New Cancelled Games & Their Lost Media Added to the Archive

Croc: Legend of the gobbos (1997) [Beta / Prototype – PSX / Saturn / PC]

Croc Legend Of The Gobbos was a platformer game released in 1997 by Defunct game developer, Argonaut Games. Using the BRender engine, which was a state of the art engine capable of powering games released between generations (PS1 and PS2 gens), it took full advantage of the consoles it released on and pushed the game engine to its limits.

Recently, a beta and tech demo was uncovered by a few fans of the game on a now defunct forum, “Croc Fan Forums” , and released to a very few people. A newely formed YouTube channel called Video Game Beta Book, posted videos from both builds that leaked a few weeks ago.

These videos show many things that were changed or cut. In the tech demo, croc appears to be voiced by an entirely different voice actor opposed to His voice actor in Croc and Croc 2. Next, many level designs are different, and some levels are even entirely unseen in the final game. The main island also looks severely different.

The tech demo that leaked was dated November 1996, and appears to be a very early alpha of the game engine, that was likely released to internal testers to test physics.  In the Prototype dated March 1997, it features slightly different animations, has cut levels, and even has something not at all in the final game: Results Screen. The results screen is similar to the ending of levels on the Spyro The Dragon Trilogy games released by Insomniac Games from 1998-2000, where it shows your gems you picked up and score.

Additionally, in the tech demo Croc is more lighter than He appears in the March 1997 Proto and the final game.

Videos of the tech demo and prototype can be seen below:

Fighting Demo [PSX – Tech Demo]

This tech demo created by Sony was shown in one of the early announcements of the “new” playstation hardware, to demonstrate the 3D graphic capacities of their 32 bit console. While today the graphic of this “fighting demo” looks simple, it was probably a great achievement in 1994. Celine was able to find the screenshots below in Edge #11 and PlayerOne magazine # 44.

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Project Delta [PS3/X360 – Cancelled]

Project Delta is a cancelled FPS that was in development in 2005 by PlayLogic for the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. The game was announced when the “next gen consoles” were still not released, but it soon vanished without any official statement. It’s possible that Delta was originally in development for the PS2 and XBOX, with the code name “Project Snap”, another cancelled FPS that Playlogic was working on in 2004.

Project Delta’s gameplay was going to be more tactical than the usual first-person shooter: while shooting with our main character, we would had to command a team of soldiers and comfort or threaten them during the battles. The game was set in different time periods, as the story dealt with time travels from the future back to the dark ages.

Project Delta was cancelled for unknown reasons, but we can speculate that the team had some development or quality problems. Only few concept arts and models remain from the project, preserved in the gallery below.

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Indiana Jag [Jaguar – Cancelled]

Indiana Jag is a cancelled mascot platform game in development by french Virtual Xperience around 1994/1995. Five different kind of areas were expected like jungle, Old West, Egypt and Space. As Rodolphe Czuba, Virtual Xperience developer at the time, recalled “only some graphics were done for Indy Jag, a concept like a humorous Indiana Jones with a jaguar figure”.

Information and scans from Joypad issue 34, additional images courtesy of justclaws.atari.org

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Galaxy’s End [PSP – Cancelled]

Galaxy’s End is an unreleased science-fiction RTS developed by Tiki Games for the PSP. The game received Stage 1 Approval from SCEA but they did not found a publisher interested in releasing the project. With the introduction of the Playstation Store for the PSP, Galaxy’s End could be completed at some point. As we can read on Joystick:

“When we started Galaxy’s End we absolutely needed a publisher at some point – not just for the financial aspect but to get it into stores. Now that the PLAYSTATION Store has been added for the PSP we have the opportunity to finish the game and release it as a digital download (like NOVASTRIKE).”

“Quite frankly we don’t have the finances to finish Galaxy’s End right now. So we’ll likely have to look for another loan. And I’ll need to convince my family (who are presently self-funding Tiki Games) that there’s a large enough audience that would be willing to purchase a downloadable real-time strategy game for the PSP.”

In the gallery below you can see work-in-progress screenshots and a gameplay movie. If you are interested in learning more about Tiki Games, the team members and Galaxy’s End, you can check their website at www.tikigames.net

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