Grease & Grudge (also known as Road Race) is a tech demo for a new racing game that was developed for the Panasonic 3DO, but they never released a title like that for the console. It is possible that this tech demo evolved somehow into Need for Speed, but for now it’s just a speculation. If you have more info about this demo, please let us know! Scans from Edge magazine 1 and 3.
Thanks to Pcloadletter and Celine for the contributions!
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S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is a FPS developed by the Ukrainian developer GSC Game World, published for PC in 2007. As we can read in Wikipedia, the game was first announced in November 2001 as “S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Oblivion Lost” and had its release date, originally in 2003, pushed back several times. Meanwhile hundreds of screenshots of the game had been released, as well as a dozen preview video clips, due to years of delays some considered S.T.A.L.K.E.R. to be vaporware.
In late December 2003, a pre-alpha build of the game was leaked to peer-to-peer file sharing networks. This build, marked as version 1096, inadvertently acted as a fully-functional tech demo of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.’s engine, despite its lack of NPC enemies and fauna.
At the end of February 2009, due to popular demand GSC Game World released “xrCore” beta build 1935, dated October 18, 2004. It uses a completely different physics engine with many cut monsters, levels, and vehicles. It was also significantly larger than the retail release. It is however somewhat unstable, but features the full game along with a “fully functional ALife system”. It is currently available for free download from the GSC servers and mirrors. Also, oldest leaked builds of the game can be found in here.
Below you can see many videos from STALKER’s prototypes, alpha and betas. More videos and links can be found in the STALKER beta topic in our U64 Forum. Thanks to Megalol for the contribution!
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ICO is an action adventure game that was developed by Sony / Team ICO for the Playstation 2. ICO was originally planned for the PlayStation 1, but after two years of development, the team ran into limitations on the PSX hardware and faced a critical choice: either terminate the project altogether or to restart it on the PS2.
An interim design of the game shows Ico and Yorda facing horned warriors similar to those that take Ico to the castle. The game originally focused on Ico’s attempt to return Yorda to her room in the castle after she was kidnapped by these warriors. Ueda believed this version had too much detail for the graphics engine they had developed on the PSX, and replaced the warriors with the shadow creatures. [Info from Wikipedia]
From early beta screens and videos, we can notice that Yorda had a different design and there were some huge shadows enemies, removed from the final version. If you can notice more differences in the screens and concept arts below, please let us know!
Yorda beta:
Yorda final:
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Video from the PSX Version:
Son of the Dragon is a cancelled action adventure that was in development by Renegade Kid and that would have been published by Gamecock for the Nintendo Wii. Sadly when Gamecock had to close down for economic issues, Renegade Kid was not able to find another publisher and the project had to be canned. Only few concept arts were released and it seems that Son of the Dragon was still in early development when it was cancelled. As we can read from an interview with Renegade Kid co-founder Jools Watsham on 1UP:
JW: Son of the Dragon was a third-person action adventure title set in a heavily stylized 15th century. You were Dracula. Something happened to you, which striped you of your ability to use your awesome powers. A quick description of it is a “good” 3D Castlevania where you are Dracula, with a focus on responsive combat, solid gameplay camera, light RPG elements, and a rich world of wickedly diverse landscapes, enemies, player weapons, and abilities. […]
JW: We spent many months developing the idea with a team of very experienced and dedicated individuals. The art team created loads of superb concept images for the player character, enemies, bosses, and environment locations. The design group created a game design document that quickly grew to over 100 pages, and detailed player abilities, damage types, enemy AI, items, accessories, level designs, currency, and many other details. It was truly inspired and exciting. We were considering licensing an engine for development, and the same day we had assets loaded into the engine, the hammer came down and the project was canceled. It was a bittersweet day.
Thanks to Celine for the contribution!
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Lucifer (aka Farralin) is a cancelled a Action RPG with a gameplay similar to Diablo, that was in development in 1998 by Eclipse Entertainment as a collaboration with Electronic Arts Canada. The game was being prototyped in the Genesis 3D engine and the design called for randomly-generated dungeons featuring mini-bosses, permutation driven monsters, a deep item reward system and networked multiplay. Lucifer featured an ambitious design and state of the art (for the time) graphics, that could have made it to rival to games like Diablo II and Dungeon Siege.
Eclipse Entertainment created a small demo in a couple of weeks and EA was really impressed by their work, but ultimately the studio and the publisher were unable to come to deal terms that were mutually agreeable, so the game never moved beyond an early protoype and pre-production phase. After releasing a couple of golf games (Jack Nicklaus 5 and 6) Eclipse Entertainment was closed down and Lucifer vanished forever with them.
Thanks a lot to Tim Fields and Bob Cooksey for the help in preserving more info and concept arts from their lost project!
Thanks to derboo for the scans (Power Play magazine 6/1998).
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