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New Cancelled Games & Their Lost Media Added to the Archive

Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance, originally known as Mortal Kombat 5: Vengeance, is a fighting game developed and produced by Midway. The game was released for the Xbox, PlayStation 2 and GameCube in 2002. Deadly Alliance was the first all-new Mortal Kombat fighting game produced exclusively for home consoles, with no preceding arcade release. [Info from Wikipedia]

At the Mortal Kombat Secrets website we can read many interesting info about the development of the game and its beta differences. Various characters were created for Mortal Kombat 5, but some of them were never used in the final game, as Kai, Dairou, Tiamat, Hachiman, Baphomet, The Evil Masters and Siobhan.

Also, some playable characters in Deadly Alliance went through a lot of changes before their final design, as Shang Tsung, Quan Chi (with a living weapon that never made it in to the game), Scorpion, Li Mei, Mavado and Frost. Early screens of the game are probably just target renders, as the graphic is nothing like the one in the final game. A Water Temple arena was also planned, but removed from the final version.

You can check Mortal Kombat Secrets for more info!

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Unseen Features, Unseen Interviews

Unseen Interview: CRV from GDRI

For our series of interviews with people from various websites related to the unseen development of videogames, this time we got in contact with CRV, founder of the Game Developer Research Institute, an organization dedicated to researching gaming companies and their employee. With over 100 company entries and over 25 interviews, the GDRI archive is one of the best place to learn more about obscure studios and their works. In this unseen interview we talk about the GDRI site, contacts with developers and games preservation.

U64: Thanks for your time Smsgenny, would you like to introduce your site to our readers?

CRV: GDRI (Game Developer Research Institute) is a website/organization started back in 2006 that is dedicated to researching the companies and people involved in game development. We try to figure out who did what

U64: Why did you decide to open an archive about popular and obscure developers?

Playstation 2 (PS2), Sony

The Ace Of Spade [PS2 – Cancelled]

monokoma

22-11-2009

5 Comments

The Ace of Spade is a cancelled action game that was in development by Ubisoft in 2004, for the Playstation 2. The team created an early playable prototype that was probably used for an internal pitch, but in the end the project was never finished for unknown reasons. The game had a cover/fire system similar to the one used in Namco’s Kill Switch and later in Gear of Wars.

Thanks to Hey Hey for the contribution!

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Nintendo, Nintendo 64 & 64DD, Playstation, Sony

WWF War Zone [N64/PSX – Beta]

monokoma

22-11-2009

6 Comments

WWF War Zone was the first 3D WWF title to be released, developed by Acclaim Studios Salt Lake and published by Acclaim Entertainment in 1998 for the PlayStation and Nintendo 64. As Andrew has noticed, there were some beta screenshots in an issue of Game Informer (?) with Star Wars: Masters of Teräs Käsi on the cover. At the time, the game was simply referred to as WWF ’98. This beta version has no health bars yet, the ropes are red, white, and blue instead of just red, and the arena has American flags. There was a beta video on Youtube but it seems to have disappeared.

Thanks to Andrew McMahon for the contribution!

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Nintendo, SNES + Super Famicom

Kaboom: the Mad Bomber returns [SNES – Cancelled]

monokoma

21-11-2009

1 Comment

Kaboom: The Mad Bomber Returns (also know as Kaboom! 2) is a cancelled action game that was in development in 1993 / 1994 by High Voltage Software / Activision (?) for the Super Nintendo. The game was based on the original Kaboom! for the Atari 2006. Gameplay in the original Kaboom! consists of using a paddle controller controller to catch bombs dropped by the “Mad Bomber”, so we can assume that the SNES version was going to be similar.

A prototype of Kaboom SNES was found in 2001 by an user of the Atari Age forum:

It look’s to pretty much to be a “Technology Demo”. Good at best. Very repetetive. There’s some-sort of mad doctor on a flying carpet, throwing down bombs to a kid who runs back ‘n’ forth trying to catch them. Not very impressive and very slow. […] This version look’s as though it was done by High Voltage Software.

Celine was able to find a couple of screens in Game Power (an italian magazine) issue 20, while some other info were found by Zwackery from the Atari Age Forum, in VideoGames magazine (vol. V, no. 11, Nov 1993). As we can read from the VGM article, Kaboom: The Mad Bomber Returns was shown at the summer CES 1991 in Chicago, along with the cancelled “River Raid: The Mission of No Return” remake.

It seems that “both got killed because the developers couldn’t push the SNES boundaires with either one” as noted by Klove in the Atari Age Forum.

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