Ninety-Nine Nights is a crowd combat game that is played similarly to the likes of Dynasty Warriors/Warriors Orochi and other Musou titles. Microsoft had big plans for this game at the time, but it didn’t hit its ambitious goal largely because of how Ninety-Nine Nights veered too far from its original vision. Information about this game is scarce, but we can a couple of screenshots from an early build shown at the Tokyo Game Show 2005.
Scivelation is an obscure third-person shooter that spent years in development hell under TopWare Interactive and Black Wing Foundation. The project was first unveiled in October 2009, when TopWare announced the title alongside an interesting overview of its premise. As originally reported by IGN:
“Set in the distant future, Scivelation’s universe is a world born out of the ashes of conflict and misery. An oppressive global dictatorship, known as the Regime, has risen to power after the aftermath of the Apocalypse; aggressively seeking out and eliminating any opposition to their tyrannical government. With this capricious, dystopian reality as a backdrop, the player will take his or her place amongst the ranks of the resistance, waging war throughout the furthest reaches of the globe in this action-packed battle for freedom and survival.”
Beyond these early press releases and promotional trailers—which largely recycled the same high-level plot summary—TopWare Interactive released very little public information. Actual gameplay footage remained virtually non-existent.
Surprisingly, the game’s official product page remains live on TopWare Interactive’s website today. The listing on the website outlines the core mechanics and introduces its two primary protagonists:
Mikhael Ivanov :
Captain of GRN, Mikhael is a decorated veteran of the Tribulation War. Due to injuries sustained in combat, much of his body is made up of Zionetric implants, improving his combat skills and allowing him to evolve above the level of a simple soldier.… and Elisha Amano :
A former geneticist for the Regime, she joined the Resistance to justify her guilt for having worked on the Omega sequence of the Ascension program, a project aimed at creating a genetic panacea with the aim of curing human mortality. This program, however, was used by the Regime for much darker purposes. Elisha not only brings a brilliant scientific mind to the Resistance, but also his research…”
Now onto the gameplay features:
While these concepts looked promising on paper, TopWare never released concrete gameplay footage beyond a handful of screenshots. To add salt to the wound, the project suffered numerous delays: initially scheduled for a 2010 release, it was pushed to 2011, and eventually delayed to Q1 2014, with TopWare aiming to target PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360.
That target passed without a word. Following the release of Renoir in 2016, Black Wing Foundation suddenly vanished too, which ultimately meant that Scivelation was done for. Today, the project exists only as a mere publisher listing, a pre-rendered trailer, and a small collection of promotional assets you can check below.
Project Flame was a cancelled 2D run-and-gun game that began development in 2008, originally conceived as a Flash-based title with plans to expand onto PC, iOS, Android, and even consoles (Xbox 360 Arcade). Spearheaded by a Syrian developer based in the UAE alongside a small team of artists and programmers, the project reached a playable demo stage that showcased a couple of levels.
Unfortunately, by 2010, internal disagreements and funding issues led to the team’s dissolution and the eventual cancellation of the game. To preserve its existence, the developer later uploaded the demo to their Behance page, allowing others to experience a glimpse of what Project Flame could have been.
Credit: Huge thanks to TunisianRetroGamer for the discovery
This video has a few beta differences.
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow is a modern reboot of the Castlevania franchise originally developed and published by Konami. Mercury Steam managed to revamp the combat of the original franchise, injecting a well-done combat system undoubtedly inspired by several action games of that era. Not only this, but the art direction of the Lords of Shadow is nothing but a work of art. Before the game was released for the PS3, Xbox 360, and PC, it underwent a few changes. Most of the beta content is challenging to find, but there are a few differences and cut content we can observe below.
This video is important as it shows a glimpse of the initial pitch of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow. The game was originally going to feature Simon Belmont, but that didn’t happen. Eventually, Simon Belmont, Alucard and Trevor were incorporated into Mirrors of Fate.
Below, you’ll find a couple of iterations and cut characters. One of whom looked fascinating in the design process.
While attempting to create a compelling design for Lord Dracula, Mercury Steam generated a host of iterations. One of them was a Frankenstein Dracula that didn’t make it past the cutting room floor.
Menacing, bloody and gruesome are just some of the words one can use to describe these early designs of Lord Dracula. While Dracula didn’t make an appearance in Lords of Shadow or Mirrors of Fate, he was the main character of Lords of Shadow 2.
Another character that went through various iterations was none other than the Prince of Darkness himself, Alucard. In these early designs, we can see that Alucard bore a slightly different look. That is pretty much everything I can find from the beta footage of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow.
Dead to Rights: Retribution is often remembered by fans as a gritty, no-nonsense third-person shooter released in 2010 by Volatile Games and published under the Namco Bandai umbrella. This game was a reboot of the Dead to Rights franchise that brought back cop Jack Slate and his loyal companion Shadow, delivering a hard-hitting experience that combined close-quarters combat with gunplay. But what most people don’t know is that Retribution wasn’t always the game we got.
Long before the final build took shape, the project began life under a very different title— Dead to Rights: Redemption. This early version aimed to be a grounded reboot — more noir, less neon. Gone were the exaggerated shootouts and over-the-top spectacle. In its place was something colder, leaner, and more emotionally restrained. Jack Slate’s original design reflected this direction: vulnerable, more human than action hero.
Below, you’ll find concept art and early design documents from the Redemption phase of the game, showing a version of Jack Slate that almost was.