New Cancelled Games & Their Lost Media Added to the Archive

Microsoft, Others, PC / MAC, Playstation 2 (PS2), Sony, Xbox

Safari Joe [PC PS2 XBOX – Cancelled]

Celine
13-12-2012
2 Comments

Safari Joe is a cancelled action-adventure game that was in development by Titus Software around 2003. Key figures in the development team were Rob Stevens (project leader), Jean-Luc Martinez (programming lead) and Eric Marradi (art lead). The game was set in Africa – central Africa around the turn of the last century to be more precise.

The hero, ‘Safari’ Joe, is hired by an aging anthropologist, professor Livingwood, to take him into the jungle in search of a lost civilization his research has led him to believe is there. An expedition is formed comprising of Joe, the professor, the professor’s assistant, Myra, Joe’s partner, Mohammed, and a female journalist, Kate. Obviously they find the lost civilization and a little something extra; an evil witch doctor called Mobaj Mojumbo.

While Professor Livingwood is examining a mummy-like corpse laid out on an altar he accidentally resuscitates the malefic priest, who had been defeated during a combat with the priests of the lost civilization thousands of years ago. To stop the evil witch Safari Joe need to find four temples and explore their interiors to find each piece of the weapon, in the form of talismans. In order to find the temples, however, Joe and his friends must explore the jungle to unearth the traces of the ancient civilization. During their travels they encounter various different tribes, some friendly, some not, some human, some not, which lead them into various little side adventures to supplement their quest.

The game was never released, probably because Titus was living serious financial strains at the time that would end up bringing the company to bankruptcy in 2005.

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Nintendo, Nintendo DS

Maximillian and the Rise of the Mutant Mudds [Cancelled – DS]

yota
09-12-2012
2 Comments

Mutant Mudds is a 2d platformer developed by Renegade Kid and released for 3DS and PC in 2012.  Originally, as you can see from the video and the screenshots below, the game was going to be a 3D third-person shooter. A  short demo made in two weeks  that used a modified version of Moon engine was in fact shown to IGN at e3 2009.

However, Renegade Kid didn’t succeed in finding a publisher, and so they tried to release it on DSiWare in 2010. That failed too, but in 2011 the developers transformed Mutant Mudds in a 2D side-scroller and decided to publish it themselves on the 3DS eshop.

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Videos:

Master System, Sega

Asterix in Egypt [Beta – Sega Master System]

monokoma
06-12-2012
No Comments

Asterix in Egypt is an action / platform game that was published for the Sega Master System based on the the french Asterix comics. In some old magazines we can see a lot of beta screenshots, with vairous graphic differences from the final version!

For more info:

Thanks to Icecaap and Lamoscato for the contribution!

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Videos:

Nes / Famicom, Nintendo

PALPS [NES – Cancelled]

Celine
05-12-2012
No Comments

PALPS is a Nintendo unreleased Disk System exclusive game that many don’t know about. It was a very novel game. Basically it was an action game, where the player could not control the hero’s movement during play. The hero moves according to the player’s programmed movements. You defeat enemies with bullets and sometimes there will be an obstacle to deal with. As you advance through the game, the variety of icon tips increases.

The hero’s movement was programmed exclusively with the simplified language part that was said to be more intuitive and advanced than Family Basic. When it appeared on japanese magazines the game was said to not be ready to be seen at all and you can see below some screenshots from an early build. It was so early in development that the genre was still largely undecided. It’s still unknown why Nintendo decided to never release this piece of software.

Very grateful to Susumu for the translation from japanese.

Images:

Microsoft, Xbox

Arc Angel (Rare Ltd) [Xbox – Prototype]

monokoma
01-12-2012
No Comments

Arc Angel is a cancelled futuristic racing game prototype that was in development in 2003 for the Xbox, by a team lead by Chris Seavor at Rare LTD. There are just a few info about this lost project as a nice article at Pure Rarity:

Chris said that for the record Conker 2 was never scrapped; he just didn’t want to do it at the time and that was how Arc Angel was conceived. A nice easy racing game, or so he thought. During the four months he headed it a fair amount of design was nailed down but it eventually proved to be too ambitious. Also, some team members left the company or moved to other projects leaving Arc Angel with a lack of resources. Eventually the game was cancelled and Chris was put on Quest as lead artist.

Some more info can be read in another article from the same site:

He told me Seavor was initially on Conker 2 but then moved onto a racing project which was cancelled. Supposedly he is now on something MMORPG. This was some really interesting stuff but I wanted to find out more about it so I asked Tony Wong as well. He hadn’t heard about the racer but confirmed that the Conker team has been disbanded. As for the MMORPG, he said he couldn’t comment on it since it was not official.

I remembered a post in the FatBabies forums about Nintendo cancelling a futuristic racer and asked Martin if this was the same game. He told me it was the Rare management — not Nintendo — that had cancelled it and that it probably was futuristic. He explained that Nintendo always leave people alone if they produce good work.

Sadly there are no preserved images or videos about Arc Angel. If you know someone that worked on this prototype, please let  us know! We would love to save some screens in the archive.