Battle Arena Toshinden is a fighting game developed by Tamsoft and originally published by Takara in 1995 for Playstation.
In 2007, AssemblerGames unearthed a video of a pre-release build of the game, which serves as evidence of numerous cuts and changes that took place during the course of development:
Witchwood is a cancelled action adventure game that was in development from 1994 to 1996 by Team 17, the studio best known for the Worms series. The game would have been published by Ocean for Amiga and PC, but in 1995 moved to PC, Playstation, Saturn, and Jaguar. As noted by Hallfiry of the Betaarchive Forum, while working on Witchwood, Team 17 was also developing Speris Legacy; another action adventure similar to the Legend of Zelda games that was released on Amiga in 1996.
The reason for the project’s termination is as of yet unknown. One possibility is that Team 17’s publishing partner, Ocean, elected to drop the game’s funding in light of Speris’ apparently lacklustre sales; rather than risk making another loss.
Despite the game’s cancellation, its soundtrack was released by Team17 composer, Bjørn Lynne, in 1996, and a playable demo of Witchwood was leaked online some years ago: you can download it from Kult Game.
Thanks to Tom Barker for the contribution!
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The original Medal of Honor was developed by DreamWorks Interactive and published by Electronic Arts for PlayStation in 1999. However, the project started life in late 1997, when Steven Spielberg pitched an idea for a new WW2 era first person shooter to DWI. When you complete all the missions in the game, you can unlock a bonus gallery that show an early prototype / beta version of the game, with different levels and 3D models. An official trailer for the game released in 1998 as an extra in Small Soldiers also show the removed Panzer Attack mission and a different HUD, in a version of the game with much more blood and gore than the final version. If you recently played Medal of Honor and you can notice more differences, leave a comment below!
Thanks to MicroChirp, LeHah and K Ill A Pinke for the contributions!
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Farstar is a cancelled Playstation space combat simulator which Teknocrest, an american software house, was working on in 1994 on Taito’s behalf. Just like Brimstone and Lufia for Genesis / Megadrive, however, the project got never completed. Fortunately, the programmer that was developing it preserved a video of the game:
Here’s some footage of a Playstation game called “Farstar” that I was working on back in 1994, I think Taito was planning to release it as “Starship Fantasy” or something like that, it was even listed in Famitsu as coming soon for a time.
It was supposed to be a mix of Wing Commander/Star Trek/Starflight. At least, that’s what I was trying to make. It was pretty ambitious for its time…maybe too ambitious.
Anyway as you can see it’s pretty shitty and was cancelled. I guess I just wasn’t a very good programmer back then…
For more informations check the topic on opa-ages.
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Gex 3: Deep Cover Gecko is a 3D platform game that was developed by Crystal Dynamics and Gratuitous Games for the original Playstation and Nintendo 64. Steve noticed a lot of beta differences from the various Gex 3 demos that were released before the final game.
First up, a video featuring the level “Clueless In Seattle” that is in volume 4 in a series of Eidos demo discs (it seems that this demo also appears in a greatest hits version of Tomb Raider II).
There are noticeable differences here compared to the level that is in the game’s retail release:
In the retail version, bears are enemies that can be found in the hedgemaze of this level. In this demo, the bears are absent there and only appear as these statues that can hurt you if you jump into them. These statues are also present in the retail version, but will not harm you if you jump into them. Also, there is an instance in the retail version where a small scene occurs in which the statue bears – for a lack of a better term – come to life as enemies. In this demo, this scene never occurs and the statue bears never come to life: