A.I. Guardian was an arena fighting game developed by ACeS Studio (internal Microsoft studio; famous for Microsoft Flight Simulator series). Based on Steven Spielberg’s science fiction movie, the game was shelved during pre-production in 2000 and handed off to a Indie Built. However, their version did not make it to the retailers either.
Thanks to Hey Hey for the contribution!
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Street Fighter IV Flashback was a concept created by Backbone Entertainment in 2006, to try to pitch a full project at Capcom. It’s not that strange that Backbone proposed something like this, as they are in good relationship with Capcom: they developed various games published by Capcom, like 1942: Joint Strike, Wolf of the Battlefield and the Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix. Also, keep in mind that this concept is not related to the real Street Fighter 4, which development started only much later.
Sf4: Flashback was meant to be a 3D sequel to the Street Fighter series, with the classic 1 vs 1 fights, online play and a full single player adventure mode, know as “Ryu’s Journey”. Ryu’s Journey was supposed to be a free-roaming 3D action game, in the vein of Ninja Gaiden or Onimusha, with levels to explore, lots of enemies to fight, NPC to talk to and final bosses.
The concept behind the “Flashback” had various meanings. The single player mode was set in Ryu’s flashback to SF2 and the story would have followed classic Street Fighter moments and revisit familiar characters. Also, there was meant to be a new game mechanic called “flashback ” that let the players to rewind time to undo mistakes.
The concept arts of Street Fighter IV Flashback were made in collaboration between Backbone, Massive Black and UDON (that in the end worked on the SSFII Turbo HD Remix arts). Unreal 3 would have been used as the main 3D engine for the single and multiplayer modes.
Even if the project could have been interesting, this concept was not approved by Capcom: probably not even a playable prototype was ever made and only these few concept artworks / 3D models remain to preserve the existence of this game that will never be.
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Trium Planeta was a prototype for a game in development for PC and Gamecube at F4 (formerly known as F4-Toys), a French video game developer based in Paris composed of former staffers from Adeline Team and No Cliche, including Frederick Raynal. From what we can see in the screens and learn from the little information available on the project, Trium Planeta was going to be an action adventure / brawl fighting game, but not much more info is available. Trium Planeta was officially cancelled in 2005.
Thanks to Robert Seddon for the contribution & to Jay for the english corrections!
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Wikipedia has some information about the beta version of MKT:
Top left: An UMK3-style menu.
Top right: An early version of the character selection screen. The screen used the UMK3 character selection screen as base, and Rain’s and Noob Saibot’s portraits are replaced by a pallete swapped version of Sub-Zero’s MKII portrait (Rain), and Reptile’s MKII portrait (Noob). Johnny Cage is not present.
Bottom left: Scorpion beats Smoke in the Portal arena. Note that Scorpion’s life bar text is different to Smoke’s life bar text (UMK3 Saturn, and later, MKT N64 didn’t remove this.) Also, the lightning all the way in the back of the Portal is viewed, but the PSX, PC, and Saturn version scrapped that. Only the N64 used it. And, the floor of the stage is crooked.
Bottom right: Baraka beats Raiden.
Originally there was another Logo they used but then replaced it with the current one. It had pieces of all the mortal kombat games before MKT.
More on Johnny Cage: He was the only character that wasn’t going to appear in MKT. The actor that did his MOCAP in MK2 was fired for advertising with another company, using his role as Johnny Cage. Midway then decided to use another actor for Johnny Cage, which would make him the only character in MKT to use new sprites.
At first there were only to be 29 characters and 26 backgrounds. In the end there were 30 characters and 29 backgrounds for the N64. More for the other systems, however.
Also, Rain was originally supposed to be a character called Tremor. In earlier versions of the game, Tremors bio would show from some sort of glitch only with Rains name.
His bio was:
Rain is an assassin working freelance. He was once a member of the Lin Kuei along with Sub-Zero, but left the clan under mysterious circumstances. Years later, Rain is found working for Shao Kahn as an assassin in the Outworld. Born a human, he finds himself questioning his loyalty towards Kahn after watching the invasion of Earth.
Thanks to Zero7 and Sir_Brando for the contributions!
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Pit Fighter 2 is the cancelled sequel to the “cult classic” arcade fighting game. Check the screenshots below for more info!
The bad arcade fighter is now badder than ever. You’ll use all you’ve got to pulverize the challengers and become the Grand Champion. Live-action video graphics and unique characters with signature moves bring the bone-crushing action to life. (Available October)
Thanks to MathUser, Akkroid and RetroMags (pics in the October 93 issue 51 of GamePro on page 157) for these scans!
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