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Action Adventure

Metroid: Other M is an action-adventure developed by a team consisting of staff members from Nintendo, Team Ninja, and D-Rockets. Metroid Other M did something that no Metroid game before it even attempted. It gave samus a human side. Known as being the cold bounty hunter, Samus was given a softer yet unrefined image. Other aspects of the game rocked the boat to a degree, but overall, it still has that metroid gameplay that true fans of the series have come to love.

Production had a really large scale, with over 300 storyboards which took six months to be completed, and ten teams being employed to develop cutscenes. To make a game though, you have to decide what to put in, and what to leave out. Thanks to the unlockable art gallery, we can see some of what was left out of the game, over it’s 3 year development period.

Thanks goes to Proto1 for pointing out these differences and to Metroid Database for sharing the artworks!

In the beta gallery below you can see:

Samus’ beauty mark was not part of her conceptual design, likely added towards end of development.
Unused GFtrooper armor.
A conceptual, streamlined powersuit. Not in game.
A shot of an unused Lyle character model that depicts him unarmored (no helmet, w/undershirt). Not in the game at all.
Alternate, unused designs of MBs hair piece.
Concept art depicts Waver once had the ability to infect other enemies. Further, art shows them recoiling off of walls. Not in game.
Grippers might have at one point been able to fly.
An unused baby Dragotix.
Alternate design for Biosphere terminal.
Unused Ian and Samus photographs
Teenage Samus w/different hairstyle.
Unused Samus civilian clothes, purple shirt.
Unused Phantoon design

Also, FacePunch are currently hacking apart Other M, and have found some interesting unused assets:

Unused Power Suit, likely beta. It’s missing several creases along the shoulder pads, arms, legs and has a different colored arm canon.

Here’s a list of several unused character models that have yet to be ripped:

249-zss body HQ
250-young samus (from prerendered cutscenes)
251-adam in uniform (from prerendered cutscenes)
252-255 hq samus powersuit
257/260- metroid

Another member found test rooms and unused clothing:

“There are some development left over files for sure. So far i found the old suit model i posted earlier, a few characters/outfits which are only appearing in pre-rendered sequences and some test rooms from a very early stage of development.”

Thanks to Zero7 for the contribution!

Images:

Microsoft, Others, PC / MAC, Xbox

Advent Rising [XBOX PC – Beta / Unused]

monokoma

27-09-2010

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Advent Rising is a science fiction action adventure developed by GlyphX Games and published by Majesco for Xbox and PC in 2005. As we can read on Wikipedia, Advent Rising was the first in a planned trilogy which also saw the development of Advent Rising PSP, a side story that took place at the same time as the first game. However, the first game’s retail performance fell short of expectations. By the end of 2005, Majesco Entertainment had completely revised its business plan and canceled plans for future Advent Rising games. Advent Rising was an ambitious project, but even the only released chapter was cut and changed before the final version.

Greg was able to find a lot of unused content in Advent Rising that is still accessible through the PC version’s console. This includes content that was promised in trailers, E3 demos, and the like, but cut for various reasons. Much of the content still exists in partially usable form once you spawn it into the game.

Saturn, Sega

Aqua (Scavenger) [Saturn, PC – Cancelled]

monokoma

06-09-2010

3 Comments

Aqua is a cancelled action adventure that was in development by Scavenger for the Sega Saturn and PC. Players would have been able to explore a sunken Mayan city under the sea, looking at fishes and other aquatic fauna. The gameplay could have probably been similar to Everblue (PS2) / Endless Ocean (Wii) by Arika or the Aquanaut’s Holiday series by Artdink, but sadly Scavenger’s Aqua was never finished. In 1997 the company had to close down for bankruptcy.

Thanks to Rod_Wod for the scan!

Images:

Others, PC / MAC, Playstation, Saturn, Sega, Sony

Terminus [Saturn, Playstation, PC – Cancelled]

monokoma

31-07-2010

6 Comments

Terminus is a cancelled action adventure / shooter game that was in development by Scavenger Inc for the Sega Saturn, Playstation and PC in 1996. As they wrote in their press release, the project was meant “to give Tomb Raider a run for it’s money” but sadly it was already too late, as the company ran out of money and Terminus had to be canned.

The few screenshots preserved in the gallery below show a great graphic engine for its time, that used NURBS / voxel-like system, as we can read in an article from Gamasutra (wrote by a former Scavenger developer):

[…] Soon thereafter we were asked to develop our own game. That provided me with the incentive to figure out how to represent characters in a game better. We knew we wanted at least ten or more characters on the screen simultaneously, but all the low-resolution polygonal characters we had seen just didn’t cut it. So I decided to keep pursuing a solution based on what I had been working on for X-Men (32X), hoping that I’d come up with something that would eventually yield better results.
At first I flirted with a voxel-like solution, and developed a character system which was shown at E3 in 1996 in a game called Terminus. This system allowed a player to see characters from any angle rotating around one axis, which solved a basic problem inherent to sprite-based systems. Still, you couldn’t see the character from any angle, and while everybody liked the look of the “sprite from any angle” solution, many people wanted to get a closer look at the characters’ faces. This caused the whole voxel idea to fall apart.

In 1997 / 1998, Scavenger went bankrupt and all their unfinished projects vanished with them. The team behind Terminus (internally known as Team Fetus) was then hired at Shiny Entertainment and their game was resurrected somehow, evolving into Messiah.

Thanks a lot to Mike Damien for its help in preserving some info and concept arts from this lost project!

Thanks to Celine for the contributions! Scans from GameFan 4-2 and EDGE 34

Images:

Others, PC / MAC, Playstation 2 (PS2), Sony

Hell’s Deep [PS2 PC – Cancelled]

monokoma

30-07-2010

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Hell’s Deep is a cancelled action adventure that was in development in 2002 by Qube Software for the Playstation 2 and PC. The project was meant to be an ambitious sandbox game, similar to GTA3, but set in a big medieval city, during a dark and menacing time. As the main focus of Qube has always been the development of 3D software for 3D middleware and not games, they probably found some problems during the development and Hell’s Deep was soon cancelled. Only few artworks and some 3D models are archived in the gallery below, to preserve its existence.

Thanks to Sewia for the contribution!

Images: