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taito

A long time ago, Unseen64 was just a shell of itself. It was hosted on the notoriously bad Xoom.it hosting service, and looked pretty much like a 90’s website horribly made with Microsoft Frontpage. However, as old as Unseen64 looked back then (it was 2004!), it wasn’t the first site dedicated to unreleased games maintained by Italians. That particular accolade belongs to The Strange (and Rare) Videogame Pics Page, created by Fabrizio Pedrazzini, an Italian games journalist, known for his work at magazines such as the glorious ‘Super Console’. TS(&R)VPP, as the name says, wasn’t solely about beta games. There were pictures of pirated software, obscure and limited edition consoles, demos, and more. Hidden among those pages was the Taito/JSB/ASCII WOWOW console.

For years, the only available information on the Taito WOWOW was limited to this report from the 1992 Tokyo Toys Show, via French videogame magazine, ‘Console+‘:

Another alliance between publishers and manufacturers has been established in Japan. It’s about JSB (that controls the satellite channel Wowow), ASCII and Taito.
A prototype has been developed. It’s small and equipped with a CD-Rom player. The basic idea is innovative: it’s about distributing games via satellite, like the streaming of TV programs, and to charge only the time really spent to play.
The other interesting thing about the console is that the games that will be released to the public will be the same of the arcade versions, with the video and audio quality of the originals.
The first games available will be Darius, Bubble Bobble and Parasol Stars…
A released date has not been disclosed yet.

The interview with Yukiharu Sambe

We have been able to get in touch with the Research & Development manager of TAITO Corporation Mr. Yukiharu Sambe, Professional engineer at the time the Wowow was created, and he was kind enough to share some new information, previously unknown, about this unreleased console. Enjoy!

Nintendo, SNES + Super Famicom

Brimstone [SNES – Cancelled]

yota

20-04-2015

No Comments

Brimstone is a SNES JRPG that Teknocrest, an american software house, was working on in 1994 on Taito’s behalf. The same programmer that developed Farstar and the genesis / megadrive version of Lufia, both of which were also cancelled, wrote about this lost game in a opa-ages thread:

Yeah it was basically another RPG that Teknocrest “promised” to make for Taito.
Funny thing is they had all this artwork, but no programmer. So I was hired to make a SNES “demo” of Brimstone.
Anyways I made something up in about a week, and Taito greenlighted the project.
But about a month later they decided to put Brimstone on hold and put priority on porting Lufia….and it all went downhill from there…

Fortunately, some of the aforementioned artworks were preserved by the project’s lead artist, Arnold Ayala. We can see them in the gallery below or in his portfolio.

Images:

Playstation, Sony

Farstar / Starship Fantasy [PSX – Cancelled]

yota

26-01-2015

1 Comment

Farstar is a cancelled Playstation space combat simulator which Teknocrest, an american software house, was working on in 1994 on Taito’s behalf. Just like Brimstone and Lufia for Genesis / Megadrive, however, the project got never completed. Fortunately, the programmer that was developing it preserved a video of the game:

Here’s some footage of a Playstation game called “Farstar” that I was working on back in 1994, I think Taito was planning to release it as “Starship Fantasy” or something like that, it was even listed in Famitsu as coming soon for a time.
It was supposed to be a mix of Wing Commander/Star Trek/Starflight. At least, that’s what I was trying to make. It was pretty ambitious for its time…maybe too ambitious.
Anyway as you can see it’s pretty shitty and was cancelled. I guess I just wasn’t a very good programmer back then…

For more informations check the topic on opa-ages.

Images:

Video:

Leaked, Mega Drive / Genesis, Sega

Lufia & The Fortress of Doom [Genesis / Megadrive – Cancelled]

yota

08-12-2014

1 Comment

Lufia and the Fortress of Doom is a rpg developed by Neverland and released by Taito for SNES in 1993. A (north-american only?) port for Sega Genesis was supposed to be released in 1994, but it got delayed and Taito America eventually closed down in 1995.

However, in 2014, the western programmer that worked on the port leaked a tech demo, featuring just the title screen and a testing dungeon, of the Genesis version of Lufia on the internet. According to him, he had just six months to finish the project:

Well, one of the reasons it was cancelled was because they told me to complete the port in 6 months.. there was no way in hell I could have done it since all the original SNES code was fucking indecipherable and the Japan programmers weren’t any help..

For more informations check the original opa-ages topic.

Images:

Videos:

Nintendo, SNES + Super Famicom

Lufia 2 [Beta – SNES]

monokoma

29-08-2012

2 Comments

As we can read on Wikipedia, Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals, released in Japan for the Super Famicom under the name Estpolis Denki II, is an RPG developed by Neverland and published in Japan in 1995 by Taito, as a prequel to Lufia & The Fortress of Doom. In July 2012, Jackhead shared in the Assembler Games forum some screens and videos from an early beta version of Lufia 2, that has many differences from the final one.

The proto has many difference to the final Version! Complete other worldmap, other skills, many different screens. Awesome! I have to replace the battery, than i can show more from the proto.
The differents are big. The last two picture are the same dungeon. In the Final version Maxim has a bow and sword. In the proto you go complete different way without an bow. In the Final Version you have a skill “GUT” in proto “FAI”. You also start with 50 elixier, and the difficult is much higher as in the Final version. Playtime on the proto also show seconds. And of corse the worldmap is complete different. Fighting animation, menue options… Thats what i see in the first 5 min off the game.
First bossfights never seen in retail version

While trying to dump the cart to preserve the game, something went wrong:

I was trying to dump the eproms with my willem. After that i replace it on the pcb but something is wrong… Game crash now after intro, sound is bad.
This is really really bad. The dumps also crashed after intro… All Dumps merged, nothing wrong with the dump itself.
I conatct a few persons, maybe the eproms are corrupt or a conection problem.
At this point i quit and give the cart away. I really hope someone out there can fix it. Im sorry…

Luckily Trevormacro with the help of JLukas from the Assembler Games Forum, were able to fix this problem and saved the Lufia 2 beta!