New Cancelled Games & Their Lost Media Added to the Archive

Jaguar, Others, Playstation, Saturn, Sega, Sony

Rayman [Beta – Jaguar, Playstation,Saturn]

U64 Staff & Contributors
29-07-2008
12 Comments

Rayman is a video game designed and published by Ubisoft. It was originally released in September 1995 for the Atari Jaguar and MS-DOS, and in November 1995 for the Sony PlayStation and Sega Saturn. A port of this game was to be released for the Sega 32X, but when the system died off due to low popularity, the port was canceled. Rayman is a traditional side-scrolling platform game which revolves around the titular character’s quest to save his world from the evil Mr. Dark.

Early in its development, Rayman was going to be about an eleven-year-old boy named Jimmy. Jimmy takes advantage of the realms that he discovers within his computer to create a fantasy world called Hereitscool. When evil invades Hereitscool, Jimmy turns into a superhero named Rayman to save Hereitscool. This idea was scrapped, and Rayman is his own being in his own world in the final version. There were a few comments in the story, such as “Sorry folks, this apparently can’t last. Do you want to play or what?”, but they were cut for the final version.

[Info from Wikipedia]

In these old screens from the back of the box from the Jaguar version, we can see some beta-differences.

beta rayman video:  there is no sound and also the life icons are different. The life is in the top middle along with 8 life dots and instead of the orbs count you have a blue guys count but in the final version life count is in top left at the edge of the screen and the blue orbs in the top right rayman can also walk on his hands in this video (not sure about the final version).

Thanks to The_IT_08, Wilco and kieranmay for the contributions!

Images:

Videos:

Unseen News

Updates on the Stop ‘n’ Swop restoration: Ice Key in DK64

monokoma
28-07-2008
No Comments

Stop ‘N’ Swop is a hidden feature in Banjo-Kazooie. Rare announced that special areas and items in the game could only be reached by completing certain tasks in its sequel, Banjo-Tooie. BT was released in 2000 and offered a way to retrieve the items but without the need to acquire them in Banjo-Kazooie. It was later discovered that Banjo-Kazooie contains seven special items which can be accessed using in-game cheat codes or by using a cheat cartridge. These items would then be viewable in a menu entitled “Stop ‘N’ Swop”. There was also an inaccessible Ice Key shown in the sequence, which induced gamers to search for a way to get it.

banjoicekey.jpg

In 2004, a patent filed by Rare was published which suggests that Stop ‘N’ Swop involved swapping cartridges with the power off to transfer data. The information would be momentarily retained by utilizing the Rambus memory in the Nintendo 64. As a result of changes done to the Nintendo 64 systems produced in 1999, the system could no longer do this effectively. [Info from Wikipedia]

At the RareWitchProject website they are working from many years to research the mistery behind the “Stop ‘n’ Swop” and a couple of days ago they have found another interesting proof of the Banjo kazooie / Donkey Kon 64 connection. As SubDrag says in his latest news: “DK64 has always had a mysterious connection to Stop ‘n’ Swop. In our DK64/BK SNS Special, we broke a revolutionary news story about Stop ‘n’ Swop originally not being between BK and BT, but BK and DK64!”. Runehero has find a way to activate the Ice Key in DK64, that was meant to open a secret door in the game!

For more info you can read the original topic in the RWP Forum! Huge props to Runehero and all the RWP users :)

Microsoft, Xbox, Xbox 360

Sabreman Stampede [XBOX / X 360 – Cancelled]

monokoma
27-07-2008
2 Comments

Do you remember Donkey Kong Racing for the GameCube? When Rare was sold to Microsoft in 2002, they also announced a racing title. As they could no longer use the Donkey Kong characters, rumours appeared saying that the game was being reworked into a racer starring Rare’s own Sabreman.

In 2003, Microsoft trademarked the title “Sabreman Stampede“, it appeared as if there was the final confirmation. In March 2004, Rare answered the following in their Scribes when asked whether Donkey Kong Racing was still alive:

“Well, yes and no. It’s not called Donkey Kong Racing any more, it’s not for the GameCube any more and by this point I’d imagine so little of the original art and code remains that it’s barely even the same game any more, but yes, it’s still coming out. In some form. Wait and see, if you haven’t already picked up on the new title that’s been unofficially floating around the electrical interweb for months now.”

It was not until 2008 that we saw how much the game had changed as an unanonymous poster leaked a video on Youtube (you can find it in our gallery beneath). Developed by a team of which many worked on Starfox Adventures or Jet Force Gemini, Sabreman Stampede had evolved from a racer into a full adventure. One could hardly notice that it had started out as Donkey Kong Racing.

In late 2004 it was decided to port both Kameo and Perfect Dark Zero from Xbox to Xbox 360. As the Kameo team did not have enough resources,  members of the  “Sabreman Team“, as such they were later credited, were asked to help out. However, this also meant that Sabreman Stampede had to be put on hold, even though porting and reworking it for a Xbox 360 release had already begun. After six years Sabreman Stampede was cancelled. Having started out as a Diddy Kong Racing successor, evolving into a title in which you were riding herds and then becoming an adventure game, its development was stopped due to a lack of focus in design.

As we can read in an  interview with Lee Musgrave:

Donkey Kong Racing was obviously pretty heavily tied to Nintendo as a franchise, and as Rare approached the finalization of a buyout deal with Microsoft it was clear that the game had no future, at least with the ape’s as characters. We switched it around to be a Sabreman game, and there was a great early Xbox prototype – but someone, somewhere decreed that it was a little too old-school for the kind of ‘revolutionary gaming experiences’ that the Xbox was capable of delivering, and so it started down a path of meandering changes, updates and ‘evolution’ that finally saw it run out of steam and fall over. There were some great ideas in the game as it developed though, and I still look back to the early racing game design and think we could have done something great with that.

This was all vaporware until July 2008, when Transparentjinjo added a video of the Xbox 360 prototype on his YouTube channel.  It seems that Stampede had a long and interesting development history, that sadly ended in a cancellation. Even if we will never be able to play the game, we are happy that some proof of Sabreman Stampede’s existence can be preserved!

Special thanks to Transparentjinjo.

Artworks:

Videos:

Playstation 2 (PS2), Sony

WCW Mayhem 2 [PS2 – Cancelled]

U64 Staff & Contributors
26-07-2008
2 Comments

WCW Mayhem 2 was a professional wrestling video game to be published by Electronic Arts. The game was rumored to have been developed by AKI for the Sony PlayStation 2. A branching storyline as well as over 1000 moves would accompany the game. Match types like first blood and gauntlet were going to be implemented as well. Unfortunately for fans, WCW Mayhem 2 was never completed as the WWF’s purchase of the WCW in March of 2001 negated Electronic Art’s licensing deal. The technology and engine, however, were later used in part for EA’s future wrestling title, Def Jam Vendetta.

Thanks a lot to Steven Diggs Jr. for all these info and screens!

Images: