Bloodrayne Betrayal is an action game developed by WayForward that was released in 2011 for Xbox 360 XBLA and PS3 PSN. In the screenshots below we can see some concept arts of the characters and of the levels, both of which changed quite a lot during the development.
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As we can read from Wikipedia, Crackdown 2 is a sandbox third-person shooter game developed by Ruffian Games and published by Microsoft Game Studios for the Xbox 360 in July 2010. Thanks to a post at Sean Noonan’s blog, we can read some interesting info about the beta and the development of Crackdown 2:
We had these cavernous locations for these monstrosities to roam, but the Goliath’s slow movement pace just couldn’t cut it against our nimble agent characters – no matter how powerful we buffed the Goliaths. Their great size meant any quick movements looked jarring and totally unconvincing, so the speed couldn’t change. […]
We pulled an all nighter or two and redesigned the Goliath. We adopted an approach whereby the Goliath would completely ignore the player. The Goliath would sprint as fast as possible to the beacon at which point he would pummel it until it was destroyed – the player’s job was to kill the Goliath before that could happen. It was simpler, cleaner and had a much more interesting visual impact. […]
The old Shai Gen Car Park in Unity Heights Square is roughly a tenth the size it originally was meant to be with the old Goliath design …in fact the old Shai Gen Car Park was once meant to be a freak infested mall as an homage to Dawn of the Dead but it’s location being on the final island best suited a Goliath encounter. At one point we talked about having a Goliath climb the agency tower as a final, but the idea was scrapped […]
Thanks a lot to Sean for the contribution!
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Kid Icarus Uprising is an action game developed by Project Sora and published by Nintendo on its 3DS system in 2012. It marked the first entry in the Kid Icarus series in over 20 years; with the last being Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters on the Game Boy.
In the great gulf of time between Uprising & its portable predecessor, the rumour mill was rife with talk of more possible installments. Take, for example, this scan from a 90’s video game magazine, which suggested an SNES game was in the works:
In 2008, Factor 5, Inc. developed a prototype for a new Wii Kid Icarus, as per Nintendo’s request. Ultimately, however, their dreams of developing a full title were shot down when the publisher chose not to proceed, before the studio later went out of business in December that year.
As Factor 5 fell, Kid Icarus: Uprising began to take shape at Nintendo’s Kyoto HQ in late 2008. An early prototype was devised by Masahiro Sakurai and a small team of handpicked for the task. Originally, Sakurai had set out to create a Star Fox game for Wii, but ran into issues with the limited manuverability of controlling vehicles, which was preventing him from moulding the experience he had envisioned. He was aspiring to develop a gameplay system in which the player could turn instantly on a dime to return fire, or dodge projectiles. By turning his creation into a Kid Icarus game, the director overcame these difficulties, as he explained to Official Nintendo Magazine in June 2010:
“…the problem with Starfox was that-and you’ll see this when you see the trailer for Kid Icarus – is that the game design incorporates a lot of different views. For example, flying and shooting sideways or turning around and shooting behind and I felt that there were some restrictions with Starfox in this regard. With Pit, there is a certain amount of flexibility that is allowed and makes a better fit for this gameplay.”
As Sakurai elaborated on in his Iwata Asks interview on the subject of Uprising, when development began, it was being prototyped and demoed on PC; as well as Wii at one stage:
Iwata:
Yes. Development did last a long time.
Sakurai:At first we didn’t have the Nintendo 3DS development kit, so we started making it on a PC. Oh, and for a while we were using a Wii to make it! (laughs)
The interview also disclosed two previously unseen prototypes from early in the game’s life cycle:
At E3 2010, Kid Icarus: Uprising had its premiere, debuting as the first ever Nintendo 3DS game to be shown to the world. Upon analysis, we can observe a number of differences between it and the final build:
The above video documents the title in an evidently early state with incomplete, lower quality graphics than the released game. At the time the trailer was created, Troy Lund was originally slated to portray the protagonist, Pit, in the English language dub. Eventually, he was replaced by Anthony Del Rio, who plays the character in the English voiceover of the final game. This trailer demonstrates Lund’s version of the character, prior to his recasting.
We can glean also that this build contained a different aiming reticule. Whereas the release build adopted a circular design, which changes based upon the power of your shot, the one seen here is more static and simplistic.
Beta
Final
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Desperados Gangs is a cancelled tactical action game that was in development by Spellbound Entertainment, as a new chapter in the Desperados series. This new game was planned to be released for Xbox 360’s Live Arcade, PS3 & PSvita’s PSN, Smartphones and PC Digital Download but sadly they were not able to find a publisher to fund the project.
Desperados Gangs was going to have a more deeper multiplayer gameplay, with VS and coop modes, online and offline options, different character classes to chose from and AI-controlled mercenaries to recruit. Players would have been able to chose from 5 different classes: the Gunfighter, the Brawler, the Healer, the Engineer and the Spy, while keeping in mind that cooperation would be extremely important to achieve the different objectives, as sabotage or rescue missions.
What they planned for Desperados Gangs was to play it something like Lead & Gold or Team Fortress 2 to evolve the series, with the option to make the game more “steampunk”, to be able to have new styles of weapons, features, ect.
Only few artworks from Desperados Gangs are archived in the gallery below, to preserve its lost existence.
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Videos from Desperados 3:
Videos from Lead & Gold:
As we can read on Wikipedia, Super Turrican was developed by Factor 5 and published by Seika for the Super Nintendo. Factor 5’s Super Turrican plays similarly to Mega Turrican and shares a similar visual style, but the game has a different set of levels and features a freeze beam in place of the original lightning whip. DEC noticed some reference about the beta version of Super Turrican on the Factor 5 web site (http://www.factor5.de/secrets