RPG

Dungeon Hourouki [NES – Cancelled]

Dungeon Hourouki (aka Dungeon Wandering Chronicle) is a cancelled RPG that was in development by ASCII for the Famicom / NES. It seems that in the game players were lost in a dungeon of some sort (a prison?) and they had to find a way to escape. An interesting feature of Dungeon Hourouki was its random generated dungeon system, that would have let to explore more than a million different combinations of levels. It’s currently unknown why the game was canned and only few screens were found in a japanese magazine.

Thanks to Celine for the contribution!

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Genjuu Souseiki [NES – Cancelled]

Genjuu Souseiki (aka Genjū Sōseiki / 幻獣創世紀, translated as “Mythical Beast Genesis” or “Genesis Phantom Beast”) is a cancelled RPG that was in development in 1990 by Nihon Bussan / Nichibutsu for the Famicom / NES. It seems that players would have took the role of a god, fighting with other gods to conquer more areas of the world, using the power of monsters that were able to evolve like in Pokemon. Only few screens, a video and some info can be found in a japanese website.

Thanks to Celine for the contribution!

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Ushiro [PSP – Cancelled]

Ushiro is a cancelled horror-themed, turn-based rpg that was being developed for PSP by Level 5. The game was officially announced and showed in 2008. Nothing much is known about this game apart from brief informations that appeared on 1up:

Ushiro (PSP) is a first for Level-5 — a horror RPG. You play Reiichiro Ushiro, a newly-minted shinigami spirit who has the power to give people near the brink of death a single wish in exchange for their lives. Whether listening in on conversations in spirit mode, possessing the living to do your bidding, or fighting personifications of the evil in man’s heart, you can be sure that being a not-so-friendly ghost is nothing if not hectic.

The game went dark shortly after the initial reveal, with no new developments on the title up until mid-late 2009, when Level-5 removed the game from their corporate website. It’s not clear why the game was eventually cancelled, but it’s possible that Level-5 decided to focus on their new ROID service, a smartphone app that launched exclusively in Japan in 2009 to help the studio break into the lucrative mobile market.

From the assets that did get released, we can see that the game appears to be in a working and playable state, though it’s not quite clear what percentage of the game was fully developed before Level-5 axed the project.

News of the game’s potential return began to circulate after Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu reported that Level-5 were considering bringing the project back from the dead, although this has yet to see any tangible results as yet. It’s possible that they were not referring to bringing the game back, but instead hinting towards the manga released in 2015, which is currently still active.

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Final Fantasy Type-0 (Agito XIII) [Beta – PSP]

As we can read on Wikipedia, Final Fantasy Type-0 is an RPG published by Square Enix for the PSP and developed by the company’s 1st Production Department. The game was originally announced at E3 2006 with the name Final Fantasy Agito XIII for mobile cellphones, but even though the game no longer has “XIII” in its title, the final PSP game still uses the Fabula Nova Crystallis mythology.

Thanks to Dreams and anony we can archive some beta screens, videos and info from Final Fantasy Type 0: there are 14 playable characters in the final game, with a couple of non playable guests.

The pic above show kurasame, type 0 teacher as playable character. It seems that the guest plus one more were supposed to be playable in the beta version, even supposed to have their own dogde animations, but most likely cut for space problems, as type 0 is already packed with a lot of content. So, through hacking, it shows kurasame, Joker, Gilgamesh (not playable only has the name).

In the gamefaqs forum we can read that there is a FF Type 0 Artbook that has some unused content in it. Does anyone have some scans of the beta / unused content? Plus somewhere in the web there is art/model of phoenix as an unused summon (but we can’t find it).

In the released game, modders have found 3D models for summons that don’t appear in the game: Pandemona, Phoenix and Typhoon. There is also a hidden unused video which has live actors doing motion capture for the game. It’s not used in the game, and it has a blue overlay with three kanji, the first meaning “temporary”. It also has mono audio, unlike all other videos in the game.

If you notice more differences in the old beta screens and videos below, please let us know! Thanks to Dreams and anony for the contribution :)

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Magic Formation WARS [WonderSwan Color – Cancelled]

When Bandai unveiled a GPS add-on for WonderSwan at Spring Tokyo Game Show 2001, Namco shown three games compatible with the new device. Magic Formation WARS (known in japanese as 魔放陣WARS) was an RPG that used the peripheral to determinate where battles were held and monsters formation. You could draw a spell on the map to cast a magic. The only other detail known was that the story was divided in scenarios. When the GPS for WonderSwan failed to be marketed it’s likely that Namco cancelled the project.

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