BETA stuff

[Anonymous No.4073476]

concept art and junk.

Why do beta games always look more interesting than the finished product?

[Anonymous No.4073479]

[Anonymous No.4073486]

[Anonymous No.4073498]

[Anonymous No.4073502]

[Anonymous No.4073516]

[Anonymous No.4073528]

>>4073516
>dat lowpoly Terra ass

[Anonymous No.4073530]

I downloaded a game magazine version of Warcraft 2 just a while back. Really interesting how Blizzard seemed to get rid of a whole resource (ore) such late in development.

[Anonymous No.4073538]

>>4073530
Thats Rad im sure they cut a lot due to time.
https://tcrf.net/Proto:Warcraft:_Orcs_%26_Humans

[Anonymous No.4073539]

>>4073530
No oil? There seem to be ships on the map but I don't see any structures in the water.

[Anonymous No.4073547]

>>4073516
Locke WAS pretty beta

[Anonymous No.4073549]

Locke WAS pretty Beta. This guy in the FF7 early beta kind of looks like him

[Anonymous No.4073557]

>>4073549
32bit FF6 would have been beautiful. but Cloud would look weird in 2D

[Anonymous No.4073565]

What could have been

[Anonymous No.4073570]

>>4073476
>Why do beta games always look more interesting than the finished product?
Because of the mystery. It's something fresh and interesting in something you're familiar with, plus the what-could-have-been factor.

That or it's some unused design that you like more than what they went with in the final product.

[Anonymous No.4073583]

>>4073516
>>4073528
I'm just annoyed there isn't video of this, just the same half dozen screenshots we've seen for 25 years.

[Anonymous No.4073584]

>>4073516
>lowpoly Terra ass
lol that's not low poly m8

[Anonymous No.4073593]

>>4073583
>>4073583
srsly?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPO7c_XmesU

[Anonymous No.4073595]

>>4073593
actually in this demo you can see it used the same background as >>4073557

[Anonymous No.4073606]

>>4073583
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5l0A3zzEgw

[Anonymous No.4073620]

>>4073593
Shit, I've wanted to see that for years and didn't know it existed. Thank you.

[Anonymous No.4073624]

>>4073565
Good lord, it looks like they had the colours inverted. That would make the eyes sore quite easily.

[Anonymous No.4073642]

>>4073549

Somewhere in an alternate universe they got to play sprite based FF7

so jelly of those alternate universe fuckers right now.

[Anonymous No.4073660]

>>4073570
Another factor is that early versions of a game often have a lot of crap that the devs thought was neat but later realized wouldn't work. So you look at it and, like the devs, think is neat without having to worry about how it would have affected how the game actually played.

[Anonymous No.4073665]

>>4073593
> girly build
> fabulous long hair
> belts out of the ass (no zippers though)
> a fucking scythe

I thought Nomura got worse with the years, but it seems he was kind of this way from the get go

[Anonymous No.4073709]

Metal Slug was originally only about the Metal Slug. You couldn't get out of the Slug and the drivers would only be shown in cutscenes. POWs were blue pallet swaps of the soldiers you fight and when rescued they would change color to match the player that rescued them and fight alongside you.
The controls were totally different as well. Earliest versions used only two buttons, jump and shoot. Pressing both at the same time would fire the canon. Later versions had you tilt the lever up to jump and use the four buttons to shoot in four different directions. We narrowly dodged a parallel universe where Metal Slug sucked.

You can read a full analysis about Metal Slug's early designs here: http://randomhoohaas.flyingomelette.com/msmia/1/ef.html

[Anonymous No.4073731]

>>4073642
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy_VII_(NES_video_game)

[Anonymous No.4074886]

>>4073709
Awesome so MS was more of a sequel to In The Hunt

[Anonymous No.4074909]

[Anonymous No.4074953]

>>4074909
Not surprising they started with that, but I like the cape mechanic of swooping up and down a lot. I'm glad they came up with it.

[Anonymous No.4074963]

>>4074909
I wish Nintendo would at least film or document their internal backup vault full of prototypes before they turn to dust. unless they already trashed everything.

[Anonymous No.4075003]

>>4074963
They are Japanese, they probably burnt it the day the actual game came out.

[Anonymous No.4075078]

never ever

[Anonymous No.4075354]

>>4074953
Yeah, flying is way more fun with a little less control

[Anonymous No.4075364]

>>4075354
beta Banzai/Bullet bill looks so derpy

[Anonymous No.4075432]

https://twitter.com/ShuzilowHA

[Anonymous No.4075434]

>>4075432

[Anonymous No.4075435]

>>4075434

[Anonymous No.4075436]

Sonic

[Anonymous No.4075437]

>>4075436

[Anonymous No.4075441]

>>4075434
Gaiapolis and Twinbee btw

[Anonymous No.4075564]

>>4075003
Why do they do this? Why are they so autistic about pretending the final product never changed during development?

[Anonymous No.4075597]

>>4075564
Two a-bombs fucked their heads up.

[Anonymous No.4077340]

[Anonymous No.4077385]

I know most people think this game is trash, but in all honestly I love pretty much everything about it. I wish I could say I only owned a N64 during that time, but I didn't so it's not like I had nothing else to play. I'm aware of it's shortcoming and barren world, but for whatever reason it's a really charming game. That and the OST is unique and catchy.

[Anonymous No.4077392]

>>4077385
Also, I always get so curious as to what the game could have really been if the developers had more money and time to invest in the game.

[Anonymous No.4077415]

>>4077385
Quest 64 kicked my ass as a kid. That forest was spooky.
They almost made a sequel
Quest 64 2
might have been cool on gamecube but I like the primitive environments of the original.

[Anonymous No.4077418]

>>4073709
MANNNN, I really wanna play a build of Beta Metal Slug. It just sounds so cool.

[Anonymous No.4077421]

>>4077415
I heard about that. Dame shame too. Were they intending to release it on the N64?

The forest was a nice environment, a little crazy at times since it felt like you could be walking in circles. The boss in that area is fucking tough as nails; in fact, most boss fights are insane.

It's interested when you come across certain parts of the game, like the boulder in the underground cave. It apparently was supposed to be a shortcut to one of the towns, but they didn't have enough time which is why they blocked it off with said boulder.

[Anonymous No.4077429]

>>4077421
interesting*

[Anonymous No.4077491]

>>4077392
>Protagonist is 12
>Love interest is 15

[Anonymous No.4077495]

>>4077491
Yeah, /ss/ is nice.

[Anonymous No.4077505]

>>4073660
It's more like they add a bunch of shit and then the game runs at 10fps and they have to start stripping shit out. Since we're just seeing static screenshots of course it looks great

[Anonymous No.4077518]

>>4077491
she's only 13 though unless you think the pirate is the love interest.

[Anonymous No.4077670]

>>4077518
Never mind, I misread. That's rather more reasonable.

[Anonymous No.4077734]

Still mad

[Anonymous No.4078928]

Quinty

[Anonymous No.4078930]

Time Gal Flash

[Anonymous No.4078946]

Lunar 1 tech demo
https://twitter.com/VGDensetsu/status/878646237125390336
>Lunar TSS (Mega-CD) technical demo that predates the game's release by more than one year. (Tokyo Toy Show - May 91)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dje-I2c5sbE&feature=youtu.be&t=793

[Anonymous No.4078953]

Originally the art style used for Breath of Fire III was the same style used in Breath of Fire II. Why Yoshikawa ultimately decided to use the watercolor style he did is unknown.

[Anonymous No.4079131]

W-well at least it was released

[Anonymous No.4079156]

>>4079131
This is a real bummer. Honestly, I found the GBA Mother 3 kind of underwhelming.

[Anonymous No.4079170]

>>4077734
Isnt that just sega genesis batman?
>>4078953
looks more generic
>>4079131
Mother 3 64 was so dark looking

[Anonymous No.4079175]

>>4075436
>>4075437
COOL SHIT BRAH

[Anonymous No.4079176]

>>4078928
I like the art style. What was this supposed to be?

