New Cancelled Games & Their Lost Media Added to the Archive

EggHead Shred [N64 – Proto / Tech Demo]

EggHead Shred was rumored to be a prototype for a N64 skiing game by Paradigm Entertainment, where the player could have took control of Paradigm’s mascott, Egghead, a weird egg with “punk” hair. There are not many more details about this, but EggHead was shown with an interactive video at SIGGRAPH 1994 / 1996 (?) where the audience controlled the game with a motion sensing technology.

The people in the room were able to move their hands left / right, up / down and get a corresponding movement with the image on the screen. You can read more about this show at the Cinematrix website. The game was never released and probably it was just created as a tech demo for the SIGGRAPH show and it was not really meant to be a Nintendo 64 game.

As we can read from BW Online, Paradigm Simulations created the game as an offshoot of defense work. Also, as noticed by Hibana, EggHead Shred was featured on the Nickelodeon variety showU to U” in the mid-1990’s:

“Egghead Shred” by Paradigm – This game had the audience playing a punk-rock “Humpty Dumpty-like” character as he skied his way down a obstacle-laden slope of frying pans and vicious forks (no kidding!). The stunning graphics were produced by a host of Silicon Graphics Reality Engine-based workstations while the audience utilized the Cinematrix IAP as the control interface.

It would be nice to find a video from this U2U episode to see Eddhead in motion.

Thanks a lot to Gilgamesh, Zach and Hibana for the contributions!

Images:

Video:

Shantae 2006 [DS – Cancelled]

shantaedslogo.jpg

The original Shantae is a platform game created by Matt Bozon for the Game Boy Color. It was produced by WayForward Technologies and distributed by Capcom. Various Shantae sequels were planned for the GBA, GameCube and the DS, but never released. In the first Shantae Club newsletter (May 2008), Wayforward revealed some interesting infos about the DS version of Shanate: “In 2006-2007 we hit pretty hard, with a massive undertaking to redo the cast of hero and enemy sprites, and about half of the sequel’s backgrounds were created by Read more

Sonic 1 Beta Remake Project @ Sonic Retro

sonicbetaremake.jpg

This is probably an old news for hardcore Sonic fans, but everyone else will be happy to know that at the Sonic Retro website they are working on a playable remake of the Sonic 1 beta! As they write on the project page: “Sonic 1 Beta Remake is a Sonic 1 hack created by Mistergambit, first released on September 14th, 2006. This hack has all of the Sonic 1 levels redesigned to look like their prototype counterparts as seen in various magazine screen shots. This hack also has new objects, such as a functioning Splats, The Checkered Ball that was scrapped from GHZ, and more. To make it seem more like a genuine prototype, Some levels are made to look unfinished.

You can read more info and download the beta remake at Sonic Retro! Props to them :)

Here’s a video from the remake of the beta Marble Zone:

Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped [PSX – Beta]

crash3logo.jpg

Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped is a platform game developed by Naughty Dog for the PlayStation. The game serves as a direct sequel to Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back. It was the last platformer in the series developed by Naughty Dog, who then developed Crash Team Racing. [Info from Wikipedia]

In these screens from the beta version there are some differences: an early design of the HUD, changes in the the Load/Save Monitor room and in the Warp room, a missing background in the “Under Pressure” area, a removed bonus stage in the medieval levels, a removed Lab assistant that was supposed to Read more