Others

Killer Instinct [Beta – SNES Arcade]

Killer Instinct is a fighting game developed by RareWare and published by Midway and Nintendo. Initially released in arcades in 1994 it was later ported to the Super Nintendo. In the gallery below you can notice some early character designs for B.Orchid and Glacius. As they wrote at the Killer Instinct Arena, the earliest version of Black Orchid was a blonde amazon, but a later version of her featured a black outfit. In the final game Orchid wears a green and yellow dress.

Also, thanks to Lucazz we found out that a beta Killer Instinct ROM was somehow leaked online, and it contains many differences from the final version:

  • the orchid stage and the cinder stage have the same beta floor
  • glacius and jago have an unused song
  • the gangsta theme is in glacius’ stage
  • the fulgore theme is in cinder’s stage
  • the menu screen is in a different position
  • the orchid stage doesn’t have the rare and nintendo logos in the screens and the stage side is moved to the right
  • the raptor sprites are corrupted
  • the eyedol bridge stage is in the cinder’s stage, similar of the arcade
  • in the continue screen the song is the same as the menu screen

Thanks to Robert Seddon and Lucazz for the contributions!

In a promotional video of Killer Instinct, embedded below, we can see an early version of the coin-op with some differences:

  • Beta character selection screen
  • Cinder’s name was Meltdown and Sabrewolf’s Werewolf.
  • Some of the combo types were removed or changed, like Mondo combo and Elite combo
  • The voice that announces the stage name is different
  • Some stages were slightly different, like the Tower arena and the Sabrewulf livel

Images:

Videos:
 

Seaman [PC – Unreleased?]

On IGN we read that a PC version of Seaman was in development some years ago, but it looks like it was never released: “The PC version of the game was announced by Vivarium founder Yoot Saito today at a conference in Japan. It’s entitled Seaman for Windows Ver. 1.0 and will be available in the 1st quarter of 2001. Seaman on the PC will be completely different from his DC brethren. It’s not a game, says Mr. Saito — rather, it’s a communication tool and a pet for your desktop. As shown in the screen shots, which have been taken from Japan’s PC Watch website, the virtual fish exists on your desktop, rather than in an aquarium. Seaman is automatically launched when you turn on your computer, and resides in memory, running in the background, swimming around on screen… hopefully behind your application windows. Seaman is still drawn in 3D, but he’s kept tiny so as to not interfere with your other work.” 

Spore [PC – Beta]

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Spore is a video game under development by Maxis and designed by Will Wright. The game has drawn wide attention for its promise to simulate the development of a species on a galactic scope, using its innovation of user-guided evolution via the use of procedural generation for many of the components of the game, providing vast scope and open-ended gameplay. Spore was originally a working title, suggested by developer Ocean Quigley, for the game which was first referred to by the general public as SimEverything. Even though SimEverything was a first choice name for Wright, the title Spore stuck. The gameplay itself had numerous changes during development. The most striking was the shift in realism, from the gritty depiction of cellular and animal life in the GDC 2005 debut, to the current iteration of a more round, softer edged depiction of the creatures. The most visible change was in the cellular phase, which transformed the monocellular organisms into strange insects with cartoonish, human-like eyes, which were  

Anachronox [PC Beta / PS1 Cancelled]

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Anachronox… a cold dark planet in the center of the Sender Sphere, crime… mafia… and a hilarious turn of style. Anachronox was an Rpg featured in the year 2001 by Edios Interactive and Ion storm, you took the place of Sylvester Bucelli (Sly Boots), A run down dectective living in a storage space above a bar. After being thrown out of a windobw by the local mafia taxman, he sets off in a quest to get his life back. He soon gets a small dectective work guiding a man down into a vast dangerous sewer like cave known as the Mystech Tunnels from there on he  

Fallout 3: Van Buren [PC – Cancelled]

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Fallout 3 was initially under development by Black Isle Studios, a studio owned by Interplay Entertainment, under the working title Van Buren. Van Buren was set to carry on the Fallout series, following Fallout 2, prior to being cancelled. Interplay Entertainment went bankrupt and closed down Black Isle Studios before the game could be completed, and the license to develop Fallout 3 was sold for