Sony

Others, PC / MAC, Playstation, Sony

Brains in Planes [PSX PC – Cancelled]

monokoma
22-10-2010
1 Comment

Brains in Planes is a cancelled racing game that was in development by Millennium Interactive, planned to be released for PC and the original Playstation. Only a single image taken from the Alias environment was found by pcloadletter and Celine in Edge magazine 35, from August 1996. Brain in Planes was probably going to play similar to Mario Kart, but with futuristic cartoon craft and the speed of Wipeout, promising more freedom to explore the tracks.

When Sony bought Millennium Interactive in 1997, they became SCE Studios Cambridge and the project vanished forever, maybe because they decided to shift development time and resource to Medievil and Creatures. Its interesting to notice that Brains in Planes was to ship first but only the other two games made it.

Thanks to pcloadletter and Celine for the contributions!

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Playstation, Sony

Breath of Fire 3 [Beta Concept – Playstation]

monokoma
20-10-2010
No Comments

Breath of Fire 3 (III) is a RPG developed by Capcom Production Studio 3 and published in September 1997 (Japan) for the PlayStation. The project went through a lengthy development phase with numerous delays, mostly due to several writing and design changes mid-progress.

Character artist Tatsuya Yoshikawa went through numerous preliminary beta designs for each character, only settling on a finalized set of drawings after many character sprites and portraits were already completed. As a result, some character’s in-game appearances differ from official promotional material, such as child Ryu having a different hairstyle and wardrobe than his final design. [Info from Wikipedia]

In EGM #83 (from June 1996) there was a small article about the initial development of Breath of Fire 3, in which they shown some of the earliest character designs for Ryu and Nina, with a style more similar to Breath of Fire 2’s one.

Early Beta Concept Art:


Final Design:


More concept arts can be found in the Breath of Fire III Memorial Book and other Capcom’s official Art books. Some of these can be seen in the Dragon Tear gallery!

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

Mudkicker [PS1, PC, Saturn – Cancelled]

monokoma
19-10-2010
15 Comments

Mudkicker is a cancelled off-road racing game that was in development in 1995 / 1996 by Scavenger for Playstation and PC (with a rumored Sega Saturn conversion, but it was denied by a former developer). The project was meant to be published by GT Interactive, along with Amok, Scorcher and Into the Shadows, but only the first 2 titles were finished. In January 1997, before Scavenger could complete and deliver the remaining two titles, GT sent Scavenger a letter setting forth notice of “material breaches of the Agreement by Scavenger” and purporting to terminate the development of those games. Because of these problems with their publisher and lack of money, Scavenger had to close down. Mudkicker was never finished and vanished forever with the closure of the studio.

Thanks to Rod_Wod and Celine for the magazine scans!

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Arcade, Others, Playstation, Sony

Bloodlust I.K.3 [Arcade PSX – Cancelled]

monokoma
18-10-2010
7 Comments

Bloodlust (aka International Karate 3) is a cancelled 2D fighting game that was in development in 1995 / 1996 by Atari for the Arcades and Playstation. The original International Karate was a 1985 title released for the ZX Spectrum, MSX, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC and Atari 8-bit family of computers, with a sequel called International Karate + released a year later. It seems that a Bloodlust prototype is in the hands of some collectors, but only few screenshots are preserved in the gallery below.

The arcade version was based on 64MB PC hardware (Cyrix Media GX PC), while the PSX conversion was going to have some graphical limitations. 16 playable characters were planned, that were inspired by RARE’s Killer Instinct.

Thanks to Celine, Ross Sillifant and Daniel Nicaise for the contribution! Scans from EDGE magazine #55

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