A few old beta / pre-release versions of the following games were found by Steve in an old (original) Xbox Development Kit:
Rainbow Six (late 2004)
XIII (dec 2002)
Brothers in Arms (Nov 2004)
Ghost Recon 2 (aug 2004)
The full XDK dump was shared online ad it’s available to be saved. Please, upload it on mirrors if you can, to be sure to preserve all the files. If you find any interesting differences / unused models hidden in the code, feel free to share your finds with the video games preservation community at:
Winterheart’s Guild is a cancelled post-apocalyptic action-RPG that was in development by Zelian Games Studio around 2007. The project was mostly known for being a collaborative project between Zelian Games and the power metal band Sonata Arctica, as much as the game’s title was taken from the band’s 2003 album of the same name.
“Winterheart’s Guild is a post-apocalyptic action-RPG. The setting is a harsh, brutal Earth, after the destruction of civilization at its technological peak. In this world, resources are scarce, and the environment is as dangerous as the enemies that the player must face. The world is mostly covered in snow and ice. It’s not only the health of your character that matters, but also warmth and energy. Valuable items are hard to come by. In this world, you truly feel the value of finding a good weapon and a reasonable stash of ammunition.
The game draws from various genres. The gameplay is action based, with RPG elements that give the game depth. In terms of actual gameplay, we have several corner-stones that come together in the final experience: Combat (action), Travel (exploration), Trade (loot, buy/sell, trade), Conversation (info, receive items, other game state effects) and Character Management. All these things take place in a very physical world – we are using Ageia PhysX (with hardware support) to bring the world physically to life. Don’t have the key to open the wooden door? Just bash it in if you have the right weapon and enough strength.
The band members feature as the main characters in this alternate futuristic world. There is no connection between the in-game characters and the real-world band, other than looks and voice. We are also trying to bring across distinct characteristics for each main character that may or may not match their real-world personalities.
Sonata Arctica is also providing the instrumental music (in-game and other) for Winterheart’s Guild, as well as one or more bonus tracks (full songs). Furthermore, many of the story, character and other elements of the game subtly draw from Sonata Arctica song lyrics, including albums other than Winterheart’s Guild. Sonata Arctica also has some input in terms of gameplay ideas and features.”
In 2008 the game was officially put on-hold due to lack of interest and funding from publishers. Zelian Games tried switching their resources to a Bejewelled clone titled “xOrbic”, which saw a public alpha release but in the end it was also canned and the team vanished.
Thanks to AeonicButterfly and António for the contribution!
“About 27 years ago, I drew these from scratch pixel by pixel to pitch a My Neighbor Totoro Super Famicom game to Hayao Miyazaki. (*for Tokuma Shoten Intermedia. The game got shelved). There were no decent scanners back then, so I had to stare at an art book and draw these one pixel at a time”
And a few more details “translated” by Google Translate:
“At that time, I felt a good bleed out when I saw it with a CRT while working, and it was more anime-like. Tokuma Shoten proposed a plan because he wanted to put it out, but unfortunately the director’s ok did not appear.
I couldn’t tell you the details of the reason for the store, but as you pointed out, he didn’t seem to like the game.
I guess it was more like an adventure game. I want to ignore the project and put out a racing game on a cat bus (laughs)
I think that there was a certain amount of odds, and I think that I had a plan for Manager Miyazaki, but in terms of adventure-oriented content, it might not have been as meaningful to turn it into a game.
Because it was for planning purposes, I think that I use more than 16 colors. However, the number of colors is considerably reduced.”
In the end after this undeveloped Super Famicom pitch there has never been an official My Neighbor Totoro video game.
After releasing Prototype 2 in mid 2012, Radical Entertainment started working on the third chapter of their series, hopeful to quickly releasing it as one of their last games for the 7th generation of consoles or even better as a launch title for Playstation 4 and Xbox One.
Unfortunately Prototype 2 did not sell as expected: the team was already in financial difficulties and their parent company decided to layoff part of their staff, cancelling plans for Prototype 3. As we can read on Kotaku:
“Although we made a substantial investment in the Prototype IP, it did not find a broad commercial audience. Radical is a very talented team of developers, however, we have explored various options for the studio, including a potential sale of the business, and have made a difficult conclusion through the consultation process that the only remaining option is a significant reduction in staff. As such, some employees will remain working for Radical Entertainment supporting other existing Activision Publishing projects, but the studio will cease development of its own games going forward.”
While Prototype 3 was never officially announced by Activision nor Radical Entertainment, fans of the IP are still asking for it. In June 2019 a few screenshots from an early development version of Prototype 3 were found online. We saved these images in the gallery below, to preserve what remains of this cancelled project.
Evil Spell is a cancelled beat ‘em up / hack & slash that was in development by Dark Ride Studios for Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. The team was established in 2010 by ex Grin developers after their former company closed down. They wanted to create simple, low-budget projects to pitch to publishers to receive funds and support, then release them on Xbox Live Arcade and Playstation Network.
In Evil Spel you would have been able to choose between 12 different characters, each one with their one combat style, weapons and skills. For example there was a medieval knight, some kind of WW1 soldier, an evil alchemist and a modern-age street-gangster.
As you can imagine the game was set in different time periods, so they could offer a good variety of levels, enemies and weapons. For example in the early prototype shown by the team at the Game’s Developers Conference 2011 we can see a medieval area mixed with a modern-day street.
In the end we can speculate Dark Ride Studios never found a publisher interested in their projects and were not able to complete Evil Spell. Only a few images and prototype footage are preserved below, to remember the existence of this lost game.
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