Space Fantasy Zone is a cancelled shoot ’em up planned for the PC-Engine, as a weird mix between the original Fantasy Zone and Space Harrier. The game was in development in 1991 by NEC Avenue, but for some reasons it was never released. A playable version was eventually leaked online so if you are interested to know more about the game, you should be able to easily find it with google.
Thanks to Celine and Guilherme Miranda for the contribution!
Images:
Videos:
Gunhead is an action game that was in development by Electronic Arts Vancouver, but very little is known about this project other than a few concept arts that were leaked and posted in gaming forums in december 2009. It seems that Gunhead was an internal pitch at EA that will never see a release, as we can assume from the following quote published on Blue’s News:
On the off chance you were interested in more info on this EA project, the gist of it is that the main character is a guy whose head is a gun. That’s it,” he tells us. “EA has been trying to get this game made for ages now. … It was a pretty lame idea, and we had no real interest in developing it for them. Every so often, I hear it pop up here and there, and it makes me laugh that they are still trying. I really must wonder who’s baby the idea is for it to not have died a well deserved death yet…
The concept arts look really nice, so we can hope that more screens or videos could be preserved in the future.
Thanks to Hey Hey for the contribution!
Images:
Marcel sent us a couple of screens from an early version of Aerogauge, an F-Zero clone that was released in 1997 for the Nintendo 64. It seems that the HUD was different, but as we never played the final game, we dont know if there are other interesting beta differences. Maybe someone else will be able to notice more differences!
A video from the retail version, the same stage: we can notice the hud changes and different textures. The “car” seems almost the same as the beta version
Warlock: The Game was released in 1994 on the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis / Mega Drive. Developed by Trimark Interactive and published by Acclaim Entertainment, an advertisement for the game found on the VHS of Warlock: The Armageddon (which the game takes most of the story elements from) shows slower game play and a smoother animated player sprite. There are some beta versions on internet.
Article by James Reed
Videos:
Dark Guns is a cancelled shooter / action game that was in development from 1997 to 1999 by a SCEA team (989 Studios?) headed by David Jaffe, planned to be released for the Playstation. The original concept was for a run and gun 3rd person shooter, but it soon evolved into a flying-shooter, in which players would had took the role of a UFO, to destroy real-life cities and abduct humans to use them for alien esperiments. A playable beta was created (as we can see from the photo of the disc, revealed by Jaffe) before they decided to stop the works on the project, because of some development and managment issues.
David Jaffe talked about Dark Guns in various interviews, that we can read on Gamespot and Gamasutra:
“I had come off Twisted Metal 2,” Jaffe said. “They gave me a blank check and said, ‘Do whatever you want.’ Anybody who was looking at $2 million–at the time that was a lot of money–to do an overhead shooter…that should have been a red flag. To have a design document that was 300 pages for anything, let alone an overhead shooter, should have been a red flag. And then being told the producer and the designer was the same person and that person was someone who had never produced a game in his life… All three of these things came up during the pitch. A number of people, including myself, should have said, ‘Let’s rethink this.”
“Everything about that game came from negativity, and after four years they pulled the plug,” he continued. “And I’m glad they did. I remember when that game was cancelled I realized, that was a huge opportunity and I blew it. No one gets that opportunity, and I wasted it. So after I did another Twisted Metal game my boss came to me and asked again, ‘What do you want to make next?’ And it was really for me a chance to do it right.”
We can only hope that in the future some Dark Guns screens or videos could be preserved too.
Images:
