New Cancelled Games & Their Lost Media Added to the Archive

Mario & Luigi RPG 3 [DS – Beta & Unused Stuff]

Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story, released in Japan as Mario & Luigi RPG 3, is a RPG released for the Nintendo DS in 2009. Unreachable normally, thanks to Waluigiuseppe and whoever made the moonjump code, we see some of the normally bowser-only enemies have some leftover attack patterns for the bros. as well. Quite strange and shows that some of these might’ve been programmed without the memo that the bros wouldn’t fight them:

  • (Naplock) The blocks are breakable with jump counter
  • Dark Fawfulbot) A weird 2-3 minute beam attack, dark fawfulbot head uses a beam attack that needs to be jumped.
  • (Choomba) Telegraphs with M and L smoke clouds and only charges, freezes after first turn it seems.

Also, some more differences can be seen in a video (@ 2:13) posted by GigaBowserNS on YouTube:

  • Yoshi Story noises present in the rom (and working when there are no yoshis in M&L3)
  • M&L2 music (glitchy) in the final still
  • Bowser dialogue change during the start of the game
  • No icons for mushroom village inside bowser and the globin icon from the area right of it are missing
  • Some map cosmetic changes in mushroom kingdom

Neo told us about an unused “Life Shroom”: a Beta Texture of a shroom with a heart can be find hidden in the game’s code!

Videos:

Fallout 3 [X360/PS3/PC – Beta & Unused Stuff]

Fallout 3 is a action RPG developed by Bethesda Game Studios in 2008, for the Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC. As we can read on Wikipedia, the F3 project was initially under development by Black Isle Studios, a studio owned by Interplay Entertainment, under the working title Fallout 3: Van Buren.

When Interplay went bankrupt and closed down Black Isle Studios before the game could be completed, the license to develop Fallout 3 was sold for a $1,175,000 minimum guaranteed advance against royalties to Bethesda Softworks, a studio primarily known for the The Elder Scrolls series.

Bethesda’s Fallout 3 however, was developed from scratch, using neither Van Buren code, nor any other materials created by Black Isle Studios.

In the released game there are still many unused items, weapons and perks, while in some early videos we can notice various beta locations and characters. You can find the full list of unused items at Fallout Wikia!

The following YouTube videos show cut content and development content from when fallout 3 and its DLC was in development. Very interesting stuff; almost all of the cut content can be accessed on the PC version and the beta tesla cannon can be found in the broken steel DLC and used on all ports of fallout 3 too.

Thanks to DCodes7 for the contribution!

Images:

Videos:

Cannon Fodder 3 [PSP – Cancelled]

Cannon Fodder 3 is the cancelled PSP sequel of a series of  war themed RTS / top down shooters developed by Sensible Software, initially released for the Commodore Amiga. On 28 August 2006, Codemasters announced that a brand new version of Cannon Fodder would appear exclusively on the PlayStation Portable. The game would have retained its familiar top down view, and the big heads of the soldiers, and for the first time the game would have been 3D. The game has since been canceled by the publisher. [Info from Wikipedia]

As we can read from an interview with Jon Hare (co-founder of Sensible Software) at Cubed3:

It does upset me that three times we started that project. It was a good project, good design, we had an extremely good team in London to develop it. Unfortunately, through no fault of their own, Codemasters hit economic problems and had to sell the studio, so everything just went.

Thanks to Celine for the contribution!

Images:

[Indie Unseen] Embodiment of Scarlet Devil – Beta / Unused

Project Touhou is a Japanese PC game series made by one man, ZUN (working under Team Shanghai Alice), and usually, nothing is left over from the beta’s. However, in Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, the sixth Touhou game, a character known as Rin Satsuki was originally meant to be a playable character, although was cut out of the final game. Her name still remains in the code, and there is only one official image of her, which originally appeared on ZUN’s website.

Update: as Susumu has make us to notice, this image did not appear on ZUN’s website. It is from the Comiket booklet that shows which doujin circles are appearing at that current event and where and when. It should also be mentioned that the picture has never been official confirmed as being her, but is widely assumed to be her, as she’s never appeared anywhere else.

Also Gabrielwoj, had found other two unused sprites in the game:

Probably, a beta sprite of Rin Satsuki. Strangely enough, it was found in Stage 1 Folder, which maybe Rin Satsuki was to be the Mid-Boss of Stage 1.
Or, it is a beta sprite of Rumia (it has similar animations on her arms, but with some different details)

Those one has been found at the EXTRA stage folder, probably, Koakuma was to be another mid-boss for the stage (or maybe ZUN only recolored the same sprites of Patchouli’s Stage [Stage 4])

Notice from the 2 Images: The white colored sprite is probably for some glow, all the sprites in the game have this “effect”.

Thanks a lot to Takoto, Susumu and Gabrielwoj for the contributions!

Images:

200pxth06rinsatsuki

Rock [PC – Cancelled]

Rock is a space combat sim / mech sim / FPS hybrid that was in development in 1999 / 2000 by Singletrack for PC, but later cancelled because the studio was closed. The team planned to combine 3 genres into a single game, to let the player a lot of freedom in how to resolve the missions. It was an ambitious project, as we can read from a preview published in Computer Gaming World magazine (thanks to Roushimsx on the HG101 Forum):

Imagine a game where you can jump into a tarfighter, dogfight our way to a martian plain, hop out, toss a grenade in a Mech to kill the pilot so you can claim the assault robot for yourself, rampage across a warzone in your new weapons platform and finally jump out and enter a building, killing some fuards before you plat explosives to level it – all of this without any load screens to stall the action.

Cooperative online multiplayer was also planned. After Singletrack closed down, the Rock team ended up moving on to Incognito Entertainment (later purchased by Sony) and started to work on Warhawk for the PS3. You can feel that some of the concepts from Rock were implemented into Warhack.

Thanks to Robert Seddon for the contribution!

Images: