New Cancelled Games & Their Lost Media Added to the Archive

Leaked, Mega Drive / Genesis, Sega

It Came from the Desert [MD / Genesis – Cancelled]

monokoma
10-04-2009
2 Comments

“It Came from the Desert” is a 1989 computer game developed by Cinemaware. It was originally released for the Amiga and the gameplay centers on the player choosing what they want to do by selecting an option on the multiple choice screens that pop up.

This unreleased Sega Genesis / Megadrive version was going to be released in 1990. The game has little in common with the Cinemaware classic as it’s more action oriented: an overhead shooter with the main protagonist running around on foot, and able to walk in all directions. Among the differences in play mechanics, the Sega version allowed the player to create powerups that were fashioned by collecting machinery pieces and joining them together in different combinations.

Note that the Sega version was originally cancelled and never actually released in physical cartridge: only later it was distributed as a ROM  from the Cinemaware website after the turn of the 21st century. Despite the similarity of camera perspective, the Sega version did not appear to reuse any of the graphical elements created for use in the computer-based versions. [Infos from Wikipedia]

We cant thanks Cinemaware enough for their decision to share this unreleased game with everyone, instead to forgot it somewhere in their basement! An interesting interview with the main programmer of this project can be read at SEGA 16.

Here’s an interview by Ross Sillifant with Bob Jacob (Cinemaware)

Ross Sillifant: What happened to the MD/Genesis version of It Came From The Desert? I believe it was a very different game in terms of plot and gameplay, being more akin to an overhead shooter. Why the changes to game format and further canning of project?

Bob: I don’t remember! (getting old)

Ross Sillifant: It’s been claimed that when S.D.I was in process of being ported to
another format, it’s release was delayed as the company had asked the programmer to add extra features and such needed extra time, is this claim true? If so which format was it and what extra features did you ask for and why?

Bob: The port referred to has to be the C64. It was never completed, not because we asked for features, but because the programmer was not up to the task (he later became quite good).

Thanks to Celine for the contribution!

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Others, PC / MAC

World in Conflict [X360/PS3/PC – Beta]

U64 Staff & Contributors
10-04-2009
No Comments

World in Conflict was developed and released in 2007 by Massive Entertainment. They showed lots of trailers before the final release, and one of them shows some things that are different in the final game:

The first thing that we can notice is that the interface is different: instead of being grayish as in the final version, we see a more reddish interface, some could even call it “futuristic”. The “buy” interface has a function left out in the final game: when you click one of the units, it shows it in 3D in a window in the bottom right corner. Read more

Game Boy (+ Color), Nintendo

Green Beret / Rush’n Attack [GBC – Cancelled]

monokoma
09-04-2009
No Comments

green-beretgbc-cancelled

Green Beret, retitled Rush’n Attack in North America, is an action / platform arcade game released by Konami in 1985. In february 2009, www.coplanet.it made an interview with Naps Team, in which they revealed that a Gameboy Color port of Green Beret was in development in late 2000.  Sadly the project was cancelled, probably because of the near release date of the new Gameboy Advance.

Thanks to Celine for the contribution and to Vaettur for the logo!

Video:

Nintendo, Nintendo 64 & 64DD

Thornado [N64 – Prototype]

monokoma
08-04-2009
3 Comments

thronadologo64

Also know as “Turrican 64”, Thornado was an action game / third person shooter that was in development at Factor 5 as a spiritual successor to the Turrican series, but with some inspiration from Metroid. This project was originally announced for the Nintendo 64, but it seems that only an early prototype / tech demo was created before it was put on hold, probably because Factor 5 was too busy to work on Star Wars: Rogue Squadron.

Originally they wanted to call the game “Turrican 64” but they could not settle on an agreement with the rights owner of the “Turrican” franchise, Rainbow Arts / Softgold. Eggebrecht said that it was internally referred to as “Thornado”, a mixture of “Thor” and “Tornado”.

The game would had featured eight levels with shooting and puzzles elements. Additionally, the game had two protagonists, a male and a female  The music would have been done by Chris Huelsbeck again and a sample is still available to download from the official F5 website.

As we can see from the few screens below, F5 realized a nice Target Render for Thornado 64, that was used to show how the game would have looked on the Nintendo console. The scene shows a scenario from the end of time, in which you had to jump over cars, shots to enemies and then fight an huge final boss. That’s only a tech demo though and probably they never created a playable one.

After some time and many delays, Thornado was cancelled for the N64 and Factor 5 tried to move it to the new “Dolphin” hardware (later know as the GameCube). As we know, even Thornado GameCube was cancelled and after so many years the project vanished forever from the gaming world.

Thanks a lot to Celine for the contribution!

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Saturn, Sega

Panzer Dragoon Saga [Saturn – Beta / Unused Texts]

monokoma
08-04-2009
No Comments

Panzer Dragoon Saga is a RPG released for the Sega Saturn in 1998. It was the third Panzer Dragoon game to be released and so far it remains the only game in the series that is not a rail shooter. Like the other Panzer Dragoon games on the Saturn, it was developed by Sega’s internal Team Andromeda development studio. The team disbanded after Saga’s release. [Infos from Wikipedia]

As we can read in an interesting article from The Will of the Ancients, in the early screenshots of the game we can see a beta HUD, unfinished environments, changes in the character placements and other minor differences. Also, in this other article we can read that some unused text is still hidden in the code: “If you put one of the Panzer Dragoon Saga game discs into your PC and open certain files in a text editor, you’ll be able to read the script for the game, which is all stored as normal text. […] However, virtually every section of text contains some lines of script that don’t appear in the finished game; there are bits of conversations that don’t take place, descriptions of items that don’t exist, and other odd things besides.”

In May 2008 Hidden Palace, thanks to donations from The Will of the Ancients community, released various beta versions of the game (from 1996 and 1997) with some differences like a removed Dermot’s Ranch camp area, missing Village of Cainus, different controls & english translation.

Also, Evilhamwizard was able to find a debug menu in the Panzer Dragoon Saga beta (Sept 16 1997 build):

Now, this appears to be the only debug that’s activated for the moment. For some reason, the battle system, the world map (I guess) system, and the menu/title screens don’t have debugs. I went though many of the PRG files, and it appears that some boss battles have special debugs enabled. But I’m not sure. The game DOES have a map select, battle select, and a sound test that’s all on the title screen (the files for the sound test still exist in this build as well as the final, I believe).[…]

Now onto the debug itself. Like I said, this debug in particular can only be loaded on a FIELD map. To get the debug to show up, however, is easy and only requires a second controller (you could probably use one controller and just switch ports). To enable it, you have to press START first to get it to show up on the second controller. Then you have to move the dpad a little to highlight what you want. After pressing start for the first time, you can then use the R button to call up the debug screen with the second controller as well. To select anything from the list, I believe I used the A button. To mess with the variables, ABC on the second controller decrease the values while XYZ increase them.

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