New Cancelled Games & Their Lost Media Added to the Archive

Knuckles Chaotix [Sega 32X – Beta / Unused Sprites]

Knuckles’ Chaotix, is a platform game in the Sonic the Hedgehog series, developed by Sonic Team, and published by Sega for the Sega 32X. The project was build on the Sonic Crackers prototype as the concepts, engine and various other materials of Crackers were almost the same (in Chaotix you can even find some unused Sonic & Tails sprites from Crackers). When Sega decided to create Chaotix, initially Espio the chamaleon was meant to be the star of the game: also in some early screens we can notice a different select screen, there were no objects in the special stages. Various beta builds of the game were released by DRX during the February 23rd, 2008 proto release.

You can find more info on X-Cult and Sonic Retro!

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Tyrian 2000 [GBC – Cancelled]

The original Tyrian was a shoot ’em up developed for the PC by Eclipse Productions (later named World Tree Games) and published in 1995 by Epic MegaGames. A version of Tyrian 2000 was in development for the Game Boy Color, but it was later cancelled to work on the Tyrian 2000 GBA version. The game was eventually leaked online as a rom.

In the Game Boy Color version, the Full Game incorporates a shorter stories (from Episodes 1-4) than the original DOS game, but planet Ixmucane core always gets destroyed at the end, and the levels were redesigned. The rear weapon from the DOS game is not available. Player can carry 2 Sidekick weapons at once, but only 1 is usable at a time. New game modes and items can be unlocked by purchasing Extras using credits obtained by completing a stage. [Infos from Wikipedia] You can find more about Tyrian in here.

Thanks to Celine for the contribution!

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Kitty’s Catch [NES – Cancelled]

Kitty’s Catch is a cancelled NES game that was discovered and purchased by Matt (aka BeaglePuss) from a lot on the Digital Press forums. The game is a two player fishing game where both players play as cats: Pitter vs Patter. It seems that Kitty’s Catch was an independent project by a GameTek developer that was pitched around to different production companies to find a publisher. You collect fish while avoiding jelly fish and electric eels, the first person to fill their bucket then receives a shell. The player with the most shells at the end of the time limit is declared the winner. There are also several power ups obtained by collecting tin cans. You can obtain a larger treble hook, or even summon a shark that can greatly weigh down your bucket. The game is currently owned by BeaglePuss and MrMark0673.

Thanks a lot to Mr Mark for the contribution!

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Metroid Prime 3: Corruption [Wii – Beta]

Retro Studios intended to give Metroid Prime 3: Corruption larger environments than Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, and enable the game to run at 60 frames per second. The developers were also interested in using the WiiConnect24 feature to provide additional content for the game that would be accessible from the Internet. A small Metroid Prime 3 Tech Demo was shown at E3 2005, created with the MP2 3D Engine. Nintendo then demonstrated how Metroid Prime 3 would take advantage of the controller’s special abilities with a version of Echoes modified for the Wii and shown at the Tokyo Game Show in 2005. The title Corruption and some of the first gameplay footage were revealed at Nintendo’s Media Release at the E3 2006 trade show.

From early screenshots we can notice that the Ridley fight in the beta did not have Meta-Ridley as in the final, different HUD, graphic details and thanks to some concept arts we can see various early character designs that were created before the final ones.

Also, thanks to a model viewer created by Interdpth and Revel8n, it is possible to find various unused models hidden in the game’s data. You can download the Metroid Prime model viewer (mpxviewer) in here. If you are able to find more unused models, please do let us know.

In January 2012, thanks to fundraising organized by user over on Assembler Games, a 2006 demo, which documented a beta version of the second planet of Metroid Prime 3, was dumped and released to the community. The proto was developed to run on Gamecube hardware with 128 mb of ram, so it’s playable only on a custom version of the Wii emulator Dolphin. Using the debug menu it is possible to active/deactivate the various power-up and to try the third-person  camera.  The map is still incomplete, so only a few areas are accessible. Apart from minor differences, the general layout of the location is remarkably similar to the final version. Cutscenes are unfinished, and of course  the interface is still based on the gamecube controller.

Thanks to Dark_ViVi for the contribution!

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