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New Cancelled Games & Their Lost Media Added to the Archive

When it was first shown, Mario Kart for the Gameboy Advance looked a bit different than the final version. If you take a look a these beta images, the characters had bigger heads and smaller karts. Also it seems that the tracks had some differences in the details and in the course design, as we can see in the images and the video below.

Mattrizzle of The Cutting Room Floor discovered that there are a few unused tracks still in the final game’s data. Most of them appear to be Super Mario Kart’s battle courses, which means that they were probably at one point planned to be in the game along with the Super Mario Kart tracks. Unfortunately, the starting positions in each of the battle courses don’t exist, so the starting points default to position 0,0.

Thanks to Mario125 and Goomther for the contribution!

Images:

Video:

The unused tracks:

GameCube, Nintendo

StarFox Armada / Assault [GC – Proto / Beta / Unused Stuff]

monokoma

08-04-2008

4 Comments

Star Fox: Assault was first announced on May 8, 2002. It had a tentative release date of April 2003 for Japan, and would be developed by the same employees who worked on Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies at Namco. New information about the game didn’t show up until a short video montage at 2003’s E3 in Los Angeles, which showcased the game’s first-person perspective.

During development, the game had three working titles: Star Fox Armada, Star Fox 2, and Star Fox. It eventually came to be known as Star Fox: Assault. [Infos from Wikipedia]

In 2003, the game was intended to be multiplayer oriented and was rumored to have a LAN mode too, but sadly it never did. If you play the game you can almost feel that there is more content in the multiplayer mode, with more stuff to unlock. Most of the missions in the single player are the same arenas used in multiplayer, with a touch of story. There was going to be a coop-mode for the Adventure mode, but sadly it was cut.

In these screens and video, we can see an early version of the game, with inferior graphic, Aparoids from level 9 seen in level 2, different text, slightly different character design and HUD. It’s interesting to notice that the Star Fox Armada Project was going to have an arcade version too, as it happened with F-Zero GX. The arcade version of Armada was never released and we can only wonder which kind of differences it could had.

Also a Unused Game Over music has been found by Gabrielwoj, it is the same Game Over Music of Star Fox 64, see video below!

Update: New video of the E3 Trailer (the other one was deleted, enjoy this one)

Thanks to bydolord and Gabrielwoj for the contribution!

Images:

Videos:

GameCube, Nintendo

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door [Beta Sprites – GameCube]

U64 Staff & Contributors

08-04-2008

No Comments

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door was initially going to simply be called Paper Mario 2 and feature a far different logo, one reminiscent of the original Paper Mario’s logo. There were also many unused badges. All of the partners from the original Paper Mario were going to appear but were cut-off as well. Bow and Parakarry were the only ones left. There was also a strange robot creature and two palette swaps of Screamy. Bobbery also had a prototype sprite, which depicts him wearing army gear. There was also going to be a probable mini-boss called Dark Atomic Boo. Dark Atomic Boo would be a Dark Boo version of Atomic Boo, and some have theorized that it may have been a more powerful Atomic Boo fought in the Dark Boo-inhabited Poshley Sanctum.

Also, in the original trailer, one can see a HP Plus badge that is located on a ledge beyond a moving platform which has a wall over it in midcourse (and assumedly could be reached with the help of Vivian). None of this made it into the final game (except the area where these things are, minus the things themselves of course). The trailer also showed that Item Shops would be labeled with Mushrooms rather than the Fire Flowers seen in the final game. Red Bones was initially named “Red Koopa Skeleton“. In the same trailer you can see that “Tornado Jump” was initially called “Hurricane Jump”. [Info from Mariowiki]

Images:

Source: www.themushroomkingdom.net

GameCube, Nintendo

Wave Race [GC – Space World 2000 Tech Demo]

U64 Staff & Contributors

08-04-2008

6 Comments

Wave Race: Blue Storm is a jet ski racing game released as a launch title for the Nintendo GameCube on November 18, 2001. It was a sequel to the 1996 Nintendo 64 game Wave Race 64 and was developed by Nintendo-owned development studio, NST. [Infos from Wikipedia]

When the new Wave Race project for the Gamecube was first shown at the Space World 2000, Nintendo presented a small tech demo with a different graphic style than the one used in the final game, more similar to the Nintendo 64 version. Probably this was just an early concept for the title and the final character design was still undecided.

Also, as noticed by Rusko Star, if you look in the booklet in the released game or in the old videos you can see that Serena had a ponytail in the beta version!

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Videos:

GameCube, Nintendo

Retro Studios Football [GameCube – Tech Demo / Cancelled]

Liam Robertson

08-04-2008

1 Comment

NFL Retro Football, also known as ‘Retro Studios Football’ was a cancelled sports game by Retro Studios, the developers responsible for the Metroid Prime series. It was being developed for Nintendo Gamecube from 1998-2000.

Retro Studios struggled in its early years, dealing with several cancelled projects and lay-offs. In 2000, Nintendo offered the company the license to the long-dormant Metroid franchise which proved to be a turning point for the company. One of the GameCube games that were cancelled to concentrate the team on the development of Metroid Prime, was this NFL Retro Football, that was basically a traditional football game with impressive graphic and animations for its time (and a rumored create-a-player mode).

Initially, this project was meant to be a Mario Football game, but Nintendo wanted Retro to create more “mature” titles (that’s why they created the team) so it soon became a realistic / real world sport game. The concept above was not created by Retro Studios, it was just a drawing done by OptimalProtocol for an N-Sider article, to show what the game could have looked like.

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