New Cancelled Games & Their Lost Media Added to the Archive

Others, PC / MAC

Black & White [PC – Beta / Proto]

monokoma
22-09-2010
1 Comment

Black & White is a god / strategy game developed by Lionhead Studios and published by Electronic Arts and Feral Interactive in 2001 for PC. The project was in development till 1997 / 1998 and in the gallery below you can see some early screenshots, taken from various target renders, prototypes, tech demos and beta versions. The initial concept for Black & White was centered around teaching to an AI character, an idea that evolved into the god’s creatures that can be raised in the final game. As we can read on GameSpot:

The initial idea was to have a little boy or girl that you would raise and teach. The artificial intelligence would have to be incredible, letting you teach your titan how to autonomously operate in the world of Eden. For Peter Molyneux, the titan gave him the chance to bring back memories of his childhood, when his action figures would tower over the ants in the sandpit. “The amazing thing about the titan,” explains Barnes, “is the idea that it would start at the size of a villager and grow to the size of a mountain.” By the end of the game, players would have their own King Kong. […]

With only three months of work under Lionhead’s belt, Molyneux set off in June of 1998 to attend E3 in Atlanta, Georgia. There, in a makeshift room on the show floor, he unveiled the game’s concept. For each game he creates, Molyneux first builds a “test bed” version, which is the basic gameplay stripped of the usual accoutrements of fancy graphics and sound. For Black & White’s test bed, the environment was an isometric green wireframe world; each villager was represented by a little pixel on the screen. […]

Fingers crossed or not, in addition to showing off the 143,000 lines of code in the test bed version, Molyneux unveiled picturesque 3D renders of what he hoped the final game would look like. One of the renders even featured the horned reaper from Dungeon Keeper as a stand-in for the titan. […]

“The nanosecond I have a hand slap a human titan, it just changes everything,” explains Molyneux. “It’s OK to slap a little monkey–people don’t wince at that–but if you are slapping a little girl, it’s just not OK.” In addition, the team realized that the amount of AI a player would expect from a human creature would far outweigh what was possible. Thus, human titans were dropped from the game and replaced by a menagerie of anthropomorphic creatures ranging from sheep and lions to turtles.

Thanks to discworld for the contribution!

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Nintendo, Wii

Contra Rebirth [Wii – Beta / Debug]

U64 Staff & Contributors
21-09-2010
No Comments

Contra Rebirth, a run ‘n’ gun downloadable game from Nintendo’s Wiiware service, released in Europe on September 9th of ’09, and America only 3 short days later, with one big difference. The European version has a code to access the games debug mode, allowing you to modify what weapons you have, give you invincibility, and access the game’s only remaining test level, which oddly enough, strongly resembles a level from Super Mario Bros. Unfortunatley, in just those short 3 days before the US version’s release, the debug mode was removed from the US version, while the European version kept it. Also odd, is that the Japanese version released first (05/12/09) and yet the European version is the only one to have the debug mode.

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Nintendo, SNES + Super Famicom

Ardy Lightfoot [SNES – Beta]

monokoma
21-09-2010
2 Comments

Ardy Lightfoot is a platform game developed by ASCII that was released in 1993 for the Super Famicom (Japan) and in 1996 for the Super Nintendo (USA and Europe). It seems that a beta version of the game was somehow leaked online, as we can see many videos from this early version on Youtube. More info on the differences in this beta are available at Flying Omelette!

Ardy’s speech bubbles are differently coloured, and Nina looks different.

The prologue stage is completely empty of stars

The push block gets a new graphic in the final, presumably to indicate it can be pushed and isn’t just scenery.

The beta presents a chest with a bomb, while the final does merely places it next to the wall and requires being moved closer.

The tunnel you fall into requires awkward walking to venture through, while the final makes a little more sense by having you slide through it.

The beta version of Scene 2 is very unfinished and different

Catry has all new sprites, but they’re pretty bad in comparison to the final ones

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Videos (Scene 2 beta):

Videos (Scene 2 Final):

Videos (more beta):

Game Boy (+ Color), Leaked, Nintendo

Roadsters 98 [GBC – Proto / Cancelled]

monokoma
20-09-2010
4 Comments

Roadsters 98 is a prototype racing game by Genetic Fantasia, with a gameplay similar to Micro Machines, that seems to have been cancelled in early development. A playable demo exists, thanks to a scene leaked ROM from the old GameBoy Color days. While there is a game called Roadsters released in Europe and USA in 2000, it is completely different from Roadster 98. The release group got access to some beta software which is normal but in this case they probably thought they’d do a nice pre-store but the final game never appeared – unless this is an insanely rare special release no one knows about.

We can speculate that Genetic Fantasia worked on Roadsters GameBoy Color for Titus, but something went wrong and the publisher decided to release a different game.

Thanks a lot to BigFred for the contribution!

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Nintendo, Nintendo 64 & 64DD

Banjo Tooie [N64 – Beta / Unused Stuff]

U64 Staff & Contributors
19-09-2010
1 Comment

Banjo-Tooie, for Nintendo 64, is a game that really needs no introduction. The sequel to the landmark platformer Banjo-Kazooie, Tooie achieved huge popularity in its own right for its immersive gameplay, huge worlds and charming characters. The game, set two years after the events of Banjo-Kazooie, didn’t receive the same amount of media interest as its predecessor because, as a sequel, it was not seen as being as revolutionary or new as Kazooie. From what we can tell (from the limited screenshots made available), a few cosmetic changes were present in the game before publication:

1) the warp pads, instead of spirals, were adorned with large “B-T” logos

2) Humba Wumba used Mumbo tokens instead of Glowbos

3) her talking head sprite wore a mask of some kind under her eyes

4) she wore a red dress

5) the large bottle of “Jolly’s Juice” was once titled “Dud Beer”

As far as the press is concerned, these are the only BETA clues available.

However, Banjo-Tooie also contains perhaps the most infamous hidden development content of any video game: Bottles’ Revenge. This was planned to be a multiplayer component of the game, in which the second player used “Devil Bottles” to take control of enemies and attempt to hurt and/or kill player one (who controlled Banjo and Kazooie as usual).

However, Rare states that it ran out of time to debug the mode, and it now remains accessible only by using a cheating device such as a GameShark. Although Devil Bottles was originally planned to be capable of possessing bosses, Rare has said that only Old King Coal was programmed for this when Bottles’ Revenge was dropped, and Old King Coal is not controllable in the version that is present in the retail game.

Further delving into the game’s code has discovered a few other sections of the game that were abandoned, but remain in the cartridge and accessible, again, through the use of a cheating device. The first of these is a large ceiling object, and the second consists of three doorways which, based on their position in Banjo-Kazooie’s memory, were probably intended to form part of Witchy World. There is one other unused area, but it is very small and contains no visible object. The first two rooms are viewable in the video below (from Runehero124’s YT Channel):

There is more information on the unused rooms at Rare Witch Project Forum!