Stunt Squad was the original title for AirBlade, a futuristic extreme sports game developed by Criterion Games and published in november 2001 by Namco for the Playstation 2, as a spiritual successor to the Dreamcast game Trickstyle. Pcloadletter found some beta images from the game in Edge 86 (July 2000), in whic Stunt Squad / Airblade looked a lot different from the final version.
Airblade Beta:
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Thanks to pcloadletter for the contribution!
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Going Gnome was a prototype that was created in 2004 at SCEA for the Playstation 2. There are not many informations on this project, but from the few screenshots available we can speculate that it was going to be an adventure / puzzle game. Going Gnome was never released, probably cancelled for some economic reasons.
Thanks to Hey Hey for the contribution!
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Splash Dive is a cancelled action adventure game similar to Ecco the Dolphin, that was in development in 1999 by SCEI for the Playstation 2. The project was meant to be one of the first PS2 launch titles and it was even featured in the early console tech demos but something went wrong during the development and in the end Splash Dive was never released. From IGN we can read an interview with Splash Dive’s producer Kaoru Hagiwara:
HPPS2EX: First of all, what kind of game is Splash Dive?
KH: If you look at the screenshots, I think you’ll understand that its a game about the ocean featuring dolphins. We’re selling it as an action game. Not action-adventure, action. Players control the dolphin and try and make friends with other dolphins. Swimming at full speed, jumping above the water: I think it will have a refreshing sense of action to it. When you talk about games and the sea, adventure and simulations come to mind. There have been lots of games that feature floating or searching for fish, so we thought, “How can we create a new, refreshing kind of action?”
HPPS2EX: I see. The basic objective of the game is to become good friends with other dolphins, but what exactly do you do to accomplish this?
KH:The key will be what the player does, but the excitement of discovering what to do, is something that I would like to keep quiet.
HPPS2EX: In Splash Dive, you will be able to enjoy dolphins and their form of communication, right?
KH: Dolphins, have their own form of communication, which is very different from humans. One type is voice. Kind of like “Dolphinese.” We’re trying to put in all of these into the game as best as we can. We don’t want to have a dolphin specialist look at the game and say “That’s not right!” Therefore, we’re really working on the dolphins’ appearance and the way they sound.
Thanks to Celine for the contribution! If you are able to find that old Spash Dive video, let us know!
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Pterosaur: Dawn of Destruction is a cancelled platform / action game that was in development at Atomic Planet in 2002, for the GameCube, Playstation 2 and Xbox. In the game the player would had used a Pterosaur (a flying reptile) to lead your fellow dinosaurs to safety, or see them condemned to extinction, while the world was coming to an end.
To do that, you had to learn to recognise the most vulnerable dinosaurs and how they behave, to be able to save them. While bigger dino-predators were searching for the weaker dinos to eat, they could have been lured away or defeated in an open battle. The scenario could have been explored to find hidden paths, with the help of friendly dinosaurs that cleared the way.
The Pterosaur project was never released for unknow reasons, but we can speculate that the gameplay was not that much fun and Atomic Planet was not able to find any publisher interested in the game. On the 25th of February 2009 Atomic Planet went into administration after a number of redundancies and the offices were closed: maybe a playable demo of Pterosaur: Dawn of Destruction could be leaked sooner or later.
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Killzone is a FPS developed by Guerrilla Games (known as Lost Boys before) and released in 2004 for the PlayStation 2. It seems that the project was originally planned to be a Playstation 1 shooter titled “Kin”, but after Sony saw their tech demo in 1999, they asked to Guerrilla to switch it to the new console. Below you can see the original Kin / Killzone pitch video, that Lost Boys created 5 years before the final release. This footage was shown at the GDC Europe in August 2010 during a keynote by Hermen Hulst, Managing Director of Guerilla Games. As you can notice, the game and the characters looked a lot different, but we are not sure if the video was still related to the PSX project or it was already changed into a PS2 title.
Thanks to Unclejun for the video (from the Killzone Collector’s Edition) and to Killzone for the link to the GDC Europe article!
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