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Yu Suzuki has stated on several occasions that during its early stages, Shenmue was a traditional style RPG based on the characters and storyline of the hugely successful fighting game title Virtua Fighter. The Ryo character was simply Virtua Fighter character Akira to begin with. The final Ryo character has several key differences, but there is a very clear visual resemblance between him and Akira. As the game’s development progressed, the characters became original and the storyline moved away from its Virtua Fighter roots.

As the gaming industry became more aware of Sega’s next generation console towards the end of 1997 and beginning of 1998, Shenmue was also getting noticed. At this time, however, the game was only ever known as Project Berkley. Tech demos from the game were being used by Sega to show what the Dreamcast was capable of producing. Many of these sequences were very well developed, and some were even used in the final retail version of the game. This has led many to believe that Shenmue was probably one of the very first Dreamcast titles to begin production. Shenmue quickly became Sega’s flagship Dreamcast title – representing the systems powerful graphics capabilities and also its ability to render immersive, cinematic characters and settings. – [info from Wikipedia]

Thanks to KEK8 for the contribution!

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Dreamcast, Sega

Streets Of Rage 4 [Dreamcast – Tech Demo / Cancelled]

U64 Staff & Contributors

10-04-2008

2 Comments

Early in the Sega Dreamcast production cycle, demos tentatively titled Streets of Rage 4 were made by Sega of Japan to bring the Streets of Rage series to the platform. This tech demo showed a character similar to Axel fighting off a group of enemy characters. Various changes in gameplay had apparently been planned, including the introduction of new team attacks and a new first person perspective. However, allegedly due to new management at Sega of America being unaware of the series and its past success, Sega did not follow up on it and the game never advanced past the demo stage. Video clips of a demo were eventually leaked online. – [info from Wikipedia]

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Nintendo, Wii

Project H.A.M.M.E.R. [Wii – Cancelled]

U64 Staff & Contributors

04-04-2008

7 Comments

Project H.A.M.M.E.R. was an action-adventure game for Wii, which was being developed by Nintendo Software Technology Corp. The game was first revealed at E3 2006, but later vanished from future showings and faded into obscurity.

In the game, players controlled a cyborg named M09, fighting to save major cities across the United States that were under siege by killer robots. Swinging the Wii Remote would have resembled swinging the protagonist’s hammer.

See our video reports on the fate of the game below:

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Nintendo, Nintendo 64 & 64DD

Hybrid Heaven [N64 – Beta / Tech Demo]

monokoma

03-04-2008

No Comments

Konami was one of the first software houses to announce full support for the Nintendo 64, after the happy and profitable experience with the SNES. In addition to Castlevania 64, one of the first games announced for the console was Hybrid Heaven, a strange cross-game between Turn-based RPG, action, adventure and fighting, that promised an open ended gameplay.

In the early images and videos released, the project had an incredible graphic for its time, much more definited than the one in the final version. When Hybrid Heaven was finally released after many delays, players found themselves in front of a very different game, graphically poor and with a linear gameplay.

Probably the early media released were just Concept Renders and when Konami started to create the game on the real N64 hardware, they found out that it was impossible to reach such level of details. We dont know exactly how many parts were removed (some places and characters seen in the concept renders were not in the final game), but we can speculate that the developers had to heavily cut the project, because their original concept was too ambitious for its time.

[spoiler /Clicca qui per la versione in Italiano/ /Nascondi la versione in Italiano/]La Konami fu una delle primissime Software House ad annunciare il pieno supporto alla nuova macchina a 64 Bit di casa Nintendo, dopo le felici e redditizie esperienze con lo SNES. Oltre al precedente Castlevania 64, uno dei primi giochi annunciati fu questo Hybrid Heaven, strano incrocio fra RPG a turni, azione, esplorazione e picchiaduro. Dalle primissime immagini il titolo faceva graficamente paura e sembrava avere tutte le potenzialità per divenire l’ennesima Killer Application per l’N64. Eppure, quando il gioco finalmente venne completato dopo anni di ritardi, i giocatori si trovarono davanti un prodotto molto diverso, graficamente povero e dalla giocabilità fin troppo lineare. Del progetto originale probabilmente si era salvato ben poco.[/spoiler]

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Nintendo, Nintendo 64 & 64DD, Playstation, Sony

Mortal Kombat: Special Forces [N64/PSX – Unreleased/Beta]

monokoma

03-04-2008

3 Comments

Mortal Kombat: Special Forces is an action game for the original PlayStation. It was released in North America on July 30, 2000, and in Europe on September 29, 2000. The player to take on the role of Jax (a.k.a. Major Jackson Briggs) as he tracks down the Black Dragon. There were plans for a Nintendo 64 version but after Tobias’ departure and the release of the PlayStation 2 and Xbox systems, Midway management decided on a budget release of the game priced at $20.00 for the PS1 only. The N64 version could have been finished, but it was never released. [Infos from Wikipedia]

Thanks to Edward Kirk we can read more interesting info from the Mortal Kombat Special Forces’ development:

the game had a convoluted history which, with the departure of MK co-creator John Tobias from Midway, left it incomplete. The final release was only half the game that was originally planned, with the storyline shifting its place within the MK chronology
the game was reduced from seven levels down to five, and from two characters down to one (Sonya was originally playable, but then removed).

You can download a PDF with the full article written by Edward in here. It compares what was planned for the original game with the one that was released.

In mid 2018 Rhythm Lunatic found a playable prototype from the beta / unreleased version of the game. You can see some footage below!

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