New Cancelled Games & Their Lost Media Added to the Archive

Microsoft, Playstation 3 (PS3), Sony, Xbox 360

The Witcher: Rise of the White Wolf [X360 / PS3 – Cancelled]

U64 Staff & Contributors
20-07-2009
No Comments

The original Witcher is a action adventure / RPG for the PC developed by CD Projekt RED STUDIO and published in 2007 by CD Projekt in Poland and Atari for the rest of the world. The console version of the The Witcher (known as Rise of the White Wolf) was to be the best version yet, with enhanced graphics, new combat system, and rebuilt pixel by pixel for the consoles. Soon followed financial issues between co developers CD Projekt RED STUDIO and co Widescreen Games as CD Projekt had not been financed in three months after fully committing to the new project. Michal Kicinski, Joint CEO CD Projekt Group for Widescreen Games response popped up as a comment on the VG247 article:

  • All payments were done on time according to milestone plan.
  • Truth is that payments were later than originally planned but this was solely due to delays in production. The delays were growing in the project due to WSG continued to miss the deadlines.
  • Delays and risks of further development by WSG were unacceptable by CD Projekt (this happened even though CDProjekt RED was constantly increasing main team involvement to help in the production). The most important fact is that development process didn’t make planned release date possible and moreover propositions of the new release date were changing few times. Besides the schedule, technical incapability created a risk of missing planned quality which is absolutely unacceptable. And this brought an end in our cooperation with WSG.
  • Currently the works are on hold. We are evaluating all possible options to continue the production.

Some time later CD Projekt officially canceled the console versions of The Witcher: Rise of the White Wolf and is currently working on the sequel The Witcher 2 for PC.

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Mega Drive / Genesis, Nintendo, Sega, SNES + Super Famicom

The Simpsons: Virtual Bart [SNES/MD/G – Beta]

monokoma
20-07-2009
No Comments

The Simpsons: Virtual Bart was released for the Super NES and Mega Drive / Genesis in 1994 by Acclaim.  KeijiDragon (Kei) has recored some videos from an interesting prototype of the game, that is somewhat different from the final version. You can check the annotations in the videos for more details:

Japanese Super Famicom (the Japanese Super Nintendo) pre-release prototype of The Simpsons: Virtual Bart game. Why is it Japanese? The ROM header states that it’s “run” on Japanese systems, or something like that. There are lots of differences in this prototype that are between large and small, and this video goes into detail what’s in the prototype.

Thanks a lot to KeijiDragon / Kei for the contribution!

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Playstation, Sony

WWF SmackDown! [PSX – Beta]

monokoma
19-07-2009
4 Comments

WWF SmackDown! is a professional wrestling game released on the original Playstation by THQ and developed by YUKE’s Future Media Creators in 2000. Lionheart was able to play a beta version of the game, with some  interesting differences:

  • Start screen is different, different background plus it has “Jan 06 2000” in the top left-corner
  • Debug text is visible during fights
  • No interactivity at all backstage
  • In the final game flames would be coming from the cooker when you whip characters into it, but nothing happens with anything backstage in this version
  • Tables, toilet seats, caskets, steel steps, Handcuff’s and trolleys / shopping carts can be used as weapons. They arent anywhere to be seen in the final game
  • Season seems to be very unfinished (random crashes, storyline text not making any sense) also shows writing with random superstars names with 255 by their name, pressing “R1” or “L1” changes these superstars, “O” views a list of wrestlers in the game.
  • On the screen before you see who your fighting in season pressing sqaure on pad 1, plays a storyline (usually wierd things like 2 of the same wrestler speaking to each other)
  • Pressing start on Pad 2 lets you move the camera around freely during a storyline using the second controller, Pressing Triangle on Pad1 restarts the scene
  • Pressing start on pad 2 during menu screens lets you move the menu screen itself
  • The one handed weapons dont do any damage unless thrown, and the thrown animation is abit glitchy the weapon leaves there hand after the animation has finished
  • “Two groups of two people” mode?
  • A few other small things like Chyna’s skin tone is alot darker in this one, ill try and take a few pics later if anyones interested

For more info you can check his post in the U64 Forum.

Thanks a lot to Lionheart for the contribution!

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Playstation, Sony

Driver 2 [PSX – Beta]

monokoma
19-07-2009
5 Comments

Driver 2 was developed by Reflections Interactive and published by Infogrames for the original Playstation in November 2000. Some beta screens were released in May 2000 and as Vicente has made us to notice, there are some little differences in there: the car shown in the early images is similar to the president’s one seen in Driver 1’s last mission but that model is not in the final D2 game. Also, the car is in an unkwnon area in the Rio De Janeiro city. In the video from Driver2Vegas Youtube Channel, we can notice some other removed cars (the Trans Am) without tinted windows, longer drawing distance,the Chicago landscape with skyscrapers looks slightly different, early HUD and gates on the bridge.

Thanks to Vicente and Gamersin for the contribution!

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Nintendo, Wii

Disaster: Day of Crisis [Wii – Beta]

yota
18-07-2009
No Comments

Disaster: Day of Crisis is a multi-event game developed by Monolith Software, first showed in a non-playable form at e3 2006. At the time, the game was compatible only with the classic controller, and the gameplay was much more action-oriented. In 2007 Monolith reworked the interface dramatically in order to take advantage of the Wiimote. Disaster was finally released in 2008.

Unfortunately we don’t have much footage of the 2006 build, but in the screenshot and in the videos of this page we can see how different was the HUD.

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