Deleted Scenes - Daredevil: The Video Game

Did you know, at some point, there's almost been a Daredevil game?

It was back in what I call the early "128-bits era".
Marvel had just released a pretty successful 3D Spider-man game (on the PSX, N64, PC and Dreamcast). With the success of its early 90s cartoons still behind them, expanding their catalog to others characters was a no-brainer.

Making video games based on comic book proprieties was an obvious step, from a marketing point of view. But besides a little Silver Surfer on the NES a decade earlier, most of those adaptations were always based on the big mainstream popular names. Batman, Superman, Spider-man? Sure.
Daredevil? Now that would have been quite something!
The task to realize the impossible was let upon developer 5000ft under Encore's publishing.
Not much was known about this game, apart the fact that it seems it would have been pretty similar to that Spider-man game mentioned above. (using Tony Hawk ProSkater's engine as well? I doubt it since it was an entirely different crew making and editing the game)

I can imagine it would have used a little HUB/open world. The whole Hell's kitchen to patrol over in a non-linear way. Maybe DD would have had to protect his neighborhood, look out for criminals/stop criminal sprees.
I can imagine they would have put an alert system in the form of a progression bar on the HUD menu.

Here's a screen at the game:

From the looks of it, it probably started production in the late 90s/early 2000s. Probably on the PS1/PC/N64 as well. It might have been published on the DC as well I can guess.

But the game was taking a lot of time, too much time for this kinda project.
Then at E3 2002, some in-game videos surfaced showing the project was still alive:



Love that "blind vision" mode.

Slated now for a Q4 2004 release.
The game was now on the then-next gen systems, meaning the PS2 and Xbox.
Sure, it wasn't the prettiest game around, was showing a bit of his old age, looking more like the 1999 Spider-man game with some acrobatic moves, than, say, Ubisoft's Prince of Persia: Sands of Time.

Here's a look at this game's boxarts:

Sadly, by then the an actual adaptation of Daredevil came out, the 2003 Mark Steven Johnson-directed Ben Affleck!Daredevil movie.
Long story short, they lost the license and all we got instead was this Game Boy Advance game:

Which was...huh...nice. But so far from what we almost had.

Funny story though, some website and stores still list that DD game like had it been released.

Thus ends another random history of something that might had been.

TV News! WW canceled

Oh yeah, I don't know if you guys followed it, but that cominc-up new Wonder Woman TV show?
It has been canceled without airing.

It seems the producers didn't like the product and so the pilot will not even air on TV.
I guess it's for the best in end.
Good or bad, the reception so far, from the few people who were able to grab a copy of the pilot before it got pulled out, didn't like it much.
I don't know if a bad WW TV show would have been good, for the character at least.

Giving a Wonder Woman series to "the crew behind Ally McBeal", didn't sound like a good move anyway. I wouldn't like a show were Diana worries about her breast size, goes shopping and spends time talking girly stuff with her roomate.
Diana is afterall the strongest woman from comics, an Amazon first of all and the "Goddess of Truth"/a warrior born.
She should be strong, spend her time protecting and helping people out and trying to promote peace and equality as the Amazons' emissary.

I believe there's still hope for a better Wonder Woman adaptation, be it on TV again or in a movie finally.
Just look at her excellent portrayal in the direct-to-DVD movie from Warner Bros Animations.
Just stay close to George Pérez 80s reboot.
Or give it to Gail Simone (as writer) or Joss Whedon (as director/producer) or anyone else that won't disguise a girly/gritty take on that Bionic Woman reboot underneath this project.

Deleted Scenes - The Flash game that never was..

If only they could give the Flash a videogame...

Well, the Flash actually had a game already. But that was in the early 90s, on the Sega Master System.
Anyway, that one was a long time ago, during videogame's early 8-bits days.
I always felt that he was the kind of character that could actually get a pretty decent game if the speed-gimmick was well thought.

Wouldn't it be perfect to represent such an abstract notion as the "Speed Force" ?
Even more so than an actual live movie/tv show/cartoon? Imagine speeding through a city, zipping around immobile villains, having a duel with other speedsters and playing around with time!

Well, that's probably what also though the guys at Bottlerocket Entertainment, the studio behind the modern Splatterhouse. They started working on The Flash....but sadly the game never saw the light of the day... Hte company shut down not long after that.

Today I'd like to take this occasion to show everything I was able to find about this game that never got released!

In the mid-2000s, the Flash almost got his very own Arkham Asylum-like game on Xbox 360, PS3 (and probably PC?).
A genuine Flash videogame was in-development, not a cartoon/movie tie-in rushed product. But Warner Bros studios did commission an actual comic book-to-video game adaptation based around the Scarlet Speedster.

It wasn't that long in development before problems with BottleRocket's publishers at that time arose.
Warner didn't had a gaming publishing company like these days.
And when BottleRocket themselves got some troubles...this game got canned logically.

It was first aimed for a 2007-8 release date, then later..later...until the delays and the production challenges got the better of it.

Anyway, thanks to some ex-BottleRocket guys portfolio and press release, I was able to get some pics of the materials produced so far.
Let's start with character designs!
I guess for a Flash game, you'd like to know which characters were supposed to appear and how everybody would look like, right?
Well, they were supposed to sport brand new redesigns (like Arkham Asylum did with Bat-characters).

Here's the lineup of the characters that were supposed to star in this game:

As you can see, it was going to show most of the Flash-centric character, be it on the heroes or the Rogues sides.
Different looks yet all pretty familar for fans.
Let's have a look at the Flash, shall we?

As you see (and guess), the Flash was gonna have a pretty Wally West inspired costume.
At various production stages, it was originally supposed to be Wally (the 3rd Flash, Kid Flash grown up)..then with DC's bringing Barry Allen (the "original" Silver Age Flash) they thought about making it Barry sporting a Wally costume.
Anyway, we can only suppose what things might have been.

I like the look, kinda similar to what DC Comics actually did with Wally since Barry's return. The boots are pretty cool, would have made for quite a visual look while he's running as a blur around the city for sure!

As you can see from the character line-up above, the game was going to feature lots of the Flash family. From Jesse Quick to Jay Garriy (the original Flash!).
It was also to feature probably time travel to some extend (and seeing characters grow up into other roles?).

Impulse/Bart Allen was to be part of this experience, and so was his evil doppelganger!

And when Barry was considered for main Flash, what about Wally?

Wally was considered for Kid Flash again, with an all-new look.

Below, another idea for a costume:

Not a big fan of this one I'll admit. Kinda too much "Jess Quick"-like.

But heroes are only as good as their villains!
That's why Batman or Spider-man are still so popular after all this time, and what made them iconic in the first place.
What about the Rogues, the villains the player would face in this game?

Here's some concept arts and even early models for some of them:

Obviously, Captain Cold had to be in there.
And below, Grodd, classic Flash stuff, the Weather Wizard in concepts, 3D modeling stage and finished model and more!

For the city, it seems it was gonna be the good ol' Central City, as most of the times it is with the Flash. (when it isn't its sister-city Keystone).

Some early placings where done. What we call "next gen" effects weren't applied yet. But it was already looking nice so far. Recognizable, bright, colorful, modern.

 And here's a map of the city (most of it? all of it?)

Alright, now that we've seen most of the components of the game, let check the game itself!

The in-game artwork was all done by Roger Robinson, who also was on character concepts duty.
The menu was to use bright colorful dynamic art as you can see:

This pic above was also going to be the game's main menu.

And here's more menu screens:

I'd say it again, but things were looking promising!
Love the direction, even moreso than the grim and gritty (awesome) Batman: Arkham Asylum game.
Why did DC pull off the plug? Why, oh, why!

And here's the in-game HUD:

Everything might not have been definitive, but it looked good so far.

I already can hear you...Yeah, so what? What about the actual game itself?? In motion!
Well, we can't imagine how the final product might have been...apart from this tech demo which actually gives us an idea:




And it looked good enough!
We can only guess, but I'd imagine this to be better than some actually released games such as most Superman games, Aquaman on the Xbox and maybe even those repetitive Spider-man movies games.
Exploring a city (more than just a city?) on foot with the Fastest Man Alive... Maybe some day..

This post was written from tidbits found here and there. And material here is © Warner Bros/DC Entertainment. Courtesy from Roger Robinson deviantart page and Baz Pringle portfolio

Deleted Scenes - New unreleased Xbox Sonic game found

A new Sonic game has been discovered!

These seem to pop up every now and then, usually on 16/32-bits system.
This is one of those rare more recent canned Sonic games found by fans.

Sega just sold some Xbox development kits (the first original Xbox) which they didn't had a use for anymore.
On one of these, an early build of some undiscovered Sonic game was present.

It's (temporary) name? Sonic The Hedgehog: Extreme.

Without a doubt, this looks like an early Sonic Heroes.
The models, engine and physics seem pretty close to what Sonic Adventure 2 on the Dreamcast was.
But the background is clearly a sort of "Seaside Hill" (1st level of Heroes).
Sonic seems to ride a board, but I doubt it was going to be a very early Sonic Riders.
Probably a gameplay variation like those "cart-thingies" in Heroes.

And here's some videos:







Courtesy of ProtonX3 youtube account

As you can see, there even was a 2-player mode. Clearly taken from SA2, but it probably ended as Heroes' multiplayer mode.
I'm still not quite certain the whole game would have been on boards, this looks like early testing, decision making/brainstorming-kinda stage.

Here's Shadow doing what he does best (being anti-social?):



And the mission mode:



Battle mode:



Entire race level:



Curiously, a later build was also present but titled Tech Deck Bare Knuckle Grind.
At this stage, they probably decided to make a separate game instead of a Sonic spinoff, build up new models, new artwork, new characters. The level looks more polished and the pace is faster.



Very interesting stuff.
The Sonic Team was probably totally into the extreme and grind aspect while making SA2, so they tried a little concept...which sort of evolved over the time into a more traditional Sonic Heroes later on.

These sort of finds are always fun to look back at.

They were experimenting and having fun with the character "back then", unlike nowadays, with the hordes of Nintendo-era Sonic fanboys, dissing and critizing stuff all the time.
I kinda preferred back when Sega (and Sonic) had a smaller audience.. I miss that time..