[Anonymous No.4079181]

>>4079176
name of the game is right there, anon

[Anonymous No.4079183]

>>4079170
Agreed on the BoF comment. the new artstyle they used in BoFIII was gorgeous and much better
>>4079156
Some changes were definitely made.
>originally twelve chapters
>around 60 hours in length
>Flint had a larger role in the story
>game used real time, in game things can change
>when planned for the 64DD certain feature were made, would be able to change character model's face and even use your own
>Wess was a planned party member and not just a npc
>believed that you could swap party members
>was subtitled "Forest of the Chimera" and then changed to "Fall of the Pig King"
>according to Itoi the game had a much darker ending where "the player character would betray the player", full details are still unknown to this day
There are probably more but those are the major ones I know.

[Anonymous No.4079187]

>>4079176
>>4079181
Quinty (or Mendel's Palace in the US) was the first game that gamefreak, creators of the pokemon franchise, created. Also the first game that Ken Sugimori, the artist of pokemon, worked on.

[Anonymous No.4079195]

[Anonymous No.4079198]

[Anonymous No.4079201]

>>4079176
NES game with pokemon artist Ken Sugimori
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWf-O4dkx2I

[Anonymous No.4079214]

>>4073530
Kinda neat that the Night Elves in WC3 seem to be inline with the elf's HUD portrait appearance in that prerelease.

[Anonymous No.4079238]

There's a seemingly very early build of The Lion King for SNES out there. Sure, maybe it isn't the most historically significant game ever, but it is fun to mess around in an early version of a popular SNES title. Pic is the title screen.

Note how much more interesting the roar and health bars were at this point and how many graphics are still just animated skeletal armatures.

http://hiddenpalace.org/The_Lion_King_(Early_Prototype)

[Anonymous No.4079275]

>>4079238
whoa stick figures everywhere. cool to see this early into the dev process.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmSDrFOjFKQ

[Anonymous No.4079296]

>>4075564

Anything less than perfection dishonors their family, and would require them to commit sudoku. So they must destroy all evidence of previous versions of a game lest the company shogun demand their head.

[Anonymous No.4079467]

>>4078953
The final sprites for the kid versions of Ryu, Teepo and Nina actually follow those designs way more closely. My guess is they suddenly updated the art direction early on to something more sophisticated and closer to the mid-90s Capcom style, but that early part of the game was already finished and they never got around to update the sprites as well.

Can anybody confirm both batches were actually designed by the same guy? -Yoshikawa or whatshisface-

[Anonymous No.4079489]

I find it really bizarre how Tales of Phantasia clearly used these designs for its sprites, and then for the official art used character designs that don't match them in the slightest.

[Anonymous No.4079690]

>>4079201
What artbook is this? For archival/scientific purposes

[Anonymous No.4079718]

>>4079489
I love the original designs, even if they look generic. They look more homely and ready for adventure instead of a fashion runway.

Also original Arche, Mint, Undine, and Luna are great.

[Anonymous No.4079727]

>>4079467
Yes, both were by Yoshikawa. Yoshikawa has been the lead artist for the series since BoFII. In a few of the very first magazine promotional materials you can see this art used as well as in game art. The in game art for the characters was actually the same meaning that the change of artstyle was probably late development and they had already making all the sprite's animations while still using the original, more BoFII like artstyle so they didn't want to rework all the sprites.

[Anonymous No.4079762]

>>4079275
>The Lion Kino

[Anonymous No.4079782]

>>4079690
It's from the Quinty manga.

[Anonymous No.4080426]

>>4079275
There's also an early build of Aladdin (for Genesis) out there:
http://hiddenpalace.org/Aladdin_(Chicago_C.E.S_demo

Not as early as that The Lion King build, but it has some neat stuff, like two enemies that were cut from the final game, completely different AI for the Iago enemy (effectively a different enemy), a totally different inside the lamp level (complete with decorations and obstacles that were nowhere to be found in the final), some in-progress animations, and different art (like the big breasted Genie in the opening).

You can read more about it here:
https://forums.sonicretro.org/index.php?showtopic=35935&st=0

Based on findings from research done by users on that forum, it seems like this build might have been one used by Sega of America to produce preview screenshots to send to magazines. Perhaps not-so-coincidentally a known former prototype seller (who obtained some goods by pilfering stuff from his Sega of America workplace) by the name of Clint Dyer was credited as being in charge of screenshots for Aladdin.

[Anonymous No.4080465]

>>4079690
https://www.amazon.com/Ken-Sugimori-Works-Quinty-Pokemon/dp/4198638063

Somebody needs to scan this

[Anonymous No.4080478]

>>4073476
dev here.

a game concept has literally no design constraints besides imagination. once the concept becomes a prototype/proof of concept, the major ideas have to be made to fit into real world constraints. From there, the rest of the game has to be made which usually means running into more bottlenecks along the way.

for example, its possible to make a super detailed proof of concept that spans one or two levels, but then when you start making it a full game you have to go "shit, i/we just dont have enough time/money/storage space/man hours to make everything look as good as this demo....fuck!"

tldr: the more paced and practical you are in your concept/prototype phase, the less likely you'll have to cut corners throughout the creation process.

[Anonymous No.4080502]

>>4080478
dev again.

ive also run into the "why did we change that?" revelation after putting a game out too. Sometimes when you look at a graphic or model a billion times a week you start wondering if its too simple, and the urge to fuck with it takes over. Only later on do you realize it was actually better beforehand, you only thought it looked bland because you saw it so many times.

this is sometimes why prototype graphics look more clean and simple but the final product looks gaudy and overdesigned. Nobody will ever admit it, but this happens. A lot.

[Anonymous No.4080505]

>>4073476
Because it's familiar to you but different enough to spark an interest. In reality most beta content is cut for good reason and would be buggy as hell / just plain boring.

Back then devs had more opportunities to play around and test ideas out also to see what worked. Nowadays games are such high budget and have hundreds of staff you literally can't afford to just try things out, they have to be meticulously planned. Older games have more of a wild west style of development

[Anonymous No.4080517]

>>4080502
Always good to have a fresh pair of eyes to look over and test stuff, for both the "looking at it so long you get overly picky with it" and "looking at it so long you begin to overlook obvious mistakes."

[Anonymous No.4080519]

>>4073498
those gnarly hands are the stuff of nightmares! haha

[Anonymous No.4080529]

>>4080465
I own this, but no scanner =[

[Anonymous No.4080536]

>>4080517
exactly. ironically, its the big multi-project studios i've worked at that are doing better at avoiding over design nowdays because people working on "Project A" will bring over people working on "Project B" to do internal testing and critiquing. They can get fresh eyes on a concept before it goes public.

AAA studios have a lot of shit in them, but sometimes there's a few really nice perks when they're made up of good people.

[Anonymous No.4080741]

>>4079467
Good catch. Never finished that game but played a little of it ages ago. I always wondered why the sprites were so different, but I was also used to Final Fantasy by that point so it wasn't all that weird.

[Anonymous No.4080746]

>>4079467
The more I look at it the more unmistakable it is. Their hair, the colors of the clothes, Teepo's armor, those are sprites from the art on top and definitely not the art on bottom.

[Anonymous No.4080764]

Video of Juli and Juni from an early build of Street Fighter Alpha 3, before their movesets had been fully differentiated from Cammy's.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFG8pZbAwww

[Anonymous No.4080791]

Unused super for Huitzil in Darkstalkers 1. There's actually some half-finished code for this move, if you hack the game to play as Huitzil you can perform it with QCF+PPP. But the code is unfinished enough that it can't actually hit anything and you get stuck until the opponent hits you. This move was never finished, it never showed up in any of the following games in the series.

[Anonymous No.4080795]

Combiner variant of Huitzil's Final Guardian super in Darkstalkers 2. No code related to this one as far as I know, only graphics. But this together with the version plenty of people got to experience during the location tests (shown here >>4079198) and then the version that made it to the final game means they went through at least 3 variations of this one move during development.

[Anonymous No.4080807]

Me want snu snu

[Anonymous No.4080808]

>>4080791
>>4080795
all this effort that didn't even get used FOR A FUCKING BOSS CHARACTER. Such a waste of resources.

[Anonymous No.4080810]

>>4079170
Its pce version before they changed it into the goofy pac-man styled one we have today. Judging from these shots it would have been very similar to the genesis version

[Anonymous No.4080814]

>>4080807
Here are some more early Darkstalkers concepts. They spent three whole months just churning out character design concepts for Darstalkers 1 because the lead artist at the time wanted to help train more of the company's artists in character design principles.

[Anonymous No.4080815]

>>4080814

[Anonymous No.4080817]

>>4080815

[Anonymous No.4080821]

>>4080817

[Anonymous No.4080823]

>>4080817
I like some of the old designs better

[Anonymous No.4080824]

>>4080821

[Anonymous No.4080828]

This is the Demitri design that was actually chosen from the brainstorming phase, yet obviously it only vaguely resembles the final design. There must have been further refining phases after this. The rest of the designs chosen from the brainstorming phase were essentially the final designs aside from a few small details.

[Anonymous No.4080838]

>>4073486
>visible panties
I can see how Conker ended up the way it did

[Anonymous No.4080939]

>>4075564
I think in a lot of cases they just didn't consider that anyone would ever give a shit about the stuff they were throwing out.

[Anonymous No.4081068]

>>4075564
A lot of prototype cartridges from back in the day held their data in EPROMs which are meant to be overwritten and reused. As such, during development they were probably often overwritten as build number increased and as projects were finished and new games started development. Protos that weren't overwritten were probably filed away and forgotten about or trashed for the reason that >>4080939 said. Some prototypes were builds sent out to magazines or stores for preview or review or demo, and even some of those were meant to be returned (some protos bear a "Needs to be Returned" designation on the cart). Companies were likely possessive of them back in the day because they could be a source of pre-release leaks or corporate espionage. Capcom would sometimes put little CAPCOM seals on their proto carts or boards so they'd know if someone tried to tamper with them in an effort to copy the EPROMs.

As for archiving stuff on hard drives and the like, hard to say. I'd imagine that in the pre-cheap-CD-R times early builds and stuff were similarly overwritten with finalized versions since storage space wasn't unlimited.

tl;dr a lot of companies likely tried to keep a tight grip on their prototypes and likely reused them when possible and forgot about/trashed them when finished

[Anonymous No.4081087]

>>4075432
Is it bad I thought that was a Doom map from the thumbnail?

[Anonymous No.4081456]

>>4080817
The soldier and the longhair Zabel are even cooler than the final one.

It seems they took the best of each concept to make the final characters.

[Anonymous No.4081881]

>>4073709
>We narrowly dodged a parallel universe where Metal Slug sucked.
The one we got definitely sounds better, but fuck do I want to play that beta. It sounds so damn interesting and would have made for a neat spin-off series.

[Anonymous No.4082065]

>>4073565
blizzardarchive.com/pub/Images/Screens/Sc1_2/clean.html

[Anonymous No.4083913]

[Anonymous No.4083914]

[Anonymous No.4083916]

[Anonymous No.4083937]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKpYoxVaWnY

you guys might find this interesting, here's a very cool making of documentary from 1990 of the NES game Equinox. They show a bunch of different builds and explain the whole development process.

[Anonymous No.4083939]

>>4083937
err meant the NES game solstice, equinox was the snes sequel

[NESfag No.4083943]

[NESfag No.4083946]

>Iron Man
>Smoke Man
>Green Man
>Drill Man

[NESfag No.4083948]

the base idea for Beat (MM5) dates back from MM3

[NESfag No.4083951]

Yudon from MM5 also dates back from MM3, this time as is.

[Anonymous No.4083973]

>>4083943
>>4083946
>>4083948
>>4083951
amazing. KONG MAN is my favorite.
>Smoke 420 Man
protoman looks badass

>>4083937
tim follin cool solstice is impressive for nes.

[NESfag No.4084030]

>>4083973
This is all from the 25th anniversary book that you can find here :

https://mega.nz/#F!G8VjXSjY!HigLekH1YRxozZQwgsu7EA

Also MM4 beta video, including some different bg, level design, enemy animation, and a whole mid level boss that got scrapped but made it to MMV GB in another shape

https://youtu.be/dje-I2c5sbE

[Anonymous No.4084041]

For the unreleased game Fleapit, the only known title for Rare's Razz/Playboy hardware. Got turned into a mascot platformer for the SNES a few years later.

[Anonymous No.4084042]

>>4084041

It's probably a good thing that it wasn't released.

[Anonymous No.4084047]

>>4084042

>(The Razz Board) used a strange data format for graphics which completely freed us from any constraints based on character, tile, or sprite sizes (its hard to explain, instead of storing square bitmaps, each pixel stored the direction [u / d / l / r] for the next pixel in the sequence).

[Anonymous No.4084184]

>>4084030
that video is a major nostalgia trip.
>>4084041
wow didnt know Plok had that much dev history or that Rare made other arcade hardware besides battletoads.

[Anonymous No.4084279]

>>4083913
>>4083914
>>4083916
Are these concepts from STI? They don't look very weeabooo

[Anonymous No.4084291]

>>4084279
yep Sonic 2 had a lot of baka gaijins do grunt work and most of their ideas got cut.

[Anonymous No.4086187]

[Anonymous No.4086270]

>>4073665
It's like he saw Magus from Chrono Trigger and didn't understand he's not Toriyama.

[Anonymous No.4086282]

>>4079467
The artbook confirmed that they did change the art style partway though development but a ton of the sprites were already done.

[Anonymous No.4086630]

>>4073565
This looks fucking amazing

[Anonymous No.4087092]

>>4086270
Magus is just blue piccolo with long hair

[Anonymous No.4087105]

[Anonymous No.4088662]

>>4080828
Looks like a cracking statue

[Anonymous No.4089132]

Battle Mania Trouble Shooter 3D DC cancelled game. Another great shmup on the dreamcast lost. Sad.

[Anonymous No.4089135]

>>4089132
Actually scratch that it would have probably been mostly 2d sprites with maybe 3d backgrounds.

[Anonymous No.4089137]

>>4073476
Damn Nintendo for taking out Stop N Swap

[Anonymous No.4089146]

Raymond 2

[Anonymous No.4089153]

>ywn get to play the shitty 64DD zelda where link can jump

[Anonymous No.4089165]

>>4073549
Where the hell did this come from? I had no idea they were developing a FF7 like this

[Anonymous No.4089168]

because you're allowed more freedom in the concept stage.

[Anonymous No.4089182]

>>4089165
only known image of that build. Its a mock-up image which lots of devs did back then. A bullshot.

[Anonymous No.4089183]

>>4079489
Playing this when the translation first came out on SNES was some of the hypest shit ever.

I should play the "newer" PSX version.

[Anonymous No.4089190]

>>4089183
the PSX version is vastly superior.
You can actually get full control during combat and do some neat combos.

[Anonymous No.4089193]

>>4089190
I am finishing on ToB right now, so I will do ToP afterwards.

I wonder about all those other Tales games that never came over as well.

[Anonymous No.4089197]

>>4073665

Keep in mind Nomura did a lot of the monster art though. So he was good for something, just not....*that*....

[Anonymous No.4089208]

>>4073502
Are those little Kekcrocs?

[Anonymous No.4089227]

>>4081087

Yes, Anon. You need to expand your gaming horizons and get better taste.

[Anonymous No.4089229]

>>4075436
>we'll never get a Sonic that looks exactly like those hand drawings only with color

[Anonymous No.4089231]

>>4089193

They're good. Namco are a bunch of cocksucks for not letting us experience them.

[Anonymous No.4089235]

>>4089190

I so wish the dude providing the translation patch for the PSX version had let me help him with it. It could have been *perfect* but nooooo.....

[Anonymous No.4089259]

>>4079201
>>4080465
I never realized how much I actually love Sugimori's style

[Anonymous No.4089286]

>>4089259
His old work is better. I guess he still draws cute girls sometimes.

[Anonymous No.4089401]

>>4073565
It's not really a beta when the project got scrapped and redone, now is it?