shoot ’em up

Future Strike (Future Cop LAPD) [PSX – Beta]

Thanks to DCodes7, we found out some interesting info about the development of Future Cop LAPD, a Playstation shooter that started as a new chapter in the “Strike” series. From 1991 – 1997 The strike series has been about Open world mid-air helicopter combat, developed by EA (Electronic Arts).

Nuclear Strike -released in 1997- was to be the last game to be released in the Strike series, but originally the developers who worked on the project were going to make another strike game called Future Strike. Apparently the game was going to be released in 1998; one year after Nuclear Strike’s Release.

When Nuclear Strike was released on the Playstation, a “Future Strike” trailer was hidden in the game. To view the trailer you have to play and beat all the game’s missions or use a cheat code. 

Pixeljunk Shooter [PS3 – Beta]

Pixeljunk Shooter, is the fourth in a series of games made by Q games for the Sony Playstation 3. Your main goal in the game is to save the scientists that have been sent to investigate a planet, and solve puzzles while doing so.

In a prerelease video, we can see the difference between the unfinished game, and the final release.

To start with, the ship design. You can’t tell to well in the video, but it’s somewhat rounded. In the final version, it looks almost like a yellow fly.

Also, the scientists are colored more yellow in the final version. Here, they’re orange. The final version of the scientists are also more detailed.

Also, the temperature bar is VERY different from the final. The final is more segmented. For that matter, the entire HUD is beta here. There’s no display of how many gems you’ve found, it shows how many lives you have left when in the final there’s no way to tell, and the area that shows the scientists at the bottom right, shows how many are in the current area, and thier current status. Either saved, deceased, or still missing. Also, the  final version of the HUD is sort of a yellow and gold mix, and is designed and arranged slightly differently in the final.

Also to be seen in the video, Are somewhat of a beta version of the bats. They barely look LIKE bats at all in the beta. And also, the doors that bar you from leaving the section you’re in are different in design.

Also beta here, is the “water bomb”. It’s rather large. The final version, is at least HALF the size. This is not to be confused with the sponge however. Water bombs explode with water all over the place upon being dropped. The sponge sucks up water it’s been dropped in, and then releases over time upon being picked up. However, on the subject of the sponge, in the beta, it releases one steady stream of water. in the final, it realeases the water steadily, yes, but in a 5 way spread.

In the beta, the “points” the enemies leave behind are yellow. In the final, they are a deep red orange.

Back to the men in destress again. In the beta, most have a flag. In the final, most don’t. In fact, only 1 per level does. On another note, upon being put under water, the men will begin to swim in the beta. In the final, they just continue to stand there.

And lastly, the enemy life meters are red and white. In the final, they are red with a yellow border. Also, when an enemy dies in the beta, they make the same sound that the standard flying enemies in Pixeljunk Monsters do when they die.

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[Indie Unseen] Embodiment of Scarlet Devil – Beta / Unused

Project Touhou is a Japanese PC game series made by one man, ZUN (working under Team Shanghai Alice), and usually, nothing is left over from the beta’s. However, in Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, the sixth Touhou game, a character known as Rin Satsuki was originally meant to be a playable character, although was cut out of the final game. Her name still remains in the code, and there is only one official image of her, which originally appeared on ZUN’s website.

Update: as Susumu has make us to notice, this image did not appear on ZUN’s website. It is from the Comiket booklet that shows which doujin circles are appearing at that current event and where and when. It should also be mentioned that the picture has never been official confirmed as being her, but is widely assumed to be her, as she’s never appeared anywhere else.

Also Gabrielwoj, had found other two unused sprites in the game:

Probably, a beta sprite of Rin Satsuki. Strangely enough, it was found in Stage 1 Folder, which maybe Rin Satsuki was to be the Mid-Boss of Stage 1.
Or, it is a beta sprite of Rumia (it has similar animations on her arms, but with some different details)

Those one has been found at the EXTRA stage folder, probably, Koakuma was to be another mid-boss for the stage (or maybe ZUN only recolored the same sprites of Patchouli’s Stage [Stage 4])

Notice from the 2 Images: The white colored sprite is probably for some glow, all the sprites in the game have this “effect”.

Thanks a lot to Takoto, Susumu and Gabrielwoj for the contributions!

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200pxth06rinsatsuki 

Darkside / Dark Ride [Saturn 3DO – Cancelled]

Darkside (sometimes written as Dark Ride or Darkride) was one of many titles being devloped by Rocket Science Games before being cancelled. It was to be a psychodellic tunnel-based game with bizarre graphics, and was briefly previewed in the December 1994 issue of Games World: The Magazine, which stated that ‘the team behind the game are perfecting the smooth scrolling of the ride… before the gameplay’.


Rocket Science Games themselves are probably more interesting than the games they made- funded by Sega Enterprises and promising more than they could deliver on, they mostly made Sega-CD and PC-based FMV based titles such as Cadillacs & Dinosaurs: The Second Cataclysm and Obsidian. However, their titles never sold well, and Sega themselves cancelled half of the company’s titles around 1994/95 to keep costs down- it seems Dark Side / Dark Ride was one of the victims of this. They eventually went out of business in 1997.

The preview in Games world: The Magazine states that the game was being developed for the 3DO, although almost all other RSG games were being developed for either the Sega CD or the PC- whether this is a mistake on the magazine’s part is unknown.

In a short article published in French magazine CD Consoles issue #4 we can read that “Darkside” was in development for the Saturn and the game would have took the player into an imaginary world, to explore it aboard a cart on rails (as in a rollercoaster). Could this have been an on-rails shooter? We are not sure.

As written in an article in Wired 2.11 (page 108), Rocket Science decided to cancel this project because it was too similar to other games of its time:

The trend toward more literate games means that some projects well along the Rocket Science pipeline have had to be scrapped. “We saw some things at the Consumer Electronics Show very similar to our Rocket Boy and DarkRide, so we’ve put those on hold,” says Caldwell. “But we still have Wing Nuts, a World War I dogfight game, in the works.”

If you have some more info on this game, please let us know!

Thanks to Celine for the scan! Thanks to Jason for the english corrections!

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Exerion 2 (II) [NES – Unreleased in USA]

The original Exerion was a vertical shoot ’em up released by Jaleco in 1983 and licensed to Taito for distribution on the United States. The game featured parallax effects and inertia simulation, something notable for 1983. [Info from Wikipedia] Sometime later, Jaleco worked on a “sequel” of the game, but as we can read on the Lost Levels forum, it was just the first Exerion with “updated graphics and music”. Anyway, in the end Exerion 2 was never released in America but a prototype was found and leaked online by the Nintendo Age community in June 2009. For all the NES collectors out there, a reproduction cart with Exerion 1+2 can also be bought and played on a real NES thanks to RetroZone!

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Exerion 1+2 exerionenemies2

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