car combat

Twisted Metal 3 [PSX – Beta]

Twisted Metal III is the third game in the Twisted Metal vehicular combat series, released in 1998. After a contractual dispute with the developer of previous games in series, SingleTrac, Twisted Metal development duties were handed over to Sony’s in-house development team, 989 Studios. [Infos from Wikipedia]

In the Youtube Channel of Playstation Museum, we can see an interesting video from an early build of TM3, in which there were some vehicles that were removed from the final version and some differences in the levels layout!

Thanks to AMB Cloud for the contribution!

Video:

 

Redline Arena [Dreamcast – Cancelled]

Redline 2 (also know as Redline Arena) was the sequel of Redline,  a  post-apocalyptic combination of FPS / Car Combat game that was released in 1999 for the PC. Redline Arena was going to be developed for the SEGA Dreamcast: a small team from Beyond Games worked on a playable PC prototype for about 6 weeks, starting with an updated-port of the first game. New features and improved AI were added, with more vehicles and weapons.

An online multiplayer mode was expected too, but it seems that “the Dreamcast’s networking setup was not in sync with the Redline networking code. Lag and latency were going to be serious buzz-kills. Addressing this incompatibility was going to be a monumental task, and ultimately, the project was dropped”.

Even if the game was cancelled for the Dreamcast, somehow the development was shifted to the PS2: the project would eventually become Motor Mayhem, a game that was released in 2001. Early prototypes of Motor Mayhem were built to run in the Redline Arena engine, and so would be its best and last innovations.

Images:

Videos:

 

Twisted Metal Black 2: Harbor City [PS2 – Cancelled]

Twisted Metal: Black is the Playstation 2 chapter of a series of car combat games, created by Incog Inc. In 2003 TM: Black was to have a sequel titled Harbor City, though it was never officially announced and the project was later scrapped.

Details on the Twisted Metal Black 2: Harbor City were revealed in the PlayStation 2 port of Twisted Metal: Head On: Extra Twisted Edition. It was originally planned the levels of Harbor City to be greatly expanded and inter-connected with one another, giving a greater feeling of a single, complete world rather than stand-alone levels. Other than car-combats, Harbor City was going to have human characters in 3rd person, for more “personal” fights.. a bit like a GTA game, but with more emphasis on multiplayer deathmatches.

According to bonus material on Extra Twisted Edition, the project was scrapped because of the deaths of six key developers in a plane crash. However, some claim this to be a hoax as no proof of this happening has arisen from another source. [Infos from Wikipedia]

Four levels of Harbor City, albeit without the interconnection or interactiveness active, were included in TM: Head On, as a bonus feature entitled Twisted Metal: Lost, but those were just a small part of the original game. An upgraded version of  the Harbor City concept is currently in development for the PS3 by Eat Sleep Play.

Thanks to Cyrax151 for the contribution! Thanks to Miles for his help in preserving more images from this lost game!

Images:

Videos:

 

Cel Damage 2 [XBOX/PS2 – Cancelled]

Cel Damage was a vehicular combat game developed by Pseudo Interactive and published by Electronic Arts for Xbox and Nintendo Gamecube. It was later updated for the PS2 in the European exclusive, Cel Damage: Overdrive. Prior to Overdrive’s development, Pseudo originally intended to produce a sequel to the first game for PS2, Xbox and GC simply titled ‘Cel Damage 2’. It was pitched to EA, SEGA, Midway, Ubisoft and others, although none of them agreed to fund it; resulting in its cancellation. This was due to a number of different factors, including the poor sales performance of the original and concerns with its marketability, as well as a general lack of faith in viability of the car combat genre among publishers.

Thanks a lot to Roberto Robert, David Wu, Kay Huang, Heidi Klinck, Albert Alejandro, Bronwen Grimes, Frank Trzcinski and all the former Pseudo Interactive artists that helped us to preserve info and media from their lost project!

Images:

Video: