New Cancelled Games & Their Lost Media Added to the Archive

Unseen News

The unreleased NES game based on a Terry Jones book

monokoma
21-05-2009
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Robert Seddon has linked us to an interesting interview that TrueChipTillDeath.com had with Neil Baldwin, chip music composer and director at Eurocom (a UK-based video game developer founded specifically to develop games for the NES), in which he revealed a previusly unknown (?) – and unreleased – NES game:

“I do remember the game very well. The game was practically finished. We just kind of lost communication with the Japanese publisher and it got shelved. It was based on a Terry Jones book. I have a ROM of it. I’ll have to see if I can twist some arms and get the game ROM released like Hero Quest. The unreleased game [is] actually pretty good. I seriously would love it to get out into the community; if only to put the music into context. It’s a role player, similar to the old Zeldas. It was one of those rare occasions when I actually paid attention to what was in the game. “

You can check the full interview at TCTD. It’s nice to know that he’s interested to share the game with the community and we can only hope that he  could be able to release it soon!

Update: on Neil Baldwin’s Website there are some more info on the game and some “unheard” music tracks to download! The book on which the game was based is “Erik The Viking”

We were producing the game for the now-defunct Japanese publisher, Video Systems and had pretty much completed the whole game. However, geographical and language problems made the testing and bug-finding phase frustratingly difficult. We were almost solely reliant on the publisher finding bugs/issues simply because there was only 4 of us trying to deliver this fairly large and complicated game and as we didn’t speak Japanese and they didn’t speak much English, it made for an interesting process.

Even I had to get involved in map building and putting together trigger/behaviour scripts for the game’s events as well as writing all the music. It was all good fun though and the last version of the game that we submitted to the publisher was in great shape and actually good fun to play!

However, things ground to a halt as the shared frustration of trying to communicate bugs and issues led to a breakdown of the relationship with the publisher and we parted ways with the game destined for the scrap-heap.

Playstation 2 (PS2), Sony

Ikon / Scavenger [PS2 – Cancelled]

monokoma
21-05-2009
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Ikon was a third person shooter / sandbox game that was in development for the Playstation 2 from 2002 to 2005 at Ratbag Games. In three years the project evolved and it was later know as Scavenger, as it was shown at E3 2005.

As we can read on the official press release: “Scavenger’s hero is a loner battling for his survival and searching for a sister sold into slavery. Scavenging, trading and raiding, he builds up his arsenal of weapons to wreak revenge on the men who took her. Centred around a huge desert wasteland, the game features convoy attacks (players pit their skills against escorted convoys to try and steal their cargo) and allows players to trade to increase their wealth, align themselves with different factions, and increase their attack power by modifying their vehicles and upgrading weapons.

As we can read from a former Ratbag developer:

Scavenger was a Free Roaming 3rd Person Action game with exciting vehicle combat and a unique economy simulation that the player could influence and exploit. The player could roam the waste lands hunting bandits and convoys shipping goods between settlements or escort the convoys for a fee. Each settlement produced something the others required, if the player intercepted the goods they could then sell them to the towns that needed them for a higher price. Money was used to buy new vehicles weapons and upgrades. Unfortunately Midway had no interest in taking the project into full production and moved the team on to The Wheelman before eventually closing the studio.

Even if they did find a couple of publishers interested in Ikon / Scavenger, the game was dropped by Rockstar after being dropped by Sony and sadly the development was stopped after E3 2005. Midway bough Ratbag Games and shut them  down with this promising game still unfinished.

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Microsoft, Xbox

Brute Force [XBOX – Beta / Prototype]

monokoma
20-05-2009
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Brute Force is a third person shooter released for the Xbox in 2003. It was developed by Digital Anvil, one of Microsoft’s internal developers. The team had previously worked on games such as Wing Commander, Strike Commander, and Starlancer. Brute Force was designed to be a first-party game for the Xbox and begun in 1999 / 2000, before the console had launched. However development had begun before the takeover of Digital Anvil by Microsoft, and the title was originally meant for PC. Microsoft promptly turned it into an Xbox exclusive title.  Only three months were spent on the concept stage of development, but would spend the next two years on the prototype cycle of development. Brute Force has the distinction of being the last game developed by Digital Anvil, as the studio was closed down officially on January 31, 2006. The staff was integrated in to Microsoft Games Studio in Redmond. [Infos from Wikipedia]

In the video below we can see a comparison between the final character design and some of the early prototypes.

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Jaguar, Others

Phear (Tetrisphear) [Jaguar – Unreleased]

monokoma
20-05-2009
13 Comments

Celine as make us to notice about a couple of interesting posts over at NFG Games (you can read them here and here) in which they talk about their visit to CES 1995, where they were able to play Phear.. the Jaguar game that later became  Tetrisphere for the Nintendo 64.

Tetrisphere is a variant on Tetris in which various shapes are shifted across a sphere and destroyed. The objective of the game changes depending on the mode, but generally depends on removing layers of shapes to reach the core of the sphere. [Infos from Wikipedia]

As NFG Games wrote in their posts, it seems that “Nintendo saw it running in Atari’s booth, walked over to the developer and offered $madcash for the rights to it”. A couple of pages from the original Jaguar’s Phear (aka Tetrisphear) brochure can also be see in there. Also Celine found a scan from EGM 98, in which we can see a Phear in-game screen from the early Jaguar version. Other screenshots could be admired in CdConsoles issue 4 and Game Fan issue 5-3.

Thanks to Celine for the contribution!

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