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Airball [NES – Unreleased]

Airball is a cancelled action game / puzzle that was in development by Novotrade and it would have been published by Tengen for the NES. As we can read at Lost Levels:

the game itself is a pseudo-3D isometric fetch-quest, along the lines of Knight Lore, Alien 8, Batman and the like (or, if you’re only console literate, Solstice on the NES). As the NES-exclusive opening cinema shows, an evil wizard has turned the player’s human character into a ball, and sets him on a journey around his castle to find a handful of items he’s misplaced.

The project was lost untill a prototype was found again in 2007: thanks to Retro Zone you can buy the reproduction of the prototype and play it on your NES console. (It works on authentic Nintendo Systems including NTSC, PAL A, PAL B, and Asian systems!)

Airball

Thanks a lot to NES World for these screenshots!

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Alex Kidd in Shinobi World [SMS – Beta]

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Alex Kidd was not originally intended to be the star of the game, but in fact an original character called Shinobi Kid. Apart from a few sprite character changes and some graphical alterations to the first level, the games appear to be identical. but no Images or Sprites of Shinobi Kid remain in the Shinobi World ROM. The first boss, Kabuto, was originally going to be named Mari-Oh, as a parody of the Nintendo character Mario (“Oh” in Japanese meaning, “King”, King Mari). Despite the name not going through, Kabuto still shares many of his would-be counterpart’s qualities; his main attack is shooting fireballs, and he shrinks after taking a certain amount of damage.

Rumor has it that Sega also originally intended Alex to appear in several games parodying their own licenses in a bit to re-invent the character, with Golden Axe and Phantasy Star on the top of the name list. Unfortunately, Sega’s success on Sonic The Hedgehog put an end to this plan. – [info from Wikipedia]

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Dinobasher [Sega Master System – Cancelled]

DinoBasher was a platform game being developed for the Sega Master System by Optimus Software and was due to be published by Codemasters in 1993. The game was a port of Big Nose the Caveman that had been released on the NES in 1991.

The game had a very cartoon like art style and the aim of the game was to club dinosaurs for Big Noses dinner. There was going to be four large islands for the player to explore and you would navigate between them using your club as a helicopter, to become the “first flying man”. You would also collect bones and rocks that you would be able to trade with the natives of the islands.

DinoBasher differs from most cancelled games though as it was actually completely finished and box art had been completed, the game had also been sent out to publications for review. Sega Power magazine gave it a terrible 42% and called it “Prehistoric Poo Poo” the review also said that it was a very generic platformer and the pacing was very slow.

The poor reviews seem to be one of the main reasons that this game was never actually released, this and the fact that it was due to be released towards the end of the Master Systems lifecycle. It could be that Codemasters wanted to concentrate on other games for the new 16bit platform such as the hugely popular Micro Machines for the Sega Megadrive. Codemasters at this time as well had started to cut down on releasing budget games and wanted to concentrate on full-price titles.

Even though the game was cancelled as it was completely finished DinoBasher can now be played as it was leaked online. There are tons of YouTube videos of the game and a rom can be downloaded and you can even play it in your browser.

Optimus Software was eventually bought out by Iguana UK in 1993, who were then acquired by Acclaim Entertainment and renamed Acclaim Studios Teesside. This studio was then also closed in 2002 and the majority of the staff were relocated to Acclaim Studio Cheltenham whose last game was RC Revenge released in 2013.

Codemasters continues to work on games today and primarily works on the F1 series of games from their Birmingham offices and also the Race Driver Grid games from the Kuala Lumpur office founded in 2006.

Thanks a lot to SMS Power for the contribute!

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Jumping Flash! [PSX – Concept / Tech Demo]

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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