The overall result suggested that the development of The Angel of Darkness had been rushed, despite numerous delays prior to its release to possibly improve the final product; difficult-to-overlook plot inconsistencies (or leaps) and frequent continuity errors added to the belief that significant ‘cuts’ were made from the original design. While it was not the first (or last) game to suffer such abridgment, the results were especially jarring and confusing. For example, in the final encounter between Lara and the overall perpetrator, they appear to
Three Tribes was announced in November of 2004 in a press release by its Dutch developer Two Tribes as an action puzzle game in an overhead perspective designed for all ages. I could only retrieve the Dutch version of the announcement, archive.org unfortunately didn’t cache a page of the English version. The game was designed for the Gameboy Advance and possibly the Nintendo DS; no release date is given for the game and the company had no publishing partner for the game at the moment of the announcement.
Three Tribes sets the player in control of a shaman whose purpose is to help out the natives he meets with their problems. Interaction between the characters, animals, objects and tools found in the game and with the environment itself would be a central part of solving the various puzzles. The game would be set in the same visual perspective as the 2D Zelda games but with a lot more freedom allowing the player to climb, swim and fly anywhere they wanted to. The game also promised a wide variety of mission objectives. The NDS version would differ from the GBA version in having a multiplayer game editor. The editor would allow players to design their own multiplayer levels and create their own objectives and later share them with friends.
Unfortunately Three Tribes was quietly cancelled; the company never found a publisher for the game. The main cause could have been the declining GBA market but I also cannot retrieve how far development of both versions was. I could find only a couple of GBA screenshots and two promotional videos (see below) and absolutely no information on the Nintendo DS version. On the current site of Two Tribes the game is briefly mentioned:
„In the meantime, we’d spent two years developing a physics puzzle adventure game called Three Tribes for Game Boy Advance, though it turned out to be impossible to find a publisher for such an ambitious concept.
The game was stated way into 2010 on the Two Tribes website as a Gameboy Advance title “In development”. After a refreshment of the website later that year the game vanished of the radar and was no longer mentioned. The game still hasn’t vanished completely as its promotional website is still (partly) online. But I think we can consider it cancelled.
Prince of Persia Prodigy (also know as Prince of Persia Zero in its early beta days) is an action-adventure and platforming game developed by Ubisoft Montreal. It was released on December 2, 2008 for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Proof of conception for this new title was found in September 2006, when a file that was leaked to the internet was found to contain concept art for the game, although Ubisoft didn’t announce the game until May 2008. [Infos from Wikipedia]
In january 2008, Surfer Girl released some screenshots from an early prototype of this new Prince Of Persia, in which the main character was followed by a mysterious flying girl. As you know, the final game has not flying-girls that follow the prince. As we can read over at GameSetWatch, thanks to “David Pettitt” we learn that this version was “a target render that the team pitched the game with”. It seems that Ubisoft showed the full Target Render at a Vancouver SIGGRAPH event. Below you can see the full video!
Some other rumors even say that originally Assassin’s Creed was meant to be part of the Prince of Persia series. Probably Ubisoft created a lot of different ideas for the project, before choosing the final one.
Even the released game has some differences from the official beta screens that we can find online. As noticed by FullMetalMC:
Different colors for the Hunter
Elika’s clothing is a bit different
A removed enemy
Prince’s sword has a alternate design
Different Tree
Elikas magic has less detail
In an interview with Prince of Persia Producer Ben Mattes, we can read more about Elika’s development:
To further answer your initial question of how her design evolved, at the beginning of the game, one of the things we were thinking about was — should she have more of an autonomous personality? Should she have a little bit more autonomy as a gameplay mechanic?
So we developed ideas of her sometimes taking the lead, or her sometimes wandering off and looking at key game points, or her basically just taking initiative. Some of them only got as far as concepts and brainstorms, some of them actually got as far as prototypes, but what we quickly realised was there was a lot of design that had to be done in terms of simplifying Elika’s involvement to make sure we delivered on that promise that she never gets in the way and she’s never a negative.
We had instances where we had interest points in the world — little objects that would attract her attention, and if you idled for a few minutes she would wander over to one of those objects to look at it, but then the player would, y’know, haul ass to the left and Elika’s wandering over there looking at that thing and then he has to stop and wait and go and get her and bring her back, and it was these things that detracted from that overall core message, which is more important than anything else.
[…] initially we kicked around the ideas of Elika being a young girl, but that brought up the whole babysitting thing, and then we toyed very briefly with the idea of Elika being a partner like a brother or a father figure or something, but it didn’t have the kind of sexual tension that’s fun to play with. And then within a couple of months we had the design of Elika almost fully fleshed out as it exists now.
