New Cancelled Games & Their Lost Media Added to the Archive

Project Hermes [PS2 – Cancelled]

Project Hermes is the code name of a cancelled platform game that was in development at Lucas Learning in 2001. The game was going to be the “spiritual successor” to Star Wars: Super Bombad Racing, using super deformed characters from the Star Wars universe. It seems that the project was stopped early in development and only a small prototype was created before the cancellation.

Thanks to Jar for the contribution!

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RS Links: reused unused concepts

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At the HG101 Forum Robert Seddon has noticed an interesting topic related to the unseen world. The question from the OP is: what are some unused ideas in games you can think of that was used in other games from the same company? Even if there are not many replies to the topic, we can read some interesting info:

Technos Corp.’s Return of/Super Double Dragon was originally supposed to have a scene in mission 6 where the broken bridge would fall apart, and after sailing for a bit, it would arrive at a steel door behind the waterfall where the boss of that mission emerged from. The door lead to the final boss’ hideout. That idea was later incorporated into Shin Nekketsu Kōha: Kunio-tachi no Banka, also from Technos Corp.

The arcade version of Border Down has a flock of birds at the beginning of stage one. G.Rev thought it would be interesting to make them not appear in the Extra mode, but accidentally took them out of the entire Dreamcast port at the last minute. (They’re pictured on the back of the game.) The birds were added to the beginning of Under Defeat as a belated gift to the fans.

Early demonstrations of Mass Effect showed a dialogue system where Shepard could enhance the conversation physically at certain points, but it got cut. They’re building that now for ME2.

Do you know more unused stuff that were later reused in other games?

Parasite (Ar’Kritz the Intruder) [PSX – Cancelled]

Update: this game was later released and renamed to Ar’Kritz the Intruder for PC only! The Playstation version was never released.

Parasite is a cancelled side-scrolling action adventure that was in development by Virtual Studio (while other sources report that it was created by Sony Interactive or Psygnosis / Sony Studio Liverpool) and it was going to be published in 1996, for the original Playstation and PC. Even if it looked nice and it could have had a fun gameplay (somehow similar to  Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee maybe?), in the end the project was canned for unknown reasons. As we can read in the original press release:

Parasite is a film-noir  thriller with a twist. In it you play an ordinary guy thrown into extraordinary circumstances – possessed by an alien law enforcer, you’re forced to walk the mean streets in search of  undercover extra-terrestrials.  But as the alien slowly mutates your host body, you’d better help him solve this one quickly, before you shape-shift beyond recognition.

Parasite features two quests in one, as you balance your own need for an
antidote with the relentless demands of the alien who’s got an agenda of his own.

Featuring a fully rendered 3D city to explore (with over 300 screens of, this dark adventure game explores an alternate reality where Raymond Chandler meets William Gibson.

There are not much more info on Parasite, but Celine was able to find some more  screens in Game Pro issues 75 and 79.

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Videos (from the released PC version):

Guitar Hero 3 [Beta]

Guitar Hero 3 was developed by Neversoft and published by Activision and RedOctane. It is the third main installment in the Guitar Hero series, and the fourth title overall. The game was released for the PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Wii, and Xbox 360 in October 2007. [Info from Wikipedia]

Dirty Harry noticed that in early videos of the game there are some notable differences:

  • In the final, there is no 1x combo. When no combo is earned the amp is blank, only showing 2x, 3x, and 4x combos.
  • All of the combos are orange. In the final the 2x is orange, the 3x is green and the 4x is pink.
  • The frets at the bottom look more like they do in Guitar Hero II in the beta.
  • The ‘Star Power Ready’ message is much more bland and less exciting than in the final.
  • There is no lightning effect when you get star power.

Thanks to Dirty Harry and Jason for the contribution!

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Engalus [PC – Cancelled]

Crytek was founded by the Yerli brothers in 1999 in Coburg, Germany. Its history starts with the ECTS 2000, where  Crytek impressed all the big publishers with their tech demos at the NVIDIA booth. [Infos from Wikipedia] In the same year Crytek announced that one of these tech demos was going to became a “full” game: Engalus, that was created with the original CryEngine 3D.

This project was meant to be a sci-fi action RPG but something went wrong and it was never released. The first released game from Crytek was Far Cry in 2004, so we can speculate that even if their CryEngine was good, they never found a publisher interested in Engalus.

Thansk to Celine for the contribution!

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