Unseen News

Without Warning 2 [Cancelled – Xbox 360, PS3]

The original Without Warning was a third-person shooter developed by Circle Studio and published by Capcom in 2005 for Playstation 2 and Xbox. As we can read on WikipediaGameplay varies depending on which character is being played. In the case of the Special Forces members and the security guard, is generally fast-paced, as is often the case with arcade-style shooters. The remaining two characters rely far more on stealth over action.

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When the first game was released Circle Studio was already working on an early prototype for a sequel, possibly to publish it on the new generation of consoles: xbox 360 and PS3. Unfortunately Without Warning was received with low review scores and sold poorly, making the studio rethink their market strategy.

They switched their resources making DVD games rather than video games, so Without Warning 2 was cancelled. In the end the company was still closed in 2007. Only a few screenshots from an early Without Warning 2 tech demo are preserved below, to remember its existence.

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Video Games eBooks Bundle: Endless Summer @ StoryBundle!

We are happy to announce 1 eBook taken from our “Video Games You Will Never Play” physical book is featured in the latest eBook bundle by Story Bundle! Our “Handheld Video Games You Will Never Play” can be found in this bundle in their exclusive ePub and Mobi versions (our full book is available in physical form on Amazon and in PDF on Patreon), so you can easily read it with your eBook reader.

videogames-ebook-bundle

In the same bundle you can also find many interesting eBooks about less known video games and their history.

Funds raised with this eBook bundle will support Unseen64, the other books authors and you can also choose to donate 10% to Pixelles, a non-profit initiative committed to helping more women make and change games.

Here’s the full description, for more details check https://storybundle.com/games

Praise the sun while you can: the festivals and hazy warmth of summer is all too fleeting. Luckily, you can capture the spirit of these carefree days forever with the Endless Summer Game Bundle, available for a limited time on StoryBundle.

David L. Craddock’s Arcade Perfect: How Pac-Man, Mortal Kombat, and Other Coin-Op Classics explores the lengths to which developers went to squeeze classic arcade games onto home consoles, handhelds, and personal computers. Craddock’s GameDev Stories: Volume 3 digs deeper
into arcades and home conversions with a selection of interviews from legendary designers such as Asteroids co-programmer Ed Logg and Mortal Kombat “ko-kreator” John Tobias.

John Harris steps up to represents great – or at least serviceably good – NES games that get a bad rap today in 8-bit Obituaries. Boss Fight Books author Alex Kane visits one of the most beloved space ports in that famous galaxy far, far away in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, a fantastic oral history of the making of BioWare’s blockbuster RPG.

Alongside those DRM-free eBooks, Hardcore Gaming 101’s Kurt Kalata takes an epic journey through cult classics on the NES, Select Start Press looks at the games your teachers have been playing, and much more.

StoryBundle is a pay-what-you-want platform for independent authors to share their works with readers (and gamers) like you!

For StoryBundle, you decide what price you want to pay. For $5 (or more, if you’re feeling generous), you’ll get the basic bundle of four books in any ebook format – WORLDWIDE.

8-Bit Obituaries by John Harris
HG101 Presents: The Guide to Shoot-em-ups Vol. 1 by Kurt Kalata
What Your Teachers Are Playing by Christian Cardenas and Dylan Altman
Handheld Video Games You Will Never Play by Unseen64

If you pay at least the bonus price of just $15, you get all four of the regular books, plus SIX more!

GameDev Stories – Volume 3 by David L. Craddock
Arcade Perfect by David L. Craddock
Boss Fight Books: Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic by Alex Kane
HG101 Presents: Unofficial Guide to Konami Shooters by Kurt Kalata
History of Digital Games: Developments in Art, Design and Interaction by Andrew Williams
HG101 Presents: NES Cult Classics by Kurt Kalata

This bundle is available only for a limited time via storybundle.com. It allows easy reading on computers, smartphones, and tablets as well as Kindle and other ereaders via file transfer, email, and other methods. You get multiple DRM-free formats (.epub and .mobi) for all books!

As always thanks for your support! 

FGB [Game Boy Color – Cancelled]

FGB is a cancelled action RPG / hack ‘n slash in development between 1999 and 2001 by Plasma Works, planned to be published on the Game Boy Color. You could imagine it as a mix between Gauntlet, Robotron and Zelda, featuring coop multiplayer (using GB’s link cable), 128 Levels and 50 different Monsters to kill during your adventure.

In 2000 IGN wrote a preview of the game with their impressions:

“To add to the gameplay, you will be able to play through the game with different characters, each with their own abilities and attributes. Playing the game as one character will key different conversations than another character, so half the fun is discovering how each character handles the same situation.

The look of FGB is very old-school, but very appropriate. Instead of focusing on detail of characters, the artists instead made basic shapes to represent enemies and heroes. What’s more, the programmers have made an engine that can push an amazing number of sprites without flicker the Game Boy Color has a 10-sprite-per-line limitation, but through a bit of programming trickery Plasma Works was able to get around it. According to the company, up to 256 enemies, bullets and explosions can be on-screen at once in FGB. Not too shabby.

Plasma Works is currently looking for a publisher for the game”

In the end Plasma Works did not find a publisher interested in funding FGB’s development and the project was cancelled. A few years later, the team released their own prototype online, to be preserved by the community.

As we can read in the description file shared among the ROM:

“Hi there! You hold in your hard drive a great Game Boy Color game called FGB (the name doesn’t stand for anything). It is a weird and wonderful game that combines elements of an adventure/RPG like “Zelda” with those of an action/shooter like “Gauntlet“.

FGB was developed by Plasma Works over a period beginning December 17, 1999, and ending May 16, 2001. That’s about a year and a half, if you’re counting. Being a small, independent developer, we approached quite a few publishers over that time but were unable to come to an agreement. Game Boy Advance was just around the corner at this point and everyone was slobbering over it, so sadly we decided to terminate FGB and move on to other stuff.

So it was that the adventures of Captain Flour and his merry crew went unheard of and unplayed… until now. To ring in the New Year, we are releasing the final build of FGB to be freely distributed. The game is 100% complete in terms of programming and locations, and 50% complete in terms of quests, conversations, and upgrades – don’t worry, there’s still lots to do, and the game plays through to a definite ending that’s just shy of reaching the grand finale that was originally planned.”

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The Unseen64 Book will be translated in French!

Thanks to our friends at Côté Gamers our book “Video Games You Will Never Play” will  be translated in French and physically published in a new, professional volume!

They have an active campaign to support the translation project and to reserve your copy of the French version at Ulule: “Metal Slug” & “Les Jeux Vidéo annulés”.

In fact, the french translation of “Video Games You Will Never Play” will also be printed along with another book, dedicated to Metal Slug :)

Here are more details directly from their Ulule page:

Côté Gamers est fier de vous présenter sa nouvelle collection :Replay. Cette collection a pour but de vous présenter en long et en large une série de jeux ou un genre, voire même un thème. Notre objectif : faire en sorte que vous sachiez tout ce qu’il faut savoir sur le sujet en question, étendre votre connaissance du sujet et éventuellement vous faire revivre vos meilleures heures de jeu. Replay est une collection faite à la fois autant pour votre connaissance du jeu vidéo que pour votre nostalgie !

Les livres édités par Côté Gamers sont toujours très détaillés et n’hésitent pas à vous plonger dans les plus petits détails des sujets qu’ils abordent. La collection Replay veut permettre à tout le monde de découvrir ou de retrouver des jeux cultes, sans pour autant conduire à devenir un expert du moindre sprite, du moindre bonus ou du moindre goodie.

Vous vous en doutez forcément, il existe de nombreux jeux qui furent annulés et auxquels nous n’avons jamais eu accès. Qu’ils aient été annulés pour des raisons financières, parce qu’il étaient trop ambitieux pour leur époque ou parce que des personnes en charge de leur développement se sont opposées, nous vous racontons leur histoire avec cette nouvelle traduction made in Côté Gamers !

L’ouvrage original fut édité par le désormais célèbre site Unseen 64, dont la vocation est de sauvegarder tout ce qui est en rapport avec les jeux annulés et les concepts de jeux jamais exploités commercialement.
Ce livre fut salué par la communauté pour son sujet d’importance et les informations contenues.

Le sujet est original, mais il mérite d’être abordé ! Pouvez-vous imaginer que ce sont des milliers de jeux qui ont été annulés au cours de l’histoire ? Saviez-vous que toutes les maisons d’éditions et même tous les constructeurs de consoles avaient dans leur catalogue des jeux abandonnés en plein développement ? Qu’il s’agisse de Nintendo, de Sega, de Sony, de Virgin, d’Electronic Arts ou de n’importe quelle autre compagnie, vous retrouverez dans “Les jeux auxquels vous ne jouerez jamais” des retours sur tous ces titres aujourd’hui perdus, oubliés ou volontairement tenus secrets.

Read more and reserve your copy at Ulule!

 

Video Games eBooks Bundle: The Spring Fired-Up @StoryBundle!

We are happy to announce 3 eBooks taken from our “Video Games You Will Never Play” physical book are featured in the latest eBook bundle by Story Bundle! Our “PS2 & Xbox Video Games You Will Never Play”, “GameCube Video Games You Will Never Play” and “Dreamcast Video Games You Will Never Play” can be found in this bundle in their exclusive ePub and Mobi versions (our full book is available in physical form on Amazon and in PDF on Patreon), so you can easily read them in your eBook reader.

In the same bundle you can also find many interesting eBooks about less known video games and their history, such as Game Boy Works by Jeremy Parish, The Guide to Retro Indie Games by Kurt Kalata, GameDev Stories by David L. Craddock, Katamari Damacy by L. E. Hall!

Funds raised with this eBook bundle will support Unseen64, the other books authors and you can also choose to donate 10% to The Video Game History Foundation, a non-profit foundation founded by Frank Cifaldi, which primary aim is the archival, preservation, and dissemination of historical media related to video games.

Here’s the full description, for more details check https://storybundle.com/games

The weather outside may be frightful, but StoryBundle’s Spring Fired-Up Bundle offers 13 books – our biggest collection yet! – about gaming culture and development to melt your winter doldrums, available for a limited time on www.storybundle.com.

David L. Craddock delves even deeper into randomly generated dungeons in Dungeon Hacks: Expanded Edition, which provides an extensive look at the making of early roguelike RPGs as well as a new interview with Rogue’s co-creators and three extra books on games influenced by the genre. In GameDev Stories; Volume 2, Craddock curates 13 interviews from the hundreds of hours of conversations he’s had with developers of games spanning InFamous and Prototype to Diablo and Hack.

Journalist and prolific Nintendo historian Jeremy Parish maps out two years of classic Game Boy games with Game Boy Works Volume 1 and Game Boy Works Volume 2, covering beloved and more obscure titles such as Alleyway, Pipe Dream, and Boomer’s Adventure in ASMIK World.

Alongside those four DRM-free eBooks, John Harris collects write-ups of arcade games curated from his Extended Play indie mag, Boss Fight Books author Laura E. Hall rolls through the history of Katamari Damacy, journalist Wes Locher explores the community around enduring MMO classic Ultima Online, Hardcore Gaming101’s Kurt Kalata blasts a path through Contra and other shoot-em-ups, and more.

StoryBundle is a pay-what-you-want platform for independent authors to share their works with readers (and gamers) like you. Paying at least $5 will get you four books from the Spring Fired-Up Game Bundle, while paying $15 or more will get you six bonus books. – David L. Craddock

For StoryBundle, you decide what price you want to pay. For $5 (or more, if you’re feeling generous), you’ll get the basic bundle of four books in any ebook format—WORLDWIDE.

  • Game Boy Works Vol. I by Jeremy Parish
  • You and Your Friends Are Dead by Joel Couture
  • HG101 Presents: The Guide to Retro Indie Games Vol. 1 by Kurt Kalata
  • PS2 and Xbox Video Games You Will Never Play by Unseen64

If you pay at least the bonus price of just $15, you get all four of the regular books, plus NINE more!

  • GameDev Stories: Volume 2 by David L. Craddock
  • Dungeon Hacks: Expanded Edition by David L. Craddock
  • Game Boy Works Vol. 2 by Jeremy Parish
  • Memories of Arcadia by John Harris
  • Boss Fight Books: Katamari Damacy by L. E. Hall
  • HG101 Presents: Contra and Other Konami Classics by Kurt Kalata
  • GameCube Video Games You Will Never Play by Unseen64
  • Braving Britannia by Wes Locher
  • Dreamcast Video Games You Will Never Play by Unseen64

This bundle is available only for a limited time via http://www.storybundle.com. It allows easy reading on computers, smartphones, and tablets as well as Kindle and other ereaders via file transfer, email, and other methods. You get multiple DRM-free formats (.epub and .mobi) for all books!

It’s also super easy to give the gift of reading with StoryBundle, thanks to our gift cards – which allow you to send someone a code that they can redeem for any future StoryBundle bundle – and timed delivery, which allows you to control exactly when your recipient will get the gift of StoryBundle.

As always thanks for your support!