Nintendo

New Super Mario Bros. [Wii – Beta]

New Super Mario Bros. Wii is a side-scrolling platform developed by Nintendo EAD and released in November 2009. The game was announced at E3 2009, and from the early videos and screens, Kirby64 was able to notice various beta differences:

  • The propeller power-up was different from the final game.
  • At the Nintendo Press Conference they said at the end of every stage a result screen will pop-up and show you how many enemies you stomp and how many coins you collected, but this only appear in the coin battle and free-for-all.
  • The checkpoint flag was changed to bowser’s head at the final game and the background color of the flag was black. In the beta it had a skull.
  • A music note / melody can be seen in the HUD.  That note is not in there in the final game.
  • The blue arrow in the screen with the lava had changed its color in the final game (it’s red and the board is yellow).
  • The world 5-3 background looks different from the final game.
  • Some stages were removed or hevily changed in the final game.

In the screen with Mario in the pinguin-suit we can see an area that was originally going to be world 3-1, but it was later removed. The ice structure has a different design in the final version, with a more blue color and snow on top of the ice.

Some more info on the beta differences can be found at Mario Wiki:

In the E3 2009 demo, after players go through the boss door, they all fall from the top of the screen and into the boss room, as the initial Larry and Morton videos showed. This was just like in the original New Super Mario Bros., where the player also enters the Bowser Jr. battles the same way. In the final version, the players are already on the ground when the boss room loads up.

Kab-ombs, Mr. Blizzards, Stretches and Bowser Statues were meant to appear but they were cut out as soon as the game was released.

Also, LucaPM noticed a unused file in the NSMB Wii code, called “test_lift.arc”. As we can read at Rusted Logic, it is a graphic file, a stretched grey block.

Thanks to Kirby64 and LucaPM for the contributions!

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Street Dunk [SNES – Cancelled]

Street Dunk is a cancelled baskteball game that was in development by Nippon Bussan (aka Nichibutsu) for the Super Nintendo / Super Famicom. It was going to have an arcade play mode with 1 VS 1, 2 VS 2 and 3 VS 3 players matches, supported by a multiplayer mode compatible with the multitap. There are not many more info available on Street Dunk and it’s unknown why it was never released. Celine was able to find some screenshots of the game in Joypad #24 and Super Power #14 magazines.

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Knights [XBOX/PS2/GC – Cancelled]

Knights is a cancelled car combat game that was in development by Eden Games for the Xbox, Playstation 2 and GameCube. The project would have been published by Atari but in May 2002 the company was sold to the Infogrames Group and Knights vanished without any traces. In 2003, Eden Games released V-Rally 3 and Kya: Dark Lineage. Only some artworks remain to preserve the existance this car combat project.

Thanks to Hey Hey for the contribution!

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Explodemon [PS3/Wii/PC – Prototype]

Explodemon! is an upcoming 2.5D side scrolling platform game in development by Curve Studios for PlayStation Network, Microsoft Windows and WiiWare. The project is described as “what Treasure would create if they mixed Yoshi’s Island with Half-Life 2”, and is inspired by elements from games as diverse as Street Fighter II, Halo, Super Metroid and Bangai-O.

In the personal blog of Jonathan Biddle, Design Director at Curve Studios, we can read an interesting series of articles about the development of Explodemon!, with images and videos from its early prototypes.  From his blog Jonatahn also released the December 2005 Explodemon proto, that you can download from here. Huge props!

There were always new games concepts bouncing around at Blue, and Jamie had a few, one of which was Exploding Robot 12. Jamie’s concept went something along the lines of humanity’s last hope – a robot that couldn’t stop himself exploding – being sent out to destroy the alien menace that was threatening all of mankind. From what I remember, it wasn’t so much a platform game, as an action puzzler, where you had to navigate sections that you didn’t want to destroy, as well as blow up the enemy spacecraft and whatnot. I always liked the idea, and my recent explosion-based thoughts lead me to wonder if it would translate well to a platform game. I mentioned it to Jamie and he was up for me carrying the idea on. The early builds even had the codename ‘R12’.

For more info on the Explodemondevelopment, check One Bit Beyond!

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For comparison, here’s the trailer from the final game:

 

The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks [DS – Beta / Unused Stuff]

The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks is the second Zelda game for the DS,  developed by Nintendo EAD and published in december 2009. The game was originally announced at the GDC in March 2009, so in the first screens and video released there are not too many differences, but Kirby64 was able to notice some interesting beta-changes:

These trees were moved and used in the snow realm

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The floor blocks (swirl circle and the square) are changed in the final game

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The purple thing (I think it’s a whistle?) was to call over the phantom,but in the final game it was changed to “Call” and the circle was blue not yellow. the phantom icon was changed to a pinkish color and it had pink eyes.The circle swirl on the phantom when it moves the color was green in the beta game but pink in the final game.

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This picture here is going through the forest

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the pole color was changed to a green color

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this bullseye was changed to a x in the final game

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this whip was remove and replace with a snake whip. I was reading a forum that the snake whip came from earthbound (note by Bill:  the rope snake is from Mother 3)

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this tunnel was remove from the forest realm and move to the snow realm

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This was the cave going to the snow sanctuary and in the cave you found the monster that the anouki villagers were talking about,in the beta game I think this cave was going to the forest sanctuary and you had to defeat the moster.

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Some more differences were noticed by Bill: in the first video you can see the train tracks on the DS differ from the tracks in the final game, and some land was changed into sea at the bottom left corner of the forest realm. Also, some town locations were switched around judging from the map. There are more few small changes in the trailers as the wooden shields used by those Zora Warriors were made into steel and some guards that are missing in the cut scene where Zelda gives Link his certificate.

Also, Gabrielwoj found some interesting things inside the ROM directory, let’s take an look;:

On the sound files of the ROM, there is an unused track. It’s the overworld of Phantom Hourglass. Maybe, doing the early development of this game, the team just was testing the music with this overworld for the new zelda, Spirit Tracks. The song was never used, and it’s on the ROM file. Maybe this song was to be overworld theme of the spirit tracks (yeah, the train navigation), but they decided to make an another, not just like from Phantom Hourglass

Interesting tough, it’s the boss battle music of Phantom Hourglass, again, the same copy and paste from the Zelda game to the another, I really don’t know why, but the music don’t makes any sense with the game, I mean, most of everything is by Pan Flute

At the Spirit Tracks rom, at the path data/MapObj/, there is a file called “DNGN.narc”, extracting this file, will have an “NSMBD” file, it’s the 3d modeling for DS games, this model is the Temple of the Ocean King of Zelda Phantom Hourglass, it’s the same exactly model and textures, an result of copy an paste (NOTE: DNGN file looks DUNGEON with 4 letters, at Phantom Hourglass rom, it’s called “temple_main.narc”, extracting it will have the same dungeon, MAIN means: The principal temple, if you remember, it’s the first Dungeon you enter in the game and the principal of the Story)

Inside the ROM, there is an Dbgfont, maybe, for Debugging:

First of all, for this image which will come, I have never heard that the Spirit Tracks was on an E3 (It was only announced, but not been played, as I know), as been said at the image, it was on E3 2009, some leftover images (already organized for better look) [Second image may look with E3, at the file name, it was E3x, and the palette don’t looks right]:

E3 Image Screen 1(CLICK for view)

and

E3 Image Screen 2(CLICK for view)

Thanks to Kirby 64, Bill and Gabrielwoj for the contributions!

You can find more info about Zelda: Spirit Tracks in the Zelda Wiki!

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