Ghouls & Ghosts Online was planned to be a MMO of CAPCOM’s cult classic Ghouls ‘N Goblins with platforming challenges and hordes of monsters to battle as well as community features like guilds. This project was announced at GDC in 2003 but the ambitious multiplatform MMO never saw the light of day.
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Beyond Good & Evil is an action-adventure for the GameCube, PlayStation 2 and Xbox, designed by Michel Ancel, developed by Ubisoft and released in late 2003. In early development the game was referred to as “Project BG&E” and only later the complete title was revealed to the press. In these beta screens and video, we can see some major differences in the character design of the main protagonist (Jade) and in some screens there are even a couple of enemies and rooms that seem to have been removed from the final game.
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Picassio was a stealth / thief game that was in development at Promethean Designs, in which the player would have had to steal artworks to “win” a bet with another thief. The project had a long development cycle: it started as a Dreamcast game, then it was postponed and passed through PS2 and GameCube. In all that time the only playable build that was made was a very basic one, and is the one that you can see in the video below: basically the character creeping about and some very basic AI. Most of the gameplay ideas did not get implemented at all. It seems that they started the game with a man protagonist in mind, but in later screens we can see a woman as the main character, so it could have been changed to appeal more to the young public.
The project got radically changed halfway through development when the company boss saw the then newly released Shenmue and basically decided to copy it. Picassio then turned into a half adventure, half stealth type game but didn’t get any further than some character/level designs before getting canned. The company fell into severe financial difficulty and employees weren’t being paid for months. Subsequently they all left to work elsewhere and Promethean Designs went bust.
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Picassio Beta Trailer
Killer 7 is an adventure game developed by Grasshopper Manufacture and published by Capcom. It was released in 2005 but it was first announced in 2002 as one of the original “Capcom 5” games. In 3 years of development the game changed a lot from its original concept trailer and when Killer 7 was finally released many parts of the story were removed.
None of the scenes from the first Killer 7 Trailer ended up in the final game. Garcian and Kaede smith look totally different from their final forms, and Harman Smith is wheelchair-ridden in the final game and only playable for a couple of sections throughout the entire story. The scenes with Dan Smith shooting the woman and Con Smith are never seen. We shudder to think what lost plot points and further story we would have gotten if that stuff would have stayed in there.
For more informations you can read the Killer 7 Beta Analysis Article
Thanks a lot to Dr. Swank for the contribution!
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Makai Wars was a Role-Playing Game in development by Nippon Ichi Software for the Playstation Portable, and was expecting a release date around the console’s initial launch in 2005. Development on Makai Wars was put on hold due to a number of internal conflicts, a few years later the title was announced for release on the Playstation 3, however it’s current status is unknown.
As we can read in Wikipedia, it’s interesting to notice that Makai Wars is frequently referenced as an internal-joke in other NIS games. In “Prinny: Can I really be the Hero?”, we find out that Asagi was to be the main character of the cancelled game, but was removed due to the ending of making the game. It’s one of the few reasons Asagi is insane in Prinny CIRBTH, mentioning it during a therapy lesson with the Hero Prinny.
Makai Wars is later mentioned in the PSP Version of Disgaea 2, in the special “Axel Mode”. In the story, Makai Wars is actually a movie, which has been on constant Hiatus and development hell. Also, in the graphic / text adventure game “Disgaea Infinite”, there’s a bonus ending in which Asagi try to buy a “time machine” to be able to change the her past and let Makai Wars to be released.
Thanks to Mittell for the description!
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