Sony

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

Dragonflight: Chronicles of Pern [PC PSX Dreamcast – Beta]

monokoma
05-11-2011
2 Comments

Dragonflight: Chronicles of Pern is an action adventure based on the Dragonriders of Pern book series by Anne McCaffrey, that was in development in 1998 / 1999 by Grolier Interactive for PC and Playstation. Initially the game was going to have a style similar to Diablo, but after a couple of years of development, Dragonflight became an action game with a 3rd person view camera. In june 2000, Grolier Interactive stopped releasing videogames when they were bought by Scholastic.

Grolier Interactive’s game could have been doomed, but it seems that Ubisoft bought their assets, cancelled the Playstation version and moved the Dragonflight to Dreamcast and PC.  In 2001, they finally released this project as Dragon Riders: Chronicles of Pern.

An old interview with Grolier Interactive can still be read at RPG Vault:

Can you provide some details on development progress that has been made over this time?

Oliver Sykes: What people may remember from the previous incarnation of the game is a very isometric viewpoint, a bit like Diablo. One of the major changes in the game is the camera system. We can now script the camera to act very cinematically. It can track with the player, spin round him, drop from above to below. Any number of camera shots can linked to describe a location and the characters in it as well as adding a great deal of fluidity.

Could you explain the level of depth and interaction we can expect from NPCs? What kind of a conversation system is there?

Oliver Sykes: The conversation system is fairly linear in most places. This choice was employed as we have such a vast number of characters to converse with, the conversation choices would have gave our scripters headaches. However, at key moments during the game you can make choices and these choices will effect the outcome of events. One choice could give you bonuses and unlock new locations and characters, whereas another may lead you down an entirely different path with different consequences.

Thanks to Celine for the scans!

Images:

Videos:

Videos from the final version:

 

Playstation, Sony

Tomorrow Never Dies [Beta – Playstation]

U64 Staff & Contributors
26-10-2011
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Tomorrow Never Dies was developed by Black Ops and then published in 1999 by Electronic Arts. On release, it was immediately compared to Goldeneye on the N64. One of the main criticisms was the lack of multiplayer, with only 10 single player missions making up the game. Yet, in the game’s content, there is an image of the beta multiplayer loading screen, so there were plans for it at some point, but abandoned before release.

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One of the loading screens also shows a level set on the HMS Devonshire, which was in the movie but cut from the game.

There is speculation that other unused beta content may have survived from an earlier, cancelled game called Tomorrow Never Dies: The Mission Continues:

The original VHS release of Tomorrow Never Dies featured a brief trailer with Desmond Llewelyn which highlighted a game that would “start where the film ends.” Footage shows bond skiing, scuba diving and driving in third person and on a first person shooting mission. The game was to come out on Playstation and PC in the fall of 1998 and was being made by MGM Interactive, not EA; EA was not involved in Bond until November of that year.

A Tomorrow Never Dies game was finally released on November 16th 1999, distributed by EA, but with notably differences from the 1998 attempt. The game was a third person shooter with the scuba diving level nowhere to be found. But perhaps the most glaring difference was the fact that the story now followed the plot of the film, not the continuation that had been promised.

A level in the game sees Bond skiing down a mountain and killing a Japanese terrorist named Sotoshi Isagura (who had featured very briefly in the film), while on another stage Bond has a driving mission in Switzerland. These were not from the film and may have survived from the ‘continuation’ story.

Article by Edward Kirk, source: Wikipedia 

Playstation 2 (PS2), PSP, Sony

Shaolin Streets [PS2 / PSP – Cancelled]

monokoma
24-10-2011
1 Comment

Shaolin Streets is a cancelled beat ’em up that was in development in 2005 by Jailed Games for the Playstation 2 and PSP, before it was canned and reworked for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. A playable beta version of Shaolin Streets was somehow leaked online, so you can have a look at the videos below, to have a better idea about how the game would have been played. Sadly, even the Xbox 360 / PS3 versions of Shaolin Streets were cancelled and it seems that Jailed Games had to close down for economic issues.

Videos by MaximumRD:

 

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

LA Noire [Beta / Cut Content – PS3 / Xbox 360]

U64 Staff & Contributors
16-10-2011
No Comments

LA Noire is a third person action / investigation game developed by Team Bondi and published by Rockstar in 2011. In an interview with Brendan McNamara, we can read that the game was going to have a desk where you would have to deal with burglaries and fraud – the desk was known as Bunko and Burglary. The entire desk had about eleven cases, all of which were cut due to the fact that the cases couldn’t fit on entire blue ray disk. Quoting McNamara from another article:

“We had a Bunko and Burglary desk – bunko is fraud and burglary is just people robbing houses and stuff – we had eleven full cases for that, which we wrote and did the design for to a certain extent – we even did the art for them too, but it just got to a point where we were never going to fit it on one Blu-ray,”

Evidence of the Burglary desk can be found in the game, such as at the beginning of the homicide desk, where the captain of homicide greets Cole Phelps after he earned a promotion from burglary. It’s also implied during the case Manifest Destiny that Harold Caldwell was Cole’s partner for that desk. Dialog implies that Harold Caldwell knows Cole Phelps – again implying that burglary was going too planned for LA Noire.

Finally, there was also a type of Mini-game (that was also cut) where the player could have made a captain angry. The player and assigned partner would have to complete certain crimes (car chases, shootings, etc) in order to get another case from the captain. Quoting the article

 “There was a kind of system where if you failed a case your captain would scream at you and you’d go out and do hot car chases or smaller robberies and muggings and all that kind of stuff in the world”

“You’d have to do enough of them to get to a point where you get offered another case, but as I said that got cut because I thought it was too much of a distraction.”

If there is any concept art from the cut desk, please share it here so we can add it to the article!

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