Celine has found a screenshot and a little description from a misterious Saturn adventure game, that was know as “Chinese Detective”: we cant find any more informations about this title and it could have been cancelled, or maybe released with a different name. Do you have any clue?
Thanks to Celine for the contribution!
Update: this game was really released for the Saturn as “WanChai Connection“, you can find the final boxart and some infos at Segagaga Domain. Thanks a lot to Yakumo for the information!
Robert Seddon has linked us to an interesting topic in the Golden Sun Hacking Community Forum, in which they have found a lot of unused items, sprites and Psynergy spells that were still hidden in the Golden Sun: The Lost Age code! All of these can not be obtained in the final game without hacking. Betweem the unused NPC there’s one that looks a bit like Link from The Legend Of Zelda and we can only wonder if it was going to be a cameo from the Zelda series, later removed for some reasons. Also several characters from the original Golden Sun are among the game’s sprite collection despite not actually appearing in the game. Maybe these sprites are still in there because the developers used the original Golden Sun code to build the second game and they just forgot to remove that old stuff.
[spoiler /List of Unused Items/ /Hide the List of Unused Items/]
398: Divine Camisole – Shirt: Raises Defense and Luck Price: 2700, Defense: 10 Is a rare item Can be equipped by: Mia, Jenna, Sheba. Luck +5
399: Herbed Shirt – Shirt: Reduces Defense Price: 1900, Defense: 7 Is a rare item Can be equipped by: Anyone Use: Herb, Breaks when used.
401: Casual Shirt – Shirt: Restores HP & Raises DEF Price: 50, Defense: 3 Is a rare item Can be equipped by: Isaac, Garet, Ivan, Felix, Piers HP recovery +5
405: Knight’s Greave – Boots: Raise Defense & HP Price: 2700, Defense: 8 Is a rare item Can be equipped by: Anyone Max HP +5
406: Silver Greave – Boots: Raise Defense & Luck Price: 3800, Defense: 11 Is a rare item Can be equipped by: Anyone Luck +4
407: Ninja Sandals – Boots: Raise Defense & Evade Price: 2000, Defense: 5 Is a rare item Can be equipped by: Anyone Critical Hits +15
411: Aroma Ring – Ring: Restores 100 HP to all allies Price: 2300 Is a rare item Can be equipped by: Anyone Use: Healing Aura, breaks when used
412: Rainbow Ring – Ring: Deludes multiple enemies Price: 900 Is a rare item Can be equipped by: Anyone Use: Delude, breaks when used
413: Soul Ring – Ring: Use to raise a downed ally Price: 1800 Is a rare item Can be equipped by: Anyone Use: Revive, breaks when used[/spoiler]
[spoiler /List of Unused Psynergy spells/ /Hide the List of Unused Psynergy spells/] 129 – Reflect A Psynergy usable in battle. No apparent use has been found.
155 – Ma???? (Magnet) A Psynergy usable outside of battle, a ring appears around the player which dissipates after a few seconds. Can be used in Psynergy Test 2 Debug Room to mess with a pile of rope. The ability may cause transitions between locations, and menus to become glitchy.
157 – A?? (Arrow) A Psynergy usable outside of battle, a bow appears in front of the player, and shoots an arrow which sticks in NPCs, and other objects. Can be used in Psynergy Test Debug Room to light a torch, and annoy Kraden. The ability appears glitchy sometimes since it ignores the height-map, and thus may appear at the wrong elevation.
298 – Aurora Field A Psynergy usable in battle. Fully heals & revives your party.[/spoiler]
Huge props to Atrius and all the GS Hacking Community for these finds!
In 2008 Midway were working on various prototypes for the Xbox 360 and PS3: this one was a proto for a third person shooter / hack ‘n’ slash (that somehow reminds me of Phantom Dust), based on Unreal Engine 3 and inspired by Gears of War style cover system, that at the time was known as “Hero“. With the bankruptcy of the company, this project was cancelled but you can find a lot of info in the video below.
In 2005 Rat Bag Games were developing an action game for the original XBOX and Playstation 2, with third person shooter and racing elements. After Midway bough the studio and shut it down, the Rat Bag project was cancelled and team was fired right before Xmas. It seems that a year later, Midway took the assets from this cancelled project to build a “new” Wheelman game, announced in February 2006 and then released in March 2009 for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3.
“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).
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