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New Cancelled Games & Their Lost Media Added to the Archive

Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2: March of the Minis is a Puzzle Game developed by NST as a sequel to the GBA MvsDK, a follow up to the Game Boy Donkey Kong game. A playable beta demo of MvsDk2 was available at various gaming conventions, from where it was saved on the DS and then shared online.

Upaluppa noticed many differences in this beta demo, as wrote in his videos on Youtube:

– The music sounds quite different
– There are hearts instead of big coins
– The small coins are rotating
– Mushroom Mayhem is called Mushroom Kingdom
– The status screen is completely different
– There’s a level map available by pressing Select
– The map looks VERY incomplete…
– The first level is completely different
– Later levels have some minor differences
– Some sound effects are different
– There is no time limit

Thanks to Hiccup for the contribution!

Videos:

32X / Mega CD, Game Gear, Mega Drive / Genesis, Nintendo, Sega, SNES + Super Famicom

Akira [SNES MegaDrive/Genesis – Cancelled]

monokoma

24-03-2010

26 Comments

Rod_Wod from the Assembler Forum has posted various scans from the cancelled Akira games (based on the manga / anime with the same name) that were meant to be released by THQ for the Genesis / Mega Drive, Super Nintendo, Mega CD and Game Gear. Probably the screens published in the magazines were all from the same version, as the graphic looks almost the same for all the various consoles. Some more screens were found by Celine in Player One #44, Console Plus #44 and #35. Thanks to Sketcz from the Hardcore Gaming 101 blog for the other scans!

From an interview at Hardcore Gaming 101 we can read a lot of interesting info about the development of these unreleased Akira games:

“It was not so much cancelled or scrapped as it fell into neglect. Larry transferred rights to THQ and we couldn’t get clear agreement on the game elements with the project manager. They didn’t understand the limitations of the SNES. The project was then victim to a number of disasters including the lead programmer leaving, and other work being more pressing.”

A short video from the game was recorded at CES in summer 1994, you can see it below (it looks like the game crashes / freeze at some point). Thanks to Brian for the link to the video!

Images:

Videos:

Others, PC / MAC

Zoiks! (Pandemonium) [PC – Cancelled]

monokoma

23-03-2010

No Comments

Zoiks! (aka Pandemonium) is a cancelled point and click adventure that was in development by Ocean Software’s Tribe team, featuring a cast of classic Hanna Barbera cartoon characters, including Scooby Doo, Shaggy, Fred Flintstone, Penelope Pitstop, Huckleberry Hound and Snagglepuss.

As we can read from the ECTS 1997 press release, in the game’s story Dick Dastardly used a sound machine to rob the Hanna Barbera world of the sounds that bring it alive. Through cunning detection techniques, Fred Flintstone had to trace the devilish Dastardly and put a stop to his mischief.

Tribe, Ocean’s in-house development team, have successfully combined traditional animation techniques with the latest video and graphic technology to bring the world of Hanna Barbera to life. The beautiful animations in Zoiks! allow for maximum interaction and are works of art in themselves. Add to this a stunning ‘surround sound’ soundtrack and speech recorded by the original cartoon cast and the result is a cartoon experience that you can truly interact with.
Zoiks! uses sound in a way no other game has before. Players learn by trial and error how certain sounds affect certain objects and characters, giving them clues to help them track down Dastardly. This format allows younger players to learn intuitively as they play without patronising more experienced gamers.

The game was meant to be published by Infogrames in 1997, but something went wrong during the development and Zoiks! was never released in the end. A little article on the game was published in Edge issue 32.

Thanks to Celine for the contribution!

Images:

Videos:

Unseen Articles, Unseen Features

Perfect Dark Beta Analysis: the removed Face Mapping

As many of you may already know, RARE planned to insert an interesting feature into Perfect Dark: thanks to the Gameboy Camera, you would have been able to photograph your face and your friend’s faces to use them as the face of PD characters in the single player campaign (as enemies) or in the multiplayer mode.

Unfortunately, due to the numerous acts of gun-shooting in American schools, RARE decided to remove this option from the game, to don’t create controversy. A game in which you could have been able to kill a character that had the face of your real friend, would probably have been too much for its time. Here are some screenshots of the removed Face-Mapping mode, perfectly working in the beta version.

Beta Face Mapping

Using the N64 Transfer Pack with the Gameboy Camera attached onto the back of the N64 controller, this message would have appeared on the screen.

Unseen Articles, Unseen Features

Perfect Dark Beta Analysis: Beta Multiplayer

And now we can move on to the beta multiplayer of Perfect Dark.

Beta Multiplayer

One of the most interesting rumors for the Multiplayer mode of Perfect Dark N64 is the one about plans for the game to have an online mode too. During the initial planning there were some ideas to develope Perfect Dark for the 64DD and to use the built-in modem of the add-on for the Multiplayer mode. However, due to many problems the 64 DD was delayed for months and years, and eventually this peripheral was never released outside of Japan. It seems that Rare even though about a special cartridge with an internal modem (as used already by another game, released in japan. See the picture above), but as you can imagine the online structure would have been difficult to develope and soon the idea was scrapped.