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New Cancelled Games & Their Lost Media Added to the Archive

Unseen64 has recently been given the opportunity to interview the legendary audio designer Grant Kirkhope, most notable for his work with Rare (GoldenEye 007, Banjo-Kazooie, Grabbed by the Ghoulies, Viva Piñata and more), he is currently Audio Director for Big Huge Games. As we can read on Wikipedia, before joining Rare in October 1995, he played for two bands called Syar and Maineeaxe where he played guitar, and already knew Robin Beanland, another Rare composer. Read the full interview with Grant Kirkhope to know more about his memories about the development of the Banjo series and other unseen Rare tales!

Unseen Features, Unseen Interviews

Unseen Interview: Grant Kirkhope

Unseen64 has recently been given the opportunity to interview the legendary audio designer Grant Kirkhope, most notable for his work with Rare (GoldenEye 007, Banjo-Kazooie, Grabbed by the Ghoulies, Viva Piñata and more), he is currently Audio Director for Big Huge Games. As we can read on Wikipedia, before joining Rare in October 1995, he played for two bands called Syar and Maineeaxe where he played guitar, and already knew Robin Beanland, another Rare composer. Continue to read below to know more about his memories on the development of the Banjo series and other Rare tales!

U64: Thanks for your time Grant! Would you like to introduce yourself to our readers?

Grant: Hello, I’m the Audio Director at Big Huge Games in Baltimore, prior to this I worked at Rare in the UK and was lucky to work on many of Rare’s big titles over my 12 years there.

U64: In your time in the games industry what were some games you’ve worked on that were never released, or that changed drastically throughout there development?

Playstation, Sony

Chrono Cross [PSX – Beta]

monokoma

04-06-2010

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Chrono Cross is a RPG developed and published in 1999 by Squaresoft for the original PlayStation. As we can read on Wikipedia, Square began planning Chrono Cross immediately after the release of Xenogears in 1998. Chrono Trigger’s scenario director Masato Kato had brainstormed ideas for a sequel as early as 1996, following the release of Radical Dreamers.

Developers brainstormed traits and archetypes during the character-creation process, originally planning 64 characters with unique endings that could vary in three different ways per character. As production continued, the length of Cross increased, leading the event team to reduce the number of characters to 45 and scrap most of the alternate endings.

More info about the Chrono Cross beta can be found in the Chrono Compendium:

Before the official release of Chrono Cross, Square Enix marketed a PlayStation release of Chrono Trigger and attached a demo of the game to it and Legend of Mana.[…] This demo has allowed a short look into the late stages of the development of Chrono Cross, offering a few prizes such as a scrapped facial portrait of Kid and missing playable characters.
Serge’s Swallow is tinted green and looks like the Mastermune.
Once the Fort Dragonia sequence is concluded, Serge wakes up in Arni and is instructed to find Leena as usual. Una has no portrait, hampering the suggestion that she was once planned to be a playable character.
The most glaring difference is the presence of a seemingly new character in Pierre’s slot. Since Pierre’s dialogue icon was already in its final state, it’s probable that this was an earlier design for Pierre.
There’s a different Viper Manor Study window.
There’s a different Lucca drawing.
Yasuyuki Honne is the artist of the Chrono series, and made some background art that was never used in the final game.

There’s also an incomplete debug room in the beta demo and some unused characters can be seen in the Chrono Cross artbook.

Also, GlitterBerri translated the Chrono Cross Ultimania interview in which we can read about some ideas that were never used in the final game. You can read the full interview at BerriBlue or in the Chrono Compendium.

Thanks to ace.dark and Megalol for the contributions!

Images:

Arcade, Others

Marble Man: Marble Madness 2 [Arcade – Cancelled]

monokoma

04-06-2010

3 Comments

As we can read on Wikipedia, Marble Madness is an arcade video game designed by Mark Cerny, and published by Atari Games in 1984. It is a platform game in which the player must guide an onscreen marble through six courses, populated with obstacles and enemies, within a time limit. The player controls the marble by using a trackball.

An arcade sequel titled Marble Man: Marble Madness II was planned for release in 1991, though Cerny was not involved in the development. Development was led by Bob Flanagan who designed the game based on what he felt made Marble Madness a success in the home console market.

Because the market’s demographic was a younger audience, Flanagan wanted to make the sequel more accessible and introduced a superhero-type main character. Marble Man expanded on the gameplay of the original game by featuring new abilities for the marble such as invisibility and flight, included pinball minigames between sets of levels, and allowed up to three players to traverse isometric courses.

Flanagan intended to address the short length of the first game and, with the help of Mike Hally, developed seventeen courses. Atari created prototypes for location testing, but the game did not fare well against more popular titles at the time such as Street Fighter II.

Atari assumed the track balls accounted for the poor reception and commissioned a second model with joystick controls. Because the new models were met with the same poor reception, production was halted and the focus shifted to Guardians of the ‘Hood, a two-dimensional beat ’em up game. Marble Madness 2 was never officially released, but the few proto machines are in the hands of various collectors.

Thanks to kieranmay and Celine for the contributions!

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Videos:

Playstation 2 (PS2), Sony

God of War 2 [PS2 – Beta]

monokoma

03-06-2010

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God of War 2 is an action adventure developed by SCE Studios Santa Monica and published in 2007 by Sony for the PlayStation 2. In the final game it’s possible to unlock a bonus video in which to take a look at some removed levels, as the Colosseum, an Aquaduct, the Rhode’s Marketplace, Atlantis and The Tomb, plus some test / debug levels as the one in the river. An unused move was also found in the game’s code.

Videos: