Ricochet Rick is a 3D shoot ’em up that was in development at Titus Interactive for the GameCube and XBOX in 2001. We dont know how much it was done before the cancellation as the only screens available are a bunch of concept renders: probably the project was canned in early development, when Titus went bankrupt in the same year.
Thanks to Vincent for the contribution!
Images:
In this new chapter of our “Unseen Interviews”, a series of articles arranged to know better some of the other websites and lovely geeks that work to preserve unseen games, we have meet Phugolz, one of the minds that are behind X-Cult, a community based project to research, archive, and distribute hard to come by gaming information. In this interview we talked about how their site was born, the preservation of cancelled games, copyright issues, information sharing, proto collectors, gaming developers… and some questions to find out Phugolz’s taste in games and food. Do you want to know more about the X-Cult philosophy? Keep reading!
U64: Thanks for your time Phugolz! Would you like to introduce yourself and your site to our readers?
Phugolz: I am Phugolz / PACHUKA / RealaNightmaren from X-Cult, and half a dozen other cults.
U64: Why did you choose the “Sonic-Cult” / “X-Cult” name for the site?
Before Ensemble Studios was closed, they worked on serveral prototype games, such as Nova, Sorcerer, Wrench and Phoenix, an RTS which featured humans fighting aliens (which later evolved into Halo Wars). Another protype was known as “Bam” which Ensemble describes as a “Ratchet & Clank-Style Platformer”. As seen on various images posted by the company’s employees , in the game you would have played as Sprocket and the levels had a cartoony look to them.
Images:
Loadstar II: Showdown on Phobos is a science-fiction action game for the Mega / Sega CD, that was in development in 1995 by Rocket Science Games, but then cancelled for some reasons. As Tim Stoddard has commented “chances are that this was cancelled because Rocket Science Games decided to move away from the FMV game genre (their reason for scrapping Wing Nuts) and since the system was almost dead in late 1995”. Loadstar II would have became the sequel of Loadstar: The Legend of Tully Bodine, released in America in 1994.
Thanks to Celine for the contribution!
Images:
Originally released in Japan as Aigiina no Yogen: Balubalouk no Densetsu Yori for the Famicom, Aigina’s Prophecy is a platform with RPG elements that was supposed to be published for the NES in USA in 1988 by Vic Tokai. As we can read on Strategy Wiki:
The goal of the game is to kill enough enemies to make progress through six dungeons, each of which contains a hidden portion of the Aura Star which has been broken into five pieces. The final dungeon contains the kidnapped princess who knows how to restore the Aura Star, which will allow you to complete the game. While most exits from a room become visible when enough enemies are defeated, the entrances to the rooms which contain pieces of the star are hidden from sight until the player jumps three times in the correct place to make the entrance appear.
Some days ago Tootai was able to buy the USA prototype, that was found by an user of the RacketBoy Forum, and he confirms that Aigina’s Prophecy seems fully translated in english, but somehow it was never officially released. The previous owner has put a video of the game in his Youtube Channel, so we can have a look at it
Thanks to Tootai for the contribution!