King’s Field is a dungeon crawler created by From Software and released in 1994 for Playstation. It was never published in the West.
From this early screenshot, taken from Edge issue 11, we can see that originally the game was called Crystal Dragon:
Another beta pic, shown below, probably taken from a more advanced build, was published in a issue of Console Mania, an italian magazine.
If you have any more info about this game, please let us know!
Katana is the WIP project name of a cancelled game that was pitched for the Xbox in 2002, by Tosym Corporation (?). In january 2009 a government agent has accidentally leaked several gigs of personal, business and government files: between those files, there was also the Katana game proposal. The project was probably cancelled in early development, with only few concepts done.
As we can read on Kotaku:
[…] the Japanese bureaucrat opened several well-known trojans that are often embedded in files found in filesharing programs Winny or Share, which upload and distribute files to uploaders specified by the virus. […]
Dubbed Katana, the leaked Xbox game submission was never made and was a proposal submitted back in 2002 under a company the agent previously ran. The proposed game is cringe worthy Final Fantasy-esque RPG stuff, complete with some hooky story involving nine stories, 100-player online multiplayer duel, and the possibility of having Janne Darc, Jack the Ripper, Ned Kelly, Musashi Miyamoto and Bruce Lee battle each other.
Images:
Tales of Phantasia is a Jrpg developed by Wolfteam and published, only in Japan, by Namco for SNES in 1995. The game was originally based on an unpublished novel, Tale Fantasia, but, as we can read from Aselia wikia, the programming team encountered many difficulties in dealing with the publisher:
Several changes exist between the initial concept of Tale Phantasia and the published game, due to Namco’s interference with Wolfteam’s efforts, eventually cutting them out of the process and removing them from the credits towards the end of development. This includes changing the character artist from Yoshiaki Inagaki to the now-familiar Kousuke Fujishima, resulting in entirely redesigned and renamed characters with in-game sprites that are based on original artwork and not Fujishima’s revisions, which are shown in the status art, along with several alterations to key chars and plot points. A grand majority of the story was cut from the game, and no attempt was made to close the plot holes that were created by Namco’s actions.
In the beta pics below we can see the original character design of Inagaki and a scan of a pre-release version of Tales of Phantasia. I played the game ten years ago, so i don’t remember it too well, and the scan is low quality, but i don’t see any major changes. If you have more informations please make a comment and we’ll update the post.
Thanks to Youloute of the Assembler forum for the scan.
Below is a few sprites that are ripped from the final version of Tales of Phantasia, but these sprites go completely unused. They’re ‘angel’ sprites for when Raise Dead is used. Some of them are completely unknown, but clearly Brambert, Rhea and Morrison are in the list. Brambert was in the beta of Tales of Phantasia, as seen in the image below. Not much is known about Rhea but it appears NPC’s may have been usable in battle. There’s also a ‘Tactics’ icon for both Brambart and Rhea as well. Not too mention both of their names are stored in the same area as Cress and Co.’s.
Thanks to Justin3009 for the contribution!
Images:
Mega Man Battle Network 5, known as Battle Network Rockman EXE 5 in Japan, is a Strategy RPG developed by Capcom Production Studio 2 for the Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS. MBN5 for the DS features a 3D Megaman on the bottom screen. For most of the game, it sits there idly. However, by manipulating a command in the game, MegaRockReborn found all animations for all models. This reveals several unused animations which suggest perhaps the game were more animate or would have been fully rendered in 3D.
Here are GIFs of the unused animations.
Using the same trick in MBN5, the unused character models found in Megaman Star Force can replace the models i this game to actually show up. Evidently the model format is the same one Megaman Battle Network 5 DS can read. Animations are different but the first frame can still be seen and here are the character models in their natural state. The emulator isn’t perfect but the models are lacking completeness in contrast to the actual models used in the game.
Check MegaRockReborn’s blog for more info!
Xenoblade, originally known as Monado: The beginning of the world, is a jrpg developed by Monolith and released for Wii in 2010 after four years of work. In the first beta trailer and in the gallery below, we can see an early version of the battle HUD. Also, in the final version treasure chests are different looking and they can obtained only by defeating enemies, while in the beta they could be found in the overworld too.
However, the most interesting thing about this beta is a large unused map, originally located between Makna Forest and Eruyt Sea, that can be briefly seen in one of the final build cutscenes and which it was removed from the final game, even if it is still possibile to explore it by modifying some internal files. It is largely incomplete and deserted, but it was one of the first areas shown in screenshots, so it must have been created at the beginning of the development. For more informations check the video below and a gamefaqs topic.
Thanks to KEK8 for the contribution!
Also, some hackers found a few debug items and an explorable test-map with a big Xenoblade sword (similar to the one in title screen). Check this topic on GBATemp for more info!
In a 2012 interview with Siliconera, director Tetsuya Takeshi admitted that he tried a turn-based system before sticking with real-time battles:
“I did experiment with a turn-based system that included the ability to see the future, but it didn’t go very well.”
The story seems to have changed quite a few times also.
Images:
Videos: