The U64 army is still growing and more beta-lovers would like to share their time and will to improve this little archive of games that we’ll never be able to play. You know, with more people in the U64 Staff, it’s possible to preserve more unseen games.. or at least trying to. Today we are happy to welcome Franklint in the U64 Staff! He already helped us a lot with his articles for beta Banjo Tooie, Spyral Saga, Spinny and Spike, Savage Heroes and many more.. now he’s officially one of us :) Good luck Franklint!
Killzone (Kin) [PSX PS2 – Beta / Target Render]
Killzone is a FPS developed by Guerrilla Games (known as Lost Boys before) and released in 2004 for the PlayStation 2. It seems that the project was originally planned to be a Playstation 1 shooter titled “Kin”, but after Sony saw their tech demo in 1999, they asked to Guerrilla to switch it to the new console. Below you can see the original Kin / Killzone pitch video, that Lost Boys created 5 years before the final release. This footage was shown at the GDC Europe in August 2010 during a keynote by Hermen Hulst, Managing Director of Guerilla Games. As you can notice, the game and the characters looked a lot different, but we are not sure if the video was still related to the PSX project or it was already changed into a PS2 title.
Thanks to Unclejun for the video (from the Killzone Collector’s Edition) and to Killzone for the link to the GDC Europe article!
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Mortal Kombat: Fire & Ice (Shaolin Monks 2) [XBOX 360 – Cancelled]
Mortal Kombat: Fire & Ice is the cancelled sequel to Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks, that was in development from late 2005 till early 2006 by Paradox (later renamed Midway Studios Los Angeles). A prototype was created for the Xbox 360, to test their new “next generation” graphic engine, but soon the project had to be canned, as revealed by Ed Boon to Game Informer:
“When they finished [Shaolin Monks], the guys at Paradox were gonna do another one called Fire & Ice. It was gonna be a co-operative Scorpion and Sub-Zero game,” Boon said. “They actually started the early stages of that game, but they couldn’t do it in time and under budget, so the project was canceled and kind of went away.”
Also, in august 2009 The Realm of Mortal Kombat fansite was able to get in contact with a former Paradox developer, that shared some more info and a level design concept for Shaolin Monks 2:
It was canceled within a few weeks of my arriving at Midway. I don’t have anything else to show you unfortunately. Half the studio was laid off, and new management was brought in. Then we started work on TNA Wrestling.
A prototype level was built, but that was it. A few design docs were worked on, and a few characters were made in 3D – Scorpion and Subzero. The game was codenamed Fire & Ice – as those two characters were to be the main characters. I was really looking forward to doing level design and construction for it. It was a shame it was canceled.
In 2008 Midway Studios Los Angeles was relocated and merged with Midway’s San Diego office and their last game was TNA iMPACT!
Thanks to MKFan for the contribution!
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FX Fighter [PC FX – Cancelled]
As we can read on giantbomb.com, FX Fighter is a cancelled fighting game, used to promote the PC-FX and it’s graphical capabilities. A demo was shown at the Tokyo Toy Show in 1994. The game was a 1-on-1 3D fighter which used FMV to represent the characters movement. The game was cancelled halfway through development with only 3 or 4 characters done because the sheer size of the FMVs needed to complete the game exceeded the capacity of a single CD.
You can watch a couple of videos below, one taken from a promotional video made by NEC to promote the then brand-new system (shared by Dosunceste), another from AssemblerEx YT Channel.
Thanks to Celine for the contribution!
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Clockwork Knight [Saturn – Beta]
Clockwork Knight is a side-scrolling platform / action game that was developed and published by Sega in 1994 for the Saturn. The game was shown in some magazines and VHS videos before the release of the console, and in this early beta version Clockwork Knight had some big differences, as noticed by Ritz in the Sonic Retro Forum:
Clockwork Knight looks completely different here; 92% of the levels’ foreground content was stripped from the game, the animations and movement physics are noticeably unrefined, Pepper has a different attack animation, the Toy Can has a fucking whacky damage routine (also with an unused animation), and the Lubancy character that wound up totally absent from the actual games is a functional enemy. And it’s all set to an original rendition of the game’s theme!
Thanks to Rod_Wod for the scan!
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