on-rails shooter

Nintendo, SNES + Super Famicom

Star Fox (Starwing) [SNES – Beta]

monokoma
26-04-2010
6 Comments

Star Fox (Starwing in Europe) is a on-rail shooter developed by Argonaut Software and Nintendo EAD, published in 1993 for the Super Nintendo. Argonaut worked closely with Nintendo during the early years of the NES and SNES. They developed a Star Fox prototype on the NES, initially codenamed “NesGlider”, which was inspired by their earlier 8-bit game Starglider, and then ported this prototype to the SNES.

Programmer Jez San told Nintendo that this was as good as it could get unless they were allowed to design custom hardware to make the SNES better at 3D. Nintendo assented to this, and San hired chip designers to make the Super FX chip, the first 3D graphics accelerator in a consumer product. [Info from Wikipedia]

Megalol found some Star Fox beta screens in Nintendo Power magazine from Jan 1993, in which we can notice a completely different (and awesome) beta title screen!

Beta Title:


Final Title:

Originally a sequel titled Star Fox 2 was in the works for the Super Nintendo, but it was never released, though a handful of ROM dumps at various stages of its development were leaked onto the internet.

Thanks to Jason for the english corrections!

Images: 

32X / Mega CD, M2 / 3DO, Others, Saturn, Sega

Darkside / Dark Ride [Saturn 3DO – Cancelled]

U64 Staff & Contributors
07-09-2009
1 Comment

Darkside (sometimes written as Dark Ride or Darkride) was one of many titles being devloped by Rocket Science Games before being cancelled. It was to be a psychodellic tunnel-based game with bizarre graphics, and was briefly previewed in the December 1994 issue of Games World: The Magazine, which stated that ‘the team behind the game are perfecting the smooth scrolling of the ride… before the gameplay’.


Rocket Science Games themselves are probably more interesting than the games they made- funded by Sega Enterprises and promising more than they could deliver on, they mostly made Sega-CD and PC-based FMV based titles such as Cadillacs & Dinosaurs: The Second Cataclysm and Obsidian. However, their titles never sold well, and Sega themselves cancelled half of the company’s titles around 1994/95 to keep costs down- it seems Dark Side / Dark Ride was one of the victims of this. They eventually went out of business in 1997.

The preview in Games world: The Magazine states that the game was being developed for the 3DO, although almost all other RSG games were being developed for either the Sega CD or the PC- whether this is a mistake on the magazine’s part is unknown.

In a short article published in French magazine CD Consoles issue #4 we can read that “Darkside” was in development for the Saturn and the game would have took the player into an imaginary world, to explore it aboard a cart on rails (as in a rollercoaster). Could this have been an on-rails shooter? We are not sure.

As written in an article in Wired 2.11 (page 108), Rocket Science decided to cancel this project because it was too similar to other games of its time:

The trend toward more literate games means that some projects well along the Rocket Science pipeline have had to be scrapped. “We saw some things at the Consumer Electronics Show very similar to our Rocket Boy and DarkRide, so we’ve put those on hold,” says Caldwell. “But we still have Wing Nuts, a World War I dogfight game, in the works.”

If you have some more info on this game, please let us know!

Thanks to Celine for the scan! Thanks to Jason for the english corrections!

Images: 

Playstation, Sony

Melt [PSX – Ed Hunter Beta]

monokoma
03-05-2008
2 Comments

Melt is the beta version of Ed Hunter is a rail shooter video game that was released in 1999 for the Playstation, based on and accompanied by Iron Maiden’s music. The game objective consists of rescuing the mascot of Iron Maiden, Eddie, from a prison while passing through game settings evocative of the albums. [Info from Wikipedia]

Thanks to Srđan we found out that Melt was the same project as Ed Hunter:

There was a sticker on the Maiden compilation Best of the Beast where it said ”Introducing Melt- Eddie’s own state-of-the-art 3D game!” and there was the picture which said Playstation and MELT. Using WayBackMachine I was looking at the old Iron Maiden site, circa ’98-’99 and it says that the game Melt has changed name to Ed Hunter. So there you go. Also , according to the description, the game was changed too, from the gameplay to the style.

Thanks to Pachuka and Srđan for the contribution!

Images:

Videos from the final version:
 

Mega Drive / Genesis, Sega

Battle Mission [MD/G – Cancelled]

U64 Staff & Contributors
14-04-2008
No Comments

md_bm

ENG: This entry in the archive doesn’t have a description yet. If you want to add some info about the beta / cancelled stuff that you see in these images, just write a comment or send us an email! We’ll add your info in this page and your name in the contributors list. Thanks a lot for your help! :)

ITA: Questa pagina dell’archivio non ha ancora una descrizione. Se vuoi aggiungere delle informazioni riguardo le differenze della beta o la descrizione di un gioco cancellato, lasciaci un commento o mandaci una email! Inseriremo le tue informazioni nella pagina ed il tuo nome nella lista dei collaboratori. Grazie per il tuo aiuto! :)

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