New Cancelled Games & Their Lost Media Added to the Archive

PSP, Sony

Zero Hour [PSP – Cancelled]

monokoma
26-11-2009
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Zero Hour is a cancelled third person shooter / action game that was in development by Argonaut Games for the PSP.  The project started out as a Playstation 2 game, but when Argonaut got PSP early development-kits, they decided to port Zero Hour to the portable console. A demo for the PSP version was shown at E3 2004, but in late October of the same year, Argonaut fired 100 employees and was put up for sale. Lack of a constant stream of deals with publishers led to cashflow issues and a profit warning earlier in the year. Zero Hour vanished with the closure of the studio.

Thanks to USERDANTE and Tanguy for the contributions!

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Unseen News

[New Unseen Interview] CRV from GDRI

U64 Staff & Contributors
25-11-2009
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gdri-interview-01

For our series of interviews with people from various websites related to the unseen development of videogames, this time we got in contact with  a member of the Game Developer Research Institute, an organization dedicated to researching gaming companies and their employee. With over 100 company entries and over 25 interviews, the GDRI archive is one of the best place to learn more about obscure studios and their works. In this  unseen interview we talk about the GDRI site, contacts with developers and games preservation. >> Read the full interview!

Saturn, Sega

Monika no Shiro (Faradoon) [Saturn – Cancelled]

monokoma
25-11-2009
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Originally titled “Faradoon: The Legend of Dragon Castle”, Monika No Shiro (Monika’s Castle) is a cancelled RPG that was in development for the Sega Saturn in 1996 / 1997, by Pioneer LDC. The game could have been almost completed, as they had a final box art and various ads on magazines, but for some reasons it was never released in the end.

It seems that a playable demo of Monika No Shiro was available at the Tokyo Game Show 1997 (?). Thanks to Raizing from Sega Saturno we can take a look at a trailer and many images from the game! You can find more info on the  game (in spanish) in the Sega Saturno Forum.

Thanks to Celine for the contribution and to Rod_Wod for one of the scans!

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Playstation 2 (PS2), Sony

Siren: Special Edition [PS2 – Unreleased]

yota
24-11-2009
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Siren is a survival horror released by Sony for PS2 in 2004. A special edition of the game was supposed to be released on 7th October of the same year, but it was suddenly canceled, probably due to the first version’s poor sales.

The special edition would have featured:

  • An easy mode
  • An new hint system that could be consulted before playing a level
  • An extra mode where a challenge was added in each level, such as playing with invisible or faster enemies, without the sight-jack,  using only the first-person view, time trials which had to be completed without being seen, and so on.
  • Complete profiles of all characters
  • A making-of documentary
  • An interview with the producer
  • A video about the event that was added in the western release.

toyama2

It seems that Toyama was having fun playing the game as himself . Of course, this polygonal model was not used in the final version. More interestingly, we can see a mysterious text that says “over seventy characters” in the screenshot. It is unlikely that there were going to be so many characters in the game, but we don’t have any official explanation about this writing.

Thanks to sweetiecandypie for the contribution! Russian translation of this article thanks to Sergey Tyutin.

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Unseen News

RS Links: the lost Street Fighter II HD’s Intro

monokoma
24-11-2009
1 Comment

Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix is a remake of the famous fighting game, that was released for the PSStore and XLArcade in november 2008. The game uses high definition graphics drawn by UDON Entertainment, at least in the gameplay sections. Robert Seddon linked us to the official UDON blog, where we can read that:

While everyone knows that UDON recreated HD versions of all the sprites, backgrounds, and character select shots…what you don’t know is that we also recreated the classic intro sequence for the game!

Unfortunately, it did not make it into the final version of the game. But, presented for here for the first time, we have the the full intro with redone HD artwork by UDON!