Kamikaze Comics is a cancelled platform game that was in development by Crystal Dynamics in 1994 for the Sega Mega CD. The main character was a comic book author that somehow got sucked into his comics and probably had to find a way to return to the real world. There is no more info available on this project and we don’t know why it was never released. Rod Wod was able to find a single screenshot of the game in an old magazine.
Thanks to Jason for the english corrections!
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Rocket Boy is a cancelled platform game that was in development by Rocket Science Games for the Sega Saturn in 1994 / 1995. Players were able to explore a full 3D world set in a weird / fantasy galaxy, with the goal of finding a way to return home before the parents of the main character were back for dinner. As written in an article in Wired 2.11 (page 108), Rocket Science decided to cancel this project because it was too similar to other platform games of its time:
The trend toward more literate games means that some projects well along the Rocket Science pipeline have had to be scrapped. “We saw some things at the Consumer Electronics Show very similar to our Rocket Boy and DarkRide, so we’ve put those on hold,” says Caldwell. “But we still have Wing Nuts, a World War I dogfight game, in the works.”
In 1997 Rocket Science had to close down due to financial problems and Rocket Boy vanished forever with them. Celine found a pic of the game in Cd Consoles magazine issue #5 and Rod_Wod found one more in another magazine! These images are likely concept artwork and not in-game.
Thanks to Jason for the english corrections!
UPDATE:
On Mega Force issue 36 there is an article about Rocket Boy. The project initially was planned for Sega Mega CD (and 32X combo) and featured pre-rendered graphics which were very popular at that time. The game was an action/platform with an isometric view similar to SegaSonic the Hedgehog. Added “real screen shots” images in the gallery with the scanned article.
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Stackers / Stackpack is an unreleased platform / puzzle game that was in development by Santa Cruz Games for the GameCube and PC. This project was probably an evolution of their Pickles prototype, in which the player had to stack various characters on each other, to resolve the levels. The Pickles demo was shown at the Game Connection 2006 as wrote in an article published on Gamasutra by Lost Level’s Frank Cifaldi, but sadly Stackers and Pickles remained only tech demos, as Santa Cruz Games was not able to put more time and money into them.
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Pulseman is a side-scrolling action platform game developed by Game Freak and published by Sega for the Mega Drive / Genesis in 1994. The game was released in cartridge format only in Japan, with the North American version being released via the Sega Channel as an “exclusive”. When first announced, Pulseman was originally named Spark.
Derboo found a screen of the beta Spark from the Korean gaming magazine, Game World #5 (1994). The on-screen display changed, and the screenshot shows a boss from the game with a slightly different sprite in a totally different situation.
The palette is also different, but the article also shows artworks with the characters colored just like in the final game, so it was probably just the prototype palette for the underwater effect.
Thanks to derboo for the contribution!
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Smaartvark (also know as “Arnie the Aardvark” and “Miniature Aardvark TV Repairmen”) is a cancelled platform / action game that was in development by Codemasters for the Genesis / Mega Drive. The title is a wordplay between “aardwark”, a medium-sized mammal native to Africa, and “smart”: infact the main protagonist of the game was an aardwark TV technician, as we can see from its sprite in the screens below.
There are not much info about this project and we dont know why it was never released. It seems that the player had to repair a TV by entering in its channels and defeating the bugs that cause the problem.
Thanks to Rod_Wod and Celine for the scans!
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