sport

Nintendo, SNES + Super Famicom

Jon Ritman’s Soccerama [SNES – Unreleased]

monokoma
02-04-2010
3 Comments

Soccerama is a cancelled sport game that was in development by Domark for the Super Nintendo. The project was programmed by Jon Ritman, a software developer, notable for his work on major 1980s video games. It seems that Soccerama started as a soccer game for the arcades, but that version was never released and the game was later ported to the Nintendo 16bit console. Sadly, even the SNES version was cancelled, because of a bug.

A couple of screens of Soccerama SNES were found by Celine in Banzzai #27 and CD Consoles #4

At the Amstrad Museum we can read an interview with Jon Ritman, with some info on the development of Soccerama:

v: in the 80’s there was news about a proyect game called soccerama. did you make any preliminary version and what happened with that game?

r: soccerama was on an arcade machine than was never launched – the game was finished though but really not that different from matchday 2.

v: did you programmed soccerama for consoles systems? i’ve remembered a domark game named total soccer in which you appear as programmer.Is this correct? then, you programmed for snes, didn’t you?

r: soccerama was probably total soccer on the snes, there was a total soccer on the megadrive but I had nothing to do with it and it was a different game. i did program it but it was never released. There was a problem with a hard to find bug and Domark were unable to get me the equipment I needed to find it.

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Nintendo, SNES + Super Famicom

Mountain Sports [SNES – Cancelled]

monokoma
27-03-2010
2 Comments

Mountain Sports (also known as Rocky Mountain Sports) is a cancelled action / sport game that was in development by DTMC for the Super Nintendo, in 1993. The player would have been able to try different activities as mountain climing, kayaking and ATV racing. It’s currently unknown how the game would have progressed or why it was cancelled. You can read some more info at SNES Central! A screenshot of the game was found in Banzzai magazine issue 14.

Thanks to Celine for the contribution!

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Mountain-Sports-Snes-Banzzai14 

GameCube, Nintendo, Playstation 2 (PS2), Sony

Crushed Baseball 2004 [PS2/GC – Cancelled]

monokoma
13-03-2010
No Comments

Crushed Baseball 2004 is a cancelled Baseball game that was in development by Amaze Entertainment for the Playstation 2 and GameCube, that would have been published by Bam! Entertainment. It was meant to be an over-the-top arcade game (similar to Sega Soccer Slam), featuring crazy characters (you can see a human-shark in the screens below) with superhuman abilities. As we can read from a GameSpot preview:

Special powers, known as mojo abilities in the game, will include pitches that slice through the hitter’s bat like a buzz saw, batters hitting the ball so that it lodges itself in the ground and can’t be picked up, and fielders using suction gloves to ensure that they don’t miss a catch.

Many of the mojo abilities in the game will have to be earned during matches played in one of the game’s fully interactive ballparks. For example, at the Karate Dojo stadium, players who hit a gong with the ball will be rewarded with a new ability, as will players who manage to smash a stained-glass window in the centerfield wall of one of the other stadiums.

Originally announced in october 2002, Crushed Baseball was scheduled for release in March 2003, but it was later cancelled probably because of the publisher’s economic problems. In 2004 BAM! Entertainment was delisted from NASDAQ and continuing financial troubles made it impossible for them to publish any new games.

A GameBoy Advanced version of Crushed Baseball was developed by Griptonite Games and published in September 2004 by Summitsoft Entertainment.

Thanks to Les Betterley for his help in preserving some more screens from this lost game!

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Playstation 2 (PS2), Sony

Road to Sunday [PS2 – Cancelled]

monokoma
01-02-2010
No Comments

Road to Sunday is a cancelled football game that was in development by 989 Sports (the Sony America Sports Studio) in 2004 / 2005 for the Playstation 2. The game had an interesting career mode, in which the player would have been able to follow a deep story mode, in which to learn more about the causes of a misterious murder, to pay back the cash owed to a criminal boss and to win on the football field at the same time.

As we can read in the Gamespot preview, there were many ways to rise more money in the game:

This is where another NAFA–the North American Fighting Association–comes into play. By entering members of your football team into these underground fights, you can hope to earn the cash you owe the boss by the end of the season. Gambling also plays a part in your bottom line, as you’ll be able to play games like Texas Hold ‘Em and Blackjack, or even hit up the local sports bookie and place bets on that particular week’s games.

Sadly the game was officially cancelled in july 2005, when Ron Eagle, public relations manager for SCEA Sports at the time, explained to Gamespot that:

The game has been officially canceled. It basically did not measure up to our first-party quality standards. In the course of development, it was not meeting our standards for where a product should be in its development cycle. It was purely an internal decision.

Thanks to Userdante for the contribution!

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