Whether the name “Cubivore” means anything to you depends on if you’re a collector of Gamecube-era video games. It’s a bizarre survival simulator developed by Intelligent Systems for Nintendo — originally for the 64DD, then for the regular Nintendo 64 once the DD flopped, and finally for the Gamecube. Nintendo
Last year’s Nintendo Gigaleak brought forth a treasure trove of secret insider content from the company’s long history. It turns out they never throw anything away, and the average unworthy N-fan got to see beta content, internal documents, and even source code in some cases. There was one thing, however,
About a year ago, an organization calling themselves The Hidden Palace, “dedicated to the preservation of retro video game development history, prototypes, artwork, source code, etc,” released several prototypes of 16-bit Sonic The Hedgehog games that were thought to be lost. Multiple versions of Sonic 2 and 3 were shown
Titus’ Superman 64 is regarded as one of the worst video games ever made, but its confinement to the Nintendo 64 wasn’t originally planned. Notice the lack of the “only for” label on the N64 box…a Playstation Superman was also in the works at Titus, and came close enough to
There are two versions of 2019: the one where Tokyo has been destroyed and some guy turns into a hideous flesh monster, and the one where a lost Akira video game finally turns up. Publisher THQ and developer Black Pearl Software announced a game based on the landmark anime movie
The original Spider-Man trilogy was meant to go on longer. A “Spider-Man 4” was in development at one point, but after director Sam Raimi and star Tobey Maguire both backed out, Sony was forced to reboot. We knew that much, but what we didn’t know was that a Spider-Man 4
Kirby starred in four games for the Super NES: Kirby’s Dream Land 3, Kirby Super Star, Kirby’s Avalanche, and Kirby’s Dream Course. But the latter game didn’t start out as a Kirby-related property. In an alternate history, the game would have released under the title “Special Tee Shot,” and would’ve
An unsanctioned peek at the early development stages of a video game is always interesting, even if that game is Ryse: Son of Rome, the failed launch title for the XBox One. Though it came out in 2013, the game was in development at Crytek all the way back in
The archival group Forest Of Illusion has released eight prototypes for games released on the Gamecube around 2002. You can now find dumps online for 007: Agent Under Fire, Lost Kingdoms, Driven, Burnout, Sega Soccer Slam and several other sports titles. They are all accessible at Archive.org. Forest of Illusion
The wiki website Hidden Palace has managed to track down a very early prototype of Earthworm Jim 2 for the Super NES. While prototypes are discovered fairly frequently these days, most of them tend to be nearly complete versions of the game they represent. Not this time…this version of Earthworm
Nintendo is a pretty secretive company, and a lot of the deep experiments they’re working on in R&D never escape to public knowledge, but in this case one did. A prototype Wii controller made its way onto a Japanese auction site, where it was purchased for what amounts to $660
It’s true, apparently: in 1994 someone was developing a Western video game that used the Akira license. Anime was growing in popularity, to be sure, but it wasn’t nearly as popular in the mid-90’s as it was going to get in the following decade. Collector Patrick Scott Patterson somehow managed
