third person shooter

Speed Tribes [PSX PC – Cancelled]

Speed Tribes is a cancelled shooter / racing game that was in development  in 1997 / 1998 by Nemicron and it would have been published by THQ for the original Playstation and PC. The project was based off a comic of the same name (or was the comic created just to promote the game?), in which six tribes of riders fight to became the leaders of the city.

In the game, players would have chosen one of the tribes and used aero-bikes to combat against the rival riders in open arenas. Many multiplayer modes were planned, especially for the PC version.

Mark Vanco (an American cyberpunk designer and artist) was involved with the creation of the comic and the game’s world. In the end Speed Tribes was never finished for unkown reasons and Nemicron closed down after a while.

Thanks a lot to Martin Jajam for his help in preserving more screens from this lost project!

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Apocalypse [PSX – Beta]

Apocalypse is an action game / third person shooter released for the PlayStation in 1998. The game was initially developed by Activision Santa Monica, but the team had some problems in fulfilling their original concept, that was seen as “too ambitious” for the PSX hardware. Apocalypse was doomed, but as Activision paid Bruce Willis a lot to have his likeness and voice in the game, they decided to  dismiss their Santa Monica Studio and hire Neversoft Entertainment to finish the project.

Neversoft was able to complete the Apocalypse project, but the original concept was changed into a more linear shooter. As we can read at the Playstation Museum, initially Bruce Willis was meant to be a sidekick to the main character, but when focus testing revealed that people wanted to play as Bruce, he became the main protagonist.

In the gallery below you can see some of the beta builds with different characters and levels. Some images (a 10% complete build?) were found by Celine in GamePro #90 while other screens and footage were preserved by the Playstation Museum.

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Melt [PSX – Ed Hunter Beta]

Melt is the beta version of Ed Hunter is a rail shooter video game that was released in 1999 for the Playstation, based on and accompanied by Iron Maiden’s music. The game objective consists of rescuing the mascot of Iron Maiden, Eddie, from a prison while passing through game settings evocative of the albums. [Info from Wikipedia]

Thanks to Srđan we found out that Melt was the same project as Ed Hunter:

There was a sticker on the Maiden compilation Best of the Beast where it said ”Introducing Melt- Eddie’s own state-of-the-art 3D game!” and there was the picture which said Playstation and MELT. Using WayBackMachine I was looking at the old Iron Maiden site, circa ’98-’99 and it says that the game Melt has changed name to Ed Hunter. So there you go. Also , according to the description, the game was changed too, from the gameplay to the style.

Thanks to Pachuka and Srđan for the contribution!

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Armed (Aftermath) [PSX/Saturn – Cancelled]

Armed (also known as Aftermath) is a cancelled side-scrolling beat ’em up / action game that was in development by Interplay / Point of View  / Activision (?) for the original Playstation and Saturn.  The game could have been released under a different name but looking at the few screens preserved in the gallery below, it does not look like any other Activision / Interplay game published on the PSX or Saturn.

Thanks to Celine and Rod_Wod for the contribution! (some scan from Cd Consoles magazine issue #19)

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