Action RPG

Master Slave [XBOX – Cancelled]

Master Slave is a cancelled action RPG (labelled as “a cinema-roleplaying game”) that was in development by Takuyo Kougyo for the original Xbox. As others unlucky Takuyo projects, Master Slave vanished in early development and it was quietly canned without any official explanation from the studio. It’s possible that they never found a publisher interested in the game and the low sales of the Xbox in japan were not of any help. It seems that the player would have took the role of Shishiro Clandart, a man who has lost his memory. With the help of Iris whom you met at a forest, Master Slave’s objective was to recover Shishiro’s lost memory. The battle involved nine different elements, using a unique system (?) to execute special moves.

Master Slave character’s design was created by Satoshi Kuramochi.

Thanks to Celine for the contribution!

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Ultima IX (9) [PC – Beta]

Ultima IX (9) is a RPG in the Ultima series, developed by Origin Systems and released for PC in 1999. Ultima 8 was released in 1994 and in those 5 years between the 2 titles, the “Ultima IX project” had a long and troubled development. As we can read on Wikipedia, there have been at least 4 distinct beta versions of Ultima IX, with different storyline and technological implementation.

The first version was already conceived by Ultima creator Richard Garriott when Origin began to work on Ultima VII, but this early concept was soon canned. The second version was developed between 1995-1997, following the feedback received by fans of the series.

By late 1995 or early 1996, the first beta screenshots of Ultima IX appeared in gaming magazines: it had a 3D graphic engine in which the camera appeared locked into an overhead view that approximated the isometric point of view of Ultima VIII, but could be rotated about its vertical axis and zoomed in or out. The game was planned to have a party system with multiple characters and pre-rendered cutscenes.

With the unexpected success of the beta phase of Ultima Online in 1996, Origin moved most of the Ultima IX team to work on that game. By the time work was resumed on Ultima IX in late 1997, corporate interest in Ultima IX had greatly diminished, many of the original team members had left Origin, and the 3D engine was already becoming out of date.

The third version of the game was developed between 1997 and 1998. The Ultima IX team experimented with different camera angles in a new 3D engine and decided that a third-person over-the-shoulder perspective, would have been more immersive. The game would no longer have a party of companions for the Avatar and would once again be a single-character game.  In early 1998, several designers of Ultima IX left Origin.

In early 1999, Electronic Arts set Origin a deadline so that the game HAD to be shipped for Christmas. However, Ultimaa IX was still notoriously bug-ridden and it was impossible to implement the scale of the world and the big story in the given time. Trying to rescue what they could, they shrinked Britannia considerably, rewrote the plot to make it much more simple. In the final version of Ultima IX: Ascension, some elements of the previous  beta storyline were kept, presumably to make use of the existing (and expensive) pre-rendered cinematics, but most of them were either heavily edited or used in a dramatically different context than originally intended.

In the gallery below you can see many screens from Ultima IX 1995 / 1997 beta version, so much different from the final 1999 version that it could be considered as a cancelled game of its own. You can find more info at Ultima Wiki!

Unused maps and models in Ultima IX: Ascension were found still hidden in the game’s code, as we can read from Hacki’s Ultima Page and Ultima Wiki:

  • Useable Halberds
  • Gremlins
  • Red Moongates
  • A Keyring
  • Asylum
  • Cove
  • Several islands
  • Britain Catacombs
  • Several dungeons

Thanks to Celine for the contribution! Scans from Edge magazine #41

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Here’s a video from the final version of Ultima IX:
 

The Witcher (1997 version) [PC – Cancelled]

The Witcher (1997 version) [PC – Cancelled]

The Witcher is a book series by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski. In 1997, a video game based on these books was in development for PC by Polish team, Metropolis Software, but this version of the game was never released for reasons unknown. In 2008, Metropolis were acquired by CD Projekt, a Polish company that in 2007 published the acclaimed The Witcher action RPG, which later became one of the most popular and successful RPG series in Europe and North America.

the witcher by metropolis software cancelled

The Witcher 1997 by Metropolis Software was a completely different game from The 2007 Witcher project by CD Projekt RED. It was merely a coincidence that CD Projekt happened to purchase a studio that was working on a cancelled game of the same name. The Witcher 1997 would have been an ambitious action RPG with a big 3D world to explore filled with quests to complete and branching paths based upon decisions made during the story; aspects that also featured in the 2007 game.

We can speculate that Metropolis could possibly have encountered some issues in realising a large scale 3D open world RPG of this nature, as all their other games released from 1992 to 1998 were in 2D. It’s also possible that they simply were unable to find the backing of a publisher.

In 2009, CD Projekt closed Metropolis Software whilst they were working on a new FPS titled “They“.

An article about The Witcher by Metropolis Software was published in EDGE magazine issue #50.

Thanks to Celine and Roninakuma for the contribution!

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Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep [PSP – Beta / Unused]

As we can read on Wikipedia, Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep is an action RPG developed and published by Square Enix for the PSP. The game was released in Japan on January 2010 and it is planned to be released in North America and in Europe on September 2010. Development of the game began in June 2005 and was originally intended for the PlayStation 2 with Sora as the prototype protagonist of the game.

Birth by Sleep was developed by Square Enix’s fifth Product Development Division, based in Osaka, the same team behind Kingdom Hearts Re: Chain of Memories, and uses the same graphical engine as Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII.

The plot was completed for the PS2, but development was halted six months after it began due to development of Re: Chain of Memories. The development team changed the platform to the PlayStation Portable so as to make use of the PSP’s functions such as co-operative and competitive multiplayer gameplay.

In August 2009, new Famitsu scans revealed a revamped User Interface (having been revamped twice before) as well as new worlds after a lack of news for close to a year.

As posted by Granville in our U64 Forum, hidden in the final game’s code there is a very cool secret world that was cut, but that you can still access via hacking! It’s a world based off the classic movie The Jungle Book.

The first area is in the Monkey Temple of the orangutan Louie. The other areas are your basic jungle type areas, although they are all clearly incomplete and lack a lot of their texture work. I’d say the Temple is the only complete area. The only way to access these areas is via hacks, they were never used in the main game and no images were shown in prerelease photos. It’s a pretty interesting find actually. A hack hasn’t been released yet, but i imagine it will soon.

On Youtube we can also see a video of Keytotruth, who managed to hack his/her way into the data and play around in it.

Thanks to Granville for the contribution!

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Devilman [NES – Beta / Unused]

As we can read on Wikipedia, a video game based on the popular Devilman manga / anime series was developed by ISCO and published by Namco in 1989 for the NES / Famicom. The game is an action RPG where players take control of Akira Fudo and the objective is to follow clues that will lead the heroes through a ruined city, into underground caves, around a hidden military base and finally into a confrontation with Zenon.

John Doom discovered that in the game’s code are some hidden images, taken directly from the comics, which were not used in the final version. It’s possible that these scenes were meant to be used during the fights against the various demons (Silen, Agwell, Ghelmer, etc.). Another shot shows a dying Miki (as in the comics).

Thanks to John Doom for the contribution and to Jason for the english corrections!

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