ZethN64 has found a rather unused enemy function in Zelda: Ocarina of Time, that only works when the 64DD code is on (aka when the 64DD + Zelda URA expansion would be attatched to the 1.0 game). An invisible Redead enemy that isn’t used in neither OOT or MQ. Check the video below!
Sorcery [PC – Cancelled]
Sorcery was to be the first, ambitious project of game developer Starbreeze Studios, who have been responsible for such titles as the Chronicles of Riddick series, and Enclave. They have developed games that have been seen on all of the major consoles since the Xbox. Sorcery was conceived in 1997, long before either of these well-received titles.
Little information is available about Sorcery, and what we do know comes largely from interviews with the developers. Sorcery would have been a fast-paced RPG, with a “high fantasy” setting. The player would have taken the role of a young mage seeking to restore order in a war-torn continent.
The unique thing about Sorcery‘s gameplay is that it was being created with an almost exclusively magical combat system. Instead of using weapons, the protagonist would have used various spells to take down opponents. The creators described the gameplay of the concept as “a cross between Diablo and Quake, with a huge world to explore and lots of quests to solve”. Indeed, the game would have contained a number of different activities and tasks for the player outside of the main plot, giving the game a heightened sense of freedom. Despite its fast-paced nature, strategy and puzzles would have been important gameplay elements.
Another promising aspect of the game was its custom-made 3D engine. The engine, created by Starbreeze, included support for movable mirrors/portals, illuminated volumetric fog, skeleton animation/deformation, animatable multitexturing materials, dynamic lighting, day/night cycling and curved surfaces with variable tesselation degrees depending on a user’s computer’s capabilities. In 1998, when 3-dimensional gaming was still in its infancy, these technologies would no doubt have been a very impressive.
Sorcery would also have contained a multiplayer mode, although the developers have admitted that this part of the game was only going to be included after the single-player game was completely polished. We know that the multiplayer side would have included team play, action and “plenty of possibilities to develop your own playing styles”, according to one of the game’s developers.
Starbreeze Studios originally found a company called Gremlin Interactive to publish Sorcery. However, after Starbreeze merged with O3 games in 2001, the game was sadly deprioritised, and never reached completion. However, the company has gone on to make excellent games since the project’s demise.
Thanks to Megalol for the contribution!
Sources:
- http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/starbreeze
- http://www.giantbomb.com/starbreeze-studios-ab/65-1768/
- http://forum.unseen64.net/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2537&p=28752
- http://www.ebobber.org/wiki/index.php?title=Starbreeze_Studios
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Avatar Sports [Xbox 360 – Prototype]
Avatar Sports was a sports game in development at Rare Ltd. in 2007 / 2008 before Kinect development started. It used an unpublished motion controller that can be compared to the Wii Remote. Little is known about this title apart from the use of Microsoft’s Avatars and the inclusion of tennis. Development was halted when the motion controller was abandoned and first Kinect/Natal prototypes emerged. Rare then started to create their Kinect Sports, released in november 2010.
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LA Noire [Beta / Cut Content – PS3 / Xbox 360]
LA Noire is a third person action / investigation game developed by Team Bondi and published by Rockstar in 2011. In an interview with Brendan McNamara, we can read that the game was going to have a desk where you would have to deal with burglaries and fraud – the desk was known as Bunko and Burglary. The entire desk had about eleven cases, all of which were cut due to the fact that the cases couldn’t fit on entire blue ray disk. Quoting McNamara from another article:
“We had a Bunko and Burglary desk – bunko is fraud and burglary is just people robbing houses and stuff – we had eleven full cases for that, which we wrote and did the design for to a certain extent – we even did the art for them too, but it just got to a point where we were never going to fit it on one Blu-ray,”
Evidence of the Burglary desk can be found in the game, such as at the beginning of the homicide desk, where the captain of homicide greets Cole Phelps after he earned a promotion from burglary. It’s also implied during the case Manifest Destiny that Harold Caldwell was Cole’s partner for that desk. Dialog implies that Harold Caldwell knows Cole Phelps – again implying that burglary was going too planned for LA Noire.
Finally, there was also a type of Mini-game (that was also cut) where the player could have made a captain angry. The player and assigned partner would have to complete certain crimes (car chases, shootings, etc) in order to get another case from the captain. Quoting the article
“There was a kind of system where if you failed a case your captain would scream at you and you’d go out and do hot car chases or smaller robberies and muggings and all that kind of stuff in the world”
“You’d have to do enough of them to get to a point where you get offered another case, but as I said that got cut because I thought it was too much of a distraction.”
If there is any concept art from the cut desk, please share it here so we can add it to the article!
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GB Rally 2 Advance [GBA – Cancelled]
GB Rally 2 Advance is a cancelled racing game that was in development by Raylight Studios for the GameBoy Advance. Only an early demo without sound was created, thanks to their Blue Roses Engine for GBA. It’s curious that despite the 2 in the title, there wasn’t actually a GB Rally 1 available commercially because it went unreleased on the GameBoy Color. Same fate shared by the sequel.
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