Shadow Stalker is a cancelled 2D side scrolling action game that was in development in 1993 by Athena for the Super Nintendo / Super Famicom. From the few screens preserved in the gallery below (scanned from Console Plus #24, EGM #51 and Game Power #25), we can assume that the game was probably going to play similar to Shinobi / Ninja Gaiden, but with lots of huge robots and other mechanical enemies.
Thanks to Alex and Celine for the contributions!
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Demon’s Souls is an action rpg developed by From Software and released for the Ps3 in 2009. The opening cutscene mentions a “Land of Giants” which archstone was destroyed in order to seal the demons that infested it. The broken archstone can still be seen among the others, and many fans of the game thought that this lost / beta scenario was going to be playable in a future DLC, but no additional content was ever made available.
Article translated in Russian thanks to Sergey Tyutin!
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007 The World Is Not Enough is a FPS based on the James Bond film of the same name, developed by Eurocom and published by Electronic Arts for the Nintendo 64 in 2000 (a Playstation version was released the same year, developed by Black Ops). An unused beta level was found hidden in the game and thanks to some GameShark cheats codes created by Goldenboy, it’s possible to explore it to see how it could have been played. A video of this beta “Subterranea” level can be seen below, from SubDrag’s YT Channel.
This is the code to activate the beta level:
D00E0779 0008
813B002C 3FF0
80102EDF 0011
811FFFD8 C300
811FFFE8 C300
811FFFEC C300
D00E0779 0030
80102EEF 0001
800E0931 0000
800E0933 0000
50002610 0000
803B0164 0001While at ANY menu (preferably the first) press L and R at the same time, the load screen will appear twice. Press C^ to rise (or moonjump) then gently tap it to get down in the pit.
Thanks to DCodes 7 we preserved some beta screenshots and videos in the gallery below. For some reason some images bond is wearing a black camouflage suit, which makes bond blend into the night. Also the HUD is different.
In the second screen you can see a bullet-proof glass door / metal detector that isn’t used in this level in the final game. In the same image a MI6 civilian employee is standing near the doorway, in front of the black door. The civilian seen in this image (dark pants, white shirt, dark tie) isn’t in the final build. He is replaced with scientists in white lab overcoats. The black tie civilian model was retextured with different shades of grey and used in another mission of the final game.
The 7th screen shows the top floor of MI6, near the starting position: behind the beta metal detector you can also see a table and a computer terminal down the hallway, not present in the final game. Then we have the security guard standing next to Bond. He is much different from the final. In the beta the security guard is wearing a suit with a hat to match, but in the final he wears a bright colored shirt with a blue body armor.
A PC and a Playstation 2 versions of The World Is Not Enough were planned too, but then cancelled.
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In 1997 RARE made their first appearance in American stores with a FPS that revolutionized multiplayer on consoles. 007 Goldeneye, released for the Nintendo 64, made use of the 4 controller ports to let gamers to waste hours and hours of their free time in front of a TV screen, playing the addicting multiplayer mode. It was probably the first time that it felt so much fun to play a multiplayer FPS on a console.
When RARE decided to work on a sequel, having lost the rights to make another James Bond game, they had to create a new character and a brand new scenario from scratch: the end result was Perfect Dark, still one of the best multiplayer games ever.
Perfect Dark had a long development cycle and it changed a lot before being finally released in 2000. Nobody, except Rare of course, really know how the game evolved, but thanks to all the early images released online, we can try to get an idea of what has changed over PD’s development. In each of these beta screens we can notice what has been changed, added or cut.
Original article written in italian by monokoma in December 2001, english translation by DCodes7 in 2010. Please let us know if you notice some english errors!
This first image is very strange. The color of the walls are different from what we know today, but looking carefully, it may be from the “Air Base: Espionage” mission. The corridor that we can see in in this screen remained the same in the final game, but the walls of the room were initially of a “greeny” color. Also there are 2 computer screens (one at the top and a second on the left of the picture), which if I’m not mistaken are not in there in the final version.
Rush Club is a cancelled racing game that was in development in 2001 by Wide Games (Kuju’s Brighton) for the Playstation 2, with planned ports for the GameCube and Xbox. The player would had to race in various cities (such as New York, Shanghai, London, and Tokyo) against rival street gangs, to reach the final goal before their competitors. Rush Club soon vanished from the PS2 release list and after Wide Games finished to work on Prisoner of War and Pilot Down: Behind Enemy Lines, in 2007 they changed their name to Zoë Mode.
The project was probably canned because they never found a publisher interested in it. The only screens and the video preserved from Rush Club look more like a tech demo than a real game.
Thanks to Userdante for the contribution!
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