Action RPG

Lord of the Rings: The White Council [X360/PS3 – Cancelled]

The Lord of the Rings: The White Council is a RPG that was under development at Electronic Arts Los Angeles. It was going to be based on the fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien, however on February 2, 2007, EA announced that the game had been delayed indefinitely. This was said to be due to management problems. EA worked with Pandemic Studios to create The Lord of the Rings: Conquest instead. [Infos from Wikipedia]

Thanks to MDHmodder for the contribution!

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Phantasy Star Zero [DS – Beta / Concept]

pso-zero-beta

PS0 is the new chapter in the Phantasy Star Online series of games, that was released for the Nintendo DS the 25 december 2008 (Japanese version). When SEGA started to work on the game, various prototypes and different character designs were tried before to choose the final one. In the earliest stage of development, they recreated the Forest area from the original PSO Dreamcast on the DS, with Boomas and the famous Dragon. It seems that initially items / mesetas were dropped on the field when an enemy was killed, instead of coming out from the final-box that appears only after all the enemies are died, as it is in the final version of the game. Probably SEGA decided to remove the single-enemy drops because of the limited graphic capabilities of the portable console (with too many 3D objects on the screen, the game could have slow down too much). In other concept arts and screens, we can see a “more stylish” design for the characters, that looked more like the one from the original PSO.  In one of the  artworks there are even some “flamed-head” enemies with guns, but there are no enemies like that in the final game. All these images were show at the Phantasy Star Zero Christmas Party that Sega organized to promote the game on the 25 December 2008.

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Monster Hunter [PS2 – Beta]

Monster Hunter  is an action role-playing game for the PS2, developed and published by Capcom. The tent in the Hunter’s camp was different in the beta version: it looked more “futuristic” and it did not have the top part. It can even be seen in the original Monster Hunter trailer from E3 2003 (and maybe there are even more differences in there? Can you see more changes?)

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Final version:

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Shadowrun: the Awakening [X360 – Cancelled]

Shadowrun: the Awakening is a cancelled game in the Shadowrun series of RPGs, that was in development by FASA Studios for the Xbox 360 and PC, before the released Shadowrun 2007. This unreleased version had a full single player mode and FASA worked on their own 3D engine for the project. Sometime later, the art director was changed for unknown reasons and they scrapped “The Awakening” project to work on the new Shadowrun, that became a multiplayer only title. It’s currently unknown why this version was completely canned with the change of director or why the single player mode was removed from Shadowrun 2007. We can speculate that some problems in the development and management of the original Shadowrun: The Awakening project lead to the decision to create a “simpler” FPS, based around the online multiplayer.

It’s interesting to notice that initial gameplay prototyping of the new multiplayer-only Shadowrun was done using the HALO engine. Check the Shadowrun-Halo prototype page for some screens.

Thanks to Robert Seddon for the contribution!

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Illusion Of Gaia / Time [SNES – Beta / Unused Stuff]

Arcane on the X-Cult forum, has posted a weird screen from an early build of Illusion of Gaia (Illusion of Time in Europe), that shows some sprites unused in the final version of the game. You can read the full topic at x-cult: Illusion of Gaia head? It seems that there’s even a beta version of the game that has been leaked online, with a different title screen, different translation, names and more stuff.

Thanks to Robert Seddon we know that the title screen (based on the Japanese title screen; completely different versions were used in the final Western releases) calls it Soul Blazer: Illusion of Gaia, whereas no officially released version of the game identifies Soul Blazer as a related game. (See HG101 for the links between S.B. and I.o.G.).

Adrien BAPTIS has made us notice about 3 beta / unused items that can be found in the ROM of the game via Action replay. (Note :names from the french version)

7E0AB405 = Mélodie Maya
(Description in-game : “Conseil du père: voir les Mayas avec la mélodie”)
7E0AB415 = Journal bleu
(Description in-game : “Journal trouvé dans l’âtre”)
7E0AB41B = Sac d’or
(Description in-game : “Récompense du Gobelet Russe”)

Jesse shared with us some more info on these unused items:

One is an un-used melody.

Another is a sac of gold.

The last one is a travel journal. I remember hearing it was Olman’s (Will’s father.)

The sac of gold of the journal were hidden behind a chimney, if I remember correctly.

If you have more infos on the beta version of Illusion Of Gaia, please let us know

Thanks to Adrien Baptis, Robert Seddon and Jesse for the contributions!

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