Gladiator: Sword of Vengeance is a hack and slash developed by Acclaim for PlayStation 2, Xbox and PC. Early screenshots and footage show many differences, as noticed by Evan Hanley:
#The health bar and magic meter had a very different design. #The health bar and magic meter are not visible for the tutorial in the final game. #Invictus can wield all three weapons (sword, axe and arm blades) but he can only wield the arm blades in the final game. #The select weapon text is different.
#The grab the rope text is different. The button to press to grab is different too. #The camera work is different. #A VC text flashes on screen very briefly. #The arena you enter after using the rope has a completely different design. #The music is very different.
#The music again is different.
The big and very noticeable differences are the Health and Magic Meter HUD is completely different and the Enemy Health Bars are basic.
Agent 9 is a character from the Spyro The Dragon game series, a space monkey that first appeared in Spyro: Year of the Dragon for the original Playstation. Sometimes in 2003 / 2004, Vivendi Universal wanted to use Agent 9 to be the protagonist of his own platform adventure game, out from the Spyro world.
Vivendi asked to Blue Tongue Entertainment to create the initial concept for this new project, in which Agent 9 became a James-Bond-alike spy, but after a series of focus group with kids, they had to redesign the character to make him more “cool” to appeal more to the right audience. Agent 9 became Prime 8, with a more “hip” look and a gameplay that should have been similar to the Ratchet & Clank series. Sadly, even after this redesign, something went wrong during the development and Prime 8 was never released.
The Blue Tongue project was not the only Agent 9 in development: another pitch was asked to Backbone Entertainment. Backbone created a series of concept designs more true to the original character (as seen in Spyro the Dragon). In the end there were at least 2 different “Agent 9” projects, but we can speculate that Vivendi Universal did not like any of them and these games were never finished.
Clarity Jones from Backbone Entertainment wrote:
Prime 8, which was a game we were developing as a spinoff of Spyro The Dragon, actually eventually became Death JR for the PSP. When Prime 8 was cancelled, we still kept messing around with the engine and eventually Death Jr was conceived.
Thanks a lot to Peter Overstreetfor donating his artworks, created for “Agent9 Backbone”!
Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver is a third-person adventure game developed by Crystal Dynamics and published by Eidos. It was released for the PlayStation and PC in 1999 and for the Sega Dreamcast in 2000. Soul Reaver entered development alongside Blood Omen 2: Legacy of Kain in 1997 and focused on puzzle solving instead of Blood Omen 2’s action.
Initially, the game was set to be released October 1998. The secondary release date was then made January 1999. Due to the game still remaining unfinished. It was granted a final delay of approximately 7 months which then, the game went gold in July 1999 and subsequently got released August 1999.
Unfortunately, these delays occurred because the game wasn’t progressing quickly enough in terms of asset creation to fulfill their original vision for Soul Reaver. Several interviews suggested the designers noticed they had an overly designed game thus had no option but to remove certain areas of the game.
Some removed areas are known as:
Under City
“Turel’s Territory”(Must confirm the exact name)
Mountain Retreat
Amy Hennig stated that the development team split the original, much larger plans in two after realizing that they had “over-designed the game”. This decision explains Soul Reaver’s cliffhanger ending and the appearance of originally planned material in later games. Despite the split, Hennig explained that the team left unused components in Soul Reaver’s game engine to avoid unforeseen glitches that might have arisen from their removal. [Infos from Wikipedia] This is why certain reavers are accessible even though they are not actually obtainable on the retail version.
As we can read in this interesting article from The Lost Worlds, many items, weapons and areas were removed / not used in the final game, as the Amplified Force Projectile & Possession abilities, The Amplified Reaver and The Ariel Reaver weapons, Five additional Reaver upgrades and the The Mountain Retreat area. You should check the Lost Worlds article for more informations, it’s really well done!
Blood Bowl is a cancelled sport / action game that was in development by Psygnosis for the original Playstation and PC in 1998. The gameplay could have been something like Speedball or Mutant League Football. The project was stopped when the company went into financial troubles, before being bought out by Sony. It’s interesting to notice that Psygnosis’ Blood Bowl was probably based on the board game of the same name and two other Blood Bowl games were released by other companies in 1995 and 2009.
Wreck’n Krew was an action game that was in development at DarkBlack for the GameCube, Playstation 2 and XBOX. As we can read from the original press release the game was a highly explosive arcade blast fest, that mixed Blast Corps, Power Stone and Bomber Man. The player would had take the role of a team of demolition experts hired to take on dangerous and dirty jobs, to destroy everything in the level but have to complete certain mission-based tasks within a time limit in order to unlock hidden areas, special characters, and the next location waiting to be ripped apart.
It seems that the developers had to closed down, maybe because they did not find a publisher interested in their projects (this game and Asylum) and so Wreck’n Krew was cancelled. (And no, i dont know why one of the characters looks like Gary Coleman.)
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