third person shooter

Microsoft, Xbox

Crimson Skies [XBOX – Beta]

monokoma
04-04-2010
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Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge is a flight-shooter game developed from 2001 to 2003 by FASA Studio (part of Microsoft Game Studios) for the original Xbox. Series creator Jordan Weisman noted that the game had a “difficult development,” and went through many different creative directions.

When development of Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge was first assumed by FASA Studio, it was conceived that the game be made into an “interactive movie,” a concept that would have involved an elaborate storyline and a large number of cutscenes. This process would have needed a linear mission design, potentially restricting gameplay.

Consequently, developers pushed back the game’s release date by a year in favor of increased development time. At this point, both playtest feedback and inspiration from games that offered more gameplay options helped shape the game’s development. The game’s “interactive movie” concept was scrapped, the storyline simplified, and the original linear mission design was reworked to promote more choice-driven gameplay.

When the game was first announced in 2002, features for the game included destructible environments which could be used to eliminate enemies, hidden areas containing bonus weapons, and “danger zones” similar in function to those featured in the previous Crimson Skies for the PC. Sadly many of these features were scrapped from the final version of the game. [Info from Wikipedia]

As noticed by Xenomrph on the Something Awful Forum, in the original Crimson Skies trailer (embedded below) we can see some removed levels:

Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge on the Xbox was going to have a bunch of other levels, and a completely different tutorial level that centered around robbing a flying casino over the ocean off the coast of Louisiana. You can see remnants of it (and other content) in the early trailer. It would have included destructible terrain, different cutscenes, and a bunch of other stuff…. but no online multiplayer.

Crimson Skies became a launch title for Xbox Live, and that involved totally overhauling the game to include Xbox Live multiplayer and cutting a lot of content to make room on the disc.

There’s still some remnants of the old content, though – the game’s dialogue includes references to the casino heist, the music from the above trailer was included on the game’s soundtrack CD (although the music never plays in the game itself), and the game’s tie-in novel ends at the casino heist (which, at the time of the book’s writing, wasn’t cut from the game yet).

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Microsoft, Playstation 2 (PS2), Sony, Xbox

Project Dagger [PS2 XBOX – Prototype]

U64 Staff & Contributors
26-03-2010
2 Comments

Project Dagger was an internal prototype for a new cooperative action game developed at Digital Illusions (DICE) during 2004/2005. When EA bought the studio, they did not greenlight the title for full production. From the look of the few videos preserved (that are probably target renders), the game was going to be about robbing bank and other criminal affairs, using 4 characters with different abilities. It seems that they wanted to have an online coop mode too.

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Microsoft, Xbox

Fallout Extreme [XBOX – Cancelled]

monokoma
16-03-2010
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Fallout Extreme is a cancelled squad-based RPG / tactical shooter that was in development by Interplay’s 14 Degrees East division for the original Xbox. The project was in development for several months in 2000, but it didn’t really have a concrete development team and never made it out of concept stage. After Extreme was cancelled, Interplay’s next attempt at making a console version of Fallout was Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel, released for both the Xbox and Playstation 2 in 2004. Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel 2 had the same fate of Extreme and was cancelled in early development.

On Fallout Wikia we can read all that is currently know about Fallout Extreme:

The game could be played in first and third person perspective. The player would control a 4-person team and would be able to switch the active character, all of which had various skills, at any moment. The team could consist of ordinary wastelanders, former Brotherhood of Steel members, super mutants, Native American shamant and even Mongol warriors. There were both single- and multiplayer modes.

Not much is known about the development team. Brian Christian, head of 14 Degrees East was the lead producer, while Todd J. Camasta was the art director, like with Fallout Tactics.

Sadly only few artworks remain from Fallout Extreme, preserved in the gallery below.

Thanks to Robert Seddon and Userdante for the contribution!

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Game Boy (+ Color), Nintendo

Jet Force Gemini [GBC – Cancelled]

monokoma
28-02-2010
4 Comments

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.

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Playstation 2 (PS2), Sony

Army Men: Sarge’s Heroes 2 [PS2 – Beta]

monokoma
24-02-2010
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Army Men: Sarge’s Heroes 2 is a third person shooter developed and published in 2000 by 3DO for the Playstation, Playstation 2 and Nintendo 64. In the gallery below you can see the first images that were released for the PS2 version: looking at the graphic in those screens, we can notice that it’s much more definited and detailed than the one seen in the final version. We can assume that these shots were just target renders, created with high-ends PCs or a PS2 development kit, to indicate how the game would have look when it was still too incomplete to show.

DCcodes7 noticed various differences:

Then there are the zombie enemies in the graveyard image, each zombie is different if you look at the image and compare each of the enemies closely. In that very same image the female character – which you get to play as in the game – her design is different in this image than it is in the final. One difference – from what I can tell – is her boots (shoes) are white in this image but are brown in the final game.

In another screen we have the helicopter – up right hand corner of the image – that’s shooting while flying straight at the main character: the way the helicopter fires and how it fly’s is different in the target renders than it is in the final.

In that same image we have a tank, again, not found in this level. There is also the “red target” around the tank, this of course means that auto aim is active and is targeting the tank. Of course the auto aim is still in the game, however the red auto aim target is different in the target renders than it is in the final.

The town seen in one of the images is on fire, which doesn’t happen in the game at all.

In another image we see a scoped version of the M16 weapon: of course the M16 is used but the scoped version of the very same weapon is not however.

Then we have the HUD: that’s seen in all of these target renders, the HUD is different in the final.

Thanks to DCcodes7 for the contribution!

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