New Cancelled Games & Their Lost Media Added to the Archive

Unseen Changes overload: Won’t someone think of the children?

At NeoGAF they have an interesting topic about censored games, where you can find lots of great differences between released games in different countries! Some of my favourites are:

Ash in Street Of Rage 3

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While translating this game from Japanese to American and European audiences, Sega of America altered it significantly. The most notable changes were that the miniboss character Ash was removed because he was a stereotyped homosexual, females were given more modest clothing, and the costume colors were changed. Axel is dressed like Adam, Blaze’s clothes were changed from red to white, and Skate wears red and blue instead of red and yellow. Sega stated that these were changed to create “gender-neutral colors.” The voice-effects were also changed, with most noticeably Axel’s catchphrase of “Grand Upper” for his semi-special move being replaced with “Bare Knuckle”. [Info from wikipedia]

German version of Soldier Of Fortune 2

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To avoid being banned in Germany, the German version of the game had all in-game violence and gore removed and placed the story in a parallel universe which was populated by cyborgs. These changes were not accepted at all by the players’ community, and the game was unsuccessful. [Info from Wikipedia]

German version of Team Fortress 2:

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German version of Bloodrayne:

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Xenosaga Episode III

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The North American release of the game, however, was criticized for a number of obvious cutscene edits that many felt were damaging to either the atmosphere or overall story of the game. The majority of these edits were for scenes of violence and blood that would have elevated the game beyond the “Teen” rating given by the ESRB to the “Mature” level. This official reason from Namco is puzzling, especially when Episode I is taken into consideration. Episode I featured several scenes with heavy blood flow (for instance, during the Gnosis attack at the beginning of the game, a crewmember is literally pounded into paste by a Gnosis) and it received a “Teen” rating from the ESRB. While the storyline remains identical in both the original Japanese release and the North American versions, the exclusion of certain violent scenes is quite noticeable, especially in a scene midway through the story in which a child reacts to the death of another character by “putting [the blood] back” in the dying individual. In the North American version, the child has nothing in her hands and several shots are shown of an area presumably splattered with blood, but that looks immaculate and clean in this version. Another scene where a character is pierced through the shoulder and leg by a weapon is also completely bloodless, whereas the scene is accompanied by a spray of blood in the Japanese version. Even more puzzling, the sound effect for the blood spray was not edited out. [Info from wikipedia]

Persona:

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The North American release of Revelations: Persona saw many cosmetic and technical changes. In order to suggest that the story takes place in a western nation, the profile pictures of several characters have been recolored and (at times) redrawn completely. The most dramatic changes are to the main protagonist: his face and hairstyle are completely redesigned. Another notable change is to the character of Mark, who is altered from a Asian boy to an African American character with Ebonics added into his dialog. Both Nate and Ellen switch their hair colors from a dark shade of black to blonde. [Info from Wikipedia]

You can see these and more on NeoGAF forum …keep them up guys! Lots of new Unseen Changes articles in there :)

More old magazines scans! EGM 01 (May 1989).. any beta in there?

The great people at Retromags have found and shared the first issue of EGM, dated May 1989! Are you unseen-geek enough to find some beta screens in it?

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“This issue was incredibly hard to come by on Ebay, I believe in the past 3 years of running Retromags, I have maybe only ever seen it listed 3-4 times. I hope you guys enjoy this release! A big thanks goes out to Meppi for sacrificing his Mario Kart play time to clean up the scans of this issue. I would also like to thank everyone who donates to this site, those donations help us acquire these rare gems for preservation. As this issue is now scanned, I have re listed it on Ebay for selling. We will be taking the money won from selling this issue to acquire more missing EGM issues.”

You can download the file @ Retromags:

They are even working on getting a full set of the first 10 years of EGM released, so help them if you can!

Castlevania: Dawn Of Sorrow [DS – Beta / Unused]

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Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow is an action adventure developed and published by Konami for the Nintendo DS, in 2005. As we can read in Wikipedia, the production of Dawn of Sorrow was announced on January 6, 2005 as the first Castlevania game to be released on the Nintendo DS. The DS touch screen was a primary point of interest, and several functions, such as picking up items on the screen and moving them, were originally intended to be incorporated. However, scheduling problems forced the development team to abandon many of these ideas.

As noticed by argh4430, in the first two screenshots (the ones where Soma is fighting a manticore and skeleton archer in the Lost Village), those enemies are not there in the final version of the game. They are in the next area you visit, the Wizardry Lab).

Thanks to Xelba we have some more info about the beta differences in the early game. There was one screenshot that showed Soma fighting Gergoth at the beginning of the Lost Village stage. Also, an analysis of the game’s rom revealed some unused dialogue hinting about the piano room and Hammer wanting to help out Julius, Alucard and Yoko fight against Soma/Dracula.

While the piano room doesn’t do anything in the final version, there might have been a puzzle that rewarded you an item if done so correctly, but this is only speculation. As for Hammer, no action sprites were found other than his normal sprites. But the hidden unused dialogue between him and Julius as well as before the fight against Soma hints that Hammer was once planned to be playable in Julius mode only.

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