"On the Cutting Room Floor", or "Previews and their horrible, horrible lies."
 

Does anyone remembers the firsts screenshoots from this game where opening stage was VERY different to the one we know? Daylight instead of night, different buildings patterns, different enemies even a never-used version of the X-Buster that was like the 1st level charge but way longer.
I wonder if there was a prototype released or better yet, a ROM.

Share your thoughts (or screenshoots)

Yeah, I think I know what you're talking about. There were 3 or 4 screenshots in an old Nintendo Power magazine. I wonder if there's a beta floating around somewhere.

Ah, the infamous Rockman X Alpha. These scans are from the GamePro issue than covered the game's pre-release back in the day. You can find out everything you want to know about what little shots were available at The Mechanical Maniacs "Mega Man X Mysteries" section. Some of the unused graphics are actually kinda neat. I wish I could track down of ROM of this thing.

The lifebar has a P on it too instead of X. How interesting. I've seen more drastic changes in other games though. Anyone remember the kiddy version of Conker? Or Dinosaur Planet on the N64 before it was changed into a Starfox game by Rare? xD

How about the massive volumes of cut content we saw in old Twilight Princess trailers? Being chased through a tunnel by a giant spider, wandering around in a wide open forest full of cats, etc. In fact, same for most modern Zelda games. There are plenty of screenshots of Ocarina of Time depicting villages and dungeons completely gone from the final product.

Can we make this a 'cutting room floor' thread?

Yes.

To this day, I think Conker is the one game that's seen the hugest amount of overhaul, both in look and subject matter. It was obviously for the better, and I think that in itself is worthy of some discussion. It became one of the most vile and offensive video games ever made after being revealed to be one of the most innocent and cute titles ever. It was quite a cool thing to see happen, especially after the final product was so brilliant.

I remember the US commercial having some kind of huge big blue angel rise in front of Link. Any idea why they would cut out interesting scenes? =/

Oh god. This one pisses me off the most. Dinosaur Planet was supposed to be a pretty big action rpg where you switched between Krystal and Saber to do different things. The characters looked completely different as well from the upgrade. Not that I don't mind the graphical overhaul of Star Fox Adventures but the game was never meant to be a Star Fox game and slapping the franchise and gutting the original game of pretty much everything that made the game interesting ruined it for me. Instead we got one sequence with Krystal and had her play the damsel in distress role for the rest of it. Don't forget that the whole story, magic system, and other characters were tossed in the act. I was soooo fucking pumped for this game, and as much as I love Miyamoto he seriously fucked up on his little "Saber kind looks like Fox. Maybe we should make it Star Fox Adventures." fixation.

You can still see kiddie Conker as a playable character in Diddy Kong Racing. He was added to the game before his own title ("Conker's Quest", later "Twelve Tales: Conker 64") got its huge overhaul, so he's still got his old Disney-esque attitude and voice. Such a big change - it went form happy-go-lucky to Happy Tree Friends in only a few months!

There is still Conker's Pocket Tails on the GBC that retains the family friendly image.

That said, now changed to a "Cutting Room Floor" thread since the initial topic was both way too limited and way too retarded. Carry on, folks.

This isn't going back too far, but one thing that really bothered me about Half-Life 2 was the E3 2003 footage.

See, two of the biggest selling points for me on HL1 were the interactivity, and the A.I. It was revolutionary to have interactive microwaves, or marines who knew how to take cover, return fire, and even flush you out with grenades if you just started taking potshots.

When I saw the level of interactive environment objects there were to take advantage of, I got excited. And when I saw the player use physics objects to block the door, and then the combine soldier that actually tried the door twice, and then proceeded to kick it the fuck in, I had to put on new pants.

Only later we learned how heavily scripted most of that stuff was, and the actual Half-Life 2 we got pretty much ditched any claims to enemy tactics or intelligent A.I. It wasn't bad, by any means, but I didn't really see any improvements.

Oh wow I just took a look at a bunch of that footage. Seems like they removed a whole bunch of junk just because it got leaked on the Internet. Wow it seems so long ago that I'd completely forgotten about that. I really hope they add some more interactiveness and of course those amazing looking hydras that they were so proud of putting in magazine articles. Seems the vehicles didn't handle like ass in the beta and battles look way more exciting.

I still like HL2 but I wouldn't have minded a little more of what was shown in these clips. Especially the parts in the city that had trolleys and lots of objects to pick up and tons of building variety. The striders really look like they're much more manageable in the beta. Antlions have a lot more ways of entering buildings too.

Hey guys, remember when Square first showed off The Bouncer, and everyone was excited because you could interact with the environment and do futuristic Emotion Engine(tm) powered stuff like jump over railings, pick up chairs to smash into enemies, sexy swing around polls, do backflips off walls (?!) and it had the whole MATRIX IS SO COOL bullet time crap? Yeah!

Then they released the game with none of those features. :tpg:

Sorry I don't remember those parts =(

Still, the bouncer was a pretty cool movie.

What about the infamous Xenosaga Margulis/Jin fight? That was shown in the trailer, but it was put into part 2. (and Jin lost his glasses along the way....)

Yeah, somehow a keylogger made its way onto some high up's computer (maybe even Gabe N's himself, if I recall correctly), and then a bunch of source code got stolen. But after I heard about it, I figured that would only account for environment and/or story changes.

Well, at any rate, Alyx is proof-positive that they're trying to go a different direction with "interactivity." I can't really complain when it's done so well. <3

I've always been interested in seeing games evolve through their development and inevitably having content cut from them, leading to a wealth of screenshots, videos, interviews, and even music and sound effects that are never seen in the released game. Unseen64 has some great material on it, I've gone through quite a bit on the site and it always amazes me how is removed before games see the light of day. They also posted the trailer of Dinosaur Planet on Youtube, which is really quite interesting because it seems like the game was almost complete at that point.

Zelda 64 probably recieved one of the biggest overhauls, since it was originally a 64DD game and was supposed to have all kinds of amazing features that took advantage of it. For example, there was going to be some persistant features if the world: cut a bush or tree, and it would remain cut for the rest of the game. It was also going to be based on an in-game time system where you basically had 7 days to save the world, and the day and night cycles were going to be much more dynamic and have a larger focus in the game. Some of the features were eventually rolled into OoT and Majora's Mask (which got a cut down, 3-day time system), but quite a few were never seen. And noone has been able to quite figure out why there's a fully working and fightable Arwing in the game code of OoT...

http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j4.../z64arwing.jpg

Resident Evil "1.5" as it's now come to be known was another big one that even today a lot of fans want to see released. It was basically a more action-oriented version of RE2 that had many things not found in the released version. Speaking of Resident Evil, RE4 is another one that went through so major design changes. The first version of it was eventually turned into Devil May Cry, the second (and possibly third) attempts were never shown, and the second-to-last version was eventually shown and videos of it were released. I think it looks like a perfect fusion between the "classic" RE style and RE4...shame nothing came of it.

As far as Half-life 2 goes, I was pretty disappointed that many of the E3 2003 scenes were drastically altered in the final version, but the leaked alpha of the game probably had virtually nothing to do with it. Almost all of the removals and changes were done because the game was, at that point, so unfinished that nothing really fit together in yet, and they weren't even making major design decisions until well after that point. Anyone else remember the Borealis?

http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j4...i/Borealis.jpg

It was the first major part of the game they revealed, the tanker that you would start off in and they talked about it a bunch in early interviews and showed screenshots of it and everything, yet it was cut very early during the game's development (before they even showed the game at E3 2003). The entire part in Episode 2 where they make a reference to how the ship "disappeared without a trace" and such seemed to be a direct joke about how they had suddenly removed it from HL2. The "Raising the Bar" book is a good source to find all kinds of information about how the game changed during it's development.

Oh, and another funny thing: neither of the 2 screenshots on the back of the original retail Half-life 2 box are in the game.

Remember Mother 3 for the 64DD and then it was supposed to come out for the N64 before it got canned then resurrected for the GBA.

Or how about Too Human when it was first announced for the Playstation. Check out the screens from that era and compare it what it is now. A complete overhaul. They didn't even put in the Norse mythology until it was announced for the 360.

Remember the preview for that game Duke Nuken Forever? Man, that was some crazy shit. I can't wait for it to come out in 2008*

How about Star Fox 2? Nintendo Power had this huge preview on it and everything, it looked pretty awesome. Judging from the most recent prototype ROM that someone found, the game was nearly complete when Nintendo pulled the plug, too. It's wierd how marketing works; the game probably would have sold tons of copies, but they were too obsessed with pushing the N64. Then again, that was just one of a long period of questionable management decisions in Nintendo.

I remember reading a long article about some game on the PS1, I forget the name now, that was supposed to be co-starring Bruce Willis. It had Willis as the player's partner, and you went through the game like in a buddy action movie, covering each other and even competing for powerups. There was talk of having the two of you share life bars, even. It sounded like a pretty promising idea.

The game that came out, they tossed the entire concept and just made it a shitty generic 3rd person action game because the playtesters wanted to play as Bruce Willis' character themselves. Interference from above probably had something to do with that too.

Shit... You have NO idea how horrible the game is until you play it. The name of the game is Apocalypse and I own it on PS1 because GamePro gave it a pretty good review back in the day. I played it once and never played it again. It was actually developed by Neversoft right before they struck temporary brilliance and developed the long-running Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series.

These days Neversoft is, in the opinion of this humble poster, a fucking joke; a downward spiral that started with Tony Hawk's American Wasteland and just hit rock bottom a couple of days ago.

Did anyone else watch the preview gameplay videos for Mass Effect? In them, one of the developers was going on about how you would be able to talk to every single character in the game, how you'd be able to interrupt their sentences and swap control to other characters in your team. The final trailer even implied you'd have to decide between rescuing some people or getting on with your mission.

In the final game you can talk to a limited number of people, must wait for them to finish before you talk, can't swap control to other characters and the game itself is entirely linear with none of your choices really effecting the rest of the universe.

It's a great game but nothing like the preview material.

This is going to sound pretty predictable, but Fable was a HUGE bummer in every respect. I remember (even though I didn't have an xbox) getting hyped up about the good/evil aspect, how everything I did was supposed to affect the way people reacted, and how I was supposed to be able to go from boy to adult.

Instead, when the game came out, boy and teenager were tutorial levels and adults didn't have nearly the freedom of doing whatever that was promised.

And the kid stage was probably the most boring first little while in a game that I have EVER played.

Remember those C&C: Tiberian Sun previews... where they promised us a full-fledged voxel engine?

That much was true actually, many of the units and some structures (to my surprise) were actually voxel-based models. It obviously doesn't use them for everything, but the game definitely used quite a bit of voxel rendering.

It probably got pushed by the wayside on account of video card manufacturers all deciding not to really support voxels.

I also thought Tiberian Sun's vehicles (RA2's, too - same engine?) were done with voxels. Am I mistaken?

Yeah, Tiberian Sun and Red Alert 2 both used voxels to render most of the vehicles. It might not have been full rendering, but I know it was at least partial. Blade Runner (which Westwood also worked on two years earlier) used voxels for a lot of its graphics, too.

Also, I remember there were lots of games on the PS2 that were supposed to have online modes, but scrapped them way before release when the whole PS2 modem plan imploded. Square said FFX was supposed to have an online mode of some kind way back when it was first announced, but never gave any details on what it was supposed to be. Most people thought certain scenarios would be played online with other people, which would be a sort of baby step for people getting ready to play FFXI, which was fully online and quite possibly the evolution of the series. As cool as it might have been, I'm glad the line between MMOs and CRPGs wasn't blurred too much here. You have to keep these genres fenced off in separate pastures, otherwise they'll interbreed and you'll have some gangly sterile hybrids on your hands that you can't sell.

Breath of Fire DQ was also supposed to have some sort of online function, but it was scrapped before programming even began, as well as a fishing mini-game like every other BoF that was cut when they fell behind schedule. This info never made it to previews, though (you had to read about it in the art book), so no one's hopes were really dashed here. I just thought it was neat.

You know, I remember hearing about that, but from what I recall it was something about using the PlayOnline service to "connect" to other users (which was a pretty vague statement) to get help to advance your quest, like asking others for advice and discussing aspects of the game as you play. I thought the whole concept was rather silly and pointless since it sounded like you'd just be using an online message board on the console or something like that. I think they were just using FFX to market their PlayOnline service for when they actually decided to use it in a game.

On the subject of cut online modes for PS2 games, Ace Combat 5 comes to mind. I was pretty disappointed that it was cut since I had just finished Ace Combat 4 right beforehand and was really looking forward to some online dogfights. I think that caused me to lose interest in the series, I loved Ace Combat 4 but I haven't even gotten around to playing 5 or Zero yet, and I didn't even care enough to bother seeing if Ace Combat 6 finally has that feature or not.

Oh, and I can't believe I forgot about one of the most horrible preview lies ever: Red Steel. It was the first Wii game that had any "screenshots" shown of it, and it looked quite impressive for a system that was supposed to just be an extension of the Gamecube. Then it turns out that those were just pre-renders, and the actual game looked like total crap and all those cool features that they talked about in the preview were incredibly boring, poorly executed, or non-existent.

I'd believe that. The whole thing does sounds kinda wonky, and I doubt Square had the infrastructure to host FFX and FFXI's servers at the time and provide full online modes for each one. Even if it was just a message board system or something, I think it takes something out of the game when you encourage interaction rather than let people figure stuff out on their own, especially in RPGs. Still, any gimmick like online features was exciting back then, especially since the Dreamcast was the only console getting it right at the time.

And since it fits the topic - beta screens! Including the old, minimalist menu, the old logo (coming 2001 - believe it!), and the virtually unchanged Tidus model. Shots are from GameCore back in 2000 when the game was announced.

Nall: I'd love a link to this minimalist menu that you mention.Oh, it just wasn't loading.

Incidentally, does anyone remember the PlayOnline that existed BEFORE the online service? The one where it had a guide to FFIX on there that sorta kinda taught you a couple things about the game, but was hyped to be like a completely comprehensive guide to the game?

Yeah, I remember that. It was supposed to be this huge online archive like you said, but it really wasn't anything that comprehensive. The original PlayOnline site was taken down for a while a few years after FFIX got old, but it was later integrated into the main Square Enix site. The codes from the strategy guide still work, too, for what it's worth.

Nice website. It reminded me of a section removed from Metal Gear Solid2, when snake is being chased through the tanker by water.

http://www.unseen64.net/xboxps2/xboxbeta2/mgs2pr37.jpg

This is more of a 'how not to localize', really, but...
Ace Combat 3 (reference).
The versions sold in the US and Europe had almost all of the story content (incuding all cutscenes) removed for some reason. Fortunately, Namco did not repeat this nonsense in subsequent iterations.
Cybernator is also guilty of this.