New Cancelled Games & Their Lost Media Added to the Archive

Nintendo, Nintendo 64 & 64DD, Others, PC / MAC

Earthworm Jim 3D [N64/PC – Beta]

U64 Staff & Contributors
04-06-2008
5 Comments

ewj3dloho.jpg

During its drawn-out three year development cycle, Earthworm Jim 3D changed publishers several times. This caused some problems as the game was based on the Earthworm Jim TV series which by the time of release, had been off the air for over 3 years. Also many locations displayed in early versions of the game are nowhere to be found in the released copy (such as a level set in a house, where Jim is ant-sized), and locations that were kept from early screenshots changed drastically before release.

In some cases, entire characters were changed – originally, Evil the Cat was to be the boss of Fear, but was changed to Professor Monkey-For-A-Head at the last moment, although his face can be seen on the records and record needles in the level “Boogie Nights of the Living Dead”. Additionally, Evil Jim, Earthworm Jim’s evil twin from the TV series, was reportedly a part of the game. Early screenshots also display Jim riding his Pocket Rocket. The characters of Earthworm Jim had to be redesigned for the shift to 3D. When the game was almost three quarters done, it suffered from framerate problems and poor animation. [Info from Wikipedia]

Also Makubeku noticed that the eye window its squared on the beta instead of how it was on the final! A beta demo was found by Nes World (as you can see in the video below), but we are not sure how many differences are in there.

Thanks to Lucas Araujo for the contribution!

Images:

Videos:

Unseen News

Nomura talks about KH: Birth By Sleep development

yota
03-06-2008
2 Comments

Interviewer: Can you tell us a bit about the development of Birth By Sleep?

Nomura: Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep is being worked on by the same team that created re: Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories. Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep’s development had originally started before the development of re: CoM, but production was stopped to complete re: CoM. At first it felt a bit weird starting the project again. I believe this project started before the other two of the Kingdom Hearts games, and I also believe it will be the last to hit the market.

[Maybe there was a proto of the Ps2 version made before the first KH? or it was just a concept that remained on paper and the real development began only on Psp ?]

Interviewer: In Birth by Sleep, is the gameplay done by choosing action commands lined up in command list?

Nomura: I believe it is necessary to say first, The Command Menu that was shown to the public [A.K.A scans, and video] has now changed. A system close to that of re:COM has been created, feeling like a command deck. However, the present screen shots show it was a bit too close to the idea of re:COM. The battle screens you see in the images now, have already been changed. However the operating sense is similar to that of the Kingdom Hearts series. The gameplay has slight influence from the DS game “It’s a Wonderful World”.

[They changed the command menu.. so the old scans and the video are beta!]

You can read the whole interview here .

Playstation, Sony

Spyro The Dragon [PSX – Beta]

Gh0stBlade
03-06-2008
4 Comments

spyrologo.jpg

In the screen below we can see a beta version of Spyro The Dragon: the statue has another appearance in the final game and is not made of gold. The red gem inside the “return home portal” is not in there anymore. In the final game when the player touches a dragon statue, the dragon that is captured inside there will come out: the first dragon that Spyro rescues was called Silvus in the beta.

Also, Dirty Harry found some more differences in this beta demo:

  • Alternate music before rescuing Nestor.
  • Vortex looked more like the Dragon Pads.
  • Alternate dialogue from rescued dragons. Completely different voice from Nestor.
  • 1-ups are gold instead of silver.

Spyro was originally going to be a “traditional” green dragon but the developers chosed purple instead because it was more original. In the artworks, we can even see some different character designs for Spyro.

Thanks a lot to Lord Deathsaur, Dudaw and Dirty Harry for the contributions!

Images:

June 1998 Beta:

June 1998 Beta:

July 1998 Beta:

Change Log:

Gh0stBlade – Added June 1998 vids recorded by LXShadow/July 1998 beta video! 08/12/14

Unseen News

RS Links: unused missions in Frontier First Encounters

monokoma
03-06-2008
No Comments

ffepic.jpg

Frontier: First Encounters is a PC video game released in 1995, where the player can go through space trading and combat simulator. It is the sequel to Frontier: Elite II (1993), which itself is a sequel to the seminal 1984 game Elite. The game was created by David Braben’s company, Frontier Developments. Many fans of the game refer to it by the shortened title of FFE. In the list of unseen-releated websites that Robert Seddon sent to us, there is even a page about some “unused missions in Frontier: First Encounters. (Retro Gamer #47 p. 31 quotes David Braben: ‘The real problem with First Encounters was that it was under an unreasonable amount of pressure,’ says Braben about the difficult project. ‘There was so much interference [from Gametek] that we offered all the money back so we could get out of the deal because I felt it was going to be a disaster. So that was a massive distraction and the game was nothing like what I wanted. As a lot of hackers have already found out there was a lot of extra story in the game that was closed off for the final release, because part of it didn’t even work.’)

At www.jades.org/brokmiss.htm we can read the unused missions text, extracted from the game: “As many of you know, FFE wasn’t finished when Gametek released it. It is possible to look at the contents of the main .exe file, and in the middle of a load of unreadable stuff the mission text is clearly readable. Among this are the missions we know about, but there are a number of other missions we don’t see. This page is dedicated to the missions which, for whatever reason, we have been denied. Note that these missions cannot be flown as the appropriate code is missing!”