Thanks to Cheaterdragon we have a nice update for the Zero Tolerance beta page, as a couple of beta / prototypes were found!
Tamiya Racing [Cancelled – N64]
Tamiya Racing is a cancelled racing game that was in development for the Nintendo 64. As far as I can tell, there is absolutely ZERO information on the game out there anywhere. According to an auction for the prototype, the game is from Intermetrics, associated with Looking Glass Studios. The label has No Gamma written on on. The seller also thinks it is very similar to the unreleased Mini Racers.
This is from the same seller who sold the also unreleased N64 Wildwaters Extreme Kayak recently for $1,600.00. From what I understand they also have a third such proto, so we may see that at some point too. The auction finished at $1,358.33 and we hope that the winner could be able to share more videos or screens from this lost game!
Post by Arshes91
Original source: www.gamesniped.com
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Air Drums [Genesis / Mega Drive – Cancelled]
When Sega presented their quirky Activator add-on controller, they shown two games meant to be pack-in for the peripheral. One was Bounty Hunter while the other was an air drum simulation called, guess what, Air Drums. Both games however were cancelled.
Scan from Super Sonic issue 21.
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Turok (2008) [Unused Stuff – Xbox 360 PS3 PC]
Turok 2008 is a FPS for PC, Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 with very stunning and exciting cutscenes. The player takes part in the military operation which occurs on a planet populated with dinosaurs. While it’s a first person shooter, Turok features a lot of third person moments, creating original and unique gameplay experience. It uses Unreal Engine 3. It was developed by Propaganda Games.
PC version of the game’s folders TurokGame\Baked and TurokGame\Live contain beta / unused maps. It’s possible to get the maps to load in game by copying these folders to TurokGame\Content\Maps folder. After that it’s required to remove the .u files from the Baked folder, otherwise the game will not launch.
The beta / unused maps can be loaded from the game console with the open command. Most of them contain only few brushes or a black room, or crash the game. But there are exceptions: developers’ test maps and prototypes of the game content.
L02_06 map contains early version of the jungle. There’s some of the game’s early content.
Lv02_htest and Lv02_c seem to be terrain testmaps.
First three maps shown in the second video are testmaps from TurokGame\Content\TurokDLC1 folder, other two are from Baked. The last one, LV_15_WB, contains very early prototypes of the game content.
RaptorTest map is an early prototype of the jungle.
Third video shows bunch of testmaps from Live folder. One of them contains unused tyrannosaur.
It’s possible to view Turok’s packages with the viewer which you can get here.
Thanks to this program, we can see beta / unused models from the game.
It is also worth mentionning that Nathan Cheever, who was Assistant Lead Level Designer until January 2007 on the game, wrote on his personal website that Turok 2008 had some cut contents during its development:
(…) As you can guess, Turok went through the typical growing pains a new company, team, and title goes through. It was originally a longer, more diverse action game. When I arrived, it was titled Turok: Rebirth. The subtitle was eventually dropped to mark it as a true relaunch of the franchise.
Other changes included reducing most of the vehicle levels, as well as an ongoing companion. Lil was a young survivor Turok had to protect throughout the story, much in the same way Ripley protected Newt in Aliens. Companion AI and gameplay diversity were the reasons she was removed from the final game. You can still dig through the game assets and find her model, however.
The project was a valiant effort for a new, robust FPS experience with a long-standing franchise. The young team, company, and scope of the game was too much at the time to find the right mix to make Turok a high-ranking game. Licensing the Unreal Engine 3 at the time had its own share of woes as well. Disney needed the game released and the team had to make things work within the allotted time.
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- Storyboard featuring Lil
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WWE Titans: Parts Unknown [PS2/XBOX – Cancelled]
WWE Titans: Parts Unknown is a cancelled wrestling game, which was in development at Next Level Games (best known for Super Mario Strikers and Punch-Out for Wii) during 2004. It was planned for release on the Playstation 2 and Xbox. This 1 vs. 1 fighter was cancelled for unknown reasons by its publisher, THQ.
It appears the game never fully entered development and was subject to cancellation fairly early on. It’s possible a prototype for it was created at one point, although no media of one has ever been recovered. It seems that Next Level developed a proposal to take WWE games in a very different direction, but the pitch was shot down by THQ. A variety of concept images from the planned game have since been unearthed from the blogs of former Next Level Games artists.
The logo lined up for the project.
Titans attempted to add a bold, new spin on the formula of previous WWE games. Its art style was very different from the norm of the series, featuring exaggerated character designs and more cinematic locales for its stages.
The level settings of WWE Titans were varied and diverse, in comparison to other wrestling games. They ranged from urban environments, like the rooftops of a sprawling city, to the top of an old castle in a desolate, snowy wilderness. It appears that some of the individual wrestlers had arenas dedicated to them, as one of the concepts is labelled “Cena Stage”.
Alongside a number of established wrestlers, the team also experimented with its own original cast members made for the game. In one of the drawings created for the project, we can see they played around with the idea of adding anthropomorphic warriors, based upon animals like crocodiles and bears; in addition to sorcerer characters.
Original character ideas created for the game, including anthropomorphs.
Aside from the stylised look of Titans, there remains little information available on its planned gameplay mechanics. One big feature we have been able to ascertain is destructible environments, which appear to have been one of the title’s key focuses. Work made by one of Next Level’s artists detailed how players would have been able to destroy the walls around the castle arena.
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