Beta + Cancelled RTS Video Games - Page 11 of 19

As we can read on Wikipedia, X-COM: Genesis is a cancelled RTS in the X-COM series, that was in development by MicroProse and then by Hasbro Interactive. The game was never completed due to Hasbro’s shutdown of Hasbro Interactive in late 1999. For this project the team developed a “Geoscape” view of Earth from orbit, that far surpassed the implementation in previous versions.

The team also created a level editor to allow the artists to build levels for the “Battlescape”—the areas where battles against the alien invaders would take place. In an early tech demo we can see an urban environment with a filling station, warehouse, an apartment building, attached parking garage, a park, a burning trashbin and streetlights that cast pools of light. Floating above it all was a blimp with floodlights streaming earthward. Standing in formation outside their aircraft were the X-COM soldiers, shifting on their feet, looking left to right.

Some more info can be found in an interview with Dave Ellis:

As for the “true to the original game” part, absolutely! Genesis was designed to follow the same basic game formula as UFO Defense and Terror from the Deep—research, buying/building, recruiting, intercepting UFOs, and fighting tactical missions. The mechanics of the game in the strategy layer (the Geoscape and all related screens) were virtually identical to those of the first two games. The combat portion of the game was going to have a very similar feel, but it would have had slightly different mechanics (real-time, for instance—more on that later).

Thanks to f2bnp for the contribution!

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Others, PC / MAC

Alien Intelligence [PC – Cancelled]

monokoma

12-10-2010

5 Comments

Alien Intelligence is a cancelled turn based strategy game that was in development by Flatline Studios and it would have been published by Interplay in 1997. Thanks to derboo we were able to preserve some screenshots from this lost game, found in Power Play 4/98 magazine. As we can read in this old preview, the game promised space conquests in a huge universe full of planets, space ships and evil aliens in the style of Master Of Orion with state-of-the-art realtime chic.

The speciality of Alien Intelligence were the simultaneous space- and ground fights, colonizing and managing, fending off pirates and the trade and science in the well known manner. The research tree alone had a whole 150 pages in 8 categories and there were overall more than 10.000 possible ship designs. A myriad of possible catasprophes from storms and asteroids swarms to wandering black holes enriched the action.

Also the characterization of the races promises fun: The Arkanians are thievish insects with excellent technical skills. Huge warriors without any humor are the Munzoids, who in lack of any other talents try to solve everything with violence. The Drache, of lizard like statue, are honorable until death and gifted industrials. The Metalloids are actually a robot race with a special hand for all electronics. the Strixthes have an insect-like state form and reprodudction rate, but are otherwise rather unpleasant contemporaries. The Psionids are, of course, arrogant geniuses who strife for control over everthing and everyone through their mental strength (and a little war).

In the end Interplay decided to kill the game for unknown reasons.

Thanks to derboo for the contribution!

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The great superbad, found a video of AI:

I have found a video add of AI on a cd and liked it.
The 1st thing was to look on ebay wich no real result.
Than came google, witch gave a lot of link’s.
This is one of them.

Origin/Source: disc 1 othe the game comlilation ‘Ultimate Strategy Archives’, folder DEMOS.

Download link: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=YKFXPCZJ

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Others, PC / MAC

Black & White [PC – Beta / Proto]

monokoma

22-09-2010

1 Comment

Black & White is a god / strategy game developed by Lionhead Studios and published by Electronic Arts and Feral Interactive in 2001 for PC. The project was in development till 1997 / 1998 and in the gallery below you can see some early screenshots, taken from various target renders, prototypes, tech demos and beta versions. The initial concept for Black & White was centered around teaching to an AI character, an idea that evolved into the god’s creatures that can be raised in the final game. As we can read on GameSpot:

The initial idea was to have a little boy or girl that you would raise and teach. The artificial intelligence would have to be incredible, letting you teach your titan how to autonomously operate in the world of Eden. For Peter Molyneux, the titan gave him the chance to bring back memories of his childhood, when his action figures would tower over the ants in the sandpit. “The amazing thing about the titan,” explains Barnes, “is the idea that it would start at the size of a villager and grow to the size of a mountain.” By the end of the game, players would have their own King Kong. […]
With only three months of work under Lionhead’s belt, Molyneux set off in June of 1998 to attend E3 in Atlanta, Georgia. There, in a makeshift room on the show floor, he unveiled the game’s concept. For each game he creates, Molyneux first builds a “test bed” version, which is the basic gameplay stripped of the usual accoutrements of fancy graphics and sound. For Black & White’s test bed, the environment was an isometric green wireframe world; each villager was represented by a little pixel on the screen. […]
Fingers crossed or not, in addition to showing off the 143,000 lines of code in the test bed version, Molyneux unveiled picturesque 3D renders of what he hoped the final game would look like. One of the renders even featured the horned reaper from Dungeon Keeper as a stand-in for the titan. […]
“The nanosecond I have a hand slap a human titan, it just changes everything,” explains Molyneux. “It’s OK to slap a little monkey–people don’t wince at that–but if you are slapping a little girl, it’s just not OK.” In addition, the team realized that the amount of AI a player would expect from a human creature would far outweigh what was possible. Thus, human titans were dropped from the game and replaced by a menagerie of anthropomorphic creatures ranging from sheep and lions to turtles.

Thanks to discworld for the contribution!

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Others, PC / MAC

SWAT: Urban Justice [PC – Cancelled]

monokoma

13-09-2010

1 Comment

SWAT: Urban Justice is a cancelled strategy FPS that would have been the 4th title in the SWAT series of real-time tactical games. Urban Justice was in development by Sierra in 2001 / 2002, but something went wrong, the game was postponed and soon vanished without an explanation. In 2004 Vivendi Universal / Sierra announced a new SWAT project, the official SWAT 4 developed by Irrational Games and published in 2005. As we can read on Gamespot:

According to a carefully parsed statement from a VU spokesperson, work on Urban Justice has been “discontinued” in favor of SWAT 4’s development. However, the same spokesman stressed that SWAT 4 is both a different game and a true sequel, so it will retain the series’ gameplay elements, albeit in a refined form.

In the released SWAT 4, they did leave an ester egg that refers to the unreleased Urban Justice (Info from IMDB):

In the mission “Victory Imports Auto Garage”, there is an arcade game in the waiting room called “SWAT: Urban Justice”. This is a company in-joke; Urban Justice was supposed to be Sierra/Vivendi’s follow up to SWAT 3: Close Quarter Battle (1999), and they began advertising the game as “Coming Soon” in 2002 with a view to releasing later in the year. However, after a spending long time (to the order of years) in development purgatory, Urban Justice was cancelled by Vivendi

Thanks to discworld for the contribution!

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Game Boy (+ Color), Nintendo

War Monster RTS [GBC – Cancelled]

monokoma

12-09-2010

1 Comment

War Monster is a cancelled Real Time Strategy game that was in development by Wicked Witch Software for the GameBoy Color. The game allowed to feature over 120 units on screen at once with large maps for mining of resources (including trees) and building of towns, complete with town centers, barracks and towers. War Monster played amazingly well for a RTS on the GBC, but sadly the project had to be cancelled because they never found a publisher. A playable prototye of this game was later found on Ebay by UncleBob.

The War Monster IP was later reused to create another RTS released for Cellphones and also a tech demo for the DS (that probably will never be used for a full game).

Thanks to Rodent for the contribution!

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