Thanks to Surfer Girl & Grahamx227 for the contribution!
[Warning: this article is just a translation from the original one in italian, there are some “lost in translation” parts, so the original version was more complete, but at least now we have an english version too. If you find some errors or some weird use of the english language, please send us a mail so we can fix them, thanks!]
[original article in italian by monokoma, english translation by Yota]
[Thanks to Evan & Sba sb3002 for the english corrections!]
Beta twilight enemies from the 2004 trailer. Their polygonal models are still inside the game, and you can see them using some GameShark codes.
Beta design of the Gale Boomerang. Also, in the beta you obtained the boomerang inside a chest. In the final version, you get it after beating the monkey boss.
A beta Moblin enemy, completely removed from the game.
The HUD was changed during the development of the game. In the beta version, it seems that it was possible to crouch and possibly crawl using the R button.
A beta cutscene from the 2005 trailer, where Colin crawls through the secret passage that leads in the village’s spring. You can still go through that passage, but the scene was removed from the final game and the player needs to find it by himself.
A beta sumo match from the 2005 trailer. This area was completely removed from the final game. In the occasions in which Link fights the Gorons, none of the battles match the one in this scene. In the final version, the rooms where the old Gorons are found have sumo looking platforms. Perhaps in the beta a sumo battle was necessary to win the key parts.
In this screen from the CDG 2005 video, we can see another interesting scene: Links is escaping from a giant spider, through a dark cave. This scene was removed from the final game, but it was probably just a different Armoghoma Boss Battle from the Temple Of Time. This could even be the boss battle for the removed beta temple, that it was later changed and reused as Armoghoma; infact, in the same video we can see a lot of parts were Link explores the removed dungeon.
The magic bar was still in the game in the pre-release build, as you can see in this screenshot taken from the backcover of the final package. The bar is similar to the one found by using the lantern, only in green. It’s strange that in Twilight Princess there is no magic system to limit how much magic you can use. This image is a proof that in the beta version there was one, or at least they wanted to implement it. As you can see below, there are even more proof of the removed magic system from the game:
A green chu chu jelly. As those who finished the game should know, you can mix the chu chu’s jelly in order to make potions with various effects. The green one is completely useless since the developers removed the magic system from the game. Normally, the green chu chu would recharge some magic. Unfortunately, Nintendo removed the green jelly in the PAL version of Twilight princess.
With the GameShark, you can unlock the magic potion item. It was probably ment to be for sale in the Hyrule stores. [Source: SnakeGuy Album]
Another beta item unlockable with the GameShark: the fire arrows, that could have been enabled with the help of the removed magic system. [Source: SnakeGuy Album]
Black chu chu jelly, unlockable with the GameShark but removed from the final game. [Source: SnakeGuy Album]
Another strange beta item unlockable with the GameShark. It’s very similar to the blue fire of ocarina of time. [Source: SnakeGuy Album]
Yet another beta enemy. it was unused in the game but was left in the memory code. It’s unlockable thanks to the GameShark. It was probably used in the temple of time or in the Twilight palace.
Another strange beta enemy, it could be a different version of the flamed snails. Thanks to Funkymicio for the contribution! [Source: Youindia @ YT]
This is certanly the strangest beta object still in game’s memory. A really odd-looking giant that was probably used just to test the dimensions of the various characters. [Source: Youindia @ YT]
With the gameshark we can even use the beta design of the bombs. They’re much more simple and similar to the ones used in previous games.
A really odd scene, where many gorons create some sort of a super goron. This enemy was removed from the final game. Maybe in the beta this boss blocked the access road to the Death Mountain. [Source: Quartoxuma @ YT]
[Warning: this article is just a translation from the original one in italian, there are some “lost in translation” parts, so the original version was more complete, but at least now we have an english version too. If you find some errors or some weird use of the english language, please send us a mail so we can fix them, thanks!]
[Thanks to Evan & Sba sb3002 for the english corrections!]
The second Zelda for the GameCube (and the first for the Wii) had a long development of nearly 4 years, and the final game turned out to be a lot different from what originally appeared in 2004. Some areas and dungeons were removed, while the surviving sections were heavily modified. In this article we will try to analyze the history of the development of TP with the screenshots and the videos available.
