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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - 5 Game Boy Color Games that were Not Released

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A Possible First in a Series

 

Infinity

           

Affinix Software was a small studio based in California that had a dream: make a kick-ass RPG reminescent of the NES and SNES classics for the Game Boy Color. Their first project, Infinity, was also their last, as the studio closed in 2002. Though Infinity was never released, due to the declining interest in the Game Boy Color and difficulties remaking the game for the GBA, what was shown had promise. Set in a fantasy world that has the typical "warring races, ancient evil returning, band of heroes" mix, the game's most fascinating aspect IMO was the combat system. It would use a mixture of the D-Pad and face buttons to select actions and target specific enemies in the game's environments, taking an environment's geography and locations of characters into account.

 

Iridion

Shin'en Multimedia is a German developer known for making all sorts of games for Nintendo hardware. Some of their recent stuff includes Nano Assault, Jett Rocket, and Nanostray. As you might have noticed, two of those games were shooters. Back when Shin'en was founded in 1999, they wanted to make a horizontal shooter for the Game Boy Color based on an abandoned project for the Amiga. The game was going to be a technical wonder, featuring two-way parallax scrolling, over 100 colors on screen at once, and 3D cutscenes. The game was fairly well planned out too, with a total of eight stages, 12 weapons, and a number of boss fights.

Unfortunately, Iridion was cancelled partway through development when Shin'en realized that trying to sell a 2D shooter for the Game Boy Color was nearly impossible in the market of the time. Fortunately, there was a sort of good ending for Iridion. In 2001, Shin'en announced and released Iridion 3D for the Game Boy Color. Despite the name, the game featured sprite-based graphics and used gameplay similar to the Star Fox series rather than being a horizontal shooter. Iridion 3D was a technically impressive early GBA game, especially its graphics and presentation. However, Iridion 3D was not particularly well received, and included less stages, bosses, and weapons than the GBC game was meant to have. Still, both the GBC and GBA games were important early steps for Shin'en in their development of Shooters.

 

Jet Force Gemini

Jet Force Gemini, one of Rare's many N64 games, was a third-person-shooter-action-adventrue-platformer-thingy released in 1999. Apparently, the development of the game was inspired by Super Mario 64, Super Metroid, Quake, and every other sci-fi movie of the prior decade. But we're not talking about that. You see, Rare at the time had a habit of making handheld counterparts to their console games. The Donkey Kong Land trilogy was a spinoff to their SNES trilogy, Conker's first game was on the Game Boy Color, Killer Instinct had a Game Boy port, Perfect Dark had a Game Boy Color version, Mickey Mouse had two handheld racers, and so on. The problem with these handheld games was that they weren't particularly good or popular, especially compared to their console counterparts. So the handheld version of Jet Force Gemini was cancelled before even being formally announced. Still, I'm a bit unhappy that this happened. What is known is that it would been a top-down shooter where you run around killing giant bugs. That sounds like a good fit for the GBC in my book, more so than Killer Instinct of all things.

 

Katakis 3D

    

Katakis 3D was planned to be a sequel to the 1987 shooter for the Commodore 64. The original game can be seen as a R-Type clone with the cool twist of having a second player being able to help shield the first player's ship. Like Star Fox or the above mentioned Iridion 3D, this game was going to be a forward scrolling 3D shooter, something I didn't know was possible on the Game Boy Color. The project's biggest resource was likely Manfred Trenz, a programmer who had worked on the Commodore 64 versions of R-Type and various other games that used lwoer end hardware to its best effect. Ultimately, though the game was almost completed, it was already 2001. Publishers were not eager to promote this kind of game already, let alone for an outdated piece of hardware.

 

South Park

South Park has had a few video game adaptations since its 1997 debut. The most famous are the 1998 FPS, which was widely panned, and the 2014 RPG  Stick of Truth, which was one of the best licensed games since Arkham City. This Game Boy Color title from Crawfish Interactive and Acclaim was meant to be a puzzle-platformer where players cycle between the main characters from the show to solve puzzles and complete levels. However, it was cancelled at last minute by none other than Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the creators of the show. They were worried that a lot of kids would end up buying this version if it were released because the demographics of Game Boy users were very youth-oriented. Normally I'd be offended, but considering how this was the year Pokemon came West...

The good news was that though the game was cancelled, it was not forgotten. Eventually, Acclaim got another license and modified/replaced the sprites from South Park with new ones as needed. The result, released in 1999, was not what you may expect.

You think I'm joking? Compare the following screen to the one with South Park characters up above.

The funny thing is that this game was actually decent. You had 50 levels of puzzle platforming where you switched between two twins and a dog, each with distinct abilities, to defeat enemies and traverse obstacles. It's a bit vanila, but only the rare digitized voices are anything to complain about.This game went on to get a pair of sequels too.

So naturally, the South Park game became a well-received Mary-Kate and Ashley trilogy.

Life is weird.



Love and tolerate.

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The Mary-Kate and Ashley game would have easily won Game of the year. No doubt about it.



This was good



Back in development days, Metroid Fusion was supposedly for Game Boy Color, then they ended up moved to GBA.



Thanks, man; I love historical tidbits like this. The South Park to MK & A twist was interesting and hilarious.



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RolStoppable said:
No Zelda?


I lack the courage to tackle that crazy Oracle trio Capcom was going to make, and can't think of any other Zeldas for the GBC.



Love and tolerate.

Really good read, nicely put together Salnax, appreciate the time/effort.



Why not check me out on youtube and help me on the way to 2k subs over at www.youtube.com/stormcloudlive

RolStoppable said:
Salnax said:

I lack the courage to tackle that crazy Oracle trio Capcom was going to make, and can't think of any other Zeldas for the GBC.

That's what I meant.

Anyway, you once again put a lot of effort into a thread that hardly anyone is going to read.


It was not too much effort, learning about a couple of these was interesting, and even a few readers is enough.

If I wanted to get a lot of views and comments per time spent on a thread, I'd be making a lot more exciting titles followed by a short and witty OP that makes fun of somebody. Which sounds fun, but I also enjoy this sort of thing.



Love and tolerate.

I wish the Infinity game had come out. I'm sure I would have liked that a lot as a kid... : (



 

              

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My sister had that Mary Kate & Ashley game, I played it a bit. Damn that takes me back.

Can't comment on its quality as I was like 9 at the time.