New Cancelled Games & Their Lost Media Added to the Archive

Game Boy (+ Color), Nintendo

Towers II: Plight of the Stargazer [Game Boy Color – Cancelled]

monokoma
01-08-2019
5 Comments

Towers: Lord Baniff’s Deceit was a first-person RPG / dungeon crawler developed by JV Games (AKA JV Enterprises) and originally published on PC in 1993, with a Game Boy Color port  published by Vatical Entertainment in 2000. A sequel titled “Towers II: Plight of the Stargazer” was later released in 1995: JV planned to also port this one to the GBC, but unfortunately the project was cancelled.

Robert was able to get in contact with Vince Valenti of JV Games, who shared some details and screenshot from their cancelled game:

“We estimated it would take 3-4 months to convert.  It took about 6. We took the Towers I game code we wrote for the GBC and improved on it to lay out the Towers II game.  Came out nice, we thought. Too bad it never made it out to market.

Towers 2 – Plight of the Stargazer, picks up a couple of months after their initial landing.  The crew is discovering that there is something very strange in the land of Lamini. There is no outside trade or information, and the locals seem only interested in the current affairs of Lamini.

During this time repairs have been made to the ship, which is almost complete, and the crew is more then anxious to leave the island.  This is when the new sheriff requests our audience. Lord Daggan, one of Lamini’s highest council members appears to have gone mad. The council’s elite guards and mages were sent in to stop Daggan, but none have been heard from since.  

According to the sheriff, you are Lamini’s best chance.  It seems that the only people that have been able to enter the Towers and escape have been individual or small groups of thieves.  Several thieves were questioned, and their confessions were amazing. They spoke of large eyes with wings, men made out of metal, and living fire.  It is now up to you, with a companion if you choose, to enter Daggan’s towers, and unravel the mystery.

In this game, the mysteries of the island of Lamini start to unravel as well as the deceit of the council.  

New & Improved Features:

  • Approximately 6 minutes of vocal conversations.
  • Larger view screen.
  • changing dungeon graphics, by level.
  • Teleporters.
  • Visual graphic spell selection.
  • Improved AI, the intro of friendly characters.
  • Improved story line integration.
  • Spell effects
  • More puzzles
  • American-style, full featured RPG
  • 2 player linkable option (co-operative mode)
  • 15 levels to explore”

Thanks to Robert for the contribution! A playable prototype was found and shared online by Gaming Alexandria in January 2020.

Others, PC / MAC

Planetfall 2: Floyd’s Next Thing [PC – Cancelled]

monokoma
25-07-2019
1 Comment

The original Planetfall is sci-fi text-adventure written by Steve Meretzky, published by Infocom for DOS PCs in 1983. As we can read on Wikipedia:

“The game starts with the user assuming the role of a lowly Ensign Seventh Class on the S.P.S. Feinstein, a starship of the Stellar Patrol. Overbearing superior Ensign First Class Blather assigns the player to mop decks, not exactly the glorious adventures promised by the recruiters on Gallium. But a sudden series of explosions aboard the ship sends the player scrambling for an escape pod, which eventually crash-lands on a nearby planet. There are signs of civilization, but curiously no traces of the beings that once lived there. Eventually encountering a helpful but childlike robot named Floyd, the player must unravel the mysteries of the single deserted structure on the planet, Resida, and find a way to get back home.”

3 years later the company was bought by Activision and in the mid ‘90s they tried to create a sequel titled: Planetfall 2: Floyd’s Next Thing. The project was started at least a couple of times, but it was always cancelled in the end.

Two trailers were released promoting the two versions of the sequel: the first one looked a bit like Myst, with per-rendered graphics, while the second version of the game was in full, real-time 3D.

In 2012 Archive.org user Swizzley uploaded a playable demo of Planetfall 2 and another prototype was later uploaded in 2016 by Agustin Cordes. As we can read from the file description:

“Don’t get your hopes up: this is a very early prototype from the cancelled sequel to Infocom’s classic text adventure. It’s barely playable, though it does provide an interesting look at how the game would have played with a realtime 3D engine. The prototype does introduce a puzzle (at least the only one I could find) and features voice acting as well as a pretty cool soundtrack tune. Judging by the puzzle, you were able to give orders to your robot companions similarly to how Infocom’s classic text adventures worked.

[…] back in 2007, an alleged ex-employee from Activision was auctioning this CD on eBay. He couldn’t verify the contents of the disc, but many enthusiasts including myself still pledged hoping it was legit. My top bid was $40 (hey, it was a pretty decent sum at the time) but the CD was sold at a whooping $90. I wasn’t going to give up, so I contacted the seller who in turn put me in touch with the buyer. Turns out he was a nice guy who exchanged the same ISO I’m uploading right now for a physical soundtrack of Scratches and a signed copy of the game. It was a fairly good deal. This prototype brings back great memories.

It’s been almost ten years since that transaction happened, and I think the time has come to properly preserve this rare piece of software history. Enjoy!”

Images:

Game Boy Advance (GBA), Nintendo

Radio Rayless [GBA – Cancelled]

monokoma
25-07-2019
No Comments

Radio Rayless（レディオレイリス）is a cancelled futuristic racing game that was in development in 2002 by Now Production, planned to be published for GBA. The game was shown in a few Nintendo leaflets along with many others GameCube and GameBoy Advance titles, but this one seems to have vanished forever.

For now the only (tiny) screenshot available online for Radio Rayless was posted on Twitter by Akamid83:

Radio-Rayless-GBA-cancelled

Around the same time Now Production also worked on Goemon: New Age Shutsudō! (GBA), Goemon: Shin Sedai Shūmei! and Block Kuzushi (PlayStation). If you can find more images or details about Radio Rayless, please let us know!

Playstation 2 (PS2), Sony

Fall of the Artificer (Psygnosis) [PS2 – Cancelled]

monokoma
25-07-2019
No Comments

Fall of the Artificer is a cancelled steampunk action adventure that was in development by Psygnosis Camden (later merged with Team Soho to form SCE London Studio) and Sony for their Playstation 2. The project was in development by the same team that previously worked on Kingsley’s Adventure, a fantasy action adventure released in 1999 for the original Playstation. In 2013 a few 3D models were found online and later Push Square asked a former developers more details on this lost game:

“I’m not sure how much I can say about the gameplay […] I’ll try and give an overview. It was a third-person action platformer with puzzle solving elements. It definitely had a steampunk feel to it, but it was also very magic-based.

I had designed a mechanical familiar for one of the main characters and based it on the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch but with legs […] I’d also designed some zombie gardeners as well.

There was a long way to go with the game’s production […] In a meeting showcasing future projects from other companies we noticed that another studio was doing something very similar and was far into production, so we called it a day.”

Thanks to another article on Retro Gamer magazine (June 2018), we know this similar game was Primal by Sony Cambridge studio:

[…] was working on Fall of the Artificer, a big-budget, high-concept, third-person action game. “It was going okay but then we visited our Cambridge studio and saw how they were getting on with Primal. […] We thought, ‘Holy shit, these guys know what they’re doing!’ That got us thinking maybe we should be doing something else.”

Unfortunately at the moment there’s not much more available on Fall of the Artificer. After the project was canned, the team worked on DropShip: United Peace Force and Eyetoy: Play.

Images:

Status, Unseen News

Video Games eBooks Bundle: Endless Summer @ StoryBundle!

U64 Staff & Contributors
17-07-2019
No Comments

We are happy to announce 1 eBook taken from our “Video Games You Will Never Play” physical book is featured in the latest eBook bundle by Story Bundle! Our “Handheld Video Games You Will Never Play” can be found in this bundle in their exclusive ePub and Mobi versions (our full book is available in physical form on Amazon and in PDF on Patreon), so you can easily read it with your eBook reader.

videogames-ebook-bundle

In the same bundle you can also find many interesting eBooks about less known video games and their history.

Funds raised with this eBook bundle will support Unseen64, the other books authors and you can also choose to donate 10% to Pixelles, a non-profit initiative committed to helping more women make and change games.

Here’s the full description, for more details check https://storybundle.com/games

Praise the sun while you can: the festivals and hazy warmth of summer is all too fleeting. Luckily, you can capture the spirit of these carefree days forever with the Endless Summer Game Bundle, available for a limited time on StoryBundle.

David L. Craddock’s Arcade Perfect: How Pac-Man, Mortal Kombat, and Other Coin-Op Classics explores the lengths to which developers went to squeeze classic arcade games onto home consoles, handhelds, and personal computers. Craddock’s GameDev Stories: Volume 3 digs deeper
into arcades and home conversions with a selection of interviews from legendary designers such as Asteroids co-programmer Ed Logg and Mortal Kombat “ko-kreator” John Tobias.

John Harris steps up to represents great – or at least serviceably good – NES games that get a bad rap today in 8-bit Obituaries. Boss Fight Books author Alex Kane visits one of the most beloved space ports in that famous galaxy far, far away in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, a fantastic oral history of the making of BioWare’s blockbuster RPG.

Alongside those DRM-free eBooks, Hardcore Gaming 101’s Kurt Kalata takes an epic journey through cult classics on the NES, Select Start Press looks at the games your teachers have been playing, and much more.

StoryBundle is a pay-what-you-want platform for independent authors to share their works with readers (and gamers) like you!

For StoryBundle, you decide what price you want to pay. For $5 (or more, if you’re feeling generous), you’ll get the basic bundle of four books in any ebook format – WORLDWIDE.

● 8-Bit Obituaries by John Harris
● HG101 Presents: The Guide to Shoot-em-ups Vol. 1 by Kurt Kalata
● What Your Teachers Are Playing by Christian Cardenas and Dylan Altman
● Handheld Video Games You Will Never Play by Unseen64

If you pay at least the bonus price of just $15, you get all four of the regular books, plus SIX more!

● GameDev Stories – Volume 3 by David L. Craddock
● Arcade Perfect by David L. Craddock
● Boss Fight Books: Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic by Alex Kane
● HG101 Presents: Unofficial Guide to Konami Shooters by Kurt Kalata
● History of Digital Games: Developments in Art, Design and Interaction by Andrew Williams
● HG101 Presents: NES Cult Classics by Kurt Kalata

This bundle is available only for a limited time via storybundle.com. It allows easy reading on computers, smartphones, and tablets as well as Kindle and other ereaders via file transfer, email, and other methods. You get multiple DRM-free formats (.epub and .mobi) for all books!

As always thanks for your support!