midway

Gun Runner [Cancelled – Xbox 360/PS3]

Gun Runner is the cancelled sequel to John Woo’s Stranglehold game from 2007; which was, in turn, a follow-up to the action movie, Hard Boiled. It was being developed by Midway’s Chicago studio and was slated to be released on the Xbox 360 and PS3 in late 2009.

The title entered pre-production in May 2008, shortly after Stranglehold’s release in September 2007. It was planned to continue the ongoing story of Hard Boiled and Stranglehold. Chow Yun-fat was down to reprise the lead role of the gung-ho Inspector “Tequila”, lending again both his likeness and voice to the character.

A New Identity

Gun Runner was proposed as the start of a campaign to rebrand Stranglehold, in order to increase its mass appeal. Despite taking place after the first game, its story was going to be completely self-contained, one developer told us.

A key aspect of this new direction for the series was the introduction of Vin Diesel. The actor would have voiced another character, alongside Tequila. A former member of the team we got in touch with described Midway’s idea for the two as “a buddy cop story“. Full multiplayer co-operative support was planned for the story mode, wherein players would have each controlled of one of them. 

Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks [Beta – PS2 / XBOX]

Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks is a beat-em-up developed by Midway LA (formerly Paradox Development) and published in 2005 by Midway for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox. In april 2012 a beta version of Shaolink Monk was shared online in the Assembler Games Forum, and Stranno noticed a few differences with the final version: textures, effects (water, lights) and some background changed like “the pit” level. In the E3 beta demo the moon is really shiny, in the final you can actually see the moon and there’s an UFO (?) flying around.  The final enemy in the demo is Baraka (you cannot finish it), in retail there is one ogre-boss-like generic enemy, this Baraka fight comes in the next level, the monks academy. Options menu was reworked and there’s no aspect switch.

A sequel, Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks 2 (Fire & Ice) was in development for the Xbox 360, but it was soon cancelled.

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Killer Instinct 2 [SNES – Cancelled]

Killer Instinct 2 is a fighting game developed by Rare, licensed by Nintendo and manufactured by Midway in 1996.  A modified version of KI2 appeared on the Nintendo 64 as Killer Instinct: Gold, but a SNES version of KI2 was also developed and completed but never released. [Info from Wikipedia]

As noticed by Molasar:

On twitter in 2015 Tim Stamper shared a photo of his old gaming stuff with a KI2 SNES development cart pcb on it.

Post by Justin Fowler

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Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wave Net [Unreleased – Arcade]

As we can read on Wikipedia, Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wave Net was a rare network version of the game. It was tested only in the Chicago and San Francisco areas that used a dedicated T1 line, connected directly to Midway’s Chicago headquarters; many people outside the test area were not aware of its existence during its release. One store kept the T1 line installed after the test concluded, but eventually removed the Wave Net game in favor of a Golden Tee game that uses a dial-up connection.

It is highly unlikely that any Wave Net test games were ever released to the public after the infrastructure was dismantled, and so there are no known dumps of the ROMs used by the games designed for it.

One of the reasons this version was not widely adopted was the rarity and cost of T1 lines at the time. The game was released before alternative broadband access was available. At the time, a T1 was the only guaranteed way to get broadband into an arcade, but the game didn’t utilize the full bandwidth of the T1. Midway subsidized the cost of the line during the tests to make it more attractive to the arcade owners.

Thanks to kieranmay for the contribution!

  

Ed, Edd n Eddy: The Mis-Edventures [Beta – PS2 Xbox GameCube]

Ed, Edd n Eddy: The Mis-Edventures is a 3D platform game based on the animated television series Ed, Edd n Eddy. It was originally developed by A2M and Cartoon Network Interactive, published by Midway Home Entertainment and released on October 2005 for the Nintendo GameCube, PlayStation 2, Xbox and Game Boy Advance. In the beta version double d had a different sling shot than the final version and the coins were yellow instead of silver.

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