This article has been subdivided in three sections (Overworld – Towns & Dungeons – Characters & Items), because of the enormous amount of beta material. Nintendo has worked on Zelda for many years, continuously adding and removing entire sections, of which many are unfortunately lost, and so it is impossible to recreate faithfully the original project. This is therefore an incomplete analysis, made using only the beta screenshots that Nintendo released in the magazines and the websites.
We however think that the online community will still find beta material hidden the code of the game, as it happened with Ocarina Of Time. This article will be therefore updated every time that new discoveries will be made . For every contribution, information or theory not included here, you can simply contact us with an email or you can post on our forum! Will we succeed discovering together all that Nintendo has removed?
Warning: It possible that there are spoilers in this article, and, because Twilight Princess is a very long game, it is possible that some areas, which i considered beta, are in the game.
[original article in italian by monokoma, english translation by Yota]
The screenshot above is from the build of TP showed at E3 2004. This zone is the first version of the Bridge Of Eldin. We notice the presence of some fire torches in front of the arc and the structure still intact, when in the released version the bridge is in ruins. We can even see a castle in the background… do you recognize it ? It is the Hyrule Castle. The Bridge of Eldin was thus originally located in the Castle Town, but Nintendo later decided to move it to the province of Eldin.
Another photo from the E3 2004 of the beta bridge of Eldin.
This is instead from the E3 2005, and, as you can see, the Hyrule Castle is still beyond the Bridge of Eldin.
The Hyrule Field has changed many times in the course of the development. In these two screenshots, we can see in the background the beta version of Hyrule Castle. The graphics was improved compared to this 2004 screenshot, but the field is just as big as the released version.
This forest it is not present in the final game, but it was probably an area of the beta Faron/Ordon Woods. It is worth noting that this forest is similar to the beta Lost Woods of Ocarina of Time.
It is really strange that Nintendo created and removed two times a very similar forest area. It almost seems like that the programmers use this wood to test the first builds of Zelda. But why it is always left out? Maybe it is too boring and confusing to explore, or there are developement issues.
In another screenshot of the beta wood, we see Epona and Link with two dogs. As we will see in the next paragraph, originally the player was required to interact more with animals, maybe in order to complete some quests.
In this screenshots of a 2005 video, Link finds a group of cats under an ancient tree. In the released game, animals have little importance, and thus it is strange that they showed this scene in a trailer.
This statue, much similar to Doshin the Giant, is yet again from the 2005 video of the beta Faron Woods. We now know that in the Sacred Grove there are some similar statues that protect the place, so we can assume that this was the beta entrance to the Sacred Grove.
This strange, small lake, shown in this 2005 image, is not present in the final version of the game. It could have been a beta version of the Lanayru Spring or one of the several fairies fountains.
This pond is also absent from Twilight Princes. The background seems to suggest that it was connected yet again to the beta Forest. The water is full of fish, so it is likely that it was also a beta fishing zone.
Others screenshots from the beta swamp. Link still has his old dress (that , by the way, it is a little different from the released game) thus suggesting that this fishing zone was near the Ordon Village, also because in the first playable demo of Twilight Princess Link can use the canoe to explore the village. Probably in the beta the Ordon river was much bigger, connecting the village with the beta woods.
The old, black and white, Twilight World. In the final build Nintendo however, as we well know, opted for a world with a strong bloom effect and saturated colors.
Yet another area removed from the beta Faron/Ordon Woods: The cementery. However the “secret” cementery in the last dungeon is very much the same as this one, apart from the trees.
In this old screenshot, we can instead see a different Bridge of Eldin fight scene, where the fire is missing near the exit and the sky has a different color than the final version.
In some other beta screens, we can even see an unused version of the Bridge Of Eldin, where it is more destroyed than the final version and the “secret room” is missing from the bridge. The strange fact is that the original version of the Bridge Of Eldin was not destroyed, because it was the entrance to the Hyrule Castle. It looks like that Nintendo had made a complete version of the bridge (when it was the castle entrance), then destroyed it (as we can see from the screens abobe) and later built it a bit more, to insert the “secret room”. What a weird development.
In the first video of Twilight Princess , the overworld of the game was a very barren and stormy land, full of dead trees. Unfortunately we can’t know if this reflects some changes in the original story of the game.
Another place shown in the 2004 trailer, probably a beta of the Gerudo Desert, where we can see a group of little ogres at twilight. Certainly it was created for the trailer, but it is interesting to see how much it is different from the atmosphere of the final Gerudo Desert.
In this 2005 screenshot we see Wolf Link in a strange snow zone, most probably a beta section of Snowpeak. No more sent us an email saying that this zone maybe was where there is now the snowboard minigame.
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