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Scavenger

Terminus is a cancelled action adventure / shooter game that was in development by Scavenger Inc for the Sega Saturn, Playstation and PC in 1996. As they wrote in their press release, the project was meant “to give Tomb Raider a run for it’s money” but sadly it was already too late, as the company ran out of money and Terminus had to be canned.

The few screenshots preserved in the gallery below show a great graphic engine for its time, that used NURBS / voxel-like system, as we can read in an article from Gamasutra (wrote by a former Scavenger developer):

[…] Soon thereafter we were asked to develop our own game. That provided me with the incentive to figure out how to represent characters in a game better. We knew we wanted at least ten or more characters on the screen simultaneously, but all the low-resolution polygonal characters we had seen just didn’t cut it. So I decided to keep pursuing a solution based on what I had been working on for X-Men (32X), hoping that I’d come up with something that would eventually yield better results.
At first I flirted with a voxel-like solution, and developed a character system which was shown at E3 in 1996 in a game called Terminus. This system allowed a player to see characters from any angle rotating around one axis, which solved a basic problem inherent to sprite-based systems. Still, you couldn’t see the character from any angle, and while everybody liked the look of the “sprite from any angle” solution, many people wanted to get a closer look at the characters’ faces. This caused the whole voxel idea to fall apart.

In 1997 / 1998, Scavenger went bankrupt and all their unfinished projects vanished with them. The team behind Terminus (internally known as Team Fetus) was then hired at Shiny Entertainment and their game was resurrected somehow, evolving into Messiah.

Thanks a lot to Mike Damien for its help in preserving some info and concept arts from this lost project!

Thanks to Celine for the contributions! Scans from GameFan 4-2 and EDGE 34

Images:

Others, PC / MAC, Playstation, Saturn, Sega, Sony

Tarantula [PSX Saturn PC – Cancelled]

monokoma

22-05-2010

6 Comments

Tarantula is a cancelled action game that was in development by Scavenger (Team Mescal) in 1996 / 1997 for the Playstation, Saturn and PC. The concept of the game was somehow similar to the released Spider (PSX) and Deadly Creatures (Wii), in which the player would had take the role of a spider to explore natural areas and human houses, fighting against other insects and animals.

As noted at Sega Collection, Tarantula was shown at E3 1996, along with other Scavenger’s games that seem to have been vanished too: Angel, Aqua, Into The Shadow, Mudkicker and Spearhead. Sadly the studio was closed down in 1997 / 1998 for economic problems.

As we can read at MobyGames:

Scavenger, Inc., with offices in Boston, California, Denmark, England, Sweden, was a short-lived interactive entertainment company specializing in the development of video games […] The President of the company in 1996 was Daniel Small. In April of that year, Scavenger and GT Interactive Software Corp. entered into a publishing agreement for several titles.
Problems occurred between the two companies concerning GT Interactive’s failure to pay according to contract, and a lawsuit resulted. Debt forced Scavenger to close its doors in approximately 1997. Even though Scavenger was awarded $1.9 million in the Supreme Court settlement (Feb. 2000), it was not enough to resurrect the company.

Thanks to Celine and Rod_Wod for the contribution!

Images:

32X / Mega CD, Sega

Heavy Machinery [Sega 32X – Cancelled]

monokoma

27-01-2010

6 Comments

Heavy Machinery is a cancelled racing / car combat game that was in development by Scavenger for the Sega 32X. The project started as a game called Nitro Wreaks, that was meant to be published for the Mega Drive / Genesis, but after some time the team decided to move it to the 32X. As we can read at the 32X Memorial Site:

According to a magazine preview of a nearly complete test version, the game was to consist of nine missions through many types of locales, weather, and road conditions. Enemy vehicles would attack you and attempt to block your path, while helicopters and planes fired on you from above. Your mission was to destroy as many enemies as possible with your weaponry, as well as make it to the next checkpoint within the required time. Hazards and power-ups littered your path, creating an obstacle course that was said to really effect the gameplay.

Even if it was almost finished, Heavy Machinery was never released, probably because of the failure of the 32X add-on.

Thanks to Celine for the contribution!

Images:

32X / Mega CD, Leaked, Sega

X-Men [32X – Cancelled]

monokoma

23-04-2009

7 Comments

X-Men: Mind Games is a cancelled action game that was in development by Scavenger and it would have been published by SEGA in 1995 / 1996 for the 32X. The game was shown at the E3 1995 and a playable demo was found and leaked by the SEGASaturno community in August 2009! This version is playable only trough real hardware (edit: now supported by Kega Fusion) and it’s an early prototype with a couple of levels. A mirror of the leaked beta can be downloaded on Hidden Palace. (edit: not available)

Thanks to Celine for the contribution and props to SEGASaturno!

Images:

Videos:

Others, PC / MAC, Saturn, Sega

Into The Shadows [PC/Saturn – Cancelled]

U64 Staff & Contributors

10-04-2008

17 Comments

“Into The Shadows” was a fighting game (not RPG as a lot of people believe) in development by Triton, an ex demo group from Sweden, active on the PC demo scene in the early-to-mid 1990s. Triton were previously known for the popular demo “Crystal Dream 2”, as well as the FastTracker / FastTracker II music editing applications. The game was to be published by Scavenger, who were also made up of many ex demo team developers.

The non-interactive demo shown in the video clip, was released in 1995, and the engine was considered superior to the Quake engine – showing realtime shadows, and aimed at running well on lower spec hardware (486 processor, compared to Quake requiring a Pentium to run at a playable speed).

Unfortunately, the game was cancelled around late 1997 / early 1998, when Scavenger went bankrupt.

In 1998, some members of Triton formed Starbreeze Studios, who merged with O3 Games in 2000. They later went on to create games such as “The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay” and “The Darkness”.

Thanks to Robert Seddon and derboo for the scans! Thanks to Paul for the description!

Images:

[Source: Segafreak – www.segadatabase.net]

Video: