namco

Brave Arms [PS3 – Pitch / Cancelled]

Brave Arms is an action game that was in early development stages at Namco’s Project Aces team, planned for the Playstation 3. We dont know how much work went into the game, as the only documents about it’s existence are a couple of scans (?) that shown some target renders and concept arts, probably created to pitch the project. As far as we can get from the japanese translation (@ Wikipedia), Brave Arms took place in Gran Rugido, the capital of the Kingdom of Sapin, an allegory of Spain in the Ace Combat series. The player would had fight alongside the local resistance against an unknown military regime.

There are no more info on Brave Arms and it’s currently unknown why it was never finished.

Images: 

Tekken (Rave War) [Arcade – Beta]

Tekken is the first of a series of fighting games with the same name, but originally in the beta it was going to be titled “Rave War” as seen in a scan from EGM issue 65. The game was developed by Namco and released at arcades in late 1994 and on the PlayStation in 1995. In another scan with concept arts taken from the Tekken Chronicle book, you can see very old / different versions of several Tekken characters. LeeChaolan was originally a silver haired brute, Nina looks like an Elf, and Kazuya looked a lot beefier than he does now.

Thanks to Celine for the EGM scan!

Images: 

Devilman [NES – Beta / Unused]

As we can read on Wikipedia, a video game based on the popular Devilman manga / anime series was developed by ISCO and published by Namco in 1989 for the NES / Famicom. The game is an action RPG where players take control of Akira Fudo and the objective is to follow clues that will lead the heroes through a ruined city, into underground caves, around a hidden military base and finally into a confrontation with Zenon.

John Doom discovered that in the game’s code are some hidden images, taken directly from the comics, which were not used in the final version. It’s possible that these scenes were meant to be used during the fights against the various demons (Silen, Agwell, Ghelmer, etc.). Another shot shows a dying Miki (as in the comics).

Thanks to John Doom for the contribution and to Jason for the english corrections!

Images: 

Snake Plissken Chronicles [PS2/XBOX – Cancelled]

Snake Plissken Chronicles (also know as Snake Plissken’s Escape), is a cancelled action game that was in development at Namco Hometek in 2003, for the original Xbox and Playstation 2. The game was based on Snake Plissken, the protagonist (portrayed by Kurt Russell) in John Carpenter’s films Escape from L.A. and Escape from New York. A playable demo was created, but the project was never finished for unknown reasons.

S0me videos from the game were shared online by Neurobellum:

This video shows a functional SNAKE PLISSKEN game built in 2004 by the remaining Dead to Rights 2 staff. Campaign design was complete, storyline was approved by Carpenter, Russell, and Hill, and concept was well underway. The game would have included full particpation by all three, including a completed cyber-scanned version of Kurt. This game was going to rock. Video produced and edited by Mike Kennedy. Music by KMFDM and John Carpenter, remixed by DJSkavenger.

A sequence of key events storyboarded for the campaign mode of the unproduced Snake Plissken’s Escape video game, by Namco. These boards were illustrated by Comic Book legend Chris Warner.

 A compilation of Environmental concept art developed for the campaign of Snake Plissken’s Escape, developed for Namco in 2004 before cancellation. Contributing artists included Francisco Ruiz Velasco (Hellboy 2, Pacific Rim) and Tim Tao (Dead to Rights).

Images:

Videos:

 

Rebelstar – Psionic Rebellion [X360/PS3 – Cancelled]

In 2007 NamcoBandai asked Kuju Entertainment to work on a successor of their GBA game Rebelstar, for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. The game was set in the near future and was about an Alien army attacking Earth. The game was cancelled when NamcoBandai decided to allocate their resources to other projects.

Images:

Video: