Beta + Cancelled Sony Video Games - Page 37 of 222

Chi Yong is a cancelled fighting game in development by Lightspeed Productions for the original Playstation in 1996. This is quite an obscure and forgotten project: we can’t even find any detail about its developers. Chi Yong was officially announced in a few websites and gaming magazines in late 1996. It was meant to be a 4 players fighting game game featuring digitized actors, similar to Mortal Kombat. Some of the actors were even the same.

As we can read in an old press release:

MK Actors to Star in New Fighting Game
Martial arts actors used in the Mortal Kombat series are being digitised again for forthcoming title Chi Yong. HoSang Pak, Daniel Pesina, Katalin Zamier, Phillip Ahn and Liz Malecki all featured in various Mortal Kombat incarnations. They have been picked to show off their martial arts prowess for Lightspeed Productions forthcoming beat-’em up.
Chi Yong (a working title which means ‘spirit of the dragon’) is a four-play multi-tap fighting game for PlayStation. Right now it’s about 20 per cent complete and should be available by the end of this year. A spokesperson for the company commented: “Most of the actors digitized are black belts in martial arts. We feel that using real martial artists with experience gives realism and authenticity to the fighting game.”

The story gets even weirder when you find out that the same actors were already planned to be featured in “Thea Realm Fighters”, a cancelled 1 VS 1 fighting game in development by High Voltage Software for the Atari Jaguar (later leaked online). There’s even a TRF promotional poster given away at E3 1995 in which we can read “ⓒ Lightspeed Productions” written in the bottom-left. We don’t know what kind of relationship High Voltage Software had with Lightspeed Productions. We can’t find any more details about who Lightspeed Productions were or what happened to them.

It seems TRF was almost complete in 1996 when Atari cancelled it alongside other upcoming Jaguar projects. We can speculate that its assets (such as the digitized actors) were kept by Lightspeed Productions to develop Chi Yong for Playstation. While the two games used the same characters, Chi Yong was expanded to become a 4 players fighting game, a nice addition for a Mortal Kombat clone.

If you know someone who worked at Lightspeed Productions, please let us know!

Thanks to eSpy for the contribution!

Images:

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

WET 2: Double Feature [Cancelled – PS3, Xbox 360]

monokoma

08-11-2018

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The first Wet was a third person hack n’ slash shooter inspired by grindhouse / exploitation movies, developed by Artificial Mind & Movement (later renamed to Behaviour Interactive) and published by Bethesda Softworks for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in 2009. As described on Wikipedia:

“Wet is an action game that combines shooting and swordplay with acrobatics and gore. The main character, Rubi, carries twin pistols and a sword (she can also carry dual shotguns, submachine guns, or crossbows), and can fire while jumping, sliding on her knees, and running on walls. In some sections of the game, Rubi’s face will get covered in blood and she will go into a murderous, berserker-like rage. These sections are presented in noir style, with bold red, black and white visuals.”

While the game received average reviews and sales, it became a cult-classic for fans of fun action games and grindhouse stories.

In late 2010 Behaviour Interactive officially announced Wet 2 during an interview:

“As part of today’s announcement that the developers of last year’s WET, Artificial Mind & Movement (A2M), would be changing their name to Behaviour, the independent studio has revealed plans to continue the story of Rubi Malone. No formats were discussed, but it is likely that the sequel will follow the original release onto the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 consoles. When discussing the future of ‘triple-A’ productions from the studio in an interview with Develop Online, CEO Remi Racine stated; “I think the triple-A market has become very difficult for independents. I’m not saying we’re avoiding it – of course we’re making a triple-A game with WET 2. But it is a very difficult market. It’s very difficult to be successful with those kinds of games.”

Wet 2 would have follow the same gameplay and grindhouse style of the first game, with new missions and enemies to defeat. The team was able to create some concept art (using placeholder images and photos from popular movies), design documents and an early prototype for Wet 2, but after about a year of development the project was canned.

As noted by Behaviour Interactive’s CEO, around 2010 / 2011 the gaming market was quite difficult for small / medium developers. Many great companies had to closed down during those years and lots of promising games had to be cancelled. Wet 2 was one of these failed ideas: we can speculate it was cancelled for lack of funds or because they thought it would have not sold enough copies to justify its completion

Some images and early HUD tests created for Wet 2 were found online by fans of the original game, and are preserved in the gallery below to remind the existence of this lost project.

After some years working on tien-in games and less successful projects, in the last few years Behaviour Interactive were able to work on such popular games as Fallout Shelter, Dead by Daylight and Star Citizen.

