New Cancelled Games & Their Lost Media Added to the Archive

Jurassic Park: Trespasser [PC – Beta]

Jurassic Park: Trespasser is a FPS developed by DreamWorks Interactive, which was released in 1998 for Microsoft Windows after much hype and anticipation. The game had a development period of more than three years. Money was the biggest hurdle in the development of Trespasser.

The game severely went over-budget several times throughout its development. Second only to money was time, as the game had to be ready to meet the release of the The Lost World: Jurassic Park film. Originally the game was to be released in the fall of 1997. However due to a number of problems the project was delayed by a year. The rush to release the game caused many features to be either cut, or left unfinished and unpolished.

Due to difficulties coding the behaviour of both arms together developers had to ditch the left arm entirely. A late shift in development effectively changed the game from survival horror to action shooter, and contributed to the many complaints the game received. Lack of experienced management and the use of artists who were unfamiliar with basic game development processes and 3D modeling has also been identified as a cause of problems. Developers struggled for more than two years on some problems and in the end released a game that is set within a very large, attractive, open, outdoor environment. [Info from Wikipedia]

In december 2009, ASSEMbler from the Assembler Games Community, was able to preserve and share an early beta of the game, in which it’s possible to explore the removed Pine Valley level, a Test area and see many other differences. The beta is available to download at the Assembler Forum.

As we can read in the videos descriptions:

This beta show the original far more sexy female character, who has a cut off tank top on, complete with sideboob and cleavage you can look between. The game’s life bar (tattoo) is moved, the breasts more detailed than the final version. The game has less physical objects in it, and runs much faster than the final version.

Videos:

Equinox (Solstice 2) [SNES – Beta]

Equinox, also known as Solstice II, is an isometric 3D action / puzzle game developed by Software Creations and published by Sony Imagesoft in 1994 for the Super Nintendo. In some early beta screens (1991?) published in EGM issue 27, we can notice that the sprite of the protagonist was completely different from the one in the final version.

Final Game:

equinoxfinal

Beta:

equinoxbeta01

Thanks to Celine for the contribution!

Images:

Future Strike (Future Cop LAPD) [PSX – Beta]

Thanks to DCodes7, we found out some interesting info about the development of Future Cop LAPD, a Playstation shooter that started as a new chapter in the “Strike” series. From 1991 – 1997 The strike series has been about Open world mid-air helicopter combat, developed by EA (Electronic Arts).

Nuclear Strike -released in 1997- was to be the last game to be released in the Strike series, but originally the developers who worked on the project were going to make another strike game called Future Strike. Apparently the game was going to be released in 1998; one year after Nuclear Strike’s Release.

When Nuclear Strike was released on the Playstation, a “Future Strike” trailer was hidden in the game. To view the trailer you have to play and beat all the game’s missions or use a cheat code. Read more

U64 Winter Break Time! See you in 2010!

Is it snowing outside? Are you waiting for xmas presents? Well, the Unseen 64 Staff is going in vacation, too! From tomorrow, 21th of December, this site will be in “Winter Break Mode”, we are going to relax somewhere around the world and dream about beta games while we are playing  near the fireplace or skiing down the mountains.

Don’t worry! We’ll be back the 7 of January with all the updates and news from the unseen videogames world. In the meantime, there are still lots of things to do while we are away:

– Look and read: Check our archive of beta and cancelled games and read our articles.

– Contribute: Would you like to help the U64 Archive? Read how you can help us to preserve more beta screens, videos and info!

– Interact: Join the U64 Forum to discuss about unseen games with other geeks! We’ll post some updates and unseen-news in the forum while the site will be in winter break mode.

– Share: Do you have a website or a blog? Spread the unseen! Add www.unseen64.net to your blogroll or in your links page, write a post about lost games, talk about U64 with your friends, and share your beta-geekness. If more people know about this site, we could have more contributions and the archive can grow with more screens, videos, and info!

– Play more: it’s xmas time, probably you got some new games or money to spend into new games. Great! If you buy them from Play.com, from Zavvi, from The Hut, from Sendit or from Playasia using our links and banners, they give us some spare money! For you it’s free, for us it helps paying for the U64 server. Thank you guys :)

– Play the Super Mario World Beta Remake: Did you enjoy all those differences that can be noticed in the Super Mario World beta screenshots? With the SMW Beta Remake created by Randy, you will be able to enjoy the game how it may have been in its beta version! This is the best xmas gift for every Super Mario World Beta lover and it’s free.

– Donate: Your best gift for this xmas? Another year of  unseen games preservation! Donate a bit of your love to U64, to help us to pay for the server that will keep up the site for the next year.

[donateplus]

Thanks to everyone that supports U64 with love. See you all very soon!

The Unseen 64 Staff

Pickles [GC/PC – Prototype]

Pickles is a prototype for a platform / adventure game that was developed by Santa Cruz Games in 2005 / 2006 for the GameCube and PC. They created a playable demo for the game running on their own engine, but it’s currently unknown if they ever tried to pitch the project to a publisher. The Pickles demo was shown at the Game Connection 2006 as wrote in an article published on Gamasutra by Lost Level‘s Frank Cifaldi:

“So the soldier monkeys have bombs, and the elephant shoots peanuts like a machine gun and stuff,” explained Alex Neuse, Project Manager for Santa Cruz Games. “The idea is that you’re stacking, and as you stack your teeter tower is toppling. This is just a tech demo, but if we could really devote some time and money into it, it could be really awesome.”

The Pickles demo looked really interesting, but it never evolved into a full game.

Images: