The U64 family is still growing somehow and more beta-lovers would like to help our little archive of games that we’ll never be able to play. Today we are happy to welcome Bowsersenemy in the U64 Staff! He already helped us a lot with his contributions for beta Animal Crossing, various MegaMan and Ratched & Clank games.. now he’s one of us :)
The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons was published by Nintendo and developed by Capcom’s Flagship Studio for the Gameboy Color. In the early screenshots released for the game we can notice many beta differences. In the gallery below you can see some of these beta screens:
As the game have a complex password system that change some of the content, some of these differences could still be in the final version. If you have more info, please let us know!
Oracle of Ages and Oracle of Seasons were originally going to be themed parts of the Triforce Trilogy along with Mystical Seed of Courage. Each of the three games originally had a piece of the Triforce and one of its qualities (Wisdom, Power or Courage) assigned to them. This idea was scrapped relatively late in the development process, and the games were re-branded to remove all mention of this Triforce theme.[Info from Zelda Wikia]
Thanks to the X-Cult Community for the contribution!
You can find more info about Zelda: Oracle of Seasons in the Zelda Wiki!
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Do you remember the post about the Team Fortress 2 Alpha “Invasion”? Well, a guy named 4emoman on BetaArchive seems to have leaked this build sometime ago, but his files went down later. Another user named Popbob has re-uploaded it on Rapidshare but on its release there are some unuseful files such as an MP3 in the TF2 folder that seems to have nothing to do with the release or Team GabeN’s tools for compiling maps.
LucaPM has uploaded a cleaner version of the Team Fortress 2 Alpha with batch files for opening the game with “advanced” options such as opening it with the control console. You can find this new leaked version at LucaPM’s blog or you can read more about this release at Team GabeN’s Wiki.
Below you can see a video of the alpha in action:
As we can read on Kotaku, before Mortal Kombat VS DC another MK game was pitched, but it was never fully developed. You could say that Mortal Kombat 8 was released as MK VS DC, but the original concept for this new chapter of the MK saga was much different from what we got in the end:
Once again, we pestered Mr. Boon about the scrapped version of Mortal Kombat 8, once described by the long-term Midway dev as being heavily inspired by the look of Gears of War. While that grittier, darker version of MK didn’t make it far beyond the technology development stages — Boon told us there was little in the way of concept art for the grimier spin on the series — […]
In november 2009 an article at Game Set Watch revealed some concept arts that are assumed to be from this cancelled version of Mortal Kombat 8. It’s currently unknown how the gameplay would have evolved from the traditional fighting game, but if it would have followed this “new” style, it could have been something like “Gears of War” with more open arenas than the usual MK ones.
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Ratchet & Clank 3: Up Your Arsenal is a platform / third person shooter developed by Insomniac Games and published by Sony. It is the third installment in the Ratchet & Clank series and was released in November 2004. [Info from Wikipedia]
Bowsersenemy was able to notice various differences in the early beta screens and in some videos: