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namco

During Spring TGS 2001 Namco announced renewed support for Bandai’s little handheld. One of the game was a curious variant of Pac-Man tentatively named Super GPS Pac-Man (GPS超!!パックマン) that would have used the WonderGate, add on that allowed the WonderSwan to connect to DTT Docomo network, and the GPS add on so that your current location would have been used as a maze where Pac-Man could eat his loved pills, while moving objects like cars would be the enemies.

This bizarre project was never released for unknown reason, though the WonderGate success was limited and the GPS add on was never released so much of its appeal would have been lost without them.

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Featured, Microsoft, Xbox

Time Crisis Adventure [Xbox – Cancelled]

U64 Staff & Contributors

28-07-2012

2 Comments

Time Crisis Adventure is a cancelled Xbox game pitch that started at Darkworks in 2003 after Capcom abandoned their other project, Lost Mantis. Time Crisis Adventure was a collaborative work with Namco US. In 2004, for unknown reasons, Namco dropped the title. However, Darkworks found a new publisher (Ubisoft) and it seems that they changed the game to release it as Cold Fear on both PS2 and Xbox in 2005 – with no references to the Time Crisis franchise.

Thanks to Warkdo for the contribution!

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Arcade, Others

Star Blade: Operation Blue Planet [Arcade – Cancelled]

yota

07-07-2012

4 Comments

Star Blade: Operation Blue Planet is a cancelled arcade on-rails shooter that was being developed by Namco. It was supposed to be a sequel of the first Star Blade, originally released in 1991. A proto of the coin-op was playable at Amusement Machine Show in 2001, but the game got quietly canceled, probably because the cabinet was too expensive.

The cabinet was known as “Over Reality Booster System” (ORBS). Its main feature was a special lens that projected a 180 degree image in order to create a very immersive experience for the player.

Arcade, Microsoft, Others, Playstation 3 (PS3), Sony, Xbox 360

Tekken 6 [Beta – Arcade / PS3 / Xbox 360]

U64 Staff & Contributors

17-06-2012

2 Comments

Tekken 6 is a fighting game developed and published by Namco Bandai, released in Japanese arcades in November 2007 as the first game running on the PS3-based System 357 arcade board. A home version was released for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in October 2009. An old Tekken 6 trailer from 2006 seems to be from a beta version, which looks like it’s running on a different graphics engine. If you compare to the final version, Jin’s pants have a reflective nature that resembles Virtua Fighter 5. The stage and game style are not included in the current Tekken 6, and it feels like it’s almost an entirely different game. The models look like they were updated from Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection, and the stage they fought on had destructible environments, to a level that had not been seen in a Tekken game. Although this looks like it was going to be a cut scene, the different character models make think it was using what they had for gameplay at that time.

Videos:

Nintendo, SNES + Super Famicom

Tales of Phantasia [Beta – SNES]

yota

26-02-2012

No Comments

Tales of Phantasia is a Jrpg developed by Wolfteam and published, only in Japan, by Namco for SNES in 1995. The game was originally based on an unpublished novel, Tale Fantasia, but, as we can read from Aselia wikia, the programming team encountered many difficulties in dealing with the publisher:

Several changes exist between the initial concept of Tale Phantasia and the published game, due to Namco’s interference with Wolfteam’s efforts, eventually cutting them out of the process and removing them from the credits towards the end of development. This includes changing the character artist from Yoshiaki Inagaki to the now-familiar Kousuke Fujishima, resulting in entirely redesigned and renamed characters with in-game sprites that are based on original artwork and not Fujishima’s revisions, which are shown in the status art, along with several alterations to key chars and plot points. A grand majority of the story was cut from the game, and no attempt was made to close the plot holes that were created by Namco’s actions.

In the beta pics below we can see the original character design of Inagaki and a scan of a pre-release version of Tales of Phantasia. I played the game ten years ago, so i don’t remember it too well, and the scan is low quality, but i don’t see any major changes. If you have more informations please make a comment and we’ll update the post.

Thanks to Youloute of the Assembler forum for the scan.

Below is a few sprites that are ripped from the final version of Tales of Phantasia, but these sprites go completely unused. They’re ‘angel’ sprites for when Raise Dead is used. Some of them are completely unknown, but clearly Brambert, Rhea and Morrison are in the list. Brambert was in the beta of Tales of Phantasia, as seen in the image below. Not much is known about Rhea but it appears NPC’s may have been usable in battle. There’s also a ‘Tactics’ icon for both Brambart and Rhea as well. Not too mention both of their names are stored in the same area as Cress and Co.’s.

Thanks to Justin3009 for the contribution!

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