New Cancelled Games & Their Lost Media Added to the Archive

RS Links: Mega Man 9 – Removed Character!

Another one of the RS Links updates, this time about a removed character from the new Megaman 9: Robert  Seddon linked us to Kotaku, where they wrote that: “According to Capcom PR dude Tim Ng, there were going to be two female robot villains – but the second girl was scrapped because the developers didn’t want fans to feel like the series was changing too much.” Now, i wonder if there was already a sprite for the second woman, or it was just a concept.. mmhh..

In an interview on GameSpot with Capcom producer Hironobu Takeshita, we can read more info about the removed character:

GS: Are there any robot masters that didn’t make the cut that you can share with us?

HT: I don’t mean to evade your question, but there is one boss we’d love to introduce to the fans in this occasion. His name is Fake Man. He appears on the special stage available in downloadable content. He also makes a small appearance in the main content. This is a big hint! Some of you might have already gotten it by just telling you this. The special stage will be very challenging for most of you, and you may not be able to see him often. Don’t be discouraged. He is waiting for you, to battle you!

[…]

He is just a Honey Bee Robot. Isn’t that way too simple? He was originally to be Honey Woman–a woman robot–but through many redesigning stages, the Honey Bee Robot became a man, and Splash Woman became the first and only woman in the series so far.

Sonic The Hedgehog 1 for Amiga?

A friend of mine found this interesting article in a page of the italian The Games Machine (thanks to Dagho, and to Old Computer Mags!).

The article explains that US Gold bought the rights to port the original Sonic The Hedgehog to Amiga, PC and other platforms (probably C64). The fact that surprise me is that TGM actually provided some screens of the Amiga version! Here is a VERY fast translation of the most important passage:

“[…]Recently, Sega decided to port Sonic to arcades (it’s not usually to see a home console title ported to coin-op!) and to grant the license to US GOLD for the recreation of the game in various computer formats. I doubt that on computer (except for the PC) they will achieve the same levels of speed that you can see on console, however, judging from the photos that arrived in the office, it seems that they’are doing very well![…]”

Onestly, they seems too mock-up to me…

Also, Rod_Wod found another interesting rumor from computer and video games uk mag 1990/91

Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge [PC – Beta]

monkeyislandl2ogo.jpg

In the website of ATMachine we can read an interesting series of articles about the old Lucas Arts adventures and between them, we can even find a wonderfull page with informations and screens for the beta version of Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge! Various differences like an early Guybrush sprite, changes in the backgrounds, are show in those screens.

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[Archive Update] Cancelled games? Not really!

Our reader Ceno has helped us to identify some previusly supposed cancelled games, that where released under different names: “Druid: demons of the mind” (Saturn) was released in Japan under the name “Druid: Yami-He no Tsuiseki Sha” – “Dawn Of Darkness” was released in Europe as “Last Rites” for MS-DOS PC –  the FPS “Hybrid” was released, although not in America. A japanese Version was released in 1997 and a PAL release followed several years later, in 2002, albeit only as a budget price release. Cover art and screenshots from the japanese version can be found here. We have updated those games in the U64 Archive, thanks a lot to Ceno for these infos!

Golden Sun [GBA – Beta / Unused Weapon / Debug]

Golden Sun is the first installment of a series of RPG games developed by Camelot Software Planning and published by Nintendo. It was released in November 2001 for the GBA, with a sequel, Golden Sun: The Lost Age, in 2003.

Golden Sun underwent a development cycle of between twelve and eighteen months by Camelot, which is considered quite a long period of time for the development of a handheld video game, and was described as a “testament” to the positive results a long development cycle can bring to a game. It was shown in early, playable form at the Nintendo Spaceworld Expo in Japan on August 2000. North American previewers received the game a few weeks before the release, and IGN noted that the experience of developing Shining Force for Sega helped Camelot develop a gripping RPG for the handheld.

Originally, Camelot planned to create a single title instead of a series, and in the extremely early stages of their project they had created a game design document for the one Golden Sun game to be on the Nintendo 64 console. When it became apparent the N64 was on its way out because the Nintendo Gamecube was coming in, Camelot shifted their focus to making a game on the handheld Game Boy Advance. [Info from Wikipedia]

In these old screens we can see a beta version of Golden Sun, with differences in the graphic style, in the characters design and in some weird places. The Kusanagi is a Light Blade that is found in the Debug Menu of the original Golden Sun. This weapon is impossible to access during normal play and can only be seen using a hacking device. Ironically, this weapon’s graphic is officially used in Golden Sun: The Lost Age for the Light Blade artifact Masamune. If it had been in the original game it would have been the most powerful Light Blade surpassing even the Kikuichimonji. You can find more info at The Adepts of Weyard website and at GoldenSun Wikia!

Thanks to Robert Seddon for these links!

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