Activision

Trail Blazer (Death Track) [GameBoy – Cancelled]

TrailBlazers, aka Death Track is a canceled and unreleased game being developed by Argonaut for the GameBoy. It’s currently unknown why this got canceled and unreleased. It was being licensed by Activision, but developed by the famous Argonaut Games, hence it being in wireframe 3D. This game takes a 3rd person approach to the track, and only offers one camera setting.  An interesting note is the combat elements in the game and the upgrade system before each race. You can purchase engine upgrades, homing missiles, oil slicks, mines, and the like. While in race, you can press select to rotate through your defenses, and press up on the D-Pad to deploy them. It feels like if the game had seen a release, it would have pushed the GB to it’s limits, as only Argonaut knew how to do.
If you are more questions, contact Digmac at obscuregamers.com or assemblergames.com

Thanks to Celine we can see a screenshot of Trail Blazer, found in Joypad magazine issue #8.

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Crash Bandicoot: Landed (2010) [Cancelled – Xbox 360 / PS3 / Wii / DS]

Crash Bandicoot: Landed 2010 is a cancelled game in the Crash Bandicoot series, which wasn’t even officially announced but some info leaked from the people who worked it. These info were soon removed from their websites: Crash 2010 was meant to be a 3d Adventure / Action game in developement by Radical Entertainment. It was cancelled due to layoffs by Activision in February 2010.

Many information were leaked after the cancellation but left unnoticed until August 2010, when they were found by some users in the Crash Mania Forums. There is a short gameplay / cgi footage and also some concept art. Crash Mania members made a petition to make activision continue working on the game but it was unsuccessful, partially due to abuse of the petition (ie. obvious sockpuppetry). A new petition has been started, and has so far not suffered these problems.

Recently, an fx demo was leaked by someone as a demo reel video. The owner of the reel video said that game would not be continued because of Activision. When the fans added the video to Youtube, Activision started removing them but many of these are still available.

Console Game!
Crash Bandicoot 2010 (Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and Nintendo Wii)
Design and implementation of character locomotion and weapon/combat using proprietary software
Open World Mission Design
Game Systems Design Documentation
Weapons/Tools
Interface
Game Economy
Boss design

Another video with items was found, in which we can see some interesting stuff about the canceled game!

  • Frogzooka [Suck]
  • Boombat [Blow… Away]
  • Glow Top [Stun/Light]
  • Fertilizer Gun [Shoot]
  • Bottle Rocket-Launcher [Ending/Surf]
  • Jet pack
  • Jet ski

Post by MotweraCity

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DS Footage (Developed by Renegade Kid):

Pictures video for similar visually done game (CTR 2010):

Also Effects Video in this link: http://landinkent.blogspot.com/p/game-fx.html 

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater [Beta – Playstation]

This is the beta for Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. There were very big differences from the beta to the final game. Some levels are heavily edited from their final versions, and some levels didn’t make it at all. In the character select screen, the characters (save for Bucky Lasek) are very unchanged from their final versions. Chad Muska is used as placeholder for some of the characters.

The School is the first level in the beta. There are some differences, like the fact that the rooftop is blocked by fans, and that the pool area is also very changed. Instead of collecting 1 secret tape for each level, there are multiple secret tapes to be found in each level. The “Bonus 500” and the “Bonus 200” point symbols are now just plain rings.

Thanks to Christopher Mauro for the contribution!

Some more details about the early prototype version of Tony Hawks were shared with us by Teetha Mundo:

“Based on the information from the source, a forum post from 1998, these screenshots are from a Pre-Tony build, or a build that was shown to Tony Hawk.

This build features one of the first original skateboarders in the game, being built a month or two after the Apocalypse-Build.  There’s actually a hologram of Bruce Willis in one of the levels, it’s the same model from the Apocalypse game.  In some of the screenshots you can see early versions of existing levels or even levels that didn’t make it to the final release. The skater and skateboard model still exists in the games files up to Tony Hawk‘s Pro Skater 2.”

Here is footage of some levels that didn’t make it:

Downhill: This level didn’t make the final cut because it looked too similar to a level in the arcade game, “Top Skater”.

Classic Concrete: This level didn’t make it because it was just a physics test, to see how the skater model reacted to terrain like grass, dirt, etc.

Suburbia: It’s unclear why this level didn’t make it. Some say that it was an early version of the San Francisco level, And I definitely see similarities. But for the most part, it doesn’t look anything like it.

Freeway: This was probably taken out because it was boring and didn’t have many things to trick off of. I think some of the level was used in the second level of Mat Hoffman’s Pro BMX, like the grindable steel girder and the porta-potties.

Chris also recorded many videos from beta and test levels:

Recently rewatched the didyouknowgaming video about the tony hawk pro skater series and they really skimmed over a lot of the content that was cut. Such things like the (inaccessible) test level, freeway map, downhill map and more. I decided to play the betas myself and see what I could do to try and get into the test level without a cheat device. Well I succeeded. I took the betas, mixed certain build files together and rebuilt the rom (and can play it on hardware as of yesterday so yay for this) and realized I had forced the test level to be a selectable stage.

Heres the levels (excluding Suburbia) that I recorded for Tony Hawk’s beta. The title says “MIXED BETA” because it’s not the original build. The 2 betas that are online I mixed together in some ways so it’s not truly the original rom, but all the stages are in tact and all stages are from the original builds (again except Suburbia which was overwritten by the test level).

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Alien vs Predator: Nightmare on Ryushi [PC – Cancelled?]

Alien vs Predator: Nightmare on Ryushi is a point & click adventure game based on the Aliens VS Predator series, that was going to be published for MS-DOS PCs by Activision in 1993, but in the end it seems that the project got cancelled. As we can read from the AVP Galaxy Forum, even fans of the series are not sure about the release of this title, but as not one knew about it before finding an old Activision catalog, it’s almost sure that Nightmare on Ryushi was canned:

When I was done obsessing over the intricacies of the labyrinth of Zork, I noticed a small catalog of Activision titles to be released in 1993 among which was the drool-inducing “Alien vs Predator:Nightmare on Ryushi” (and yes it is Alien, not Aliens).

It appears to be a point and click first person adventure title for MS-DOS with excellent graphics. It also looks like the first AvP game to allow the user to play as all three species in independent campaigns!!

After an intense an stressful search of the InterWebs, I came up with absolutely no trace of this game ever having existed!! It is even absent from AvPGalaxy’s list of cancelled titles!

If you know someone that worked on this game or could have more info about its development and cancellation, please let us know!

Thanks to Unclejun for the contribution!

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River Raid [SNES – Cancelled]

River Raid: The Mission of No Return (aka River Raid 3) is a cancelled shoot ’em up for the Super Nintendo, based on the original River Raid released in 1982 by Activision for the Atari 2600. The game was going to be published by Activision but it was later cancelled and only few screens remain preserved in the gallery below. Celine was able to find some of these images in Banzzai magazine #14 and Super Power #13.

The source code of River Raid SNES was found in 2001 by an user of the Atari Age forum:

I can tell you, that what I have of River Raid SNES, is mainly a source code dump from August of ’93. You’d have to recompile it in order to view it. I had one of my programmers do so just we could figure out what exactly we have on the floppy.

Some other info were found by Zwackery from the Atari Age Forum, in VideoGames magazine (vol. V, no. 11, Nov 1993). As we can read from the VGM article, “River Raid: The Mission of No Return”  was shown at the summer CES  1991 in Chicago, along with the cancelled Kaboom:  The Mad Bomber Returns.

It seems that “both got killed because the developers couldn’t push the SNES boundaires with either one” as noted by Klove in the Atari Age Forum.

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