Our nice friends Robert Seddon and Batzarro have linked us to an intersting news that was spotted on Game Set Watch and Gamasutra, that talks about the find of some screenshots from “Titan Project”, an HALO inspired Massive Multiplayer Online game that was in development at Ensemble Studios, but was cancelled in 2007.
Ensemble Studios has recently closed (for financial problems?) after they had finished to work on Halo Wars and a supposed former employer of the team has started to share screens and some infos about the cancelled games that he worked on. On his Flickr Account we can see a wonderfull collection of images from Titan, and on his blog we can read that: “In 2005 Ensemble Studios completed Age of Empires III. Following that, several game prototypes (a major one was ‘Wrench’, more at a later point) were developed. One of them was a Halo inspired MMO codenamed Titan; cancelled after around two years in June 2007.” Read more
At the Digital Press Forum, van_halen has posted some photos from a prototype version of Super Mario Kart, a “beta” with some interesting differences, like early version of some of the sprites, different layout and music in some levels, different title screen, select screen and “choose-your-driver” screen, missing “black X” from the Lakitu’s flag (when you drive in the opposite direction), a flying Super Koopa and missing reward cups in the ending scene. Check the original topic for more infos. Huge props to van_halen for sharing these images!
In an old magazine, MathUser has even found a couple of screens that show a different design for one of the tracks, maybe an early version of the Mushroom Cup Round 2, as Madou has wrote in the HPZ Forum
Konno: Originally, the development of Super Mario Kart began with the idea of creating a two-player racing game in contrast to the single-person gameplay of F-Zero.
Miyamoto: Just so there’s no confusion, however, I should point out that we didn’t set out to create a two-player version of F-Zero. We set out to make a game where we could display the game screen for two players at the same time.
Konno: With more than one player, it would have been impossible to illustrate the high speeds of F-Zero.
Iwata: Why did you decide on using Mario?
Konno: Well, in the very first prototype, there was a guy in overalls sitting in the kart.
Iwata: Wait just a minute! I can’t let that slip by. Did you just say a guy in overalls?
Konno: Sounds like Mario, doesn’t it? It wasn’t like I forgot to put Mario’s beard on him or something, though… (laughs)
Miyamoto: For F-Zero the characters were seven heads tall, but for Super Mario Kart, we decided on three heads tall characters in order to suit the design of the karts.
Iwata: How long was it before Mario himself actually appeared in the karts?
Konno: It was about three to four months after we started development, when we had created a prototype involving two karts racing simultaneously.
Miyamoto: At first, no racing was involved. It was just two karts moving around freely. Then we noticed that it looked neat if you stopped one car and looked at the other car flying by. We decided to see what it would look like with Mario in one of the karts, and everyone thought that looked even better. Who knows, maybe the designer who drew the overalls on the earlier guy intended that it be changed to Mario all along! (laughs)
Konno: Back then, instead of a banana peel as an item, there were little oil cans. If you threw one out, the oil would spill, sending the karts spinning.
Iwata: How did you come to make the race and battle modes?
Konno: We had decided from the start that there would be races, but we thought that it would be good if the game served as a communication tool in which one-on-one battles were possible via some other kind of gameplay rather than simply competing for rank, and someone had the idea of popping each other’s balloons.
X-COM is a series of computer games, started by Mythos Games and MicroProse in 1993. The first three titles were tactical games while the fourth was an action-based space combat/strategy game. The first installment, UFO: Enemy Unknown in Europe (also known as X-COM: UFO Defense in North America) was written by a team led by Julian Gollop. MicroProse quickly had an internal team create the sequel X-COM: Terror from the Deep. Subsequently, the Gollop brothers went straight to work on X-COM: Apocalypse, which would end up being the third in the series when released in 1997. Soon after Apocalypse, MicroProse was bought by Hasbro Interactive. All titles were developed for the PC, with a few ports to the Sony PlayStation and Amiga.
The Dreamland Chronicles: Freedom Ridge was a cancelled game by the authors of the original game (Mythos Games), claimed to having been “essentially a remake of the first X-Com with 3D graphics”. [Info from Wikipedia]
Donkey Kong Country is one of the most famous Rareware games made in Super Nintendo. The technology of Advanced Computer Modeling helped Donkey Kong Country makes a successful fame and great looking graphics.
But not giving much words, the old chimp, Donkey Kong, have been changed during the development. Shigeru Miyamoto first idea was to make Donkey Kong looks like the Donkey Kong Jr., from the NES, the RAREware employers decided to make Donkey Kong looks more strong and looking more “cartoonish” . The Final rendered image have changed, such as, less beefy and with a little less hair. Check the image below: ~You can click the image below to enlarge it~
Also, Robert Seddon has made us notice about a series of Donkey Kong Country unused stuff that some lovely geeks at DKC Atlas have found out in the memory of the game, like unused rooms and sprites. You can read the full topics in here, here and here. Thanks a lot to Robert for these links and props to the DKC Atlas guys for the finds!
Thanks to Lucas and Gabrielwoj for the contribution!
Images:
Videos:
In the Video above, it’s possible to notice some differences:
-The Banana Counter was no limit, it would be possible a “collect all bananas” mode that was scrapped?; -Banana Animations are a Little more faster; -In Funky Flights, Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong don’t jump too high in Final version; -At 4:00 , there is a Concept Art with both Kongs using the Team-Up move, these was used later in Donkey Kong Country 2 and Donkey Kong Country 3; -At 7:35 , when Donkey Kong in running with the Steel Keg, the checkpoint doesn’t activate. It was fixed in Final Version; -At 8:07 , when the player gets s Life (Balloon), the sound effect is really different than the final version; -At 9:00 , it’s possible to see a Debug Coding at the corner of the screen; -At 12:03 , the First Level is Raining. Even if the player (in final version), does reach at the end and go back, this doesn’t happens; -Some of the animations are a little more slow, and some others are too fast.
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