Deadlands is a cancelled game that was in development at Headfirst Productions, the makers of the Call of Cthulhu game. Deadlands was based on a “pen and paper” PRG that has the same name, set in alternate history which combines the Western, Horror and Steampunk genres. The videogame was meant to be an action-adventure with RPG elements. The game was originally based on zombies in the western era but when it was scrapped, rumors says that the exact engine was used in a later project that we know as GUN, a gem released for the PC, XBOX, PS2, GameCube and Xbox360. A playable proto of this game (a single level tech-demo) was leaked in 2006.
Thanks to J M J for the video and to David Ladnier for some of these infos!
A few months prior to Chrono Trigger‘s market release, a beta version was given to magazine reviewers and game stores. An unfinished build of the game, it contains numerous differences from the final version, such as unused music tracks and a location called “Singing Mountain”. Curious fans later explored the ROM image through various methods, discovering two unused world map character sprites and presumed additional sprites for certain non-player characters. This has led some to rumor that an eighth playable character exists or was intended for play, but there is no evidence to this claim. [Info from Wikipedia]
Soon enough, it became the time in which the Super Famicom was completed and released. During that time, we were still seeking a higher capacity media for our games, and upon getting word from Nintendo that they were developing a CD-ROM adapter for the Super Famicom, we decided to start a project in a different direction from Final Fantasy IV, which at the time was in the middle of development and was touted as a next-generation RPG fitting the large storage capacity the new cartridges had. The development codename for the new project was Maru Island, and we were making it as a collaboration work with Akira Toriyama-sensei after we established contact through Shueisha. I frequently ran back to the office just to receive and look at the screen mock-ups that Toriyama-sensei did in the initial stages of the project.
Despite that, the CD-ROM adapter was never completed. Once everyone learned that the CD-ROM adapter was never going to see a release, they decided to abandon everything that had been planned for development since the very start, including Toriyama-sensei’s contributions, and decided to revise the project in order to make it release into a ROM cassette. We said that we would wait for the CD-ROM to make a collaboration project with Toriyama-sensei, but when it was revised, it actually became an entirely different project with an entirely different direction. That was what later on was completed into the game we know as Chrono Trigger.
Dorque & Imp is a cancelled platform that was in development by Norse (a swedish gaming studio) for the Super Nintendo. Akumu from the Lost Levels Forum translated a swedish preview in which we can read some more info on the project:
2 of the worlds are completed. When Power Player catches up with the team of programmers, they are already hard at work to finish up the demo that will be shown in England. Peter shows us how far they are come. He has 100 000 command lines which helps him to quickly change the enviroment on the screen. He is programming in assembler, and can in principal cut and paste artifacts and backgrounds from the pictures that Jim has created in a image software program.
We could assume that Norse did not find a publisher interested in Dorque & Imp, and after the studio released Legend of Myra (for PC), it seems that they had to close down. In May 2011, 3 playable beta levels from an incomplete version of Dorque & Imp were shared and preserved online. You can find them in here:
Thanks to Saga Darvulia for the contribution and to Peter Waher for sharing some playable levels from their lost project! If you are a collector, you can buy an official cart of Dorque & Imp to play on your SNES thanks to Piko Interactive.
Nightmare Busters is a cancelled beat ’em up / action game that was in development in 1994 by Arcade Zone (a french studio) for the Super Nintendo. After Sony decided to not publish Nightmare Busters SNES as the original Playstation arrived in Europe, Arcade Zone had to close down and cancel all their projects.
Turrican was released in 1989 for the Commodore 64 and 1990 for the Amiga and Atari ST. It was Programmed by Rainbow Arts and Factor 5. Then Accolade made a port to the Sega Genesis, GameBoy, and Turbo Graphix 16. The Accolade Ports were a huge disaster. However, Accolade wanted to do the same thing with Turrican 2, which is known to be the best Turrican game and in general one of the best games ever made. They screwed up a classic and they wanted to screw up another.
However, the members of Accolade wanted to make their new port into a game based off of Universal Soldier to make more money. Universal Soldier was released for the Sega Genesis and Game Boy and was given horrible reviews. It’s a shame they took such a great game and turned it into a mess. There was going to be a Super Nintendo version but Nintendo didn’t license it despite the message on the title screen.
The Super Nintendo version was even worse than all of Accolade’s previous ports! The controls are messed up, the music sounds good at first but it becomes a mess. For example, one of the best songs in Turrican 2 is “The Wall” but in the SNES Universal Soldier version you can’t even hear the song because the beat is too loud. The Sound effects are annoying, the graphics are obviously ripped from Turrican, and the collision detection is beyond terrible.
If it was released, it would probably be called one of the worst games ever made. If you want to try this disaster a ROM of it was leaked on the internet.
Thanks a lot to Edward Morley for the description / info and to SNES Central for these images!
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