In the August issues of British publications Sega Power and Mean Machines Sega, three different prototype versions of Earthworm Jim 2 for the Mega Drive were previewed. Each of them have some minor yet interesting changes compared to the final product, including a lot of material cut from the game.
Bomberman 64 is the first 3-D game within the Bomberman series. It also implements a different single-player mode by incorporating action-adventure and platforming stages, instead of arenas in which enemies or other elements must be destroyed. The game was released in Europe on November 27, 1997 and released in North America on December 1 of the same year. [Info from Wikipedia] In the beta version of Bomberman 64, the HUD was different, with more stuff on the screen, while the clock icon was round and not a square like in the final version. You can see a comparison between the beta (at the top) and the final (below). The levels and the characters from these old screens look just the same as the ones in the released game.
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![Super Metroid [SNES – Beta]](https://www.unseen64.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/super-metroid-beta-670x300.jpg "Super Metroid [SNES – Beta]")
Super Metroid was the third game produced in the Metroid series. Metroid producer Gunpei Yokoi oversaw the project, but owing to him being busy with designing the Game Boy Pocket and Virtual Boy, Super Metroid was produced by Makoto Kanoh, who had devised the original game’s storyline. The game’s early planning began in 1990 with Nintendo’s Nintendo Research & Development 1 (R&D1) headed by Yoshio Sakamoto. [Info from Wikipedia] Looking through old screens from the game’s previews, we can notice some interesting changes made in the game while in development.
Link from the X-Cult hack forum, has found some unused characters in the code of Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games for the Wii: Birdo, Donkey Kong, Jet & Silver. Other “hidden” characters like Shy Guy, Goomba or the Monkey, are normally used only in the background of the game, but thanks to the WiiRD they became playable and some of them have even animations for the various olympic games.
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Tommy Thunder was a third person shooter in development for the Nintendo 64 (and later for the PSX too) from Player 1 studios, but it was never released and we never got many informations about it. In November 2007, herpetic.adventures on the LostLevels forum posted an interesting story about a misterious file: “[…] about 10 years ago I was poking around the Player1 website looking for info on when Robotron 64 was coming out. Just for the hell of it, I clicked the “Press Info” link. Which turned out to be an anonymous FTP. Woo. Poked around a bit, and amongst directories of PSX assets, I found robo64.zip and tommy64.zip.” Inside the zipped file, there was what it looks like an early prototype of Tommy Thunder 64 and so, thanks to herpetic.adventures, we finally have some screens from the game to look at! You can read more info about his find in the Lost Levels Forum and check this article on NES World, where you can read some quotes from Tommy Thunder’s developers:
What you have is an early N64 Prototype of Tommy Thunder. The game got signed by ASC games and switched to PlayStation. We made it pretty far into production before ASC Games ran out of money and were forced to cancel the project.
Thanks to Vaettur for the logo!
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