New Cancelled Games & Their Lost Media Added to the Archive

Microsoft, Others, PC / MAC, Playstation 3 (PS3), Sony, Xbox 360

Sky Gods [PS3/X360/PC – Cancelled]

monokoma
11-07-2010
No Comments

Sky Gods is a cancelled shooter based on HALO (High Altitude, Low Opening) Special Forces operations. The project was in development at BlackFoot Studios in 2008 for the  Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and PC. As we can read in the official press release, in a typical HALO exercise, the parachutist will jump from the aircraft, free-fall for a period of time at terminal velocity, and open his parachute at a low altitude. The combination of high speed downwards and minimal metal and forward air-speed serves to defeat radar, enabling a stealthy insertion.

In Sky Gods players would have been in full control of their character during HALO freefall as well as while under canopy and were required to properly steer to a landing zone and land without injury or fatality. Once on the ground, players would have been tasked with various missions based on real life SOF experiences, observing and engaging targets through various terrain environments.

The game was planned to have 8 Coop missions playable with 1-8 people, customizable weapons and kit, a training scenarios playable solo or Coop and mod capabilities out of the box.

Sky God was officially cancelled when BlackFoot Studios went through some internal restructuring. As we can read in their official website:

BFS has been operating as a virtual company for some time now and we have had some good people move on to other ventures as well as those still with the projects finding themselves in need of other income sources and/or other outside influences effecting their involvement.

Thanks to Celine for the contribution!

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Arcade, Others

The King of Fighters ’99 [Arcade – Beta / Concept]

monokoma
11-07-2010
No Comments

As we can read from Wikipedia, The King of Fighters ’99: Millennium Battle is a 1999 head-to-head fighting game by SNK released for the Neo Geo arcade and home platform. The King of Fighters ’99 initially meant to remove Kyo Kusanagi and Iori Yagami from the series due to the introduction of the new lead character, K’. However, due to negative fan response in location tests, they decided to readd them.

The SNK staff wanted to create a Robo Army Team. However, this idea was abandoned but they later made it a tribute in The King of Fighters 2000 by introducing Rocky, a character from Robo Army as a striker for Maxima. The character from Whip was originally meant to star in The King of Fighters ’96, but due Leona’s introduction in that game, the staff decided to wait until K0F ’99.

Developers also found troubles with the large number of young characters appearing in the game; as such the staff also designed older character such as Maxima and Vannesa to balance the game. In contrast to this Bao was added to the game in order to reduce the average age from the Psycho Soldiers Teams. Bao had many different design before its final one, as you can see in the gallery below.

Here’s the final Bao sprite to compare it with its early designs:

Thanks to Saga Darvulia for the contribution!

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Nintendo, SNES + Super Famicom

Rayman [SNES – Cancelled]

monokoma
10-07-2010
16 Comments

The original Rayman is a 2D platform game developed and published by Ubisoft on September 1995 for the PlayStation and Jaguar. Early in its development, Rayman was planned for the Super Nintendo and the game featured a 2 players coop mode and different graphics. It seems that Ubisoft decided to move the project to the new CD-Rom consoles and they hired animators from a cartoon company which has considerably improved the graphics. [Info from Wikipedia]

TYKUN found some images from the unreleased Super Nintendo version in french magazine Pix’N’Love #13. In the article we can read:

Long before the Jaguar and PlayStation versions, Michel Ancel and his team were working on Rayman for the SNES. Even if it was  in advanced development, the game was stopped in favor of the CD support. As exclusives, here are a few pictures from this aborted version

The original story was going to be about an eleven-year-old boy named Jimmy. Jimmy takes advantage of the realms that he discovers within his computer to create a fantasy world called Hereitscool.

Thanks to Adamis and TYKUN for the contributions! A few more details on the cancelled SNES version of Rayman can be found in Pix ‘n Love book “L’Histoire de Rayman” (french only) by Michaël Guarné, you can buy it from Amazon FR, Amazon USA, Amazon UK or Amazon IT.

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Nuon, Others

aMaze [Nuon – Cancelled]

U64 Staff & Contributors
10-07-2010
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aMaze was among the first known titles to be announced for the NUON DVD game system but like most of the games announced for it, aMaze never saw the light of day. The premise was based upon those old marble balance board games where you tried to get a small ball to the goal, avoiding the many holes along the way. It also was notable at the time as the game employed real-time raytracing to draw objects such as the ball. The official description goes as follows:

aMaze is based on the classic board game that challenges you to tilt the board in order to roll a steel ball through a nerve-racking maze of trap holes. Simple in theme yet elegant in graphic nature, aMaze is best described as an overall experience that is highly addictive, yet surprisingly relaxing. From the outset, aMaze was designed to be attractive to all types of gamers – from hard core to mainstream. aMaze is an engaging game for everyone.

Some screenshots and a couple of videos can be found at NUON-Dome.

Thanks to Adam for the contribution!

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Microsoft, Playstation 3 (PS3), Sony, Xbox 360

Red Dead Redemption [X360 PS3 – Beta / Tech Demo]

U64 Staff & Contributors
09-07-2010
No Comments

Red Dead Redemption is a Western open world action adventure, developed by Rockstar San Diego and published by Rockstar Games for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in May 2010. A trailer of the project was sent to a select number of people at a Sony conference in 2005, promoting the release of the PlayStation 3 system. The trailer was a tech demo of RAGE set in a western setting referred to as Old West Project and a direct sequel to Red Dead Revolver. [Info from Wikipedia]

In this tech demo video we can see like an early version of Armadillo, and the character it shows looks nothing at all like the John Marston we have now, most notable difference is the character in that video has blonde hair.

The comments in the Youtube page point out some more differences:

Looks like the town is an earlier rendition of Armadillo, with buildings similar to the ones in the MacFarlane Ranch. And the duster is an early rendition of the duster outfit that can be unlocked in RDR.

I’d say you are right, it sure does share great similarity to Armadillo building wise. Interesting to see the layout differences of some of the buildings. If you look closely at around 0:11 also, you can see what appears to be animals (possibly horses?) moving around the fenced building to the top-left. I’m guessing that was the original idea of the fenced horse area in Armadillo next to the Salon in the final game.
I always find it amazing, watching this video.

Thanks to Userdante for the contribution!

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