As we can read on Wikipedia, Vanguard Princess is a Japanese indie 2D fighting game for Windows PC, developed by a single programmer / illustrator called Tomoaki Sugeno and a supposedly ex-Capcom employee. As posted by Megalol in our U64 Forum, Tomoaki Sugeno has shared a lot of beta materials, canceled characters concepts, stages and old sprites in his blog!
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WWF SmackDown! Just Bring It is a professional wrestling fighting game developed by YUKE’s Future Media Creators and published by THQ for the PlayStation 2 in 2001. In the early screenshots from the beta version Lionheart noticed some differences:
Jericho, Angle and Jeff Hardy had different costumes in the final game, these models can still be used with a gameshark/codebreaker
The game had 3D announcers sitting at the announcers table, who would sometimes pop-up in a “picture in picture” view to talk about the match. Both of these features where cut out of the final game (Although you can see a picture of Tazz and Micheal Cole commentating on the back of the boxart).
You were able to attack the announcers during the match
In the final game there is only one ladder in ladder/tlc matches, while in the beta there were a lot.
There are no big ladders at all in the final game.
In the beta it was possible to do attacks with the ladder which were removed from the final game (Dropkicking the ladder into the face).
You can also notice an alternate start screen.
Thanks to Lionheart for the contribution!
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Guilty Gear is a fighting game developed by Arc System Works and released in 1998 for the Playstation. The game has become famous for it’s great 2D sprites design, but in its early development it had a different graphic style, with pre-rendered characters. Some screens from the beta version of Gulty Gear can be seen in the gallery below, thanks Saga Darvulia that found them in some old japanese magazines. We can also notice alternate designs for the characters and their weapons!
Guilty Gear Beta:
Guilty Gear Final:
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ClayFighter is a fighting game developed by Visual Concepts and published by Interplay for the Super Nintendo in 1993, and later ported to Mega Drive/Genesis in 1994. In an old promo video, uploaded on Youtube by gamecubedude03, we can see some beta differences as a removed Super Move green meter. As noted by Falcovsleon20, Blue Suede Goo was originally named Elvis the Impersonator, Ickybod Clay was originally named Ghost Guy, Helga was originally named Val, and Tiny was originally named Crusher.
Also Nabz noticed that on back of the Box Art there is a picture with the Blob transforming into a Bomb and another screen in which an opponent is thrown into the slime river at the clowns stage. These special moves were removed from the final game. The unused Blob / bomb move can still be seen thanks to a game genie (6280-DD6F): Blob will turn into a bomb and after a couple of seconds, it will explode and hurt both himself and the opponent. Kind of a pointless move, which was probably why it was disabled in the first place.
Lucas also noted that Taffy was orginally named Taffy Man and his alt pallete is Green, The Blob was orginally named Blob, Blue Suede Goo outfit orginally is Blue, Ickybod Clay was named Icky Bod Clay after Ghost Guy and all the charatcers have his own intros
Beta Biographies
Bad Mr. Frosty
Likes: Pizza
Hates: Fire
Clay Type: O-
Sex: Clay
Married: No
Taffy Man
Likes: Glue
Hates: Perns
Clay Type: B
Sex: Clay
Married: Yes
Crusher
Likes: Color
Hates: Sega
Clay Type: R
Sex: Clay
Slogan: Win!
Blob
Likes: Hair
Hates: Port
Clay Type: X
Sex: Other
Moto: Ill
Ghost Guy
Likes: Wind
Hates: Day
Clay Type: M
Sex: ???
Moto: Float
Bonker
Likes: Xmen
Hates: Soap
Clay Type: Z
Sex: Clay
Slogan: Pie!
He also rumored these Biographies
Impersonator
Likes: Music
Hates: Drugs
Clay Type: J or O+
Sex: Clay
Rival: Val
Val
Likes: Opera
Hates: Food
Clay Type: AB
Sex: Clay
Rival: Elvis
Thanks to Lucas Araujo for the contribution!
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As we can read from Wikipedia, The King of Fighters ’99: Millennium Battle is a 1999 head-to-head fighting game by SNK released for the Neo Geo arcade and home platform. The King of Fighters ’99 initially meant to remove Kyo Kusanagi and Iori Yagami from the series due to the introduction of the new lead character, K’. However, due to negative fan response in location tests, they decided to readd them.
The SNK staff wanted to create a Robo Army Team. However, this idea was abandoned but they later made it a tribute in The King of Fighters 2000 by introducing Rocky, a character from Robo Army as a striker for Maxima. The character from Whip was originally meant to star in The King of Fighters ’96, but due Leona’s introduction in that game, the staff decided to wait until K0F ’99.
Developers also found troubles with the large number of young characters appearing in the game; as such the staff also designed older character such as Maxima and Vannesa to balance the game. In contrast to this Bao was added to the game in order to reduce the average age from the Psycho Soldiers Teams. Bao had many different design before its final one, as you can see in the gallery below.
Here’s the final Bao sprite to compare it with its early designs:
Thanks to Saga Darvulia for the contribution!
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