third person shooter

Project Overkill [PSX – Alpha / Beta]

Project Overkill is a shoot ’em up game developed and published by Konami in 1996 for the original Playstation. The gameplay takes on a 3d-esque isometric view, in which the player chooses one of four mercenaries to lead through the levels. [Infos from Wikipedia]

My friend optiK sent me a link to this video (from Asuka120 youtube channel) and I thought it was neat:  it is in fact from a pre-alpha build and most of what we can see in this early footage was not in the final game.

Video (Alpha version):

Video from the final game:

 

Hero (Midway Prototype) [Xbox 360 PS3 – Cancelled]

In 2008 Midway were working on various prototypes for the Xbox 360 and PS3: this one was a proto for a third person shooter / hack ‘n’ slash (that somehow reminds me of Phantom Dust), based on Unreal Engine 3 and inspired by Gears of War style cover system, that at the time was known as “Hero“. With the bankruptcy of the company, this project was cancelled but you can find a lot of info in the video below.

Thanks to Hey Hey for the contribution!

Images:

Videos:
 

Wheelman [XBOX / PS2 – Unreleased]

In 2005 Rat Bag Games were developing an action game for the original XBOX and Playstation 2, with third person shooter and racing elements. After Midway bough the studio and shut it down, the Rat Bag project was cancelled and team was fired right before Xmas. It seems that a year later, Midway took the assets from this cancelled project to build a “new” Wheelman game, announced in February 2006 and then released in March 2009 for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3.

Thanks to Hey Hey for the contribution!

Video:

 

Thornado [N64 – Prototype]

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Also know as “Turrican 64”, Thornado was an action game / third person shooter that was in development at Factor 5 as a spiritual successor to the Turrican series, but with some inspiration from Metroid. This project was originally announced for the Nintendo 64, but it seems that only an early prototype / tech demo was created before it was put on hold, probably because Factor 5 was too busy to work on Star Wars: Rogue Squadron.

Originally they wanted to call the game “Turrican 64” but they could not settle on an agreement with the rights owner of the “Turrican” franchise, Rainbow Arts / Softgold. Eggebrecht said that it was internally referred to as “Thornado”, a mixture of “Thor” and “Tornado”.

The game would had featured eight levels with shooting and puzzles elements. Additionally, the game had two protagonists, a male and a female  The music would have been done by Chris Huelsbeck again and a sample is still available to download from the official F5 website.

As we can see from the few screens below, F5 realized a nice Target Render for Thornado 64, that was used to show how the game would have looked on the Nintendo console. The scene shows a scenario from the end of time, in which you had to jump over cars, shots to enemies and then fight an huge final boss. That’s only a tech demo though and probably they never created a playable one.

After some time and many delays, Thornado was cancelled for the N64 and Factor 5 tried to move it to the new “Dolphin” hardware (later know as the GameCube). As we know, even Thornado GameCube was cancelled and after so many years the project vanished forever from the gaming world.

Thanks a lot to Celine for the contribution!

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