of Jonathan Biddle, Design Director at Curve Studios, we can read an interesting series of articles about the development of Explodemon!, with images and videos from its early prototypes.  From his blog Jonatahn also released the December 2005 Explodemon proto, that you can download from here. Huge props!

There were always new games concepts bouncing around at Blue, and Jamie had a few, one of which was Exploding Robot 12. Jamie’s concept went something along the lines of humanity’s last hope – a robot that couldn’t stop himself exploding – being sent out to destroy the alien menace that was threatening all of mankind. From what I remember, it wasn’t so much a platform game, as an action puzzler, where you had to navigate sections that you didn’t want to destroy, as well as blow up the enemy spacecraft and whatnot. I always liked the idea, and my recent explosion-based thoughts lead me to wonder if it would translate well to a platform game. I mentioned it to Jamie and he was up for me carrying the idea on. The early builds even had the codename ‘R12’.

For more info on the Explodemondevelopment, check One Bit Beyond!

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For comparison, here’s the trailer from the final game:

 

Escaper [Playstation – Cancelled]

Escaper is a cancelled action / adventure game that was in development in 1997 by Sony (SME) for the original playstation. Players would have been able to create their own super hero, to resolve puzzles and fight enemies. The game was shown at the Tokyo Game Show 1997 and few screenshots were published in old gaming magazines, but we cant find any more info on the project. It seems that Escaper was never released, but it could also be possible that i was released under a different name, at least in Japan. If you recognize this game, please let us know!

Thanks to Celine for the contribution!

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