New Cancelled Games & Their Lost Media Added to the Archive

Sonic Colors / Colours [Wii – Beta]

Sonic Colors or Sonic Colours is a platform game developed by Sonic Team for the Wii. Tehe video below is from the e3 demo of Sonic Colours, there are some minor differences between this and the final.

-The music has much more bass than in the final.
-The announcer shouted “POWER UP” whenever a wisp was collected.
-The announcer shouts “SPIN” when the yellow wisp is used, while in the final he shouts “DRILL”.
-Music doesn’t change when using the green wisp (the laser wisp).
-Some of rings and wisp power-ups are in different locations than in the final.
-The announcer’s “good, great, awesome, outstanding, amazing!” is different in this version. It was re-recorded for the final.

Thanks to Slashy for the contribution!

Videos:

Babylon 5: Into the Fire [PC – Cancelled]

Babylon 5: Into the Fire is a cancelled space combat simulation that was in development by Yosemite Entertainment, an internal division of Sierra FX / Entertainment, based on the cult TV series. The main story would have been placed after the war against the Shadows, but an in-game simulator was supposed to allow fights against their ships, as well.  As we can read in Wikipedia, work on this game ended on September 21, 1999, when, as part of a corporate reorganization, Sierra cancelled it and laid off its development staff when the Babylon 5 was only a few months away from release.

The game was going to let players to pilot of a Starfury fighter craft, giving the opportunity to “move up through the ranks,” and eventually take command of capital ships and even fleets. Christopher Franke composed and recorded new music for the game, and live action footage was filmed with the primary actors from the series.

In the old Babylon 5 website we can still read some more info about the project:

What ships can we fly?

In the single-player game you’ll be flying for the Earth Alliance. That means that your primary ships will be the Starfury and the Thunderbolt. The Minbari Nial, the Centauri Sentri, the Narn Frazi and the Drazi Sky Serpent fighters will be available in multiplayer mode. The Whitestar may also be added as a special case ship.

Will this game be multiplayer?

From day one, the game has been designed with a robust multiplayer mode. B5’s mulitplayer mode has been shown at 1999’s E3, Gencon and a few other events where gamers have been able to test the multiplayer demo.

Thanks to Brackynews and derboo for the contributions! (scans from from PowerPlay 7/1998 and PowerPlay 9/1999)

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Videos:

Space Fantasy Zone [PC Engine – Cancelled]

Space Fantasy Zone is a cancelled shoot ’em up planned for the PC-Engine, as a weird mix between the original Fantasy Zone and Space Harrier. The game was in development in 1991 by NEC Avenue, but for some reasons it was never released. A playable version was eventually leaked online so if you are interested to know more about the game, you should be able to easily find it with google.

Thanks to Celine and Guilherme Miranda for the contribution!

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Videos:

Gunhead [X360 PS3 – Pitch / Cancelled?]

Gunhead is an action game that was in development by Electronic Arts Vancouver, but very little is known about this project other than a few concept arts that were leaked and posted in gaming forums in december 2009. It seems that Gunhead was an internal pitch at EA that will never see a release, as we can assume from the following quote published on Blue’s News:

On the off chance you were interested in more info on this EA project, the gist of it is that the main character is a guy whose head is a gun. That’s it,” he tells us. “EA has been trying to get this game made for ages now. … It was a pretty lame idea, and we had no real interest in developing it for them. Every so often, I hear it pop up here and there, and it makes me laugh that they are still trying. I really must wonder who’s baby the idea is for it to not have died a well deserved death yet…

The concept arts look really nice, so we can hope that more screens or videos could be preserved in the future.

Thanks to Hey Hey for the contribution!

Images:

Aerogauge [N64 – Beta]

Marcel sent us a couple of screens from an early version of Aerogauge, an F-Zero clone that was released in 1997 for the Nintendo 64. It seems that the HUD was different, but as we never played the final game, we dont know if there are other interesting beta differences. Maybe someone else will be able to notice more differences!

A video from the retail version, the same stage: we can notice the hud changes and different textures. The “car” seems almost the same as the beta version