Beta + Cancelled Metroidvania Video Games

Future Zone is a cancelled action/adventure platformer game, developed for the Super Nintendo and the Genesis/MegaDrive, from 1993 until 1995, by Visual Concepts and published by Electro Brain.

The game was set in a distant future where players took the role of Jason Baker Kane, a soldier sent in an alien world named future zone, which serves as a prison. The player allied himself with a rebel group, trying to escape this fortress.

The game was briefly mentionned, for the first time, in March 1993 by the issue #46 of Nintendo Power after apparently being shown at the Winter CES. In the same period, GamePro issue #45 said that the game showcased:

(…) an unbelievably huge environment, close to the size of Super Mario World.

It was then planned for the end of the year, also on the Genesis/MegaDrive. Then in August 1993, with the issue #51 from Nintendo Power again, the title has apparently been shown again, this time for the Summer CES. By the time, the project was re-scheduled for a release in mid-1994.

It wasn’t until May 1994 that Future Zone came back in the press. Still with Nintendo Power, issue #60, we learned that, apparently, the project changed in its direction, alongside the developer, without additional details. The Genesis/MegaDrive version was, from this point on, never mentionned again. More was shared in December 1994, with the issue #71 from Video Games Magazine, where we learned that the title was developed by Visual Concepts and was going to feature side-scrolling platform action, first-person 3d mazes and Mode 7 flying levels.

In February 1995, it was the issue #39 of french magazine Joypad which said that Future Zone was scheduled for June 1995, according to them, it was of the same caliber as Super Metroid. The Mexican version of Club Nintendo wrote a short preview, the same month, on the game, showing a screenshot of a Mode 7 level. Here is what we can read:

In a prison in the future, a soldier who should not be there has to escape in order to save a planet, this is the plot of the game Future Zone by Electro Brain; This title has 16 megabytes of memory and is basically developed in two types of game modes: Contra-style action and in a ship that flies over a surface with rotation and scale. This game is still very preliminary, we just hope that they are not going to leave it in mobility as we saw.

Unfortunately, it was the last time that Future Zone was covered in magazines. The game vanished with no trace, and to this day, it is still unclear why it was ultimately cancelled, although, by reading about it on various magazine issues, it looks like the development didn’t always go as planned, with numerous changes. To this day, no ROM leaked onto the internet, but a short trailer is available to remember its existence.

If you know someone who worked on Future Zone and could help us preserve more screenshots, footage or details, please let us know!

Article by Daniel Nicaise

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PSP, Sony

Promethus (Geekaysoft) [PSP – Cancelled]

monokoma

28-09-2020

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Promethus is a cancelled side-scrolling action game that was in development by Geekaysoft around 2008 – 2009, planned to be published on Sony PSP. Players would have been able to explore the Promethus planet using different skills and items, unlocking new areas and secrets (metroidvania style).

As we can read in their official press-release:

“You are the renowned space mercenary Angel. Your mission is to infiltrate the seemingly peaceful planet of Promethus and uncover the plot of the Evil Lord Duroth. Recover and use the energy blaster, katana, grenades and whip to vanquish the enemies. Uncover ancient promethan relics and crystals to powerup your attacks. Little does she realize the depth of the deception, and the perilous adventure that will decide the fate of the known galaxy that awaits her on the planet Promethus.”

Features

A mysterious world to explore – complex mazes and secrets take you to every corner of the planet
Can you outwit the Ancient Promethans and find the secrets to their crystal puzzles
An arsenal of weapons and acrobatics at your disposal
Customize and enhance your characters abilities
Fight through 7 bosses to the final epic encounter with Duroth

While the game is basically forgotten today, it was featured as a playable demo on PSN in 2009 and because of its similarities to Metroid people were quite curious to try it. As we can read from their old website:

“We are pleased to announce that a free demo of PROMETHUS will be available on PSN starting October 29, 2009. Featuring 7 great levels of platformer gameplay in the full version, you will recover and use the energy blaster, katana, grenades and whip to vanquish your enemies. customize your attacks and abilities with collectable powerups and crystals. The demo will let you explore the first level of the game, Torden. We hope you will enjoy the demo as we continue sprinting to the finish line on the final version”

Unfortunately this demo was not good at all, with unresponsive controls, bugs and floaty jumps. We can assume the team was not able to fix these issues and in the end decided to cancel the project. You should be able to find the playable demo online, preserved in various ROM pages.

Thanks to Iqra for the contribution!

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GameCube, Nintendo

Metroid Prime 1.5 [GameCube – Cancelled Pitch]

monokoma

09-12-2019

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Metroid 1.5 was an undeveloped new game in the Metroid Prime series, internally pitched at Retro Studios between the development of Metroid Prime and Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. This lost project was found in 2011 thanks to online research by Mama Robotnik on the NeoGAF forum, who unveiled the Metroid 1.5 design document written by former Metroid Prime designer:

“This adventure would take place immediately after Samus takes off from the surface of Talon IV. Upon exiting the planets surface, Samus decides to take a long rest in her Cryo chamber as her ship autopilots home. However, something goes wrong and Samus’s ship computer hones in on a distress signal. The distress signal is coming from a huge alien vessel (huge, like the size of several Star Destroyers) that is drifting out in space. As Samus’s ship approaches the alien craft, a tractor beam activates and the Ship is pulled into one of the gigantic docking bays. As the ships doors close, the gigantic vessel folds and enters a parallel dimension, thus begins Samus’ new adventure

Upon awakening, the ship appears to be abandoned, there is no power except for auxiliary lights and telemetry from computers. It is up to Samus to unravel this mystery. The mystery being that the ships AI has gone mad and the ship is actually a war vessel that is on a collision course with a peaceful planet. Its goal? The entire enslavement of the race of beings on said planet as well as natural resource stripping as its (the planets) destruction. So in essence, the ship AI has split into several different personalities, and is playing a deadly game with Samus. The Alien inhabitants of the ship are also in a state of suspended animation because as the ship travels through the parallel dimension, the alien inhabitants are being created and refined for warfare until the ship arrives at its destination and assaults the planet. However, the robotic and automated entities are not, these will be the primary enemies that Samus must deal with. In addition, Samus must also deal with the ships cunning AI, who will all the while be taunting her and trying to trick her at every opportunity.”
“The Main reason Samus and possibly other Bounty Hunters are being pulled into this ship is to assimilate their best and most deadly abilities into the personality construct of not only the ships AI, but also into the actual Alien Inhabitants in order to further their quest for perfection. As the ship reaches its target, it will unfold into this dimension and begin its attack. This has what the ship and Alien race who created it has have been doing for past thousand or so years, going from planet to planet, assimilating the most violent parts of a culture and asserting it into its own being.

The main goal for Samus is to disable the engines of the ship, destroy the AI, and eradicate all life forms on the ship. The catch is that even though Samus is all powerful from her previous item acquisition on Talon IV, she will be limited to use them in certain areas of the ship due to the containment matrix that the Rogue AI has set up all over the ship. This will force the player to handle situations differently than expected, and once the containment matrix is disabled, Samus will be free to use all of her abilities. Due to being in a parallel dimension, there are areas within the ship where floors may become ceiling due to gravity being reversed, Time may run backwards, (illustrated by creatures and machines moving in reverse, water moving up into a faucet) and other sorts of environmental weirdness, that Samus as well as other Bounty hunters will have to learn to adjust to in order to survive.”
“Mad AI, the central computer of the ship has gone crazy, it sees inviting Samus onto the ship as a game for its amusement. Will taunt and try to trip Samus up at every move. The Mad AI has four distinct personalities: The Child, The Killer, the Martyr, and the Fool each one is deadly and utilizes different tactics and techniques.”

This cancelled project was meant to have a short development time, to release it shortly after the first Metroid Prime while the main team would take their time to develop the true sequel:

“So this is pretty much what I think we could crank out in a year, A Smaller Adventure with expanded mechanics and a few new ones thrown in. The beauty of spaceship design is that a lot of corridors and hub rooms can be reused over and over again, with minor variation; it also lends itself well to our room/door/hall layout. Plus, we can make the world denser by exploiting the super structure of the ship using morphball mechanics. Even though the idea of an AI gone mad has been used before in games as well as films, I feel that we could put a unique twist on it. And by allowing Samus to use only certain abilities in certain parts of the game, we can get a fair amount of replay value by offering the player different solutions to a single problem. This I feel would satisfy gamers who completed Prime and are hungry for something more with a few new mechanics and ideas thrown in.
With the addition of the co-op multiplayer components I have noted in the previous paragraphs, I feel that we would still have a game that feels like Metroid, albeit the feeling of Isolation would no longer be there, at the expense of the multi-player experience. However, I think the by unlocking the additional multi-player modes, after the actual game is completed, it won’t detract from the experience. Unlike TimeSplitters 1 and 2, we can keep the player focused on the main portion or adventure of the game which is what Metroid is all about.”

Concept art was also found in the design doc and on the websites of other former Retro Studios developers. You can find a deep-dive into the document’s details on Wikitroid.

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