Rarest Beta/Unreleased/Prototype video games?

Just wondering, could we get a list going of the rarest Beta/Unreleased/Prototype video games? What games would you consider?

I would consider any early version of Halo or Grand Theft Auto to be very rare.

|Running List of Rarest Beta/Unreleased/Prototype games|​ This list is created based on the opinions of members here at Assembler.

 

marvel vs capcom saturn, still remember there was supposed to be a release on the saturn ... dont know if it's true or not thou

 

Early alpha versions of any Gears game..... like Gears 3 soooo much content / maps and mp maps that were cut out like MP_River and two or three dozen more maps that did not make the cut

 

You're referring to Gears of War I assume?

 

yup

 

Anything that hasn't been leaked, but still exists in corporate storage. Next is whatever hoarders' own that exists in very limited quantities. Last is pre-release copies for journalists. I think that's about right.

 

sigh .. any dead rising betas. rare as fuck.

 

and there is a 90% chance that we will never see them... there is SOO much unreleased / cancelled game builds "out there" in the hands of people not in the industry in not even funny....

 

Earthbound 64, there were rumors of 4 carts being sold to an anonymous buyer and I remember reading an article of someone who played it. Not sure if real.
Sonic X-treme, there was a video from around '96 that showed Sonic going against the Metal Sonic boss fight so whatever build that was/the latest. Knowing Sega's track record, they probably lost it anyway.

 

The carts you might be speaking about are these. http://starmen.net/stonehenge/bluedisks/ Starmen apparently likes indefinitely cockteasing Mother fans because that's been up for years. Still remember the disappointment long ago when I read that those disks' internals were analyzed and some of them were Mario Artist disks. Forgot what the remaining ones contained, but I distinctly recall no mention of Mother 3.

In the case of SX I believe there was build with significant amount of data in it, but was involved in some sort of drama. Either it got destroyed or hoarded. There's a public build, but it's barebones.

 

Crazy stuff. This thread is depressing me now. All of those gems we will (most likely)never get to see

 

Honestly, I've been a gamer since the Atari VCS days, and really I could care less about unfinished prototypes, there's so many great games that actually made it to retail (which is generally a sign that someone thought people would actually pay money for them) that even if you lived to be 100 and didn't have to work for a living you wouldn't have time to play them all. Some of the garbage that does get released just emphasises what a dead-end a game has to be to get shelved.

I have Halo on my iMac right now, it's not a great port, so I'm going to make an ass out of u and me and say that if a playable pre-XBOX beta exists it probably isn't super-awesome.

Earthbound64 became Mother 3 on the GBA to the best of my knowledge, so play that and be happy you can experience the story without some clunky "next gen" graphical gimmicks.

There are a few exceptions, Half-Life for Dreamcast springs to mind, but I doubt there's much unreleased that is actually going to provide a memorable play experience, unless it's a memorably bad one.

 

You might be in the wrong site lol. Not everyone will find protos and unreleased games thrilling, but those miss out on so much mystery and backstory. Games often start out much different than what they end up as. A prototype might have enough working data that it's almost like DLC. Half Life 2 had enough cut content made for it to make another game out of (which people have tried to as Missing Information mod). You can't comment on how well prototype Halo played just one some port, that's absurd. Those "gimmicks" on Mother 3 could've been amazing if they were done right.

 

Has Half-Life for the dreamcast been discovered yet, besides the leaked beta?

 

What do you mean, besides the leaked beta? That is what exists, it came from a GD-r. That is as discovered as it gets.

 

Has a physical hard copy of the game been found?

 

Well speculation is free and fun I guess, but that's all it is. I agree there is some interesting history behind some big games, but that's frequently all it is - interesting history, and yes I can comment on how prototype Halo played based on "one some port" because that's a logical deduction, unlike "could've been amazing if they were done right" which is baseless speculation. Whilst there's a high level of interest in pre/unreleased games on this forum I don't see it as assemblergames's main focus, I personally spend most of my time in the modding/hacking and general gaming boards.

What's out there is a final beta, it's a complete game, actually it's one and a half complete games if you count Blue Shift. It's a little buggy (mainly the VMU management) but quite playable and completeable.

If you mean a retail copy, then no, no such item exists, whatever you might have read.

 

The Mac version is based on the Xbox version, I think, just like the PC version. Halo was originally supposed to be a strategy game for the PC. Eventually it evolved into an FPS and was moved to the Xbox. I used to have a demo disc from PC Gamer that had some early game footage for the PC version - this was before it was announced that it would be on the Xbox. I'm fairly certain that I no longer have that disc.

 

Right on the RTS, but Bungie were a Mac developer first and foremost. Sad as I am I actually have the September 2007 Gamepro to hand so I can scan this for you all.