About a month ago SEGA Saturno in cooperation with Hidden Palace, announced a fundrising campaign to be able to release a “new” prototype for the Saturn. A couple of days ago, finally they reached the amount needed and they released Werewolf: The Apocalypse, a playable demo of the cancelled action RPG that was in development by Capcom in 1995 / 1996!
Huge props to the Sega Saturno community for their efforts in preserving all these lost games for the sega consoles! You can find more info on this release at Sega Saturno (in Spanish).
The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons was published by Nintendo and developed by Capcom’s Flagship Studio for the Gameboy Color. In the early screenshots released for the game we can notice many beta differences. In the gallery below you can see some of these beta screens:
The waggon that we see in the opening place (when Din is dancing near the fire) was once set near the first dungeon too. In the final game it’s never in there.
The sprites for the trees and flowers were different in the beta version
There are some circle green things near a signboard in one of the beta screens, that does not exist in the final game.
The entrance of the first dungeon was different and it did not had a keyhole.
Impa’s house was in a slightly different place.
There are also many areas in these beta screens that does not look like any other areas in the final game. It’s possible that in this early build they created a small playable demo in a placeholder world, just to shown how the Seasons System worked.
As the game have a complex password system that change some of the content, some of these differences could still be in the final version. If you have more info, please let us know!
Oracle of Ages and Oracle of Seasons were originally going to be themed parts of the Triforce Trilogy along with Mystical Seed of Courage. Each of the three games originally had a piece of the Triforce and one of its qualities (Wisdom, Power or Courage) assigned to them. This idea was scrapped relatively late in the development process, and the games were re-branded to remove all mention of this Triforce theme.[Info from Zelda Wikia]
Mega Man X4 (aka Rockman X4 in Japan) is the fourth game in the Mega Man X series, released for the Sega Saturn and PlayStation in July 1997. Kei was able to find an old preview/trailer of the game from an equally old April 1997 Multiple Option CFC (Capcom Friendly Club) Style videotape from Japan. As Kei has wrote in the U64 Forum:
While this preview may not include much immediate beta/pre-release differences, there is one particularly noticeable element that can be heard in this video. For one, X sounds completely different as you see him jump and shooting out charged buster shots in the video; we’re talking about a pre-release video of the Japanese version here. Apparently, he had a different voice actor, as he sounds like a girl, much like he does in the English final version of RMX4. Zero also sounds slightly different as well, his Saber slashes are odd too.
Also, Bowserenemy and Protodude noticed some more differences in the same beta trailer:
Enemies are in different spots; Zero’s missing a few frames in his mid-air slar, and the hit detection is a bit off here and there. […] it’s the same as the third slash in his 3 hit combo, so just compare the two.
Hidden in the game’s code, Ace Spark from The Mechanical Maniacs has found some unused animation frames for Double, that could be from removed dialogue sequences [UPDATE: The running animation for Double is actually used in the game, but you only see it for a split second after you select a stage in the game. Thanks to OKei!]. An unused mugshot is in there too.
Some beta screenshots are available too, in which we can notice that the intro stage had a drill enemy in the beta, that was removed from the final game. When the place starts blowing up there are even more drill enemies. You can read more info on the beta at The Mechanical Maniacs!
Images:
Video:
An even later beta build than the one above with many more differences can be seen below:
Even if Capcom had already planned an online version of Resident Evil in 2000, Outbreak (aka Network Biohazard) was officially announced only at E3 2002. This beta version was much more ambitious than the game that we got in the end: originally there were about 20 playable scenarios, some of which were completely removed, notably a Dock stage and The Raccoon City Hotel, while others later appeared in Outbreak File 2, like “Flashback”, the episode located in the forest.
Of course, more levels meant more characters, and unfortunately they had to renounce to include personalities such as little girl with a gun (!), some UBCS members, the fan-favorite Hunk, a policewoman, and on so on. Their polygonal models are still inside the two outbreak games, and it is possible to access them using Gameshark codes.
Another feature prominent in the original trailer was a four player split-screen mode, probably dropped for technical reasons. At the end, Capcom decided to divide Resident Evil Online in two different games: Outbreak and Outbreak File 2. A File 3 was supposed to follow shortly, but Capcom never bothered with the series again.
Here we can also find the videos of the beta versions of the characters endings.
Robert Seddon has linked us to an article on GoNintendo, that reports an interview by NGamer with Ryota Niitsuma, producer on Tatsunoko Vs. Capcom, in wich he revealed that the team had some plans to add the Phoenix Wright character in the game, but in the end he was canned because of his special move:
Because Phoenix Wright only has one move, ‘Objection!’, we struggled. We designed a move for him: when he says objection, the actual writing attacks the opponent. However, ‘objection’ in Japanese is ‘igiari’ – it’s four characters, whereas ‘objection’ becomes ten [sic. It’s nine, actually.] When we localize, the balance of the game gets destroyed because the move becomes bigger. There’d be no way of avoiding it! We had to remove him for these reason. In the future, it is one of our aims to get him in.
That sounds like a weird reason to remove a character. Why not to remove just his special move? We’ll never know.
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