Yep, that’s right, you can download the various beta builds of Spore at www.spore.com/comm/prototypes . We can only hope that more software houses follow the example of EA and release as many betas as possible!
As they say in their site: “Spore has been a huge undertaking. Along the way we ended up exploring countless design directions in gameplay, simulation and user interface. One of the ways in which we explore possible design directions is by
Mellahan has sent us a mail to make us to notice that Protodude’s Rockman Corner blog has just gotten a hold of a beta build of Mega Man Legends (Rockman DASH) for PSX. The first link contains info over the beta build, while the second link contains the files to download the beta. From the blog we can read that “the (Rockman Dash) beta contains a vast amount of differences from the final retail version, specifically in the graphics and audio department.” It seems that this is considered to be one of the rarest betas around with only ten to fifteen copies in existence! Huge props to Protodude for the sharing!
You can find an interesting list of screens and informations from this beta at MegaMan Legends Station’s. About the differences in this version, another post from Protodude’s blog has a collection of videos from the beta demo and he tell us that there are “different title screen, differend Rock’s character model (smaller, different hair style/color), weird Special Weapon gauge, different Data’s boots, different Buster animation, different Roll’s eyebrows.. and oh so much more!”
Thanks a lot to Mellahan for these links!
Some more differences from Ian & Makubeku:
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OKeijiDragon has even found some unused dialogues hidden in the XA directory in the final disc! Those unused voices include alternate lines for MegaMan on unlocking the portals to the living quarters, unheard cheering from the TV Reporter after presumably clearing the Bonnes’ robots in City Hall, and more intended dialogue from the Inspector after foiling the “bank robbery”. You can check one of the videos below to hear those dialogues.
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Soulstar was a Mega-CD game created by Core Design, and after its release, two seperate conversions were planned. One was a port to the Jaguar CD, under the same name, whereas the other was an updated version for the 32X, under the name Soulstar X. In the end, neither of them were released.
Corn Buster is an unreleased Super Nintendo game developed by Engine Software. The game is the story of a dragon named Globey, who sets out to defeat the person who’s stolen all the cornflakes in the world. The gameplay is an interesting mix of an Arkanoid-Style ball-and-paddle game and a vertical scrolling shooter. The game quietly began development around 1994, and was canceled soon after interest in the Super Nintendo waned in light of the release of Sony’s Playstation. Some time ago, Engine Software released a ROM of the game for free download on their website. The download page has since been removed, but the ROM is still easily obtainable. The game was 70-80% completed before it was canceled.
Thanks a lot to Marshall Leslie for all these information and screens! If you are a collector, you can buy an official cart of Corn Buster for SNES thanks to Piko Interactive.
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Tommy Thunder was a third person shooter in development for the Nintendo 64 (and later for the PSX too) from Player 1 studios, but it was never released and we never got many informations about it. In November 2007, herpetic.adventures on the LostLevels forum posted an interesting story about a misterious file: “[…] about 10 years ago I was poking around the Player1 website looking for info on when Robotron 64 was coming out. Just for the hell of it, I clicked the “Press Info” link. Which turned out to be an anonymous FTP. Woo. Poked around a bit, and amongst directories of PSX assets, I found robo64.zip and tommy64.zip.” Inside the zipped file, there was what it looks like an early prototype of Tommy Thunder 64 and so, thanks to herpetic.adventures, we finally have some screens from the game to look at! You can read more info about his find in the Lost Levels Forum and check this article on NES World, where you can read some quotes from Tommy Thunder’s developers:
What you have is an early N64 Prototype of Tommy Thunder. The game got signed by ASC games and switched to PlayStation. We made it pretty far into production before ASC Games ran out of money and were forced to cancel the project.
Thanks to Vaettur for the logo!
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