Beta + Cancelled RPG Video Games - Page 24 of 39

Robert Seddon has linked us to an interesting topic in the Golden Sun Hacking Community Forum, in which they have found a lot of unused items, sprites and Psynergy spells that were still hidden in the Golden Sun: The Lost Age code! All of these can not be obtained in the final game without hacking. Betweem the unused NPC there’s one that looks a bit like Link from The Legend Of Zelda and we can only wonder if it was going to be a cameo from the Zelda series, later removed for some reasons. Also several characters from the original Golden Sun are among the game’s sprite collection despite not actually appearing in the game. Maybe these sprites are still in there because the developers used the original Golden Sun code to build the second game and they just forgot to remove that old stuff.

[spoiler /List of Unused Items/ /Hide the List of Unused Items/]

398: Divine Camisole – Shirt: Raises Defense and Luck
Price: 2700, Defense: 10
Is a rare item
Can be equipped by: Mia, Jenna, Sheba.
Luck +5

399: Herbed Shirt – Shirt: Reduces Defense
Price: 1900, Defense: 7
Is a rare item
Can be equipped by: Anyone
Use: Herb, Breaks when used.

401: Casual Shirt – Shirt: Restores HP & Raises DEF
Price: 50, Defense: 3
Is a rare item
Can be equipped by: Isaac, Garet, Ivan, Felix, Piers
HP recovery +5

405: Knight’s Greave – Boots: Raise Defense & HP
Price: 2700, Defense: 8
Is a rare item
Can be equipped by: Anyone
Max HP +5

406: Silver Greave – Boots: Raise Defense & Luck
Price: 3800, Defense: 11
Is a rare item
Can be equipped by: Anyone
Luck +4

407: Ninja Sandals – Boots: Raise Defense & Evade
Price: 2000, Defense: 5
Is a rare item
Can be equipped by: Anyone
Critical Hits +15

411: Aroma Ring – Ring: Restores 100 HP to all allies
Price: 2300
Is a rare item
Can be equipped by: Anyone
Use: Healing Aura, breaks when used

412: Rainbow Ring – Ring: Deludes multiple enemies
Price: 900
Is a rare item
Can be equipped by: Anyone
Use: Delude, breaks when used

413: Soul Ring – Ring: Use to raise a downed ally
Price: 1800
Is a rare item
Can be equipped by: Anyone
Use: Revive, breaks when used[/spoiler]

[spoiler /List of Unused Psynergy spells/ /Hide the List of Unused Psynergy spells/]
129 – Reflect
A Psynergy usable in battle. No apparent use has been found.

155 – Ma???? (Magnet)
A Psynergy usable outside of battle, a ring appears around the player which dissipates after a few seconds. Can be used in Psynergy Test 2 Debug Room to mess with a pile of rope.
The ability may cause transitions between locations, and menus to become glitchy.

157 – A?? (Arrow)
A Psynergy usable outside of battle, a bow appears in front of the player, and shoots an arrow which sticks in NPCs, and other objects. Can be used in Psynergy Test Debug Room to light a torch, and annoy Kraden.
The ability appears glitchy sometimes since it ignores the height-map, and thus may appear at the wrong elevation.

298 – Aurora Field
A Psynergy usable in battle. Fully heals & revives your party.[/spoiler]

Huge props to Atrius and all the GS Hacking Community for these finds!

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Saturn, Sega

Panzer Dragoon Saga [Saturn – Beta / Unused Texts]

monokoma

08-04-2009

No Comments

Panzer Dragoon Saga is a RPG released for the Sega Saturn in 1998. It was the third Panzer Dragoon game to be released and so far it remains the only game in the series that is not a rail shooter. Like the other Panzer Dragoon games on the Saturn, it was developed by Sega’s internal Team Andromeda development studio. The team disbanded after Saga’s release. [Infos from Wikipedia]

As we can read in an interesting article from The Will of the Ancients, in the early screenshots of the game we can see a beta HUD, unfinished environments, changes in the character placements and other minor differences. Also, in this other article we can read that some unused text is still hidden in the code: “If you put one of the Panzer Dragoon Saga game discs into your PC and open certain files in a text editor, you’ll be able to read the script for the game, which is all stored as normal text. […] However, virtually every section of text contains some lines of script that don’t appear in the finished game; there are bits of conversations that don’t take place, descriptions of items that don’t exist, and other odd things besides.”

