Snes games which never were...

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I thought I'd mix it up a little this week. It's great talking about the gems of the 16-bit era, even if I've been babbling on about nought but Snes games these last few months. But there's so many games which never quite reached the game shop shelves- Aye, the sad, forgotten games which didn't receive a shred of love. Perhaps development got too pricey. Perhaps the company was shut down, or bought mid-way through production. Perhaps the game was simply cancelled in favour of a new idea.
But although these games flopped before reaching the public eye, seemingly destined never to see the light of day, leaked prototypes have been made available on ROM sites to give us a glimpse of what might have been.

So, I thought I'd make a post celebrating some of the games which never quite got the chance they deserved.

EURIT

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So, let's say you're the emperor of an entire Galaxy. You're getting old, and soon you'll have to choose a new, younger emperor to take your place. “Emperor of the Galaxy” is a big pair of shoes to be filled, so how would you go about choosing the new ruler? Would you host a gigantic blood-bath tournament where the last man standing wins the title? Would you host a humongous racing competition?
No no no, of course not. The current emperor knows how it's done- The new emperor is decided via games of Tag.

That's right, Eurit is a game of tag, mixed with elements of Capture the Flag. Developed by radical Entertainment, this game has a player set as "It", and you have to chase your opponent until you touch them, making them "it". They will then proceed to chase you back. Meanwhile, while your opponent is chasing you, you need to capture a certain number of flags. The first player to get as many flags as is required will win the game.
This game is hilarious, and pretty addictive. It's simple yet innovative gameplay is perfect for a multiplayer split-screen game, and would have been a party-game must-have. It's hilarious how stupidly serious all the player's facers are while they play, and the emperor's powerful, booming voice shouting "Player 2's It" is just the icing on the cake.
The game isn't quite as simple as tagging and grabbing, though. Each stage has a minimal amount of flooring, and you'll have to build paths to get to tag your enemies, and to reach the flags. You can also destroy paths behind yourself, to put more distance between yourself and your enemy. Another thing you can do is use your magic to confuse the other player (which swaps the controls around, making it more difficult for them to escape), slow ‘em down, even turn all the creatures on the level against your them.
This game's so dang fun, really, it is. It being a prototype however, it's not quite finished. Just whatever you do, Do Not Fail a game, because if you do the game will crash. And quite badly too.

The game was cancelled because the development team simply couldn't find a publisher for the game. After deciding the Snes market had died, they instead adapted the game for the newer gen consoles. It became the game we now know as "Grid Runner".
It truely is such a shame the Snes never saw this game, but I'm glad it found a home in the following generation.

APOCALYPSE II
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Apocalypse II was written by Simon Nicol for Psygnosis, and was intended for release in 1995.
It would have been a slightly odd game. Instead of the player being a hero, on a quest to save a planet from destruction, you find yourself in a large spaceship, dealing out the apocalyptic destruction.

At the start of every stage, countless power ups whizz about the stage like it's nobody’s business. You'll have the opportunity to catch some shields, rockets, speed-ups and more before the battle begins. After that, the game takes on an asteroids-like style of play. Using L and R to rotate your ship and A/B to shoot, you've got to destroy planets and moons, dodging them as they (Strangely enough) chase you around the screen. Once so many planets are destroyed, you'll be taken to the next stage, where the process is repeated with more difficult planets.

Apocalypse II seems reasonably polished for a half-brewed game, but where the developers hadn't quite finished their work is obvious.
The planets zoom into the scene until they come into the foreground, where they'll start following you around. But for some reason, the planets seem to be destructible while in the background, despite the fact they're so far away. In fact, the earlier you attack them, the more easily they are destroyed- Leave them to reach the foreground, and you're going to have trouble getting away from 'em. I'm going to take a wild stab in the dark, and perhaps I'm wrong, but I'd say this isn't the originally intended gameplay mechanic. It seems as though planets were originally intended to be of varying sizes, and the larger the planet would be, the more difficulty you'll have destroying it. However, in the prototype, they used the smaller planets to make the planet appear to zoom in, before a better script was to be written to allow the usage of different sized planets. The prototype also seemed to mostly lack a difficulty curve, simply throwing you in against hard-to-destroy planets from the get-go. I'd assume that the planets at the start were originally intended to be a whole lot smaller, and a little easier to destroy, but because the prototype was mainly made for testing purposes, they simply released it as it was to demonstrate the engine.

Certainly, despite it being almost unplayable in its current form, I feel that had development continued this might have made a pretty great game, one I'd have been happy to include in my collection.
Such a shame, really.

IRON COMMANDO


A Shotgun in one hand, an enemy in the other. Truth be told, I'm feeling pretty brutal right now.​

This game was in development by Arcade Zone, and was set for release in Europe and Japan.
Now, I must say, as far as Beat-Em’-Ups are concerned, I think this could have made a fine one. At the start of the game, you're dropped onto a long street full of thugs who desperately want their knifes in your gut. As with most Beat-Em’-Ups, you can punch, jump-kick and grab enemies, as well as picking up dropped weapons such as baseball bats and knifes, and all the rest of the staple beat-em-up things. But one of the things featured in this game I thought was nice is that enemies will sometimes drop guns, which you can pick up and use yourself. How cool's that? Now I'm not saying it's an entirely new concept, but it's a beat-em-up with Shotguns! Shotguns! On top of that, the "GO >" sound is just so perfect! "Guh, Guh, Guh!!"
One thing that annoys me about this prototype, however, is that you can't pause it. In fact, press Start, and you'll be greeted by a game-over screen. That's never convenient. However, this's just a prototype after all, and this obviously wouldn't have been carried over to the full release, had it happened.

EDIT; The game was released in Japan, but never reached European shores, nor US.

MR. TUFF

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Mr. Tuff was in development by Sales Curve Interactive, and was intended for release in 1995. The game was never finished, supposedly because it was “Too Ambitious”.
In Mr. Tuff, you play as a robot who must destroy an empire ruled by Military bots. Mr Tuff has large wrecking balls for hands- And as his name implies, he's a pretty tough guy who can get past practically any obstacle by smashing it up. Pressing Y allows you to punch out with your left arm, while pressing A will swing whatever item you've got equipped around. You can pick up all sorts of power-ups along the way, such as drills, fire balls and force beams, all of which have their own pros and cons. When you pick up your new power-up, it'll attach itself to your right arm, replacing your right wrecking ball.
It's fun drilling your way through walls, smashing up robots, and squishing gigantic cockroaches, and the vehicles available in some of the levels add a little more variety to the game, such as the wrecking crane in the Home Land Flats stage, or the Hover-boards of the Bad Land Castle.

The only real issue I could find in the prototype was that collision sometimes seemed a tiny bit off. The graphics looked a little odd in places too, most notably the first door in the Flats level, which seems to cover up some of the floor's texture. Ooh, and on top of that, this prototype had not yet implemented the use of passwords, so you’ll need to use some save-states instead.

However, the prototype is completely playable and well presented. This is yet another would-have-been great game.

CORN BUSTER

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Imagine a game like Arkanoid, where the objective of the game is to move a bat around and break blocks. However, in this game, the main objective is to get to the end of each stage. The camera follows the ball as it travels upwards, while it breaks through walls and collects up cash. So basically, Arkanoid in adventure-game form. You get an extra bat as well as your staple hanging-about-the-bottom-of-the-screen one, though. The second bat can be moved in all directions, including vertically, so you can travel through the levels with more ease. Both bats can be controlled in multiplayer, one for each player, so as to bring co-operative multiplay into the game. Which is nice. And as with all games of this genre, if the ball falls to the bottom of the screen, you lose a life.

I feel the game takes an over-used, simple concept and gives it a new spin, making its gameplay sorta refreshing. However, there is definitely an air of incompleteness about it. The prototype allows you to fly directly over levels without releasing the ball, basically allowing you to simply watch the world go by, until you reach the finish line... and then further. You can go as far as to actually leave the level behind, but if you release your ball over this point, the game will just crash. Using this, you can even pass over walls and onto later levels in the game, though the graphics on these levels often look all screwed up.

Something terrible has occurred.​

This ability to skip huge parts of, or even entire levels, was likely used so the developers could test specific areas of the levels. I'm pretty sure it's safe to say this wouldn't have featured in the actual game.
Despite the fact the game is on constant-debug mode, and is thus made almost unplayable, I feel that had the developers finished the game, it could have been pretty great.

SHADOW

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“The Shadow” was basically gonna be your average beat-em-up game. You start off in Time Square, where you beat up punks, sailors and samurai warriors. You've got three main abilities- You can punch, spin-kick to trip your opponents, and (Obviously) grab and throw them. You've also got three Special abilities which'll lower your Special bar. Invisibility will turn you invisible, so your opponents can't attack you. They still seem to be aware of where you are, but eh, perhaps they can hear your footsteps or something. Dash will slam you into the side of your enemy, knocking them possibly into another enemy, in which case both will take damage. Devastation takes up more of your special bar, and will cause an explosion to deal massive damage to any enemies on screen. You can scroll through these abilities using L and R. I like the use of the Special bar, it adds a little more depth to the otherwise generic Beat-Em-Up gameplay.
Ooh, and you get Twin pistols, which looks awesome. And Feels Awesome. And is Awesome.

Now, there is a timer on “The Shadow”, but really- Don't worry about it. Take your time. If it runs out, nothing happens because the timer hasn't been properly implemented in this proto. Also, you'll sometimes see some enemy sprites go all MissingNo on you, turning into a terrible pixely abomination.

6% speed. That's the pain I went through for you, EP. Be grateful and stuff.​

It's noticeable, but should only last half a second or so, and wont effect the gameplay in any way. And, obviously, this would have been fixed for the final release.

STARFOX/WING 2

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Perhaps one of the most anticipated of unreleased snes games is StarFox/Wing 2, which, despite it being entirely complete on the development side of things, was not published simply because Nintendo was soon releasing the Nintendo 64, and felt they should stop releasing 3D games on the Snes because of it. As such, we never saw this fantastic game on shop shelves.
This sequel added new ships, two new playable characters (including best character Miyu), land-walker stages (which were Awesome), and an entirely new style of gameplay.
Instead of the linear gameplay of the original, where your paths through the levels were set in stone, you can now freely move around the Lylat system. The aim of the game is to protect Corneria from missiles and enemies, approaching them in the map screen to intercept them. The battle system is similar to the originals, although you now can turn your ship in 360 degrees, rather than having to go in one set direction. The frame rate is much smoother than the original due to the improved Super FX chip, making the game a whole lot easier on the eyes, and the graphics are simply superb. This game is also in real-time - even while you're battling enemies, other enemies and missiles continue moving towards their destinations.

I find it astonishing that the game was never released, especially after gaining such positive feedback in countless magazines and in the 1995 Winter CES. However, despite a good game being wasted, the development of Star Fox 2 did have an effect on later Nintendo titles. The programming for the camera was apparently reused for the N64 game Super Mario 64, and a few game concepts were recycled in Lylat Wars and StarFox Command.
But anyway- This game is Amazing. Play it. Right now.




Although these games were never released, their prototypes are available in ROM form, for Emulation. These ROMs can be found on sites such as Emuparadise, which I find to be one of the most reliable sites for ROMs (Though pop-up advertisements can be a pain).
I've been playing unreleased games for the past week or so, and I really must say, it's so sad seeing some great concepts and fantastic game-development feats having gone to waste. These games really deserved to have been finished and published. It's especially infuriating when you consider the amount or crappy shovel-ware the poor old Snes received. I think unreleased games like these deserve to be recovered, released and remembered.
Hmm. Enjoyed that. Might see if I can find some more discontinued game protos.