New Cancelled Games & Their Lost Media Added to the Archive

Others, PC / MAC

Blizzard Cancelled Games

U64 Staff & Contributors
27-05-2008
1 Comment

blizzardcancelledgames.jpg

At DICE 2008, Blizzard had some talk about their games and in there, they showed an interesting list with a couple of “new” artworks for some of their cancelled projects. As Kotaku has wrote about:

“The team also revealed a list of the Blizzard games that have been canceled over the course of their 17 years, a list longer than you may think. If you thought Blizzard was only focused on StarCraft, Warcraft and Diablo, think again. While they may have a few lesser known titles like Blackthorne and The Lost Vikings on their resumes, they were at one point working on all of the following Read more

Others, PC / MAC

WarCraft Adventures [PC – Cancelled]

U64 Staff & Contributors
27-05-2008
4 Comments

warcraftadvlogo.jpg

WarCraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans was a dark comical point-and-click adventure computer game under development by Blizzard Entertainment that was set in the Warcraft universe, and cancelled before its release. American company Animation Magic was out-sourced due to their experience in classical two-dimensional animation to produce the twenty-two minutes of fully-animated sequences, the game’s artwork, the coding of the engine and the implementation of the sound effects. Blizzard then provided all the designs, the world backgrounds, sound recording and ensured storyline continuity. Four or five months after Blizzard had released Read more

Nintendo, Nintendo 64 & 64DD

Nomen Quest / Aidyn Chronicles [Beta – N64]

U64 Staff & Contributors
27-05-2008
5 Comments

nomenquestlogo.jpg

Aidyn Chronicles: The First Mage is a video game developed by H2O Interactive and published by THQ. It is one of the few console RPG released for the Nintendo 64. Due to a combination of the poor reviews and even poorer sales, projects for a sequel were dropped.  The game has developed somewhat of a cult following, leading some groups to try to remake the game for Wii or DS homebrew with improved graphics and more rigorous bug testing. [Info from Wikipedia]

In the gallery below you can see some screenshots from a target render that was created in the early days of the project, when it was still know as “Nomen Quest“. In these images the graphic was much more detailed and definited than the one in the final game. Some other screens are from a later beta version, with a different HUD.

Thanks to Myron Mason, we found out more beta differences in these early screens:

The beta for Aidyn Chronicles is indeed very different from the finished game. I have the game and I can already noticed the major differences. The characters are either wearing different clothing or have different colored versions in the beta version and the compass and solar/lunar indicator are different as well. Some of the monsters looked different like the Minotaur as well as the cities. For example, in image 5 it shows the observatory in Gwernia castle, the first city you basically start in. It stands next to the shops and is black in the beta version, but in the finished version it is inside of the castle.

Also, it appears that in the beta version you could pick who you wanted to represent the party when walking around outside of battle. And you could also make that character carrie a weapon around with them. In the realeased version, only Alaron (the main character) represented the party and no weapons could be carried around.

Update: Lisa wrote to us for some corrections:

Although I do realise Myron Mason is only claiming he has the retail game and has spotted some differences in the beta pictures it should not be there as non of it is true. The only true part is that clothing is different on a very few characters.

If you played the game and you can notice some more interesting changes, please let us know!

Images:

Arcade, Leaked, Nintendo, Others, SNES + Super Famicom

Killer Instinct [Beta – SNES Arcade]

U64 Staff & Contributors
26-05-2008
7 Comments

Killer Instinct is a fighting game developed by RareWare and published by Midway and Nintendo. Initially released in arcades in 1994 it was later ported to the Super Nintendo. In the gallery below you can notice some early character designs for B.Orchid and Glacius. As they wrote at the Killer Instinct Arena, the earliest version of Black Orchid was a blonde amazon, but a later version of her featured a black outfit. In the final game Orchid wears a green and yellow dress.

Also, thanks to Lucazz we found out that a beta Killer Instinct ROM was somehow leaked online, and it contains many differences from the final version:

  • the orchid stage and the cinder stage have the same beta floor
  • glacius and jago have an unused song
  • the gangsta theme is in glacius’ stage
  • the fulgore theme is in cinder’s stage
  • the menu screen is in a different position
  • the orchid stage doesn’t have the rare and nintendo logos in the screens and the stage side is moved to the right
  • the raptor sprites are corrupted
  • the eyedol bridge stage is in the cinder’s stage, similar of the arcade
  • in the continue screen the song is the same as the menu screen

Thanks to Robert Seddon and Lucazz for the contributions!

In a promotional video of Killer Instinct, embedded below, we can see an early version of the coin-op with some differences:

  • Beta character selection screen
  • Cinder’s name was Meltdown and Sabrewolf’s Werewolf.
  • Some of the combo types were removed or changed, like Mondo combo and Elite combo
  • The voice that announces the stage name is different
  • Some stages were slightly different, like the Tower arena and the Sabrewulf livel

Images:

Videos: