New Cancelled Games & Their Lost Media Added to the Archive

Microsoft, Playstation 3 (PS3), Sony, Xbox 360

Beyond Good & Evil 2 [Cancelled – PS3 / Xbox 360]

U64 Staff & Contributors
11-05-2012
2 Comments

Beyond Good & Evil 2 is the sequel to Ubisoft’s 2003 action adventure, which was released on PlayStation 2, Xbox, and GameCube. Pre-production started in 2007, just like the original title by a team at Ubisoft Montpellier. Michel Ancel returned as lead designer after his Rayman 4 concepts evolved into a minigame collection.

Even though a short teaser was shown at Ubidays 2008, the title was put on hold in summer 2009. The team was dissolved, Ancel started work on Rayman Origins, while other members of the team moved onto other project at Ubisoft (Tintin, different prototypes).

However, in 2009, a short trailer was leaked showing what the team envisioned for the game. Two years later, Ancel presented this trailer at a conference together with various artworks and another video with in-engine footage.

The current fate of the title is unknown. Michel Ancel revealed that current generation consoles are not powerful enough to realise the team’s vision for the game, implying a next-generation release. While both he and Ubisoft deny that the game is cancelled, only a small team (if any) is currently working on it.

Special Thanks to BGEMyth.net, Twitter user Alltpweek, and Gamersyde.com.

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Playstation 3 (PS3), Sony

Gravite (Gravity Daze) [PS3 – Prototype]

yota
08-05-2012
No Comments

Gravity Daze (Gravity Rush in the west) is a PS Vita action-rpg created by SCE Japan Studio that was released in february 2012 in Japan. Thanks to an article from Dengeki Online, we know that the game was already in development in 2008 as a Playstation 3 retail game called “Gravite”. Additional DLC episodes were also supposed to follow the original release shortly. In 2011, however, Sony decided to port Gravity Daze to his new console.

In the gallery below we can see screenshots from the original PS3 version and the various concept arts made during the two years of work on the Ps3 build.

Images:

Videos:

Microsoft, Others, PC / MAC, Playstation 2 (PS2), Sony, Xbox

Star Wars: Battlefront [Beta – Xbox / PS2 / PC]

monokoma
05-05-2012
2 Comments

Star Wars: Battlefront is an action game developed by Pandemic Studios and LucasArts, and released on September 2004 for PlayStation 2, Xbox and PC. Development for Star Wars Battlefront began at Pandemic Studios in 2002. Greg Burrod, executive producer on Battlefront stated “We wanted to create an online shooter title for the Xbox, PS2, and PC which would allow for team strategy and would feature battles and worlds from every one of the six Star Wars films.”

A beta version of Battlefront was released as an extras DVD for one of the trilogy sets. It’s quite interesting and has a lot of ideas that were not in the final version. The build date is February 03 2004, 8 months before the final version was released. Also, the HUD was different and the graphic was still unfinished.

Stranno posted a video and some comparison-screens between the beta and the final version on the Assembler Games Forum!

Videos:

Game Boy (+ Color), Nintendo

Iridion [GBC – Cancelled]

monokoma
04-05-2012
2 Comments

Shin’en Multimedia was founded in 1999 by coders from the Amiga demoscene.
Manfred Linzner, one of the founders, always had the desire to develop an horizontal shoot-em-up for the beloved Amiga computer but after just programming one stage the project was abandoned.
When the Munich based developer decided to focus to the Game Boy Color the idea of creating a shooter was still alive and they started work on it.
According to developer, Iridion was a horizontally scrolling shooter that pushed the Game Boy Color’s hardware to the maximum with never-before-seen (on the Game Boy) graphical effects.
With the help of its proprietary graphics, coding and music tools, Shin’en was promising some impressive technical feats, like 128 colors simultaneously on screen, smooth two-way parallax scrolling, multi-color overlay-sprites, 3D-rendered animation sequences and more elaborate music pieces than most other Game Boy titles.
The game was planned to have 8 stages, 9 bosses and 12 weapons to dispose the enemies with.
Anyway, after just an excellent one level demo, Shin’en, recognizing that original GBC games were almost impossible to market, dropped this project as well.

When Shin’en shifted their focus to the Game Boy Advance, Iridion was their first game to appear on the “new” system.
Iridion 3D was then released in 2001 for the GBA with commercial success and thus began Shin’en technical excellency on Nintendo platforms that continues to this days with the recently released Nano Assault for Nintendo 3DS.

Thanks to Celine for the contribution!

Images (GBC version):

Video from the final GBA version:

Nintendo, Wii

Jackal [Wii – Prototype]

Celine
30-04-2012
No Comments

In 2009, images about an undisclosed project for Wii appeared on 3d artist Eric Testroete’ site. The pictures resemble very closely a 3d rendition of Konami old military game Jackal released in 1986 in the arcades. In light of Konami revival of its older franchises on Wii under the Rebirth brand-name ( Contra, Castlevania, Gradius ) a new Jackal could have been in the card. Too bad it seems the project never went further than that working prototype.

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