New Cancelled Games & Their Lost Media Added to the Archive

Arcade, Leaked, Others

Street Fighter 1 [Arcade – Beta / Proto]

U64 Staff & Contributors
10-02-2010
No Comments

The original Street Fighter made its debut in the arcades in 1987. It was designed by Capcom’s Takashi Nishiyama and Hiroshi Matsumoto. The player took control of martial artist Ryu, who competed in a worldwide martial arts tournament, spanning five countries and ten opponents. [Info from Wikipedia]

Street Fighter 1 went through some changes between the prototype and the final, some of the more notable changes is the main character Ryu’s victory pose has changed from prototype to final, some of the characters not programed into the game, and no voices for the game. Below is a list of noticeable changes, with the help of  Torentsu who was kind enough to do a little digging into the coding, so please if you see him on the U64 Forums, please give him a pat on the back.

The prototype version:

* No Demo Mode, goes to high score table and then back to the title screen
* There are different colors used in the high score table.
* Title Screen animation is different
* Is buggy
* No voice samples.
* Characters share stage music.
* Ryu’s victory pose is different.
* Every sound effect is different from the final.
* Different intro/outro music.
* Instead of best 2 out of 3, you must win a best 3 out of 6
* There is a typo on the victory screen, “Rut Don’t Forget…” instead of  “But Don’t Forget…”.
* There’s no level select, it just goes down a list of fighters.
* The Hurricane Kick isn’t in the game.
* The Build Date is earlier than the final, possibly a demo version of the game
* Enemies are missing from the beta, but the stage maps are there, and there are some differences between the beta and final.

Below is a video comparing gameplay from the prototype build to the final, note some of the changes are shown. If you have any information about this prototype, let us know in the comments.

Videos:

N-Gage, Others

Joe [PSP/N-gage – Cancelled]

monokoma
10-02-2010
4 Comments

Joe is a cancelled action game that was in development by HumanSoft in 2003, for the N-Gage and PSP. Originally the studio produced a Renderware tech demo to pitch Joe for the N-Gage, but a PSP version was also planned. The 2 screens preserved in the gallery below are probably target renders for the N-Gage version and it’s unknown how much the game was progressed before being abandoned. Probably HumanSoft never found a publisher interested in their project and Joe had to be canned.

As we can read from the original press-release on IGN:

Joe is a “commando-type action-platform game”, Joe will boast four single-player missions with up to eight different levels per stage. Throughout the course of his adventure, Joe will make use of his hand-to-hand combat skills as he battles it out against a group of terrorists who have overtaken military bases, invaded important office buildings, and hijacked various trains, boats, and airplanes.

[…]

Additional details are still forthcoming, though it has been confirmed that Joe will utilize the PSP’s linking feature and support up to four players at the same time. A publisher has yet to be named.

Thanks to Userdante for the contribution!

Images:

Mega Drive / Genesis, Sega

Nuclear Rush [Sega VR – Unreleased]

monokoma
09-02-2010
9 Comments

Nuclear Rush is an unreleased shooter that was in development in 1993 for the Sega VR, the canned “virtual reality” accessory planned for the Mega Drive / Genesis. Four games were apparently developed for the system, each using 16 Mb cartridges that were to be bundled with the headset. One of these was Nuclear Rush, in which the players were able to fly with an hovercraft to fight in a futuristic war.

Thanks to Sega Forever we can read the original Sega VR press release that was published in Sega Visions magazine, August/September 1993:

From the moment you strap on the headset, you know that your gaming life will never be the same again. The world you see through the twin eye-pieces of the virtual reality (VR) headset responds as if it were another world, one you can explore by moving around without leaving your chair. […]

You are playing Nuclear Rush, the game that will be bundled with Sega VR, Sega’s new virtual reality headset. […]

Welcome to the year 2032. Get ready for a cataclysmic trek into a post-nuclear gold rush, where low-level nuclear waste is bartered as an energy source. You are posing as a nuclear pirate, piloting a hovercraft through radioactive wastelands guarded by heavily armed robots and drones.

As Iron Hammer, it’s possible that Nuclear Rush was playable even without the VR accessory. From an interview with Kevin McGrath at Sega 1 6, it seems that Nuclear Rush was completed before the Sega VR was cancelled:

My first project, called Nuclear Rush was to design and code one of the games that was going to be released with the SEGA VR Headset. It was a simple 3D shoot-em-up kind of game, but with the VR Headset it became an intriguing experience. We had concerns about creating nausea for the player, which could happen if the graphics are just slightly out of sync with the actual movement of the players head. Anyway, I spent a year on this project, and although SEGA paid us in full and we completed everything, the hardware never made it past prototype stage.

Thanks to Celine for the scan! (found in GamePower #21). You can also see Nuclear Rush in motion from the video below (thanks to  Grooveraider YT channel!).

Images:

nuclear-rush-sega-vr

Videos:

Nintendo, SNES + Super Famicom

Cooly Skunk [SNES – Cancelled]

monokoma
08-02-2010
4 Comments

Cooly Skunk (also known as “Punky Skunk” in USA) is a platform game that was originally in development by Visit for the Super Famicom / Super Nintendo. The game was never released for the Nintendo console, but the title was somehow resurrected (by Ukiyotei?) with some graphical changes for the Playstation and later published in Japan by Visit and in America by Jaleco.

In Cooly Skunk the player takes the role of an anthropomorphic skunk and the game plays much like other side-scrolling action games, featuring a set of special tools including a skunk spray, parasail, a pogo stick, inline skates, digging claws, and a snowboard.

The project was probably canned for the 16 bit system because of  the new Playstation and Saturn consoles, that “killed” the SNES / Mega Drive (Genesis) market. Although released for the Playstation, it seems that the game was “not finished to completion” (at least from what we can read on Wikipedia, does anyone know more about this?). Cooly Skunk remains a collectors curiosity due to the generally unfinished nature of the game and its Super Famicom origins.

Celine was able to find some screenshots of the Super Famicom / Super Nintendo version on Super Power magazine issue 41. A playable demo was found and released online in January 2019!

Images:

Videos: