New Cancelled Games & Their Lost Media Added to the Archive

Project Velocity (Octane) [Xbox – Cancelled]

Project Velocity (aka Octane) is a cancelled racing game that was in development by Visual Science for the original Xbox (and maybe for the Playstation 2?). It seems that this prototype would have been a new title in the Need for Speed series, but there are not many info about it.
As we can read at Past to Present:
Way back in 2007, Gamerfreak1727 leaked a title he found on a debug Xbox called ‘Project Velocity.’
It seems to be an early version of one of the Need for Speed Underground games, with references to the ‘Underground’ race style. The issue being, the build date seems to be around January 20th, 2006, almost a full year after Need for Speed Underground 2. It is possible that it is a prototype for an unreleased sequel, or even one of the other spinoffs like Need for Speed Carbon, but I am not 100% certain where it would fall. Any NFS fans who want to chime in, feel free!
Thanks to Megamoto85 and Borman for the contribution!

Videos:

KotOR 1 & 2 beta restoration mods

The original Knights of the Old Republic had a lot of beta / unused stuff and KotOR 2: The Sith Lords, so many fans decided to work together to create a couple of mods for the PC version of the game to be able to play some of those beta elements that were changed or removed before the final version!

The KotOR 1 Restoration is an attempt to restore almost all the content that was cut from the game Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic by BioWare Corp. Of course, these restorations will be within reason and things that were cut because they did not fit with the plot, and cannot be made to fit with the plot, will most definitely NOT be restored. Remember, this is only the demo, not the full mod.

Most of the content that has been released in this demo is from Taris. However, there are few pieces of restored content that pertain to Dantooine as well as a difficulty option restoration.

– Impossible Difficulty, a cut option for difficulty that is harder than the Vanilla “Hard” difficulty
– Carth dialogue when the PC first awakens on Taris, Carth makes a few comments about the PC’s injuries. (Thanks to zbyl2 for this!)
– Lower City, numerous restorations to the Lower City
– Under City, numerous restorations to the Under City
– Restoration of the Black Vulkar Base Sublevel
– Restored Droid Items
– Restoration of some dialgoue with Niklos in the Uppper City Cantina
– Restoration of the Duel Ring announcer in the Taris Upper City Cantina. The announcer will be available to speak to in between fights.
– Zaerdra Swoop Platform Dialogue, Zaerdra will make some final comments to the PC on the prototype accelerator before intitiating your first run with it
– Sith Base, numerous restorations
– Sarna and Yun Genda are available to talk to members of the same sex and can be used to further the plot of Taris. Albeit, in different ways than they normally do.
– Iriaz Restoration, returns the Iriaz to the plains of Dantooine. (Thanks to Seamhiann for this!)
– Garrum and Tar’eelok Restoration, returns a cut padawan and master to the Jedi Enclave. (Thanks to Seamhiann for this!)
– Restoration of cut items within the Jedi Enclave
– Shen and Rahashia Indecent Proposal, the PC can make a rather indecent, and awkward, proposal to either Shen or Rahasia depending upon the PC’s gender.
– The file called plc_glowpudl.utp had the name of “Glowing Puddle” however when placed in game it looked like a blood puddle. The model file and textures have been changed so now the glowing puddle placeable makes a glowing puddle of green liquid. It can be seen in the new module, tar_m03ac, or the swoop platform non-racing version.
– Modified Iriaz from Seamhiann’s modules so there were less of them, they fought against the Kath Hounds, and usually stayed in their small areas.

The Sith Lords Restored Content Mod (TSLRCM). This mod’s intention is to restore much of the cut content to The Sith Lords, that was lost to the main game due to a rush to release the game. This rush also left the game with a plethora of bugs (some of which also blocked out content, so not everything restored was really “cut”, for example the quest ‘Corrun Falt’), this mod should seriously decrease the buginess that plagued TSL.

Final Fight: Streetwise [Beta – PS2 / XBOX]

As we can read on Wikipedia, Final Fight: Streetwise is a beat-’em-up produced by Capcom, released in North America and the PAL region for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox in 2006. It is a spin-off of the original Final Fight developed by the American team of Capcom Production Studio 8 (the developers of Final Fight Revenge and the Maximo series). You can play as Kyle, the brother of Cody from the original series. When you find that Cody is in trouble, you must roam the streets of Metro City until the mystery is solved. Final Fight: Streetwise is a third-person game that stays true to its beat-’em-up roots but adds light role-playing elements and minigames to the fray as well. A respect system has been added so that your decisions affect how characters in the world react and relate to you.

However, the game had a lot of beta elements such as:

  • Combo Bar
  • Journal Image
  • No BGM play
  • Different Loading screen (Which it appeared as Loading text instead the turnable disc)
  • Different logo
  • Respect Logo changed
  • Doesn’t had Kyle victory pose
  • Had a Episodics

At the beginning, Cody did not have a white band in his hand. And he said a lot of curse words. Also, Kyle’s introduction was also different:

“The bloodly like a motherfu**er is me”

Also, after Handsome Bob sent some gangstas to kill Kyle, they said:

“That’s HIM, he fuc*ked Bob up, GET ‘HIM!”

Instead this

“That’s HIM, he messed Bob up, GET ‘HIM!”

Capcom removed a half of the cutscene in the opening. Also there was no slow motion effect. Combo Bar was removed before release. Journal Image is replaced as the “Journal Updated” text. A couple of IGN Gameplay videos have some beta gameplay we never seen before with all differents above. Dialogues bubbles are different too, they used some kind of Transparent Space instead Sharp Metal Box. No BGM added, possibly they aren’t licensed with Funkareem yet, so Fatti Sotto wasn’t add yet. Different logo of the game also shown in some trailers and IGN & GameSpy’s gameplay. Also at the Barfly, It had the Point hand instead the Arrow.

Before Streetwise entered development, Capcom was producing another title, Final Fight: Seven Sons, which featured a different story and characters, a different gameplay system and cartoonish, cel-shaded graphics, that was later cancelled in favor of Streetwise.

If you find more beta differences in the videos below, please let us know!

Post by Thomas Christian

Jason [PS2 XBOX – Concept / Cancelled]

Jason was one of many game concepts done at French studio Darkworks in the early 2000s, plannet to be developed for the Playstation 2 and Xbox. There are not many info available on the project, but that it should have been set in a sort of Norse mythology, with viking boats, warriors and demons to fight. However, the title never entered in production as no publisher was found. Instead, work on Time Crisis Adventure was started, a project that seems to have been later evolved into Cold Fear, Darkworks’ survival horror that was released in  2005 for Playstation 2, Xbox and PC. Sadly only few artworks remain to preserve this game, archived in the gallery below.

Thanks to Dawok for the contribution!

Concept Art:

Spiderman (2000) [Beta – PSX / N64]

As we can read on Wikipedia, Spider-Man is an action game based upon the Marvel Comics character of the same name. It is loosely based on the 1990s Spider-Man and Spider-Man Unlimited cartoon series. The game was developed by Neversoft and published by Activision for the PlayStation and Nintendo 64 in 2000.  In the videos below we can see some beta differences, as the Web Counter (different textures), some beta levels were bigger than the final, some  monsters looks different and they were in other areas than the final ones.

Thanks to solidsnake11 for the contribution and Megaroxas12 for the videos!

Videos: