namco

Playstation, Sony

Pac-Man Ghost Zone [PSX – Cancelled]

monokoma
14-11-2010
No Comments

Pac-Man Ghost Zone is a cancelled platform game that was in development in 1996 by Namco Hometek for the original playstation. This would have been the first 3D Pac Man game to be released for home consoles. Ghost Zone was previewed in various old magazines and it seems that it was even shown in some form at E3, but after a while Namco decided to kill the project for quality reasons. As we can read on the Playstation Museum:

We built a playable demo and even though there was some fun gameplay, the game just never felt right. The environments all felt too much the same and it was lacking a sense of grandeur found in other games like the recently released Mario 64. Japan must of felt the same way too – when we flew to Japan and presented it to Namco president Nakamura-San, he was very displeased. As a result, almost the entire team – save 1 designer (myself), 1 programmer (Gil Colgate) and 1 artist (Neil Strudwick) – were fired and we had to start again on what eventually became Pac-Man World.”

Thanks to Celine for the scans! (GamePro #100, Console+ #78, GameInformer #53)

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Playstation 3 (PS3), Sony

Brave Arms [PS3 – Pitch / Cancelled]

monokoma
08-11-2010
1 Comment

Brave Arms is an action game that was in early development stages at Namco’s Project Aces team, planned for the Playstation 3. We dont know how much work went into the game, as the only documents about it’s existence are a couple of scans (?) that shown some target renders and concept arts, probably created to pitch the project. As far as we can get from the japanese translation (@ Wikipedia), Brave Arms took place in Gran Rugido, the capital of the Kingdom of Sapin, an allegory of Spain in the Ace Combat series. The player would had fight alongside the local resistance against an unknown military regime.

There are no more info on Brave Arms and it’s currently unknown why it was never finished.

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Arcade, Others

Tekken (Rave War) [Arcade – Beta]

U64 Staff & Contributors
05-07-2010
2 Comments

Tekken is the first of a series of fighting games with the same name, but originally in the beta it was going to be titled “Rave War” as seen in a scan from EGM issue 65. The game was developed by Namco and released at arcades in late 1994 and on the PlayStation in 1995. In another scan with concept arts taken from the Tekken Chronicle book, you can see very old / different versions of several Tekken characters. LeeChaolan was originally a silver haired brute, Nina looks like an Elf, and Kazuya looked a lot beefier than he does now.

Thanks to Celine for the EGM scan!

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Nes / Famicom, Nintendo

Devilman [NES – Beta / Unused]

monokoma
19-05-2010
No Comments

As we can read on Wikipedia, a video game based on the popular Devilman manga / anime series was developed by ISCO and published by Namco in 1989 for the NES / Famicom. The game is an action RPG where players take control of Akira Fudo and the objective is to follow clues that will lead the heroes through a ruined city, into underground caves, around a hidden military base and finally into a confrontation with Zenon.

John Doom discovered that in the game’s code are some hidden images, taken directly from the comics, which were not used in the final version. It’s possible that these scenes were meant to be used during the fights against the various demons (Silen, Agwell, Ghelmer, etc.). Another shot shows a dying Miki (as in the comics).

Thanks to John Doom for the contribution and to Jason for the english corrections!

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Microsoft, Playstation 2 (PS2), Sony, Xbox

Snake Plissken Chronicles [PS2/XBOX – Cancelled]

monokoma
16-09-2009
1 Comment

Snake Plissken Chronicles (also know as Snake Plissken’s Escape), is a cancelled action game that was in development at Namco Hometek in 2003, for the original Xbox and Playstation 2. The game was based on Snake Plissken, the protagonist (portrayed by Kurt Russell) in John Carpenter’s films Escape from L.A. and Escape from New York. A playable demo was created, but the project was never finished for unknown reasons.

S0me videos from the game were shared online by Neurobellum:

This video shows a functional SNAKE PLISSKEN game built in 2004 by the remaining Dead to Rights 2 staff. Campaign design was complete, storyline was approved by Carpenter, Russell, and Hill, and concept was well underway. The game would have included full particpation by all three, including a completed cyber-scanned version of Kurt. This game was going to rock. Video produced and edited by Mike Kennedy. Music by KMFDM and John Carpenter, remixed by DJSkavenger.

A sequence of key events storyboarded for the campaign mode of the unproduced Snake Plissken’s Escape video game, by Namco. These boards were illustrated by Comic Book legend Chris Warner.

 A compilation of Environmental concept art developed for the campaign of Snake Plissken’s Escape, developed for Namco in 2004 before cancellation. Contributing artists included Francisco Ruiz Velasco (Hellboy 2, Pacific Rim) and Tim Tao (Dead to Rights).

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