Sony

Others, PC / MAC, Playstation, Sony

MDK [PC/PSX – Concept]

U64 Staff & Contributors
14-07-2008
1 Comment

mdk-psx-concept

MDK is a third-person shooter game developed by Shiny Entertainment and released in 1997 by Playmates Interactive Entertainment for the PC, Macintosh, and subsequently PlayStation. MDK’s gameplay is usually a third person shooter, except when sniper mode is entered. As expected, Kurt has a wide range of weapons to choose from, which differ in standard gameplay and sniper mode. [Info from Wikipedia]

Thanks to this old promo video that Chentzilla has uploaded on his Youtube channel, we can see a concept version of MDK, with some differences from the final version:

Video:
 

Others, PC / MAC, Playstation, Saturn, Sega, Sony

Dreadnought (HMS Carnage) [PC PSX Saturn – Cancelled]

monokoma
09-07-2008
4 Comments

HMS Carnage (later renamed to Dreadnought / Dreadnoughts and internally know as Dread0) is a cancelled Victorian steam-punk shooter (with strategy elements) set on the red planet of Mars, that was in development for almost 3 years by the Tribe team at Ocean Software. It was an ambitious project, but only a small playable demo and detailed FMV were finished before Infogrames acquired Ocean in 1998 and decided to kill it some months later.

It seems that the game concept was somehow similar to Warhawk, released in 2007 for the Playstation 3, in which the player is able to use ground and air vehicles, turrets and on-foot weapons to kill their enemies and complete the mission objectives.

HMS Carnage was mainly a PC-CDROM game and the PSX / Saturn ports were an afterthought: the console versions would have been very different  with more action and less strategy.

At the time Ocean had a reputation for producing low quality movie tie-ins but with the much-hyped arrival of CDROM as a gaming format they wanted to develop some really ground breaking games. Ocean rebranded their internal development department as “Tribe”, invested a lot of money, hired a lot of new talent and asked everyone to come up with amazing original concepts huge enough to fill a CDROM.

HMS Carnage was one of the winning concepts, Silver was another (released 4 years later) and the third was a point ‘n click adventure with Hanna-Barbera characters, called “Zoiks” which was also cancelled.

The game kept its “HMS Carnage” title throughout most of the development, while “Dreadnought” was a name thought up by the marketing department towards the end (the development team didn’t much like it). Probably they though it was a more sellable title for a shooter.

Sadly the name-change was not enough to save the game. When Infogrames bought Ocean and review Dreadnought, too much work and money were still needed to complete the project: they thought that it could have been an economic failure and decided to cancel the development. After the cancellation, part of  the Tribe team went to work at Psygnosis.

A preview for HMS Carnage was published in Edge magazine issue 32 (1996), if you are able to scan those pages, please let us know!

Thanks a lot to Maria Ingold, Matt Wood, Julian Holtom for their help in preserving media and info from their lost project!

Thanks to Robert Seddon and Celine for the magazines scans!

Images:

Videos:
 

Microsoft, Playstation 3 (PS3), Sony, Xbox 360

Rock Band [X360/PS3 – Beta]

U64 Staff & Contributors
03-07-2008
4 Comments

Danny33 has wrote a topic in our forum where he makes us notice that in the first build of Rock Band we can see some interesting changes from the final version:

  • Different looking drums and microphone
  • Energy notes look very different
  • Guitar model not made yet
  • Notes look very different
  • During drum fills, sections do not flash.
  • Microphone notes are now blue.
  • Playing notes during the Big Rock Ending do not flash.
  • Welcome to the Jungle was set to be playable, but was removed. (This song later ended up in Guitar Hero 3.)
  • Different looking HUD/s

Also, ForWhomTheBellTolls noticed:

  • Great was replaced with Awesome when getting a streak singing.
  • There is no “You Win” after you beat a song in the final product.
  • The guitarist highway wasn’t blue during the solo like in the finished game, as well as the solo percentage HUD (You put that, but I wanted to add the blue highway portion.

Even in the e3 2007 build we can find some minor differences:

  • Different looking notes
  • It appears that the Stratocaster was smaller.

Thanks to Danny33 for these infos!

In the PAX 2007 version, the notes that filled your overdrive meter were bland and gray instead of glowing. Also, when you engaged your overdrive, the “highway” the notes appeared on would catch on fire and every note you hit would send plumes of smoke and debris off of the sides.

Thanks to Dr. Swank for these infos! 

Playstation 2 (PS2), Sony

Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness [PS2 – Beta]

Gh0stBlade
22-06-2008
5 Comments

tombraiderangelslogo.jpg

The overall result suggested that the development of The Angel of Darkness had been rushed, despite numerous delays prior to its release to possibly improve the final product; difficult-to-overlook plot inconsistencies (or leaps) and frequent continuity errors added to the belief that significant ‘cuts’ were made from the original design. While it was not the first (or last) game to suffer such abridgment, the results were especially jarring and confusing. For example, in the final encounter between Lara and the overall perpetrator, they appear to