Kinect Sports (codenamed Natal Sports) was Rare Ltd. first Kinect title. Development started in late 2008 and fully started in early 2009 when the studio was restructured to fully focus on Kinect Software. It was Rare’s second try to produce a sports title on Xbox 360, their first attempt used an unreleased motion controller, similar to the Wii Remote, which remained unpublished.
Thanks to Moren for the contribution!
Storyboards:
Video:
Joe & Mac is a platform game originally released in 1991 for the arcades by Data East. It was later ported for various consoles, as the SNES and Mega Drive / Genesis. Rod_Wod sent us some screens from a version of Joe & Mac for the Mega Drive / Genesis that seems to be different from the released one (a simple port of the Arcade version).
For example the background of this boss from the magazine scan:
Looks different from the one in the final game:
Could those screens in the magazine be from a beta version, or a different / cancelled Joe & Mac? We have not finished the final game, so we are not sure. If you have finished Joe & Mac and recognize those images, please let us know!
Thanks to Rod_Wod for the contribution!
Images:
Mother (aka Earth Bound) is a RPG developed by Nintendo Tokyo Research and Development Products in cooperation with Ape, published only in Japan for the Famicom in 1989. Thanks to OKeijiDragon and GlitterBerri, we are able to have a look at an old beta video, in wich we can notice many little differences in the beta version of Mother.
Originally found on Nico Nico Douga titled, ファミマガ Ｖｉｄｅｏ 【 1989年 ５月号 （２／２） 】 (literally Famimaga Video May 1989), I stumbled upon this interesting Mother footage while searching for media on Mother 3 for Shat-Canned Legends. Same as the SMB3 footage.
The video shows the various differences of this prerelease version to the final version that my annotations go over. While there isn’t anything hugely major to show, the path from Ninten’s house looks to be mirrored, some game menu details are different, and the O on 0:07 is at the lower right corner of the title!
Videos:
Colosseum: Road to Freedom (aka Gladiator: Road to Freedom in Japan) is an action game developed by Ertain and published by Koei in 2005 for the Playstation 2. The uncut / beta version is a different enough game that it could be probably be considered the equivalent of a “director’s cut”. Aside from the slave trade mode missing, it’s an overall MUCH more polished and satisfying game to play all around and certainly a LOT less frustrating.
There is actually a “Retry?” option available for boss battles that lets you replay the fight several times if you lose. You do not instantly lose all of your items and half your money if you continue as you do in the release version. It is baffling as to why this feature was removed as it lets you “scout” out the boss and if you lose you will be able to prepare yourself better to fight him/her the next time around.
The uncut / beta version contains a “Gore” option that can be turned on or off. When turned on, body parts can be hacked off during battle and go flying across the screen. Severed heads can be used as handheld weapons, thrown, or kicked across the ground at opponents. Legs get hacked off and enemies fall down in severe pain. It adds a lot of fun and realism to the gameplay, and of course better portrays the brutal nature of what was gladiator combat. Body parts can also be carried out after a fight and sold to the merchant for a very large amount of money, so much in fact that you can buy any armor you could possibly want and the extra money allows you to upgrade your armors exactly how you want them.
I don’t know quite what happened between the two versions, but so many things were changed around and removed for worse in the release version and I feel the game suffered because of it. It almost seems to me as if the game producers / developers had conflicting concepts of how they wanted the game to be, and the release version we know won in the end.
Thanks a lot to DeusFlux for the info and the video!
Videos:
Beetle Adventure Racing is a racing game developed by Paradigm Entertainment and released for the Nintendo 64 in 1999. Goomther noticed that in the GSCentral archive there is a cheat code that modifies the track you’re about to race on. Some of the values turned out to be beta / unused tracks and debug rooms. You can check them in the video below.
Beetle Battle was known as Bug Hunt in the beta version and had 9 ladybugs. The unused ladybugs are the Black Ladybug, the Grey Ladybug and the White Ladybug. The boxes used in Beetle Battle and some placeholder objects also exist as ladybugs, it’s unknown why they are there, but the developers just tested them (they forgot to remove them). There is a test turning track in the game that doesn’t have it’s own track. It has a bridge in the middle and a road that goes from the other one. The left part begins with it going with no turns. Then it turns right and left. The right part begins with the road then turning left into the bridge. The tracks you see in the menus also exist as their own models. The Inferno Isle menu track 2 has one difference: the small road to the left doesn’t exist. The beetles do have weird crappy textures on their back, however some don’t have it.
Thanks to Vanalker for the contribution!
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