New Cancelled Games & Their Lost Media Added to the Archive

Iron Hammer [SEGA VR – Unreleased]

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Sega, flush with funds from the Sega Mega Drive (released as the Sega Genesis in North America), announced the Sega VR add-on in 1991. It was based around an IDEO virtual reality headset (HMD) with LCD screens in the visor and stereo headphones. Inertial sensors in the headset allowed the system to track and react to the movements of the user’s head. Because of development difficulties the Sega VR remained only a prototype, it was last seen at computer shows in 1993 and vanished from the release schedules in 1994. Four games were apparently developed for the system, each using 16 Mb cartridges that were to be bundled with the headset. [Info from Wikipedia]

One of these Sega VR games was Iron Hammer, a first person shooter with futuristic aircraft. A prototype of this game was somehow saved from the limbo and thanks to Nicola from Gamescollection.it, we had a brief chance to play it at the VGH 2008, a little videogames expo that took place in Monza (Italy) the last May. You can check the video below to see Iron Hammer in motion.

Video:

Mini Chill Bullies In Super Mario 64: unused enemies?

In the YouTube channel of dudaw12 we can see a video of Mario 64 “hacked”, where there are some little Chill Bullies that are not used in the final game.

 

As hes say in the description of the video “Using Toad’s Tool 64 by VL-Tone, I added the model ID of mini Chilly Bullies in Super Mario 64. Perhaps they were beta elements? Or maybe just a scaled model left in the game? I don’t know.” If you dont remember who Chill Bully is, here’s a description from Mariowiki:

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“Chill Bully is a Big Bully found in Super Mario 64. It has a blue surface and a single golden spike on the top of its head (as opposed to the usual black surface and twin horns of normal Bullies). Chill Bully appeared in Course 10: Snowman’s Land. In this level, Chill Bully walked around on an ice platform above a pool of extremely cold water.” In M64 Chill Bully is just one big boss, but these little ones could have been “ordinary” harder enemies for the same level or maybe from a removed one?

Final Fantasy VII unused text translation project

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Robert Seddon & Glitterberri have finished their interesting translation project and now we are able to read in english all the unused japanese text that was found in FF7 International. Here’s an example: “Another piece of unused dialogue from Mt. Corel; in the English files the dialogue on this map is all from Barret’s flashback with Dyne. GlitterBerri’s translation below shows a bit of extra character development on the journey through the mountains.

Barret: Hey, Cloud……

Cloud: What is it? Your voice sounds strange.

Barret: ……..jeez… It’s nothing.

Tifa: whisper whisper…… (Something’s weird about Barret…)

[…]

Yuffie: Hey, I have to go to the bathroom! I hope there’s one nearby…

Presumably this scene would have foreshadowed Barret’s reception in Corel Village; maybe Square decided it was superfluous.”

You can read more about the “Hot Blooded Detective Joe” project and all the unused text @ BerriBlue Blog & The Face Of The Moon Blog. Props to them for the find and the translation! :)

If you are curious about the Detective Joe reference, it’s linked to the original FF7 plot, as we can read in an old IGN article: “Nomura recalled the creation of the game’s plot, which was originally written by Hironobu Sakaguchi, now of Mistwalker. Nomura, who claims to still have a copy of the plot, noted how “completely different” it is from the final version. “I think he wanted to do something like a detective story? There was a character called Hot Blooded Detective Joe.” The Midgar city was already in place at this point. The early part of the story that was written by Sakaguchi involved Detective Joe chasing after the main characters, who then blow up the city. Obviously, the story changed some once Nomura and Kitase got involved.”

Gears of War [X360 – Beta]

It’s not often that current generation beta games fall into the hands of the ‘public’. So I was quite excited when I got the chance to play with a beta of Gears of War for the Xbox 360. The game’s size (as in, harddrive space), is quite small, so I’m unsure just how far the differences ago (as it may be audio languages or similar, I have no idea). But even in this late beta, some differences show themselves. Read more