New Cancelled Games & Their Lost Media Added to the Archive

Microsoft, Xbox

Katana [XBOX – Concept]

monokoma
01-03-2012
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Katana is the WIP project name of a cancelled game that was pitched for the Xbox in 2002, by Tosym Corporation (?). In january 2009 a government agent has accidentally leaked several gigs of personal, business and government files: between those files, there was also the Katana game proposal. The project was probably cancelled in early development, with only few concepts done.

As we can read on Kotaku:

[…] the Japanese bureaucrat opened several well-known trojans that are often embedded in files found in filesharing programs Winny or Share, which upload and distribute files to uploaders specified by the virus. […]

Dubbed Katana, the leaked Xbox game submission was never made and was a proposal submitted back in 2002 under a company the agent previously ran. The proposed game is cringe worthy Final Fantasy-esque RPG stuff, complete with some hooky story involving nine stories, 100-player online multiplayer duel, and the possibility of having Janne Darc, Jack the Ripper, Ned Kelly, Musashi Miyamoto and Bruce Lee battle each other.

Images:

Microsoft, Playstation 2 (PS2), Sony, Xbox

Crash Twinsanity [Beta – XBOX / PS2]

U64 Staff & Contributors
29-02-2012
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As we can read on wikipedia, Crash Twinsanity is an platform game developed by Traveller’s Tales and published by Vivendi Universal  for the PlayStation 2 and the Xbox. It was released in North America on October 2004, while a Nintendo GameCube version was planned but canceled for undisclosed reasons. In the videos below you can see removed and different parts from Crash Twinsanity beta version, as the lost level “Gone a bit coco”. If you can notice more beta differences, please let us know!

Thanks to Retroguy205 for the contribution!

Videos:

The music for the removed level, Gone a Bit Coco, can also be heard in the video below.

Unseen News

Pioneer LaserActive beta and cancelled games

monokoma
27-02-2012
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The LaserActive Preservation Project is a new blog that is working to preserve documents about the obscure Pioneer LaserActive console and its beta / cancelled games. Below you can see an interesting video full of unseen Laseractive titles and thanks to the project team we have some more info about what we can see in there:

2:23, 2:25, 6:24 – 6:27, 6:41, : Unknown Title #1. Could have been a proof-of-concept mockup, or footage of an unreleased game. Due to the disparity in image quality, it’s probably the former.

6:46: Unknown Title #2: Maybe footage from Goku proof-of-concept?

5:44 – 5:57, 6:28 – 6:30: Goku [SEGA MEGA-LD, 1995] (BETA). Early CGI footage, may or may not have been used in the final game.

5:57 – 6:03, 6:15 – 6:17, 6:37, 6:39 – 6:40, 6:42, 6:48 – 6:50: Pyramid Patrol [SEGA MEGA-LD, 1993] (PROOF-OF-CONCEPT/MOCKUP): Unused CGI footage showing “rough drafts of several stages from Pyramid Patrol.

6:31 – 6:33, 6:38, 6:45 – 6:47, 8:58 – 9:43: Pyramid Patrol [SEGA MEGA-LD, 1993] (BETA).
Identical to the finished product except for a different crosshair animation when charged shot is fully charged, as well as different enemy placement.

12:36 – 13:15: Hi-Roller Battle [SEGA MEGA-LD, 1993] (BETA).
No HUD or enemies implemented in this build of the game. Looks to be a recording of a computer workstation exploring the unfinished game area in real time; it is definitely not being played on a LaserActive, which could not support real-time rendering of 3D environments.

13:57 – 14:26: Vajra [NEC LD-ROM2, 1993] (BETA). No healthbars or score implemented in this build of the game.

Check the LaserActive Preservation Project for more info and updates!

Unseen News

Mini Racers N64 prototype now available to buy on eBay

monokoma
26-02-2012
3 Comments

After the Tamiya Racing auction, another Looking Glass Studios cancelled Nintendo 64 game is now available to buy on Ebay: Mini Racers! This looked like an awesome multiplayer game similar to micromachines, it was really a shame that it was never released. The price for this proto is quite high, currently more than 2.000 $, but we hope that if someone (maybe you?) could be able to afford this cancelled title, maybe they could share some new videos with everyone! We’ll be happy to see more from the game :)

Thanks to Joel for the link!

Nintendo, SNES + Super Famicom

Tales of Phantasia [Beta – SNES]

yota
26-02-2012
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Tales of Phantasia is a Jrpg developed by Wolfteam and published, only in Japan, by Namco for SNES in 1995. The game was originally based on an unpublished novel, Tale Fantasia, but, as we can read from Aselia wikia, the programming team encountered many difficulties in dealing with the publisher:

Several changes exist between the initial concept of Tale Phantasia and the published game, due to Namco’s interference with Wolfteam’s efforts, eventually cutting them out of the process and removing them from the credits towards the end of development. This includes changing the character artist from Yoshiaki Inagaki to the now-familiar Kousuke Fujishima, resulting in entirely redesigned and renamed characters with in-game sprites that are based on original artwork and not Fujishima’s revisions, which are shown in the status art, along with several alterations to key chars and plot points. A grand majority of the story was cut from the game, and no attempt was made to close the plot holes that were created by Namco’s actions.

In the beta pics below we can see the original character design of Inagaki and a scan of a pre-release version of Tales of Phantasia. I played the game ten years ago, so i don’t remember it too well, and the scan is low quality, but i don’t see any major changes. If you have more informations please make a comment and we’ll update the post.

Thanks to Youloute of the Assembler forum for the scan.

Below is a few sprites that are ripped from the final version of Tales of Phantasia, but these sprites go completely unused. They’re ‘angel’ sprites for when Raise Dead is used. Some of them are completely unknown, but clearly Brambert, Rhea and Morrison are in the list. Brambert was in the beta of Tales of Phantasia, as seen in the image below. Not much is known about Rhea but it appears NPC’s may have been usable in battle. There’s also a ‘Tactics’ icon for both Brambart and Rhea as well. Not too mention both of their names are stored in the same area as Cress and Co.’s.

Thanks to Justin3009 for the contribution!

Images: