New Cancelled Games & Their Lost Media Added to the Archive

Virus [PS3 – Cancelled]

Virus was a downloadable PSN arcade shoot ’em up for PS3 that was in development in 2007 at Factor 5 before its cancellation. It was to be published and funded by Sony Computer Entertainment, who had struck an exclusivity deal with the developer at the time they began to collaborate on Lair. When Lair turned out to be critically and commercially unsuccessful, Sony terminated their contract with Factor 5 and cancelled all of their joint projects. Along with a 3D Turrican reboot, Virus was one of the casualties of the two companies splitting. Both were cancelled in October 2007.

octomush_virus_logo

The logo of Factor 5’s Virus.

Virus is believed to have only been in development for no more than a few months and was planned to be a unique take on the arcade shooter genre. The game would have placed the player in control of tech support employees of various real life companies (including AT&T), as they endeavour to prevent oncoming viral threats from corrupting their networks.

This quirky, miniature sci-fi narrative was represented by a blue bar travelling down a hexagonal tunnel, revolving around it to shoot oncoming viruses. The player would have had to destroy these enemy forces to prevent the respective company’s network from going down. As you can see in the images below, the health of the network was represented by an icon on the HUD which turned from green to red.

Images:

Gun Loco [Xbox 360 – Cancelled]

Gun Loco is a cancelled third person shooter / action game that was in development by Square Enix for the Xbox 360. Players would have took the role of a series of crazy criminals in a prison-planet with no guards, in which they had to fight against each other to survive and take the power. In march 2011 Square Enix announced the cancellation of the project, but without an official reason for the decision. We can speculate that it was because of quality or economic problems.

Images:

Videos:

Donkey Kong Country Returns [Wii – Beta / Unused Stuff]

Donkey Kong Country Returns is a side-scrolling 2.5D platform game developed by Retro Studios and released by Nintendo for the Wii console on November 21, 2010, in North America, December 3, 2010, in Europe, and on December 9, 2010, in Japan. It is the series’s first traditional home console installment since Donkey Kong Jungle Beat, and also the first Donkey Kong Country entry not to involve Rare during the development. (Info from Wikipedia)

Development on Donkey Kong Country Returns started in 2008, but it wasn’t until E3 2010 that it was revealed to the public.

On the Gameplay and E3 trailers, we can notify some small things:

  • -Health Icon is a sightly different.
  • -Game general Font is much different.
  • -0:32 = When Donkey Kong bounces on the three enemies consecutively, he does not preform a spin followed by a somersault, like he does in the final version.
  • -0:47 = Diddy and Donkey Kong team Icon is Cyan, on the Final Version, the color is Blue.
  • -1:00 = The bombs on this stage is much more faster them the Final Version.
  • -1:06 = It’s possible to see again the Cyan color, but on the 2-Player Mode.
  • -1:13 = On the final version of this stage, it doesn’t have “automatic” barrels.
  • -1:20 = The stage don’t have storm and darkness.
  • -1:36 = Different scene.
  • An another gameplay video (which was playable after the E3 event), shows other miscellaneous stuff:

  • -Font, Health Icon and other lighten stuff is a little different.
  • -At the end, the background is Yellow, on the Final version, it shows as Green.
  • On an ANOTHER video, it shows a MUCH different title screen, and other stuff (which was already shown on the other videos)

  • -Different Title Screen (the Buttons, the Logo, the Font and specially the Background)
  • An Show at the Television did show DKCR gameplay (at before releases)… It shows again the other stuff, but we can also see other stuff:

  • -The Instructions appears from no where, at the Final Version, the Tutorial Pig appears in the background and explains the controls
  • The video below shows some animations of Donkey Kong Country Returns:

    Progressing into the Beta related stuff, when you progress in the game, you unlock some concept arts… They are separated into enemies, characters, levels and others…
    Some interesting stuff of those concept arts, are the Levels… Much levels have been changed in the development, such as Golden Temple… Some characters did changed too, such as Rambi, which was to be much more Realistic…

    It was also found on the Game Disc, that DKCR was to have 4-Player modes, still is unknown about it, but probably other Kongs could be in, similar to New Super Mario Bros. mechanism.
    Maybe was scrapped because of Copyrights of RARE:

    Click to zoom-in, it will open in another tab

    Images:

    Those images shows the stuff from previous videos, like the different icons, fonts and etc.