Voodoo Islands is a cancelled open world action adventure that was in development in 2002 / 2004 by Spirit / 10TACLE Studios for the Playstation 2 and PC. Gamers were able to play in three different modes in both online and offline play, following the life of a pirate, attacking ships, searching hidden treasures and so on.
Taking the role of a pirate captain, you set forth on the high seas, fighting against evil cannibals, hostile pirates and the omnipresent Conquistadors. Your aim is to control the Caribbean Sea … but these are not calm waters. This is a treacherous sea full of bloodthirsty enemy Pirates, dangerous Voodoo spells and mysterious magical artifacts.
Sadly the game was canned for unknown reasons. In the gallery below you can see various screens from the project: it’s interesting to notice that the early images released were from target renders, that did not look like the “final” game.
A GameBoy Color version of Jet Force Gemini was in development by Bit Studios (for Rare) in 2000, but it was cancelled in the end. The original JFG is a third-person shooter / action adventure published for the Nintendo 64 in October 1999, but the GBC version was never officially announced.
We were able to know about this cancelled project only thanks to Dano2k0 from the Assembler Forum, that found a playable prototype and shared some screens with the community. Rare released 2 other GameBoy Color games based on their Nintendo 64 titles, Perfect Dark and Conker’s Pocket Tales, that were received with low interest by gamers: we could speculate that their third GameBoy Color “N64 port” was canned for this reason or for quality issues.
Jet Force Gemini GBC was going to have an isometric 2D view, while the gameplay was probably going to be “similar” to the N64 version, with lots of shooting and insects to kill.
As we can read in an interview with Martin Wakeley:
JFG on the Gameboy was the only occasion I can remember Rare outsourcing anything. It was being done by Bits Studios and was nearly done last time I saw it, I’m not sure what happened to it.
God of War: Chains of Olympus is an action adventure developed by Ready at Dawn and released in march 2008 for the PSP. As we can read on Wikipedia, the game had already been in the development stages just before the completion of Daxter, when Ready At Dawn pitched the idea of a God of War game for the PSP to SCEA’s Santa Monica Studios.
In an interview after the game was completed, director Ru Weerasuriya stated that several things had to be cut from the game given time constraints. These included multiplayer and co-op aspects as well as other puzzles, characters and dialogue
Also, from an article at Industry Gamers, we found out that the game could have been a side scroller action game:
Dana Jan, lead level designer on the game, revealed that Ready at Dawn briefly thought about making the game 2-D. “There were early discussions of making Chains of Olympus a side-scroller rather than 3D in case the experience couldn’t be fully realized on a handheld,” he said. “This really fueled us to prove that it could be done.”
In the gallery below you can see some footage (thanks to L1qu1dSnak3‘s YT channel1) from the early development of the game: the “Making of Attica” (prototype of the first level) and “The Lost Levels” (removed areas and scenes) videos can be unlocked in the final game (Beat the game in God mode and finish the Challenge of Hades).
Moon is a FPS developed by Renegade Kid and released in 2009 for the Nintendo DS, but originally the project was born as a 2D side-scrolling action adventure for the GameBoy Color. Moon GBC was revealed by Jools Watsham, game director at Renegade Kid, in a video from his Youtube Channel.
The GameBoy Color version of Moon was never released, but the scenario and the characters were later reused to create the DS version. Moon looked like an interesting adventure, similar to Metroid II, and it’s sad that it did not had its chance on the GameBoy Color.
Props to Jools Watsham for sharing these screens from the prototype!
The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks is the second Zelda game for the DS, developed by Nintendo EAD and published in december 2009. The game was originally announced at the GDC in March 2009, so in the first screens and video released there are not too many differences, but Kirby64 was able to notice some interesting beta-changes:
These trees were moved and used in the snow realm
The floor blocks (swirl circle and the square) are changed in the final game
The purple thing (I think it’s a whistle?) was to call over the phantom,but in the final game it was changed to “Call” and the circle was blue not yellow. the phantom icon was changed to a pinkish color and it had pink eyes.The circle swirl on the phantom when it moves the color was green in the beta game but pink in the final game.
This picture here is going through the forest
the pole color was changed to a green color
this bullseye was changed to a x in the final game
this whip was remove and replace with a snake whip. I was reading a forum that the snake whip came from earthbound (note by Bill: the rope snake is from Mother 3)
this tunnel was remove from the forest realm and move to the snow realm
This was the cave going to the snow sanctuary and in the cave you found the monster that the anouki villagers were talking about,in the beta game I think this cave was going to the forest sanctuary and you had to defeat the moster.
Some more differences were noticed by Bill: in the first video you can see the train tracks on the DS differ from the tracks in the final game, and some land was changed into sea at the bottom left corner of the forest realm. Also, some town locations were switched around judging from the map. There are more few small changes in the trailers as the wooden shields used by those Zora Warriors were made into steel and some guards that are missing in the cut scene where Zelda gives Link his certificate.
Also, Gabrielwoj found some interesting things inside the ROM directory, let’s take an look;:
On the sound files of the ROM, there is an unused track. It’s the overworld of Phantom Hourglass. Maybe, doing the early development of this game, the team just was testing the music with this overworld for the new zelda, Spirit Tracks. The song was never used, and it’s on the ROM file. Maybe this song was to be overworld theme of the spirit tracks (yeah, the train navigation), but they decided to make an another, not just like from Phantom Hourglass
Interesting tough, it’s the boss battle music of Phantom Hourglass, again, the same copy and paste from the Zelda game to the another, I really don’t know why, but the music don’t makes any sense with the game, I mean, most of everything is by Pan Flute
At the Spirit Tracks rom, at the path data/MapObj/, there is a file called “DNGN.narc”, extracting this file, will have an “NSMBD” file, it’s the 3d modeling for DS games, this model is the Temple of the Ocean King of Zelda Phantom Hourglass, it’s the same exactly model and textures, an result of copy an paste (NOTE: DNGN file looks DUNGEON with 4 letters, at Phantom Hourglass rom, it’s called “temple_main.narc”, extracting it will have the same dungeon, MAIN means: The principal temple, if you remember, it’s the first Dungeon you enter in the game and the principal of the Story)
Inside the ROM, there is an Dbgfont, maybe, for Debugging:
First of all, for this image which will come, I have never heard that the Spirit Tracks was on an E3 (It was only announced, but not been played, as I know), as been said at the image, it was on E3 2009, some leftover images (already organized for better look) [Second image may look with E3, at the file name, it was E3x, and the palette don’t looks right]: E3 Image Screen 1(CLICK for view) and E3 Image Screen 2(CLICK for view)
Thanks to Kirby 64, Bill and Gabrielwoj for the contributions!
You can find more info about Zelda: Spirit Tracks in the Zelda Wiki!
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