In May 2008 Hidden Palace, thanks to donations from The Will of the Ancients community, released various beta versions of the game (from 1996 and 1997) with some differences like a removed Dermot’s Ranch camp area, missing Village of Cainus, different controls & english translation.

Also, Evilhamwizard was able to find a debug menu in the Panzer Dragoon Saga beta (Sept 16 1997 build):

Now, this appears to be the only debug that’s activated for the moment. For some reason, the battle system, the world map (I guess) system, and the menu/title screens don’t have debugs. I went though many of the PRG files, and it appears that some boss battles have special debugs enabled. But I’m not sure. The game DOES have a map select, battle select, and a sound test that’s all on the title screen (the files for the sound test still exist in this build as well as the final, I believe).[…]
Now onto the debug itself. Like I said, this debug in particular can only be loaded on a FIELD map. To get the debug to show up, however, is easy and only requires a second controller (you could probably use one controller and just switch ports). To enable it, you have to press START first to get it to show up on the second controller. Then you have to move the dpad a little to highlight what you want. After pressing start for the first time, you can then use the R button to call up the debug screen with the second controller as well. To select anything from the list, I believe I used the A button. To mess with the variables, ABC on the second controller decrease the values while XYZ increase them.

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Others, PC / MAC

Ultima 8: The Lost Vale [PC – Cancelled]

monokoma

03-04-2009

5 Comments

Ultima VIII: Pagan is the eighth part of the computer RPG series Ultima: it was developed by Origin Systems and released in 1994 for the PC. Dominus sent us a couple of links (here and here) in which we can read some informations about the cancelled Ultima 8 expansion, that was called The Lost Vale. It seems that:

The Lost Vale was planned to be an add-on for Ultima 8, but it was never released. Sources seem to suggest that the add-on was fully made and ready for release, but was not released because of Ultima 8’s relatively poor sales […] The Lost Vale would have been accessed from the locked double-doors at Bonecrusher’s cave on the Plateau […] This Vale would apparently offer an additional adventure for the Avatar during his stay in Pagan, featuring the other three Zealan gods and a shield with their symbols, broken in two. […]

We can even read some more infos on PC games That Weren’t. If The Lost Vale was really finished, we can hope that one day it could be leaked and preserved somehow.

Thanks to Dominus for the contribution!

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Others, PC / MAC

Black Isle’s Torn [PC – Cancelled]

monokoma

27-03-2009

No Comments

Black Isle’s Torn is a computer role-playing game developed for Windows by Black Isle Studios, announced on March 2001 and cancelled in July of that year. The game was to use a modified version of the SPECIAL role-playing system, which had been implemented in the Fallout series.

Developed on various editions of the Lithtech engine, Torn possessed features unseen in previous Black Isle Studios games, such as 3D graphics and real-time camera movement.

In July 2001, after circulation of rumors, Torn was officially cancelled.Following the incident, fifty-six members of Black Isle Studios’ staff were laid off. The ultimate reason for Torn’s cancellation was eventually revealed by Feargus Urquhart:

“I don’t know if we ever released an official reason on why [Torn] was canceled, but in a nutshell, the game was canceled because it was not going to be done in time to get Interplay the revenue the company needed to continue operations. That sounds like it was all Interplay’s fault, but that’s really not the case. The project was not going well and continued to be an ongoing challenge.”

The delays were caused by numerous engine upgrades and large problems with pathfinding, due to the team’s inexperience with 3D engines. [Infos from Wikipedia]

Thanks to Celine for the contribution!

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Unseen News

Pokémon Ruby: more unused content in the game?

U64 Staff & Contributors

27-03-2009

3 Comments

IMPORTANT NOTICE: The offsets that are in this article work only with Pokémon Ruby v 1.0 (USA). If you want to know which version is your game, you can use the Rom Header Editor Advance (RHEA). You can find RHEA at any Pokémon hacking website. The text can be seen with Advance-Text (A-Text) but you have to convert the offsets from HEX to DEC (for doing this you can use Windows Calculator). For the unused rooms, you can use Advance Map (A-Map).

I have found some unused dialogs and rooms in Pokémon Ruby. None of them are used in the final version of the game but they are still hidden in the game code!

It seems like the game’s early project name was POKéMON AGB (AGB is the official product code for the GBA).

Unused Text n° 1 (offset 1A0712)