New Cancelled Games & Their Lost Media Added to the Archive

Microsoft, Xbox 360

Saints Row [Beta – Xbox 360]

U64 Staff & Contributors
16-05-2012
2 Comments

Saints Row is an action-adventure open world video game developed by Volition Inc. and published by THQ. It is the first title in the Saints Row series. The development of the game began at around 2004 or 2005 and was originally named “Bling Bling” which in it’s sequel, it has a certain store with the exact same name. Thanks to a certain person down in the comments who said this, The game was originally for PS2 and PS2 only at the time it was in the making.

So in the video below, you can see many beta differences between the gameplay such as:

  • Saints wearing green
  • Beta Logo
  • Shop Hold-Ups
  • Beta Rim-Jobs

Post by The Monokariba (AKA Monokiba)

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(Will research more on Saints Row’s beta.)

Nintendo, SNES + Super Famicom

Super Turrican [Beta – SNES]

U64 Staff & Contributors
14-05-2012
2 Comments

As we can read on Wikipedia, Super Turrican was developed by Factor 5 and published by Seika for the Super Nintendo. Factor 5’s Super Turrican plays similarly to Mega Turrican and shares a similar visual style, but the game has a different set of levels and features a freeze beam in place of the original lightning whip. DEC noticed some reference about the beta version of Super Turrican on the Factor 5 web site (http://www.factor5.de/secrets_super_turrican.shtml) and several other web site relay this information when the already known version was planned to the Wii virtual console. Read more

Microsoft, Xbox 360

Specs (Tim Schafer’s Kinect Adventure) [Xbox 360 – Prototype]

U64 Staff & Contributors
13-05-2012
No Comments

Over the last few years Double Fine has released some fantastic games. But it looks like one of the more interesting games did not see the light of day. The game, called “Specs” was going to be an interactive Kinect adventure that features a strange variation of the good / bad mechanic. Your two hands controlled you decisions. Your left hand controlled “hate” while your right hand controlled “love”.

It seems there were also other different emotions as well such as fear and trust. Holding your hand over objects in the environment would change the way the story progressed depending on what hand you used.

Sadly the game was only really a test of what the Kinect could do, and will probably never be released to the public. Information of this game was also very hard to come by, which is why I have only been able to fin d a limited number of pictures and a small amount of relevant information on Kotaku:

“Specs were to tell the story of a cursed, sentient artifact, which was the persona, that controller that gets passed on from character to character. In the video above, you’ll see an early prototype where only the emotions of love and hate were implemented followed by a later one where gestural input makes more emotional prompts available.”

Post by Liam

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PSP, Sony

Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 2 [Debug / Beta – PSP]

U64 Staff & Contributors
13-05-2012
No Comments

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 (GRAW 2) is a shooter developed by High Voltage Software and published for the PSP in 2007. Edward Kirk found out that in the final game there are still some unused options that are usually hidden.

This game contains a number of debug options and a level select which, when enabled, turn it into a “Pre-Certification” version. The released game contains a file called Game-txt, which can be edited to enable the debug menu and other options used to test a game.

The debug has a number of different options which affect the game, such as …

… wireframe mode. Although the Game.txt file does identify the enabling of cheats, the features found so far are definitely for debugging and testing, rather than just making it easier to get through the game.

More on Edward Kirk’s website: http://zenade.angelfire.com/GRAW/debug.html

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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