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Mega Drive / Genesis, Sega

Spinny and Spike [GEN MD – Cancelled]

U64 Staff & Contributors
17-07-2010
5 Comments

Spinny and Spike was a Genesis game, produced by Sega Technical Institute, that got cancelled relatively early on in development. It was unique in that it was one of the first games to be made up exclusively of boss battles, with no segue levels between them. Two characters (presumably named Spinny and Spike) were to fight through various nightmares.

This would have allowed for a great deal of creative flexibility and extremely varied characters.Two of the known enemies were Snake, a robotic snake with two stages of combat and a fake “natural” snakeskin that had to be blown away by the player, and Junkyard Dog, a vicious canine, the defeat of which required the player to abuse the occasional raising of its metallic head-plate.

Not much more is known about this game, apart from a wealth of old production artwork. However, there is a fair bit of interest surrounding it, and the story of its demise is of particular note.

The story goes that the game was originally conceived and planned by the trio of Steve Woita, Jason Plumb and Tom Payne (two programmers and an artist, respectively). It was soon given the go-ahead by Tom Kalinske (then-CEO and president of Sega of America), along with two other games, Comix Zone and Sonic Spinball. However, not long into its production, the three members of the team were reassigned to the Sonic Spinball project, which needed extra assistance in order to reach completion in time for the holiday rush.

Upon returning to Spinny and Spike, the three were rudely surprised by the apparent instigation of a completely new producer and lead artist, who had been hired to continue work on the game. The new team had sent it off in a completely different direction, and had not stayed faithful to the original design, according to Woita. Both he and Plumb decided to leave Sega in disgust, after receiving offers to work at Ocean of America.

While development of the game was meant to continue in the absence of these two key players, it was soon decided that its completion would be impossible without the input of Woita and Plumb; their code was too individual and unconventional, and its efficient use would have first required a complete rewrite. As this was too costly, Sega simply canned the project.

You can see many pieces of concept art, and read more about Spinny and Spike, in the Select Button Forum!

Article by Franklint

Images:
 

Nintendo, SNES + Super Famicom

Thunder in Paradise [SNES – Cancelled]

monokoma
16-07-2010
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Thunder in Paradise is a cancelled action game that was in development in 1994 for the Super Nintendo by Software Toolworks. The game was based on the TV series of the same name, starring Hulk Hogan, and it would have had at least 3 different gameplay modes, as we can see from the screenshots in the gallery below, found in  EGM issue #63.

As wrote by Evan G in his article on SNES Central, it’s possible that  the Thunder in Paradise game was never released because the TV show was cancelled in late 1994 for quality reasons. It would have been an economic risk to complete and publish a game based on an unsuccessful TV show.

Another Thunder in Paradise game was released for the CD-I, but it’s different from the SNES version.

Thanks to Celine for the contribution!

Images: 

Nes / Famicom, Nintendo

Screwballs Superleague [NES – Cancelled]

monokoma
13-07-2010
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Screwballs Superleague is a cancelled brawler / action game that was in development in 1990 by Rare. The game had two modes of play, battle mode and cooperative play: players would each start a level in their own “spin engine”, which would spin-up the character from their normal state into a spinning top. Players could exit the “spin engine” at any time, but it took time to spin the character up to full speed: the faster they were spinning, the more energy they had to throw either another player out of the battle arena (in battle mode) or an enemy monster (in coop mode).

As they player bashed into things, and over time, their spin energy would decrease making them more vulnerable to attack, so they would need to periodically head back into their own spin engine to spin-up to full power again.

Sadly Screwballs Superleague was canceled when the lead programmer left Rare. The game was pretty fun, but was months away from being completed and at the time they did not have a publisher for it yet.

Thanks a lot to Simon for his help in preserving some info on this lost project!

Images: 

Microsoft, Playstation 3 (PS3), Sony, Xbox 360

Catalyst (Next Level Games) [Xbox 360, PS3 – Cancelled]

U64 Staff & Contributors
12-07-2010
1 Comment

Catalyst is a project pitch for a new action game for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, developed by Next Level Games, famed for Punch-Out and Mario Strikers on Wii. Details are unknown as the project was never officially announced. Next Level Games may still try to find a publisher for this title though.

Thanks to CNL for the contribution!

Video:

 

Nintendo, Wii

Eduardo the Samurai Toaster [Wii – Beta]

monokoma
12-07-2010
No Comments

As we can read from Wikipedia, Eduardo the Samurai Toaster is a run and gun side-scrolling action game developed by Semnat Studios and released in 2009 for the Wii’s WiiWare digital distribution service. As noticed by Jaimen, originally the project was called “Eduardo the magical toaster” and instead of firing pastries you used a long stick to fight. A beta video found by TheSuperSonic111 shown this early beta (there’s also a removed ninja powerup).

In an interview by Gamasutra, the developement team talks about the early development of Eduardo:

What inspired Eduardo the Samurai Toaster, and why did you decide to make it?

DeMaria: After my freshman year of college I finished work on a really terrible turn-based strategy game. After a little time went by I felt like making another game. The intention was to learn how to make a larger game than the few that we had worked on before and to see if we could make a really excellent game. I asked Daniel if he had any ideas and he jokingly suggested that we work on a platformer where you play as a toaster that fights magical fairies. After a minute we both realized that his idea actually sounded pretty fun and we began development.

A little less than a year went by and we had made a game that was not very good, but we saw the potential in the concept. We started over from scratch and Daniel rethought the character design. It was at this time that Eduardo became a samurai with a sweatband. […]

How long did development take?

DeMaria: We spent roughly one year making the first version of the game before Eduardo was a samurai. We then started over from scratch and spent about a year on that version. This is when Daniel re-worked the character design. After that, we switched to the Torque Game Builder from an engine I made. It’s been a little less than a year since we switched engines. So we’ve been working on Eduardo for about three years.

Also, in the blog of Ian Bowie (from Semnat Studios) there are some more info:

First I should give a quick recap of the history of Eduardo. There have been three versions prior to this WiiWare game. In 2004 we started work on Eduardo the Magical Toaster, and started over again sometime early 2005, I believe, with Eduardo the Samurai Toaster. And pardon me if I get my dates wrong(the past five years of development have turned into a big blur) but I believe it was in 2006 when we started on yet another version of the game, this time using the Torque 2D engine.

Thanks to Jaimen for the contribution!

Videos:

Here’s a video from the final version: