New Cancelled Games & Their Lost Media Added to the Archive

Some infos about Chakan Dreamcast

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Cobra Blade has sent to us some interesting infos about the cancelled Chakan project for the Dreamcast: “This sequel to the Genesis hit was under development by the original’s creator Ed Annunziata and his new studio AndNow. While there was no official cancellation declared, the project would be dropped and the lead artist would then reuse the majority of the concepts and designs for Blood Omen 2 which he was the lead artist and co-writer of.” Thank you Cobra! This was really usefull

Searching through the net, i have found The Lost Worlds website, that has some more informations about these Chakan / Blood Omen 2 connections:

“Depicted in this artwork for Chakan are quite a few elements which are familiar. In addition to the general similarity of themes:

* Chakan himself differs from the Blood Omen 2-era Kain only in that his body and face are harder-worn and he wears a hat.
* A worm-riding character is clearly the predecessor to Umah.
* Several enemies bear the “broken ankh” symbol of the Sarafan in Blood Omen 2.
* Enemy designs range from very similar to virtually identical.
* The depiction of the streets of the city is essentially a futuristic version of Meridian.

In addition, a preview of Chakan described its plot arc as “[evolving] from a fantasy story to a pure science-fiction setting” – just like Blood Omen 2.

Some time later, IGN forum member Embla discovered an even older unreleased Steve Ross project – Sirens. A 1997-era PlanetQuake page (no longer online) was dedicated to a proof-of-concept that Ross and Joshua Gordon had created using the engine from the original Quake.”

You can read more about it in here: Chakan & Sirens

Mario Land [Virtual Boy – Cancelled]

VB Mario Land is a cancelled game /  prototype of the Mario Virtual Boy game that actually became Mario Clash. Nintendo was originally developing this as a full mario platform game, as show at E3 1995. The original project was cut and Mario Clash became just a remake of the classic Super Mario Bros, with featured small 3-d elements to show what the Virtual Boy was graphically capable of. For example, some parts exchanged the original idea of warp pipes with 3-d doorways that players enter by pressing up on the D-pad.

You can find more infos at Planet Virtual Boy

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Seaman [PC – Unreleased?]

On IGN we read that a PC version of Seaman was in development some years ago, but it looks like it was never released: “The PC version of the game was announced by Vivarium founder Yoot Saito today at a conference in Japan. It’s entitled Seaman for Windows Ver. 1.0 and will be available in the 1st quarter of 2001. Seaman on the PC will be completely different from his DC brethren. It’s not a game, says Mr. Saito — rather, it’s a communication tool and a pet for your desktop. As shown in the screen shots, which have been taken from Japan’s PC Watch website, the virtual fish exists on your desktop, rather than in an aquarium. Seaman is automatically launched when you turn on your computer, and resides in memory, running in the background, swimming around on screen… hopefully behind your application windows. Seaman is still drawn in 3D, but he’s kept tiny so as to not interfere with your other work.” Read more