New Cancelled Games & Their Lost Media Added to the Archive

Unseen 64 Community Forum Test!

As we wrote a couple of weeks ago, we are trying to find the best way to have a new U64 Forum without the main problems that the old forum had, especially to have it on the same server as the main website and the risk to lose all the discussions (as it happened when we had to delete the old forums) . We collected all your feedback and even if there are some concerns about using Facebook Groups as a community forum, there are some nice features that are super useful for us and we’d like to do a test to see how it will goes.

So we created the Unseen 64 Community Forum with FB Group group, to work together to search for beta and cancelled videogames, to discuss about them and to get in contact with other unseen games fans. You are free to join and post new discussions, ask for help to other unseen games fans to find and share more info, screens and videos.. what we’ll be able to achieve? If this test will be successful, this group could be the new official U64 Forum! We are waiting for you :)

unseen 64 forum 2014

Space Jelly [N64 – Cancelled]

Space Jelly, also known as Moon Jelly (and originally called “A Fist Full of Credits”), is a cancelled game that was in development for the Nintendo 64 by Software Creations. The game’s world and settings were created by the Pickford Brothers as an original game concept, with concept arts by Steve Hanson. Initially Space Jelly / Moon Jelly wasn’t really a platform-specific game, it was more about designing a main character, their world, backstory and art style, with the intention of creating a franchise which would lead to a series of games. Ste and John Pickford put together a reference book of characters, art, locations, while Richard Kay (Software Creations managing director) was trying to sell the concept to various publishers, before any actual game development began.

In 1995/1996 the Pickford Brothers left Software Creations and were no longer involved in Space Jelly, but Software Creations continued to work on the game, with Steve Hanson taking over as game designer. With only some concept arts and a design doc, it seems that Software Creations was not able to find a publisher for Space Jelly yet. In 1995 Nintendo of America announced that Software Creations entered in their “Dream Team” and as SC’s knowledge of the N64 hardware became more and more deep (SC also created the sound tools for the N64), they started to work on a Nintendo 64 prototype using the Space Jelly concept, with 3D models done by Deborah Graham.  In the gallery below you can see one Space Jelly character, Johnny Forbidden, modeled by Francis O’Brien in his spare time inbetween other Software Creations projects.

Space Jelly became a self-funded Nintendo 64 project, a 3D platformer / action game, with ingame graphics tailored to the strengths / weaknesses of the N64 hardware. As we can read from the comments by journalists that saw a video of Space Jelly when Software Creations was showing it at gaming expos, the graphics were great, like a colorful Tim Burton game, with animations done by ex Cosgrove Hall staff.

Sadly Space Jelly was later cancelled, along with many others Software Creations projects for the N64, as Forever Dragonz, Dead Ahead, Blade & Barrel and Creator. Even with various teams full of talented people, probably Software Creations at that time had too many original prototypes in development and they had to cut some of them to switch resources to those project that had more chances to be profitable. In the end, the only games developed by Software Creations that were released on the Nintendo 64 were Carmageddon, FIFA 99, Hexen, World Cup 98 and a couple of Wayne Gretzky’s 3D Hockey: all their more interesting and original games were never released.

Thanks to Francis O’Brien and Ste Pickford for their contributions! Thanks to Celine for some of the scans!

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Pinkie [SNES – Cancelled]

Pinkie is a 2D platform game developed by Data Design Systems and published for Amiga in 1995. It seems that a port of this game was in development for the Super Nintendo but never completed for various reasons. Thanks to an anonymous contributor a playable version of Pinkie SNES was leaked and can now be preserved.

This is a developer build and has various debugging features turned on, such as the controller Select button will allow you teleport the character anywhere in a level and the map screen automatically unlocks the next level without you needing to complete the previous level. There’s lots of other bits in there as well – along with various parts that are completely broken such as the level exit effect which will cause the game to lose frames and never properly recover.

It works on the current batch of SNES emulators if you want to take a look.

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Contra Spirits 64 [N64 – Cancelled]

Contra Spirits 64 is a cancelled shooter / action game in the contra series that was in development by Konami Computer Entertainment Osaka for the Nintendo 64. There are just a few info about this unreleased project as Konami never shown any official screenshot or concept art, but the title was in many list of games to be released for the N64 and the hopes went up for many Nintendo gamers that wanted a new and fun game for their 64bit console. Unfortunatly it seems that as the Nintendo 64 sold poorly in Japan, Konami decided to stop the development of the project and disbanded its team.

As we can read on IGN64:

Contra was planned, but the original team was disbanded and all team members now work on different projects,” said a company spokesperson. [Contra] has pretty much been shelved. […] There is concern over the poor N64 console sales in Japan […]

Contra 64 would have been a sidescrolling 3D game, with some sessions in which the camera would have switched angles or move behind the characters, possible for boss battles. There are some rumors that say that the Contra Spirits 64 concept was resurrected and became Contra: Shattered Soldier for PS2, but as Contra N64 was in development in 1998 and Contra PS2 was announced and released in 2002, it’s hard to say if the 2 project have anything in common.

Below you can see some scans from old magazines that wrote about Contra Spirits 64 (if you have Next Generation Issue 29, Volume 3 May 1997 and can make a bigger scan of their N64 article, please let us know!).

Thanks to Celine and Contrapedia for the contributions!

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The new U64 Forum?

U64 Forum

Do you miss the U64 Forum? We are trying to find the best way to create a new forum, but we need your feedback!

As the old U64 forums were on the same server as the main site, they used a lot of resources and to moderate them was time-consuming.. also, as the U64 forums had to be removed from the U64 server, they are not accessible anymore.

So we are thinking about to use a Facebook Group as the new U64 Forum: that will not take any resource from the main U64 server and even if U64 will go down again, at least Facebook will stay online and the “forum” will be accessible (almost) forever.. what do you think?

We will collect all your feedbacks and decide what to do! Leave your comment below and tell us what you think about to use a Facebook Group as the new U64 Forum :)