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I-Ninja [PS2/XBOX/GC – Beta & Concept]

I-Ninja is a fun and underrated action game that was developed by Argonaut Games and published in 2003 by Namco (in USA) and Sony (in Europe) for the GameCube, Xbox and Playstation 2. A Game Boy Advance version of the game was announced too, but later cancelled.

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As it happened with Orchid (another Argonaut game that was later cancelled), originally I-Ninja had a much more colorful and stylized graphic, but the publisher was worried that it looked too childish, and wanted an edgier, grittier look. As we can see from the early mockup / target renders, the original style of I-Ninja looked a bit like Zelda: The Wind Waker (especially for the islands, the pigs and the scene in which Ninja is sailing a ship) but the 2 games were in development almost at the same time so it was just a coincidence. 

Earthworm Jim 2003 [XBOX/PS2 – Prototype]

In 2003 a new chapter of the Earthworm Jim series was in development at Interplay as a side-scrolling 3D platform that was probably meant to be released on the Playstation 2 and Xbox. Sadly the project was soon cancelled, just after the preproduction stage. The basic structure of the game would have been somewhat similar to Klonoa or Donkey Kong Jungle Beat, with 3D environment, but viewed along a track with a fixed camera.

Jim’s head would have been used to not only swing and attack, but also as a grappling appendage that could hoist heavy objects. Aside from a few tests and the concepts you can see in the gallery below, not much more work was done before this new Earthworm Jim was canned, probably because it was seen as a risky project.

Lots of crazy ideas got tossed around during the early stages of development, as a musical sequence in which Jim went to Heck (hell) and had to do a boatride through the river styx. Jim was all mopey because he was dead, and the Grim reaper turns to him (in the small boat) and says “Cheer up Jim… it’s not that bad.” [in a terribly over the top British accent] and whips off his robe to reveal the Zuit Suit (that you can see in the concept arts). At this point, it was going to be a whacky musical boatride into Heck, to the tune of something like the Squirrel Nut Zippers song Afterlife/Hell. There would have been dancing skeletons, and demons and stuff as they travel down the river.

The Cyclops monster that you can notice in another concept art was a boss for a level made entirely of cheese. Imagine Rome, constructed of cheese, with the citizens all being mice, wearing togas. He was the “Gorgan Zola”. Made of cheese, with a pimento olive for a head (the red pimento being his eye). There would have been a showdown / boss-battle within the Fondue Colliseum, with cheering / jeering mice in the crowd.

Thanks a lot to Michael and Earthwormjim for the contribution!

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RS Links: Miyamoto talks about the removed Mario 64 coop

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Robert Seddon has linked us to an interview with Shigeru Miyamoto that was published on Wired. In one of his answers, Miyamoto talks about the removed coop mode that was supposed to be included in Mario 64:

Wired.com: You said you had the idea to do a four-player Mario game for a long time. Had you ever actually done any prototypes of such a game on other hardware?

Miyamoto: With each (Mario) project, we do different experiments. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do. We’ve done games in the past where we’ve had the idea and worked on it. But with side-scrolling games, the challenge was that the screen continues to scroll forward, and what happens when the other player falls off the screen? With Mario 64, we had an experiment that took advantage of the idea of the screen growing larger and smaller depending on how far apart the characters were. So we had Mario and Luigi running around in that 3-D world, but we ended up not using it. […]

Wired.com: Why did you decide not to use that Nintendo 64 game with Mario and Luigi?

Miyamoto: Ultimately, it’s the idea of processing speed and working within the constraints of the hardware. The DS Mario 64 had a mode with something similar to that, where you were playing with four characters.

I wonder if he really meant the original “Mario 64” when he was talking about Mario & Luigi in the prototype, as he could have got confused with “Mario 64 II”. Infact, his phrase is similar to an old comment about M64II (as we can read on Super Mario 128 Central):

Well, for over a year now at my desk, a prototype program of Luigi and Mario has been running on my monitor. We’ve been thinking about the game, and it may be something that could work on a completely new game system. – Shigeru Miyamoto on Mario 64 II, November 1998

Thanks to Robert Seddon for the link! 

Milo and the Rainbow Nasties [XBOX/PS2/GC – Cancelled]

Milo and the Rainbow Nasties was going to be an action  game / platform in which the player would had to bring the colors back to the world after some weird bugs consumed it all. Originally the game was in development by Warthog Games for the XBOX, Playstation 2 and GameCube, but then it became a Gizmondo exclusive (as it happened with Johnny Whatever), untill its final cancellation. In February 2006, the owners of Warthog, Tiger Telematics, went bankrupt and therefore all their games were cancelled.

The concept of this game was never detailed considering it had a short lifespan, the gist of the plot was the world in which the player was in is overcome with darkness / bug creatures. The player was to clean this world using color, the concept was very similar to Super Mario Sunshine.

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Mirror’s Edge [PS3/X360 – Proto / Beta]

Mirror’s Edge is a first person platformer video game developed by DICE (EA Digital Illusions CE) and published by Electronic Arts. The game was released on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in November 2008. [Info from Wikipedia] Before working on the real game, DICE tested the first person movement with a target render / prototype video, using canned animation as a target of how it would feel in the final game.

At this stage Faith was a male and it still had a gun. DICE held a presentation of the game at GDC09 and shared a proof of concept video with the fans as a “documentary” of the  development of the project. Also, in the beta version we can notice some minor differences in the level layout. You can find some more info on X-Cult!

As mentioned in the bonus section of the game, a prison level was cut from Mirrors Edge for unknown reasons. Some early concept arts of the characters can also be unlocked in the bonus section.

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