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visual novel

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (時をかける少女, Toki o Kakeru Shojo) is a cancelled adventure game that was planned around 1998 by Bandai for the original Playstation. The game was based on the 1967 novel of the same name by Yasutaka Tsutsui and possibly the related 1997 movie (and not the 2006 anime, unless Bandai leapt through time), which were quite popular at the time.

By looking at gameplay from the available footage (found in the VHS edition of the 1997 movie and on a CD-ROM from “Pre-Pre” PlayStation CLUB magazine) the game looked similar to Revelations: Persona on PS1, with top-down 2D exploration and animated cutscenes. As far as we know there was no combat in The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, but there could have been some kind of dating-sim mechanics.

Character design for this lost PS1 video game was by Minene Sakurano (who at the time was working on Mamotte Shugogetten) and the scenario was written by Hiroshi Yamaguchi (mostly known for his participation in Gainax and Gonzo). A preview was published in Dengeki PlayStation magazine (Vol.76, June 1998): if you are able to translate the most important parts from this preview, please let us know in the comments below!

Thanks go GIoN for the contribution

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Nes / Famicom, Nintendo

Ooinaru Kan [Famicom / NES – Cancelled]

monokoma

27-02-2020

No Comments

Ooinaru Kan (大いなる完) is a cancelled adventure / simulation game based on Hiroshi Motomiya’s 1984 manga series, in development by Hect / Hector and planned to be published for Famicom / NES.

This series is quite obscure outside of Japan, but we can read a short plot description on Amazon Japan (“translated” with Google Translate):

“Tetsuma Kan, a peasant’s prisoner, is a bad guy who is entitled “Bonno” because of the annoyance of missing digits. In 1938, he committed the only daughter, Takako, of the landowner Ishikura, and jumped out of his hometown to climb to an equal position with Ishikura’s house. One generation of a man who lives in a turbulent era and rises to the top of politics.”

We can assume the game would have followed the same storyline, but not much is known about this project. Heimao found a single screenshot from the game in an old gaming magazine and shared it on Twitter.

As it often happens with cancelled Famicom games, today Ooinaru Kan is forgotten by everyone and we’ll probably never know more about what happened to it.

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32X / Mega CD, Sega

Apros: Tenku no Sho (WolfTeam) [Sega Mega CD – Cancelled]

monokoma

30-06-2019

1 Comment

The original “Apros: Daichi no Shou Kaze no Tankyuu Sha hen” was an adventure game based on a series of Japanese Sci-Fi Fantasy novels, developed by WolfTeam (now Namco Tales Studio, mostly known for their Tales Of series) and published in 1992 for PC-98. A few months later they were already working on a sequel for Sega Mega CD, titled “Apros – Tenkū no Shō” (アプロス天空の章), but in the end was quietly cancelled when the main developer / designer has left the team.

As noticed by Kid Fenris on the Lost Levels forums:

“The only screenshots I’ve found are in this vaguely worded capsule preview from the February 1993 issue of (Diehard) Gamefan.”

“Apros was mentioned again in the June 1993 Gamefan, where the letters columnist informed a reader that the guy who was developing Apros has left Wolfteam (along with many others) and is starting his own company. He told Kei that he will continue development but is unsure of what format Apros will appear on. (It may be several.)”

As noted by Zigfried these images from the Sega Mega CD version of Apros are completely different from their first PC-98 game, so we can assume it was really going to be some kind of sequel:

“It’s a fantasy adventure game with lots of (non-CG) animation. I’ve got the PC-98 game, and I’ve got a magazine that shows screens from *before* the Mega CD version was canned… and I’ve got to say, it looks nothing at all like those pics from the Gamefan mag.”

VGDensetsu also found more images in Beep! Mega Drive magazine (November 1992 + February 1993)

If you find out more about this lost game, please let us know!

Nintendo, Nintendo 64 & 64DD

Metal Slader Glory 2 [Nintendo 64DD – Cancelled]

monokoma

13-02-2018

No Comments

The original Metal Slader Glory is a sci-fi visual novel / graphic adventure developed by HAL Laboratory and published in 1991 for the Nintendo Famicom. The game’s plot is similar to many popular mech-anime series, with a group of young boys and girls fighting against their enemies using cool robots.

As we can read on Wikipedia the game soon became a cult-classic and a sought-after collector’s item in the secondhand market due to its quality and its rarity. This may be the reason why Nintendo and HAL initially decided to create a new Metal Slader Glory for their Nintendo 64 DD Add-on.

As revealed by Metal Slader Glory scenario director & character-designer Yoshimiru (よしみる) in a doujin booklet he published a few years ago and later in a series of tweets, it seems Metal Slader Glory 64 would have been a sequel / prequel, as the main character was planned to be Kisaragi Yayoi, a girl who (as far as we know) is just a secondary NPC in the original Famicom game (plus he also revealed they planned a new character named Uzuki). The team also wanted to use many of the 64DD features, such as its internal clock and rewritable disks.

Unfortunately after a while Metal Slader Glory 2 was cancelled – maybe because Nintendo kept delaying their 64DD – and instead the team developed a simple remake of the first game for the Super Famicom under the title “Metal Slader Glory: Director’s Cut”, later released in 2000 as the last official game ever published for SNES in Japan.

We can only imagine how many more obscure lost cancelled games for N64 are still hidden out there to be discovered one day.

Thanks to VGDensetsu for the contribution!

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Microsoft, Others, PC / MAC, Playstation 2 (PS2), PSP, Sony, Unseen News, Xbox

Shadow of Memories / Destiny (The Day of Walpurgis) [Beta]

lytron

13-06-2017

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“Shadow of Memories” is a 2001 released Visual Novel by Konami in guise of a Third Person Action Adventure for the PS2. Set in the fictive German town of Lebensbaum, the game combines solving a murder case (the protagonist’s very own) with a time travel element and gothic fantasy elements. Like Visual Novels, the game did not offer many possibilities to stray from the predestined path(s), which baffled a portion of its players and reviewers at the time as well as its total lack of action elements in any form. Yet, like Visual Novels, its strengths are its setting, atmosphere and story, which branch into not less than half a dozen different endings. Known as “Shadow of Destiny” in the US, the game was ported to several other platforms: in 2002 it was released in the EU for the original XBox, a short time later a PC version was produced for the west and finally in 2009/2010 it came out for the PSP in Japan and North America.