Before being cancelled, a version of Metal Gear Solid was in development for the ill-fated Game.com, a portable console released by Tiger Electronics in 1997. It seems that the game was going to be a port of Metal Gear Solid PSX, but there are just few info on the project. At one point, a gameplay video of this game was distributed among group members of the now-defunct America Online account “TigerGcom”, but sadly this footage seems to have been lost forever.
After many researches, Celine was able to find a screenshot of Metal Gear Solid Game.com in Console Plus magazine issue #90! On the 22 January 2010, Parasyte posted some more screens in the Lost Levels Forum.
Alliance: The Silent War was a game in development by company Windward Mark Interactive. It’s important to note that Alliance has not been cancelled definitely: Windward Mark Interactive would love to continue work, if the game recieves proper interest and publishing / funding.
The five founders Asi Lang, Chris Colosi, Brad Kittenbrink, Palmer Truelson, and Eric Tulla all knew each other while they were undergraduates at Harvard from 1999-2003. Several of them had been working on advanced graphics research, and eventually teamed up and decided to come up with something new and unique in gaming. Work was stopped on Alliance when the game was approximately 30% complete. (You can read more about the story of Windward Mark Interactive in Asi Lang’s article + U64 interview)
The WarStudio
One of Alliances’ most unique and original features was called the WarStudio, the WarStudio would serve as your menu for online matches and “what if” scenarios. The WarStudio has a 100 year span of weapon options, and equipment, spanning over 200 small arms, and dozens of countries, and armys. Players would be able to search for weapons by a multitude of search parameters, including date of production, country of origin, ballistic profile, caliber, and so on and so forth. On the server-side, players would be able to set up custom searches or configurations within the WarStudio, or, alternately, pick from a number of pre-configured settings (say, “WWI Western front” against “British spec-ops, 1983”) and jump right into combat.
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!
Videos:
For comparison, here’s the trailer from the final game:
Nuclear Strike is a multi-directional shooter developed by Electronic Arts and released in 1997 for the PlayStation and PC. DCodes7 has noticed that there are some data files named “E3*” in the game’s disk, that are probably releated to a beta demo that could have been used in a past E3 to show Nuclear Strike to the press. Luckyly this beta demo can be freely played by typing the code “LIGHTNING” in.
The beta level is unfinished, the mission and its terrain is based off the second level of Nuclear Strike, but with lots of incomplete edits. More than half of the area is empty and has no live action FMV’s of its own. When completing all objectives you will hear a message saying “Thank you for flying strike air, we know that you have a choice of many games to play and we appreciate your time to play us.”
Also note that the “LIGHTNING” code for the beta level never appears in Nuclear Strikes campaign and the only way to know of its existence is to look up the code on the net. You can see this unfinished level in the videos below.
Jurassic Park: Trespasser is a FPS developed by DreamWorks Interactive, which was released in 1998 for Microsoft Windows after much hype and anticipation. The game had a development period of more than three years. Money was the biggest hurdle in the development of Trespasser.
The game severely went over-budget several times throughout its development. Second only to money was time, as the game had to be ready to meet the release of the The Lost World: Jurassic Park film. Originally the game was to be released in the fall of 1997. However due to a number of problems the project was delayed by a year. The rush to release the game caused many features to be either cut, or left unfinished and unpolished.
Due to difficulties coding the behaviour of both arms together developers had to ditch the left arm entirely. A late shift in development effectively changed the game from survival horror to action shooter, and contributed to the many complaints the game received. Lack of experienced management and the use of artists who were unfamiliar with basic game development processes and 3D modeling has also been identified as a cause of problems. Developers struggled for more than two years on some problems and in the end released a game that is set within a very large, attractive, open, outdoor environment. [Info from Wikipedia]
In december 2009, ASSEMbler from the Assembler Games Community, was able to preserve and share an early beta of the game, in which it’s possible to explore the removed Pine Valley level, a Test area and see many other differences. The beta is available to download at the Assembler Forum.
As we can read in the videos descriptions:
This beta show the original far more sexy female character, who has a cut off tank top on, complete with sideboob and cleavage you can look between. The game’s life bar (tattoo) is moved, the breasts more detailed than the final version. The game has less physical objects in it, and runs much faster than the final version.
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