Images:

Playstation 3 (PS3), Sony

SuperBot’s “Rival Schools” [PS3 – Cancelled]

monokoma

08-11-2018

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SuperBot Entertainment was an American studio formed in 2009 by Sony, to work on PSP, PS Vita and Playstation 3 exclusive games such as PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, released on November 2012. Unfortunately after the release of All-Stars Battle Royale, Sony cut ties with the company due to “inadequate sales” of the game. In 2013 SuperBot tried to pitch new IPs and worked on a few different projects, one of which was an untitled fighting game inspired by Capcom’s Rival Schools.

We don’t have many details about this cancelled fighting game: it was never officially announced and only some concept art remain preserved in the gallery below, to remember the existence of this lost game. We can assume that it would have been played more like a traditional fighting game than a Super Smash Bros clone, with high-school protagonists using weapons and special powers. In the end they never found a publisher interested in this project and it was quietly cancelled.

Then SuperBot had to work on “CuddleFish Friends”, an edutainment game for kids published in late 2013 for iOS and Android. Unfortunately this was not enough to keep them alive and soon the company had to close down.

Images:

Leaked, Microsoft, Others, PC / MAC, Playstation 3 (PS3), Sony, Xbox 360

Black Death (Darkworks) [Cancelled – Xbox 360, PS3, PC]

monokoma

31-10-2018

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Black Death is a cancelled FPS / Survival Horror game somehow similar to Condemned and Dead Island, in development by Darkworks around 2011. Darkworks was an independent French studio not widely known by the average gamer, but they released a couple of fan favorite games as Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare (Playstation, Dreamcast and PC) and Cold Fear (PS2, PC and Xbox). Black Death was announced in June 2011, as the team tried to get attention from publishers to find money and resources to fully develop their idea. This was the last project they tried to pitch before closing down after a series of unfortunate failed projects, such as their Onechanbara reboot, State of Crisis and The Deep.

After Ubisoft took away I Am Alive from Darkworks in 2008 to complete it under Ubisoft Shanghai, the team worked on many different prototypes. We can assume at the time the team tough that shooters were the most marketable genre to be greenlighted by publishers, so they conceived a few ones (such as Black Death) with interesting / original features.

Some more details about Black Death were published in the (now removed) official website:

What is Black Death? Black Death is a new survival horror from Darkworks. Black Death is the personification of the fear generated by the recent pandemics and the mistrust which has been associated to their supposed origins (natural apocalypse, scientific, industrial, or military ones… or else… ). Our goal with Black Death is to go one step further by focusing the game on three essential elements: speed, fluidity and freedom of action, to offer the player a sensation of freedom and the possibility to create his own arsenal.
Pitch: Today, The American North East coast, a city is suddenly hit by a massive cloud of smoke. Mysterious swirls of this black smoke appear and infect everybody. This new disease is spreading all over the city making it a place full of sick people sunk into a comatose state. As they mutate into strange creatures with various powers and group behaviours, they start to become violent and invade the whole city. The player is a survivor who will try to stay alive and wipe out this scourge from the city.

Gameplay Experience: THE FOG PLAYS WITH YOU, PLAY WITH THE FOG
Survive in the fog
Be Creative: Create your own chemical weapons and test them on your enemies
Cure or kill infected you meet and choose your fighting strategy
Spectacular: Have fun discovering a unique bestiary, and experiment with multiple weapons and devices
Fight: Fast action, it’s difficult to kill, you must finish on contact
Control the fog
Discover the black death evolution

A playable demo / prototype for Black Death was also released in July 2011 (download backup in here), but it failed to gain much interest from gamers and publishers. With no more money to keep working on their projects, in October 2011 the studio was placed into Compulsory liquidation and was closed. In about 15 years of activity, Darkworks were able to successfully complete and release only 2 games, while all their other projects were either cancelled or moved to different developers. There are already a good number of interesting lost Darkworks games in the Unseen64 archive, but many more still remain unseen and even if we tried multiple times to get in contact with people that worked at the studio, it seems almost impossible to know more about what happened to them or to their cancelled games.

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Videos:

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

Death Monsters [PS3, Xbox 360 – Cancelled]

monokoma

31-10-2018

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Death Monsters is a cancelled horror beat ’em up in development by french studio Birdies Road (formerly Punchers Impact) around 2010 / 2011 for Xbox 360 and PS3. Not many details are available on this lost project: it was quietly announced in early 2011 on some French websites but was soon canned after a playable prototype was completed. The main protagonist could transform himself into a werewolf and levels would have been played as in a side-scrolling game, fighting enemies (zombies, monsters), resolving simple puzzles and jumping around to avoid traps.

Unfortunately it seems their publishers (Mindscape) did not pay the team for a few months, and without money Birdies Road had to close down for bankruptcy in July 2011. Death Monsters was then cancelled and lost forever. Only a few screenshots, artworks and videos from the prototype are preserved below, to remember its existence.

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