Unseen News

Unseen News

RS Links: the unreleased Burnout Paradise’s content

monokoma
20-01-2010
5 Comments

Over at the official Burnout / Criterion blog, they wrote a post about planned Download Content that was meant to be released for Burnout Paradise, as new tracks, modes and vehicles, but for some reasons they never finish them.

We were very interested in the whole concept of downloadable content, and we knew that we wanted to approach it very differently and push it as far as we could. A downloadable Island was started almost immediately after the main game was built.

[…]

We did have ambitious plans for a series of Islands. One was going to be purely off-road based. Hence we created the ‘Dust Storm’ dune buggy in anticipation for that. Our original dreams for Paradise were to create a series of Islands, all connected to Paradise City and each would focus on a different style of racing game. One Island was going to be completely circuit based – and be all marked up like a modern Formula One circuit!

[…]

Planes. A lot of Burnout fans already know about this – as we showed flying around in a live podcast. It was really cool to be able to see Paradise City from the air. It did not happen because of the way the game world was built. The city was never meant to be seen from such viewpoints. Think of it like a film set, a very big film set – meant to be seen from certain camera angles and not others.

[…]

The Moon! Again, completely true. Someone on the team said that ‘players want the moon on a stick when it comes to DLC’ We thought that was funny and thought we’d do it. The actual surface of the real Moon was modelled and it was drive-able. Lunar Challenges would have been totally unexpected – as would have been zero gravity Takedowns and Challenges.

[…]

Time Travel – Not many know about this, but it was discussed. On a certain day, a time portal would have opened on the Island. When you jumped through, you would have found yourself on Big Surf, at another point in history. Maybe the Wild West…you could have done some Challenges and then jumped back.

Thanks to Robert Seddon for the link! 

Leaked, Nintendo, Others, PC / MAC, Playstation 3 (PS3), Sony, Wii

Explodemon [PS3/Wii/PC – Prototype]

monokoma
13-01-2010
No Comments

Explodemon! is an upcoming 2.5D side scrolling platform game in development by Curve Studios for PlayStation Network, Microsoft Windows and WiiWare. The project is described as “what Treasure would create if they mixed Yoshi’s Island with Half-Life 2”, and is inspired by elements from games as diverse as Street Fighter II, Halo, Super Metroid and Bangai-O.

In the personal blog of Jonathan Biddle, Design Director at Curve Studios, we can read an interesting series of articles about the development of Explodemon!, with images and videos from its early prototypes.  From his blog Jonatahn also released the December 2005 Explodemon proto, that you can download from here. Huge props!

There were always new games concepts bouncing around at Blue, and Jamie had a few, one of which was Exploding Robot 12. Jamie’s concept went something along the lines of humanity’s last hope – a robot that couldn’t stop himself exploding – being sent out to destroy the alien menace that was threatening all of mankind. From what I remember, it wasn’t so much a platform game, as an action puzzler, where you had to navigate sections that you didn’t want to destroy, as well as blow up the enemy spacecraft and whatnot. I always liked the idea, and my recent explosion-based thoughts lead me to wonder if it would translate well to a platform game. I mentioned it to Jamie and he was up for me carrying the idea on. The early builds even had the codename ‘R12’.

For more info on the Explodemondevelopment, check One Bit Beyond!

Videos:

For comparison, here’s the trailer from the final game:

 

Unseen News

Laguna Cool [PSX – Not Cancelled]

monokoma
10-01-2010
4 Comments

Update: thanks to Susumu and Matt we found out that this obscure RPG was really published in Japan with the name “Lagnacure” by a company called Artdink. You can find more screens of the released version at Snesorama!

Laguna Cool is a cancelled (?) RPG that was in development by Sony Music Entertainment in 1996/1997 for the original Playstation. The game was available at the Tokyo Game Show 1997 but we dont know if there was any playable demo or it was just a video. A single screenshot of this RPG was found by Celine in PSM magazine #3. There are pratically no info on the project, at least with the Laguna Cool title: could this game have been released with another name in Japan? If you recognize this screen, please let us know!

Thanks to Celine for the scan!

Image:

Laguna-Cool-PS1-PSM3-TGS-97 

Leaked, Others, PC / MAC

Jurassic Park: Trespasser [PC – Beta]

monokoma
08-01-2010
2 Comments

Jurassic Park: Trespasser is a FPS developed by DreamWorks Interactive, which was released in 1998 for Microsoft Windows after much hype and anticipation. The game had a development period of more than three years. Money was the biggest hurdle in the development of Trespasser.

The game severely went over-budget several times throughout its development. Second only to money was time, as the game had to be ready to meet the release of the The Lost World: Jurassic Park film. Originally the game was to be released in the fall of 1997. However due to a number of problems the project was delayed by a year. The rush to release the game caused many features to be either cut, or left unfinished and unpolished.

Due to difficulties coding the behaviour of both arms together developers had to ditch the left arm entirely. A late shift in development effectively changed the game from survival horror to action shooter, and contributed to the many complaints the game received. Lack of experienced management and the use of artists who were unfamiliar with basic game development processes and 3D modeling has also been identified as a cause of problems. Developers struggled for more than two years on some problems and in the end released a game that is set within a very large, attractive, open, outdoor environment. [Info from Wikipedia]

In december 2009, ASSEMbler from the Assembler Games Community, was able to preserve and share an early beta of the game, in which it’s possible to explore the removed Pine Valley level, a Test area and see many other differences. The beta is available to download at the Assembler Forum.

As we can read in the videos descriptions:

This beta show the original far more sexy female character, who has a cut off tank top on, complete with sideboob and cleavage you can look between. The game’s life bar (tattoo) is moved, the breasts more detailed than the final version. The game has less physical objects in it, and runs much faster than the final version.

Videos: