Beta + Cancelled Racing Video Games - Page 13 of 18

12 Volt is an arcade racing game that was in development by Sproing in 2003 / 2004 for the Playstation 2, Xbox and GameCube. The game was set in slot-car tracks and players would have been able to race their models in houses and gardens. 12 Volt looked like a mix between Re-Volt and another cancelled Nintendo 64 game, Mini Racers: it’s unknown why Sproing never released this project or how much it was completed before being canned.

Some more info can be read in the original press release:

The cars can move freely on the track, they are not bound to a specific lane or slot like conventional slot cars are! This way the game combines the look of a die-cast-racer with the feeling of a full-physics arcade rally game!

Highly realistic physics enable the player to activate toys and tools that work as weapons against other players. Imagine plunging through a heap full of marbles crashing at you in a world that really looks and feels like a childhood dream-come-true. Special magnetic rails even allow you to hook on to the inner side of hairpins and drive through them at full speed!

A GBA version was planned (and cancelled) too, but they did not even show any screens from this portable version.

Thanks to Userdante for the contribution!

Images:

Nintendo, Nintendo 64 & 64DD

Wildwaters (Extreme Kayak) [N64 – Cancelled]

monokoma

29-01-2010

10 Comments

Wildwaters (also know as “Extreme Kayak” and “X-Stream”) is a cancelled racing game that was in development by Looking Glass Studios for the Nintendo 64 in 1998 / 1999. The project was announced at E3 1999 by Ubisoft (that was interested as a publisher) while the studio was working on Destruction Derby 64 (published in the same year), but sadly it was never finished.

Wildwaters 64 was very promising as Looking Glass were able to create an engine with real physics running for the waterflow through the river on an N64, but it needed more time and love which eventually ran out. Five different gameplay modes, including Arcade, Time Trial, Championship, Finals and Versus Battle were planned for the game.

Some months later, on May 2000, Looking Glass Studios went out of business during a financial crisis related to their publisher at the time, Eidos Interactive. Wildwaters / Extreme Kayak vanished forever, along with their other promising N64 racing game, Mini Racers.

There was another cancelled water racing game titled “Wild Water World Championships” that was planned for the Nintendo 64, but it should not be confused with this one as WWWC was developed by Promethean Designs.

Thanks a lot to Les Betterley for the help in preserving some images from this lost project!

Images (in-game):

Images (models):

Videos:

Unseen News

RS Links: the unreleased Burnout Paradise’s content

monokoma

20-01-2010

5 Comments

Over at the official Burnout / Criterion blog, they wrote a post about planned Download Content that was meant to be released for Burnout Paradise, as new tracks, modes and vehicles, but for some reasons they never finish them.

We were very interested in the whole concept of downloadable content, and we knew that we wanted to approach it very differently and push it as far as we could. A downloadable Island was started almost immediately after the main game was built.

[…]

We did have ambitious plans for a series of Islands. One was going to be purely off-road based. Hence we created the ‘Dust Storm’ dune buggy in anticipation for that. Our original dreams for Paradise were to create a series of Islands, all connected to Paradise City and each would focus on a different style of racing game. One Island was going to be completely circuit based – and be all marked up like a modern Formula One circuit!

[…]

Planes. A lot of Burnout fans already know about this – as we showed flying around in a live podcast. It was really cool to be able to see Paradise City from the air. It did not happen because of the way the game world was built. The city was never meant to be seen from such viewpoints. Think of it like a film set, a very big film set – meant to be seen from certain camera angles and not others.

[…]

The Moon! Again, completely true. Someone on the team said that ‘players want the moon on a stick when it comes to DLC’ We thought that was funny and thought we’d do it. The actual surface of the real Moon was modelled and it was drive-able. Lunar Challenges would have been totally unexpected – as would have been zero gravity Takedowns and Challenges.

[…]

Time Travel – Not many know about this, but it was discussed. On a certain day, a time portal would have opened on the Island. When you jumped through, you would have found yourself on Big Surf, at another point in history. Maybe the Wild West…you could have done some Challenges and then jumped back.

Thanks to Robert Seddon for the link!

Mega Drive / Genesis, Sega

Road Riot 4WD [MD/G – Cancelled]

monokoma

19-01-2010

5 Comments

A Genesis / Mega Drive version of Road Riot 4WD was in development at Tengen in 1993, but it was later cancelled. The game is an arcade racing game somehow similar to Mario Kart. A SNES (1992) and an Arcade (1991) versions do exist, but while the SNES version doesnt look that good, the Genesis one seems to have been graphically more similar to the Arcade game. It’s currently unknown if the canned game would have had new tracks. Some images were found in Joypad magazine #7, EGM # 40 and # 41!

Thanks to Celine for the contribution!

Images:

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

Crude Awakening [X360/PS3 – Cancelled]

monokoma

17-12-2009

No Comments

Crude Awakening (aka The Crib) is a cancelled action / driving game that was in development by Pseudo Interactive in 2007 / 2008, planned to be released for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. The project was meant to be a “next gen” Carmageddon with a different graphic approach: the idea behind it was to make it stylized, like Team Fortress 2, with a crazy cast of characters and a weird city to explore.

As in the original Carmageddon, the player had to race a vehicle against a number of other competitors with a certain amount of time to complete each mission. More time may be gained by collecting bonuses, damaging the competitors’ cars or by running over pedestrians.

The Crude Awakening concept was quite funny (in a gruesome way), there would be different objectives and sometimes the objective was to hit only one type of pedestrian and avoid others. Crude awakening was basically Carmagedon HD including some reworks of old characters.

The game was going to be published and funded by SCI / Eidos (the original Carmageddon publisher, now known as Square Enix Europe), but later they changed their mind and canned the development. As Crude Awakening was a major project for Pseudo Interactive, its cancellation became one of the causes for the studio’s economic problems and the following closure. In april 2008, Pseudo was officially shut down and all their WIP projects vanished with them.

As we can read in an old article at Gamespot:

However, whatever plans SCi had were subject to change once investors called for a change in upper management. Longtime CEO Jane Cavanagh resigned shortly thereafter, and the following month the new regime announced some drastic changes, including layoffs of 200 workers and the cancellation of more than a dozen games.

Only some artworks, concepts and few screens remain from Crude Awakening, preserved in the gallery below.

Thanks a lot to Roberto Robert, David Wu, Kay Huang, Heidi Klinck, Albert Alejandro, Bronwen Grimes and all the former Pseudo Interactive artists that helped us to preserve info and media from their lost project!

Images:

Videos: