New Cancelled Games & Their Lost Media Added to the Archive

Nintendo, SNES + Super Famicom

Thunder in Paradise [SNES – Cancelled]

monokoma
16-07-2010
No Comments

Thunder in Paradise is a cancelled action game that was in development in 1994 for the Super Nintendo by Software Toolworks. The game was based on the TV series of the same name, starring Hulk Hogan, and it would have had at least 3 different gameplay modes, as we can see from the screenshots in the gallery below, found in  EGM issue #63.

As wrote by Evan G in his article on SNES Central, it’s possible that  the Thunder in Paradise game was never released because the TV show was cancelled in late 1994 for quality reasons. It would have been an economic risk to complete and publish a game based on an unsuccessful TV show.

Another Thunder in Paradise game was released for the CD-I, but it’s different from the SNES version.

Thanks to Celine for the contribution!

Images:

Leaked, Nes / Famicom, Nintendo

Titan Warriors [NES – Unreleased]

monokoma
15-07-2010
1 Comment

Titan Warriors is a cancelled shoot ’em up that was developed by Capcom for the NES / Famicom, in 1988. The game was meant to be a sequel of Vulgus, an arcade shooter developed and published by Capcom in Japan in 1984. An almost complete build (with just some bugs) of Titan Warriors was somehow leaked online, and you can download it at the Lost Levels Forum. For more info about this project, you can read a nice article written by Frank Cifaldi for 1UP’s Retro Gaming Blog.

Images:

Videos:

Game Boy (+ Color), Nintendo

Super Mario Land 2 [GB – Beta]

monokoma
14-07-2010
1 Comment

Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins is a platform game developed and published by Nintendo in 1992 for the original Game Boy. It seems that Mario Land 2 changed a lot through its development, as we can notice by a series of beta screnshots found by BigFred in an old magazine. As he wrote in our Forum:

None of these scenes exist in the game in this form. There is no exit shaped like a mushroom. There are also no mushrooms in the jelly (?) stage. The status bar is different and the world map doesn’t match the final release either. Compare to the complete maps on this website: www.vgmaps.com/Atlas/GB-GBC/

Also, ace.dark found a different title screen planned for the english version.

Images:

Nes / Famicom, Nintendo

Screwballs Superleague [NES – Cancelled]

monokoma
13-07-2010
No Comments

Screwballs Superleague is a cancelled brawler / action game that was in development in 1990 by Rare. The game had two modes of play, battle mode and cooperative play: players would each start a level in their own “spin engine”, which would spin-up the character from their normal state into a spinning top. Players could exit the “spin engine” at any time, but it took time to spin the character up to full speed: the faster they were spinning, the more energy they had to throw either another player out of the battle arena (in battle mode) or an enemy monster (in coop mode).

As they player bashed into things, and over time, their spin energy would decrease making them more vulnerable to attack, so they would need to periodically head back into their own spin engine to spin-up to full power again.

Sadly Screwballs Superleague was canceled when the lead programmer left Rare. The game was pretty fun, but was months away from being completed and at the time they did not have a publisher for it yet.

Thanks a lot to Simon for his help in preserving some info on this lost project!

Images:

Nuon, Others

NATIVE II [Nuon – Tech Demo / Cancelled]

monokoma
13-07-2010
4 Comments

NATIVE originally started as a “homebrew” shoot ’em up project on the Atari Jaguar platform by German developers Duranik. The project was eventually cancelled after the developers had issues working on the Jaguar platform and they were also concerned about the game being too similar as R-Type. This did not stop them from showing interest in taking the game over to the NUON and they created some mock-up videos of what the game would have looked like running on the platform. Unfortunately VM Labs, the developer behind the NUON technology was short-sighted and was not interested in the game, effectively killing it forever.

Note that while the videos below say that they are from the Atari Jaguar version, these are actually the NUON demos Duranik had made.

Thanks to Adam for the contribution!

Videos: