Death Drone (final name Death Drome) is a DeathDrome is a 1996 third-person shooter game developed by Zipper Interactive, that was planned to be released for the Playstation. In the end the game was published by Viacom New Media only for PC.
Thanks to Pachuka and Celine for the contributions!
Images:
S.T.O.R.M. is a cancelled side-scrolling action game that was in development by Virtual Studio in 1996, for the original Playstation and Saturn. From the look of the few screens preserved (only one seems in-game, the others are probably from a FMV), the game was set in an under-water scenario. There are not much more info on the project, it would have been published by American Softwork but something went wrong during the development and STORM was never finished.
Thanks to Pachuka and Celine for the contributions! Scans from EGM #83, CD Consoles #8 and #19.
UPDATE: Thanks to hydr0x, we found out that STORM was released for PC!
Images:
Videos:
Melt is the beta version of Ed Hunter is a rail shooter video game that was released in 1999 for the Playstation, based on and accompanied by Iron Maiden’s music. The game objective consists of rescuing the mascot of Iron Maiden, Eddie, from a prison while passing through game settings evocative of the albums. [Info from Wikipedia]
Thanks to Srđan we found out that Melt was the same project as Ed Hunter:
There was a sticker on the Maiden compilation Best of the Beast where it said ”Introducing Melt- Eddie’s own state-of-the-art 3D game!” and there was the picture which said Playstation and MELT. Using WayBackMachine I was looking at the old Iron Maiden site, circa ’98-’99 and it says that the game Melt has changed name to Ed Hunter. So there you go. Also , according to the description, the game was changed too, from the gameplay to the style.
Thanks to Pachuka and Srđan for the contribution!
Images:
Videos from the final version:
Shining Sword is a cancelled action adventure that was in development by American Laser Games for the original Playstation. The game was meant to be an ambitious projects, but after a while the team fell into various development issues and Shining Sword had to be canned. Some details were shared by a former ALG developer on Wikipedia:
Yes I worked for ALG – in fact I was the first artist ever hired at the company, in 1993. I worked on Shining Sword for about a year. We had switched from 3DO titles to developing for the not yet released Sony playstation. We had some of the first devkits in the US at the time. There was a really long drawn out story that was full of every dungeons and dragon style cliche you can imagine. We had concept art for most of the main characters and first pass 3d models of all of them. We were using stretchy meshes with internal bones, which was kind of ahead of its time a little bit. Some of the staff worked in 3D studio for DOS, some worked on Lightwave, and some actually worked on Silicon Graphics workstations. I had built several environments including an Aztec style Temple level.
Unfortunately, the owner’s wife had gotten heavily involved in the company and convinced him and other investors to switch over to making games for girls, so games like shining sword were on the chopping block. To be honest, I think the game was never really a game, it was a bunch of ideas kind of stuck together and it suffered through a lot of rehashings. It was extremely derivative of other games, and wholly unoriginal, but I don’t think there were any copyright worries.
Getting a working game engine and tools for the playstation was a daunting task in itself, not to mention trying to make a successful title. In my opinion, Shining sword was more style than substance, and really never developed much style either. Somebody may have saved the original code, but one would need an SDK for the original playstation – it would be a complete waste of time to try to get it running.
When the company was restructured into “Her Interactive”, I and some others were laid off. I moved on to California to Novalogic, making Comanche 4 and a few other military games before switching over the Neversoft as Lead Artist and eventually Environment Art Director, where I helped create the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series, Gun, and Guitar Hero III before leaving the biz.
Thanks to Pachuka and Discworld for the contributions!
Images:
ENG: This entry in the archive doesn’t have a description yet. If you want to add some info about the beta / cancelled stuff that you see in these images, just write a comment or send us an email! We’ll add your info in this page and your name in the contributors list. Thanks a lot for your help! :)
ITA: Questa pagina dell’archivio non ha ancora una descrizione. Se vuoi aggiungere delle informazioni riguardo le differenze della beta o la descrizione di un gioco cancellato, lasciaci un commento o mandaci una email! Inseriremo le tue informazioni nella pagina ed il tuo nome nella lista dei collaboratori. Grazie per il tuo aiuto! :)
[Thanks to Pachuka for the contribution!]
Images:
