We end our epic finally of ranking each unreleased Dreamcast games. This second part will cover big SEGA games like Shenmue III, Scud Racer, Toejam & Earl 3, and of course Propeller Arena. Check out the epic finale!
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SEGA Talk is covering every canceled Dreamcast game from years past, this is such a massive undertaking that we will be splitting it into two podcast. Sit back, buckle and let’s take a trip down the ‘what could have been’!
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The site GamingAlexandria has posted some assets from the unreleased SEGA Genesis/Mega Drive port of Breach. This whole project was compiled and preserved by David Ashley.
Thankfully if you wanted to try out the beta port of ‘Breach’ on your original hardware, you can download the rom and assets here. If you didn’t know Breach was the first installment of a trilogy of sci-fi strategy games developed by Omnitrend Software who are mainly known for their 1983 text adventure game ‘Universe’. Lots of people would describe Breach as a early version of X-Com. You can read more about this ports development via GamingAlexandria’s in-depth post. According to our sister site, SEGA Retro, the game was last seen again at Winter CES 1993.
Analogue’s FPGA Mega Drive/Genesis console, the Mega Sg is giving would be owners an additional bonus built into the console. A pack in title! Hardcore, a side-scrolling shooter in the vein of other European shooters such as the Turrican series, was developed by Digital Illusions who have since changed their name to DICE. (Who went on to become famous for the Battlefield series.) Due to the impending arrival of disc based consoles in 1994, the publisher of the game, Psygnosis decided to cancel the title despite being slated for release on Amiga, Mega Drive, Genesis and SEGA CD, with the Mega Drive/Genesis version being nearly ready for shipment. However due to legal issues, Analogue states on their website the game will be renamed to Ultracore. The game content will remain the same.
No this isn’t the infamous Sonic Xtreme originally developed for the SEGA Saturn but cancelled due to development hell. Sonic Extreme was a cancelled skateboarding game originally pitched by a development studio called Vision Scope Interactive, which as the name suggested involved Sonic characters preforming skateboarding tricks and races similar to the famous Tony Hawk Pro Skater series involving hover boards. A prototype of the game was originally found in a Xbox devkit and leaked on the internet in 2011.
Liam Robertson, a known contributor to the website Unseen64 that specializes in beta and cancelled video games, decided to investigate further into how the game was originally pitched by contacting Vision Scope Interactive employees. The results includes how the opportunity came to be due to helping with developing the CG cutscenes in Sonic Heroes, how the prototype was quickly assembled and pitched, and it’s connection to the similar Sonic Riders released years later.
What Sonic Extreme might have been if it became a full title is unknown, but it’s nice to know more information about another curious case in Sonic’s history.
A new Dreamcast game has been recently discovered, specifically a Dreamcast port of the PC game Millennium Racer: Y2K Fighters. Millennium Racer: Y2K Fighters is a racing game created by a company called Creat Studio back in 1999, most comparable to the wipEout series on Sony consoles. The game was found in a Dreamcast devkit, playable and seemingly complete, yet strangely never received any type of publicity. The PC version was released, but the Dreamcast version was quietly cancelled for unknown reasons.
The original finder of the unreleased Dreamcast port of Millennium Racer: Y2K Fighters was a Dreamcast enthusiast named Kuririn84, who found the game in dev kit and distributed the game to two people in order to extract it. Since then another user by the name of japanese_cake successfully got the game to boot and provided a downloadable link for anyone to try out. Full comments from japanese_cake can be found here.
It’s nice to see another game has been discovered and preserved for future generations, and thanks to all the dedicated Dreamcast fans for preserving a small bit of history.
[Source: The Dreamcast Junkyard]
For more screenshots and video from The Dreamcast Junkyard, click below.
The Dreamcast had quite a bit of cancelled game before it met its erupt end on March 31st, 2001. Some of the popular ‘unreleased’ games that have made it out in the wild include a port of Half-Life and even SEGA-AM2’s Propeller Arena. Looks like we have one more game to add that list, Colin Mcrae Rally 2.0 (the precursor to the DiRT games).
Colin McRae Rally, the first game got a release on both Windows and Playstation; while 2.0 only had a release on Windows. Mcrae Rally 2.0 added more difficultly levels (Novice, Intermediate and Expert), Arcade mode and more. Sadly the port that was unearthed was only 30% complete, but its still pretty cool to see.
You can hear Tomleecee from The Dreamcast Junkyard talk about the unearthed unreleased port.
[Wasn’t this design later used in South Park?]
Resident Evil Code: Veronica was my favorite entries into Capcom’s long running survival horror franchise. Maybe its because I’m biased due to it being originally a Dreamcast exclusive title (which later got a Playstation 2 port). I’m also the type of person that likes to see unreleased artwork for games, especially concept art. It seems the guys over at Project Umbrella (a Resident Evil fansite) have been sitting on hundreds of pieces of unreleased concept artwork for Resident Evil Code: Veronica and Resident Evil Zero.
From the owner of Project Umbrella via NeoGAF:
We came into contact with freelance concept artist Satoshi Nakai, who was hired by CAPCOM in 1997 at the recommendation of Nextech Co., Ltd to provide concept art for the games under the directions of scenario company FLAGSHIP’s lead writers Noboru Sugimura and Hiroshi Soda.
Only a very small fraction of this artwork has been released by CAPCOM over the years. They are direct scans of the original pages. Also included is a single artwork for a scrapped game originally directed by Masaaki Yamada, featuring HUNK on a cruise ship facing against new plant/human Zombie enemies.
Hit the jump to see over 100 pieces of never before released concept art.
Brace yourself for this one folks, because it’s pretty big!
Recently, a previously unearthed build of the infamous cancelled Sonic game, Sonic X-Treme for SEGA Saturn, made its way into the hands of AssemblerGames member jollyroger. It was a PC executable, supposedly tying into SEGA’s SEGA PC initiative that took place at the time of X-Treme’s development and saw several Saturn titles ported to PC. This initiative was also intended to help launch nVidia’s first GPU, the NV1, which worked similarly to the Saturn: this build required the NV1, as a result. This led to the interest of our fellow site Sonic Retro; and as one thing has led to another, jollyroger and Sonic Retro members cooljerk and Andrew75 (who has been working on a Sonic X-Treme remake project, Project AXSX in the Sonic GDK engine) have worked together to try and get the code running, with Cooljerk having sent off an NV1 to jollyroger, and Andrew75 testing parts of the code in SEGA Saturn emulators. And lo and behold; they’ve succeeded, in what I can only describe as a superb team effort.
So here’s a nice surprise: three people in Portugal have found a prototype of an unreleased shmup by SEGA for the System-18. Meant to be released in 1991, this game never found it’s way in arcades for unknown reasons. So it’s great that we can finally see what the game is like. While the arcade board the game was found on was damaged, the fanatics managed to get it working by putting the chips on a working System-18 prototype.
Not only that, we can soon play it for ourselves. The group has dumped the game’s code into a ROM and MAME is already capable of playing the game. While the ROM isn’t up yet, we likely won’t have to wait long until it can be downloaded. Another video showing the attract mode can be found after the jump.
Christmas kept on giving this year for SEGA fans as Assembler user ZakhooiTM has released on the internet the unfinished build of ToeJam and Earl 3 running on Dreamcast hardware. The game was originally found on a dev-kit that was purchased for $1200. ZakhooiTM was initially looking to begin a fundraiser but has instead decided to release the build as-is.
The beta is noticeably different in that it lacks some of the finer details seen in the final Xbox version. It also makes the game mechanics feel much closer to the original ToeJam and Earl game seen on the Mega Drive as there is no jump button and no cutscenes to break up the action or provide hints, likely due to the date while in development drew closer to SEGA’s exit from the hardware business. Be sure to check out their forums for more information as well as a link to download the game.
We already know that SEGA got ToeJam & Earl III: Mission to Earth out on Xbox, but the game was originally being worked on for Dreamcast. This isn’t the only game, lots of early SEGA 3rd party games where mean’t to be Dreamcast titles, like Shinobi and Gunvalkyrie. Seems like the unfinished Dreamcast versions of these games never see the light of day, thankfully there are people that find them. That is what happen here.
The person that found the rare gem is a forum member from Assemble Games that goes by the handle ZakhooiTM. Mr. ZakhooiTM is starting a fund raiser to get the code online, for all public to freely download and try. You can find more information here. Above is over 30 minutes of gameplay from the beta and after the jump we have 2-player mode footage. Enjoy
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This week on Vidya Retro we look at what could have been after the passing of the Dreamcast as we take a look at unreleased games and other elusive Dreamcast products as well as a pre-show look at the Android version of Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing.
Games covered include released and unreleased Dreamcast games, as well as games running on commercial and homebrew emulators through Dreamcast such as Half-Life, Bleemcast! with Metal Gear Solid, Propeller Arena – Aviation Battle Championship, Wacky Races, Fur Fighters, Sam & Max: Hit the Road and Doom II – Hell on Earth.
Commentators include Sonic Retro members Bartman3010, TimmiT, Overlord, Cinossu and David the Lurker. Listen as they trudge up old Dreamcast information from the US Dreamcast magazine and guess review scores for Dreamcast games.
Yuji Naka is on a ‘promotion’ streak for the U.S. release of Ivy the Kiwi? In the recent Nintendo Power magazine, Yuji hints at what to expect in the future from Prope.
“We’re currently developing an action game that has yet another new and unique control scheme, and another project that lets you experience a fun real-world activity within a game.” – Yuji Naka
With Playstation Move and Project Natal around the corner, it should be interesting to see what platform either of the projects is for.
[Source: NeoGAF]
