Beta + Cancelled RPG Video Games - Page 26 of 39

SaGa Frontier is a PlayStation RPG by Square, released in Japan on July 11, 1997 and in North America on March 25, 1998.

Originally, the title of this game was “Romancing SaGa 4” during early development. In that stage of development, two more heroes’ quests were also being planned, in addition to the existing seven lead characters. One of them was Fuse, the IRPO agent who may be enlisted as a playable character in the actual release. In his quest, Fuse was supposed to be able to take part in other characters’ scenarios, and the ultimate goal of his quest might be determined by what the player did in the course of gameplay. The “ninth” protagonist was to be the daughter of a channellers family who is engaging in a controversy as to who of them shall inherit the property of their former patriarch. This scenario seems to be dropped during the early development because of being too comedic.

Due to time constraints, some plot points of Asellus’ story were removed too. During those events, Asellus was supposed to visit Dr. Nusakan’s clinic, Bio Research Lab, Lambda Base, and Furdo’s Workshop so that she would find her true identity so that she would decide to live as a human being or as a mystic. These quests were also intended to affect her scenario’s ending. [Info from Wikipedia]

Eriol made us to notice that “Asellus […] supposed to throw herself at Kurenai, and it explains why she has a naked sprite (just go to the debug mode). And also, does Rei-hime suppose to sell sacred lot in first place? I never able to draw anything from her, she always said SOLD OUT.”

Thanks to Robert Seddon we found out that there’s some untranslated text in the North American version of SaGa Frontier (though of course it might turn out just to be duplicate stuff from other maps). You can check the “misterious” japanese text in the gallery below. At Robert’s Blog we can even read that the “Fuse’s sprite, seen in the bottom left of the prototype title screen shown in The Essence of SaGa Frontier, but cut from the final one, with his entire quest, actually still exists and is even loaded into VRAM.” You can read more about it in here.

Also Zedprice has translated an interesting interview with Akitoshi Kawazu, director of the game:

What is the reason that Rouge can learn Mind Magic, but Blue can’t?
My bad. Blue and Rouge should have both been able to earn the gift of Mind Magic before their final confrontation. If the game is released in an English version, we will certainly fix that. “Saga Frontier International”? That probably won’t happen.
Where exactly does the final showdown between Blue and Rouge take place?
Actually, that was never decided. At first we were thinking that when you go to a swamp or a dungeon, you would meet Rouge there, talk a bit, then fight. Being pursued just in like in Asellus’ story, right? Having that ultimate battle in any location turned out to be impossible, so we settled on the current location.
Right after the beginning of the scenario, a message saying, “Hurry, seek out magical talents before Rouge” appears. Is there actually a time limit on Blue’s magic quest?
There was when we first started out. […] But, in the spirit of SaGa games allowing players to develop their characters the way they like, we decided restricting players like that would be a waste.

As we wrote already in another news, informations on the removed SaGa Frontier scenes can be found in a Japanese book called ‘The Essence of SaGa Frontier‘. “‘Red’s quest was supposed to have a unique spin to it– he was supposed to have a love parameter that would determine how close Red and Yuria are.” Some scans of this book, with concept arts and screens from the removed stuff, can be found at IRPO website and in this Livejournal gallery.

Also, you can find much more screens and info about the unused stuff hidden in the game’s code at The Cutting Room Floor! For a deep-dive into the game’s development and changes, check FFVDGames!

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Unseen Articles, Unseen Features

Translation for the Chrono Trigger prerelease video

chrono-translation

In the 90s the SNES produced some of gaming’s finest RPGS. Great classics such as Final Fantasy 4 and 6 kept American audiences entertained, while Japanese gamers had greats such as the original Star Ocean. Entertaining both audiences was the timeless classic Chrono Trigger. Now years later the rise of the internet has put fans together and given those interested the ability to search for in game beta. Notable finds have been made, such as the music from the fabled “Singing Mountain,” and the demo rom. Now thanks to gamers/fans/translators Glitterberri and Gekkahiro we can read in good ole English a translation of this video that has been floating around the web for some time now.

Play the vid and you can follow along with the following translation.

Nintendo, SNES + Super Famicom

Mother 2 / Earthbound [SNES – Beta / Concept / Unused Stuff]

U64 Staff & Contributors

22-12-2008

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Development on EarthBound took place as a joint effort between Ape, Inc. and HAL Laboratory, Inc. and was designed by Shigesato Itoi. The total development time for the project was five years, much longer than was initially expected. The first design concepts for the HP boxes were to make them like pachinko balls and have them fall off the screen whenever a character was damaged. However, this was later changed to the “rolling counter” HP boxes because the pachinko balls did not work so well when characters had large amounts of HP. [Infos from Wikipedia]

In the video, subtitled by the lovely Starmen crew, we can see a collection of beta scense, in which Ness has no backpack, and we can read some interesting facts about the development of the game. In the image gallery there are some unused sprites, like Everdred’s ghost, a climbing King, a Starmen Capsule, an unknow flag and a red beating heart. You can read more about these unused sprites in here. From the various concept arts that were in the MOTHER 1+2 Art Book, we can notice some nice differences from the same scenes in the final game, like a fortress on top of Dungeon Man’s head, a giant elephant that keeps up the Dalaam city, early design of Dr. Andonuts’s lab and missing snow in some areas. You can read more about these concept arts in here.

Also, some unused animations from the opening were found in the rom.

Thanks to Gabriele for the contribution! (scans from Japanese magazine ‘Game Peer – vol. 4’)

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Others, PC / MAC

Grandia Online [PC – Beta]

U64 Staff & Contributors

18-12-2008

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Grandia Online was a MMORPG being developed by Game Arts and published by GungHo Online Entertainment. It was announced in 2004 with a planned released in 2006, but the project was postponed many times and in the end it was released only 5 years later. In the gallery below you can see some images from the original announcement, with an early graphic and some different world areas, if you played the final game and can write a list of all the differences shown in these beta screens let us know!

Thanks to fishinsoup for the contribution!

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Game Boy Advance (GBA), Leaked, Nintendo

Fire Emblem: the Sacred Stones [Beta / Debug – GBA]

U64 Staff & Contributors

13-12-2008

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Recently a beta version of Fire Emblem the Sacred Stones has been found. It is a very early version of the Sacred Stones and contains many differences. This pre-alpha ROM uses many things from the previous game as placeholder; even the title and menus from the Blazing Sword are still there. The game opens up with a debug menu that is identical to the one from the Blazing Sword prototypes. Although the game does have some of the stages programmed in it many of these still need much work. Some do not yet have enemies and have a level two Cavalier as the only enemy. The game’s own music has not been implemented and certain moster enemies are missing battle artwork. Many character portraits are absent; those that do exist were changed in the final. These alterations are mostly minor but some characters were changed quite a bit. Also Ephraim’s name was originally Izark.

Alpha on the left. Final on the right.

Debug Title Screen

Additional information from Serenes Forest:

Amelia has Tana’s role; her class was planned to be a flying Trainee.
L’Arachel has a variation of Tana’s portrait, while Tethys has a variation of Neimi’s portrait.
There was a Wyvern Rider called Nate planned Ephraim’s name was planned to be Irzark (seen in the debug menus).

These characters were changed drastically in the final.

Many of the World Map locations have different names. Some of the battle map layouts are slightly different.
In Chapter 6, after Eirika hands over her bracelet, the Grado soldiers kill the civilians in front of her eyes.
At the end of Chapter 6, Saleh appears and kills the boss with a critical attack. Chapter 6’s battle map is the same as Chapter 11’s (Eirika’s route) in the retail version.
The boss of Chapter 8 is Dyude Rubarth, one of Grado’s Seven Generals, also known as the Black ?-stone.

By using the debug options one can remove an enemy’s weapon. This shows sprites that are not viewable in normal gameplay.

Eirika promotes at the beginning of Chapter 17 The Final Chapter is comprised of just one map.
The Tower of Valni has two extra stages- seen in Floor 2 and 3.

You can find even more infos at Serenes Forest! Props to them

Below you can see a bunch of scans from Fire Emblem: Sacred Stones beta, before it came out. You can see its earliest scans (first reveal scans) where the first couple chapters are different and there are different animations and mugshots for some characters. The stolen prototypes (they were stolen from Intelligent System’s network) seem to have some content from this earliest version, but also content that wasn’t present in the earliest OR the final version.

Thanks to Iven Allen for the scans!

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