PC / MAC

[Indie Unseen] Embodiment of Scarlet Devil – Beta / Unused

Project Touhou is a Japanese PC game series made by one man, ZUN (working under Team Shanghai Alice), and usually, nothing is left over from the beta’s. However, in Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, the sixth Touhou game, a character known as Rin Satsuki was originally meant to be a playable character, although was cut out of the final game. Her name still remains in the code, and there is only one official image of her, which originally appeared on ZUN’s website.

Update: as Susumu has make us to notice, this image did not appear on ZUN’s website. It is from the Comiket booklet that shows which doujin circles are appearing at that current event and where and when. It should also be mentioned that the picture has never been official confirmed as being her, but is widely assumed to be her, as she’s never appeared anywhere else.

Also Gabrielwoj, had found other two unused sprites in the game:

Probably, a beta sprite of Rin Satsuki. Strangely enough, it was found in Stage 1 Folder, which maybe Rin Satsuki was to be the Mid-Boss of Stage 1.
Or, it is a beta sprite of Rumia (it has similar animations on her arms, but with some different details)

Those one has been found at the EXTRA stage folder, probably, Koakuma was to be another mid-boss for the stage (or maybe ZUN only recolored the same sprites of Patchouli’s Stage [Stage 4])

Notice from the 2 Images: The white colored sprite is probably for some glow, all the sprites in the game have this “effect”.

Thanks a lot to Takoto, Susumu and Gabrielwoj for the contributions!

Images:

200pxth06rinsatsuki 

Rock [PC – Cancelled]

Rock is a space combat sim / mech sim / FPS hybrid that was in development in 1999 / 2000 by Singletrack for PC, but later cancelled because the studio was closed. The team planned to combine 3 genres into a single game, to let the player a lot of freedom in how to resolve the missions. It was an ambitious project, as we can read from a preview published in Computer Gaming World magazine (thanks to Roushimsx on the HG101 Forum):

Imagine a game where you can jump into a tarfighter, dogfight our way to a martian plain, hop out, toss a grenade in a Mech to kill the pilot so you can claim the assault robot for yourself, rampage across a warzone in your new weapons platform and finally jump out and enter a building, killing some fuards before you plat explosives to level it – all of this without any load screens to stall the action.

Cooperative online multiplayer was also planned. After Singletrack closed down, the Rock team ended up moving on to Incognito Entertainment (later purchased by Sony) and started to work on Warhawk for the PS3. You can feel that some of the concepts from Rock were implemented into Warhack.

Thanks to Robert Seddon for the contribution!

Images: 

O.S.S. [PC? – Concept]

In 2000, Pandemic Studios developed a game concept called “OSS”. It was set in World War II and the player was involved in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), a United States intelligence agency, as the game’s title reveals.  OSS never entered production at Pandemic Studios for unknown reasons. The platform of the game was probably not decided yet, but we can speculate at least a PC version.

Artwork: 

Far Cry 2 [X360/PS3/PC – Alpha]

Far Cry 2 is an open-ended FPS developed for Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC by Ubisoft Montreal and published in 2008 by Ubisoft. Crytek, the developers of the original game, were not involved in the development of Far Cry 2. A pre-alpha video of the game, showcasing the visuals and 13 minutes of gameplay with developer commentary, was presented in Leipzig in August 2007. [Info from Wikipedia]

In the Pre-Alpha demo Slayermaggot81 noticed various differences:

  • Different Level (the jungle in the pre-alpha looked more realistic)
  • When Player gets shot by enemies the screen turns red.
  • Different lignthing technic
  • More green-ish grass

Thanks to Slayermaggot81 for the contribution!

Images:

Videos: