Action Adventure

Half Life (Quiver) [Beta / Concept / Prototype]

half-life-logo

Half-Life was the first product of Valve Software, which was founded in 1996 by former Microsoft employees Mike Harrington and Gabe Newell. They settled on a concept for a horror-themed 3D action game, using the Quake engine as licensed by id Software. Valve eventually modified the engine a great deal, notably adding skeletal animation and Direct3D support; a developer stated in a PC Accelerator magazine preview that seventy percent of the engine code was rewritten. The company had difficulties finding a publisher at first, many believing their project “too ambitious” for a studio headed by newcomers to the video game industry. However, Sierra On-Line had been very interested in making a 3D action game, especially one based on the Quake engine, and so signed them for a one-game deal.

The original code name for Half-Life was Quiver, after the Arrowhead military base from Stephen King’s novella The Mist, which served as early inspiration for the game. Gabe Newell explained that the name Half-Life was chosen because it was evocative of the theme, not clichéd, and had a corresponding visual symbol: the Greek letter λ (lower-case lambda), which represents the decay constant in the half-life equation. According to one of the game’s designers, Harry Teasley, Doom was a huge influence on most of the team working on Half-Life. Subsequently, according to Teasley, they wanted Half-Life to “scare you like Doom did”.

The first public appearances of beta Half-Life came in early 1997; it was a hit at Electronic Entertainment Expo that year, where they primarily demonstrated the animation system and artificial intelligence. Valve Software hired science fiction author Marc Laidlaw in August 1997 to work on the game’s characters and level design. Half-Life’s soundtrack was composed by Kelly Bailey. Half-Life was originally planned to be shipped in late 1997, to compete with Quake II, but was postponed when Valve decided the game needed significant revision.

In a 2003 “Making Of Half Life” feature in Edge, Newell discusses the team’s early difficulties with level design. In desperation, a single level was assembled including every weapon, enemy, scripted event and level design quirk that the designers had come up with so far. This single level inspired the studio to press on with the game. As a result, the studio completely reworked the game’s artificial intelligence and levels in the year leading up to its release. At E3 1998 it was given Game Critics Awards for “Best PC Game” and “Best Action Game”. The release date was delayed several times in 1998 before the game was finally released in November of that year. [Info from Wikipedia]

Below you can see beta screenshots and videos from the early Half Life development, with many differences and removed content.

Images:

Videos:

 

Power Crystal [M2 – Tech Demo / Proto / Cancelled]

ENG: This entry in the archive doesn’t have a description yet. If you want to add some info about the beta / cancelled stuff that you see in these images, just write a comment or send us an email! We’ll add your info in this page and your name in the contributors list. Thanks a lot for your help! :)

ITA: Questa pagina dell’archivio non ha ancora una descrizione. Se vuoi aggiungere delle informazioni riguardo le differenze della beta o la descrizione di un gioco cancellato, lasciaci un commento o mandaci una email! Inseriremo le tue informazioni nella pagina ed il tuo nome nella lista dei collaboratori. Grazie per il tuo aiuto! :)

Images: 

D2 [M2 – Cancelled ]

d2m2logo.jpg

D2 had originally started life as a game project for the never-released Panasonic M2 console. Originally, a pregnant Laura was to have died in the opening credits (during a terrorist attack on a plane), but her unborn child would be “warped” back in time. The player would have taken the role of Laura’s son – now a teenager – trapped in a large, European castle, from which he had to escape while being assaulted by supernatural phenomena. The game was practically finished when Panasonic officially announced that the M2 was not going to be released, leaving WARP with no way to sell the title. When given the chance to put out D2 for other systems, Kenji Eno decided to abandon the entire original project and start over from scratch with a new setting. – [Info from Wikipedia]

A video with the intro from the original M2 version was leaked online, showing a castle in transylvania, and a man that is apparently “Vlad Tepes” alias Dracula. You can see a forest of corpses impaled on spikes, and that’s what Vlad Tepes was known for doing to his victims. Apparently Vlad’s tormented with something, maybe the death of his wife (there a scene of a woman lying inside a coffin, it may be her), when suddently he close it and then going mad. After that we can see him reading books, doing a ritual, be consumed by flammes, then a blue light appears and a mask: he speaks to the mask, request a wish maybe, and after that the scene changes to 1998 in Sanfrancisco.

Thanks to Guillaume Pascal & Marshall Leslie & Celine for the contributions!
Thanks to Games That Weren’t for have shared videos from the D2 alpha/tech demo!

Even more info: www.cdi.randomvariable.net/THDO/D2/index.html

Images:

Videos:

 

Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories [GBA – Beta]

kingdomgbalogo.jpg

Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories is an action RPG developed by Square Enix and Japanese studio Jupiter and released in 2004 for the Game Boy Advance. The idea for an intermediary title was developed after director Tetsuya Nomura and his team had already begun to develop ideas for the second Kingdom Hearts game, which he had intended to be set a year after the original. Originally titled Kingdom Hearts: Lost Memories, Nomura changed the name to match the overall outline of the story, while still reflecting the theme of memories. [Info from Wikipedia]

Thanks to Umiyuri Papaeyra, we can notice various beta differences in the screenshots below:

First screenshot: Axel VS Sora

  • No boss fight takes place in the Unknown Rooms (the vestibule that appears before a world door).
  • Axel’s on the wrong side of the screen as well.
  • The pillars in the room are square while in the final game they are thick, round, and widely spaced.
  • There’s also a door visible in the wall that doesn’t exist in any of the Unknown Rooms in the final game.

Second screenshot: Sora in the Guarded Trove room in Wonderland

  • The door is less adorned than it is in the final game.

Third screenshot: Axel meeting with an Organisation member

  • The room with the χ-shaped table never appears in the final game.
  • Axel’s sprite looks kinda odd here, but I don’t know if it’s different, since the resolution of the scan is bad.

Fifth screenshot: Sora and Vexen

  • The marble ‘plant pot pillar’ here shows a leafy plant; in the final game they’re finely-crafted marble roses in large square pots.
  • The pillars from the first screen are finally visible as short ones; in the final game they reach to the ceiling.
  • The Unknown Rooms in the final game are a lot longer than shown here, and start with a set of steps coming up that don’t appear in this screen.
  • The door is much more visible here. Once again, the only door in the Unknown Room leads into the next world.

Sixth screenshot: Sora running around Olympus Coliseum

  • The world’s graphics are very different from the real game, showing a different ‘skirting board’ and ‘ledge’ pattern.
  • White Mushrooms only appear in a room when a special Map Card is used, and they’ll be the only enemies there.

Seventh screenshot: Cloud’s summon

  • Cloud’s cards in this screen are coloured grey; in the final game all the Summon Cards are classed as Magic Cards and are blue.
  • The Enemy Cards in the final game show the enemy’s faces.

Eighth screenshot: Fighting Darkside

  • Same as the previous screenshot, the Enemy Cards here don’t show Darkside’s face, when they should be.
  • The graphics on the Thunder and Fire cards are different to the final graphics.

Thanks a lot to Umiyuri Papaeyra for the contribution!

Images:

[Images from: www.kh2.co.uk

Dark Night [GBA – Unreleased]

datrknightgba.jpg

ENG: This entry in the archive doesn’t have a description yet. If you want to add some info about the beta / cancelled stuff that you see in these images, just write a comment or send us an email! We’ll add your info in this page and your name in the contributors list. Thanks a lot for your help! :)

ITA: Questa pagina dell’archivio non ha ancora una descrizione. Se vuoi aggiungere delle informazioni riguardo le differenze della beta o la descrizione di un gioco cancellato, lasciaci un commento o mandaci una email! Inseriremo le tue informazioni nella pagina ed il tuo nome nella lista dei collaboratori. Grazie per il tuo aiuto! :)

Images: