I don't know when the cancelled release date was, but I believe around Fall 2001, probably in September or October. Here's the reason Sega gave for cancelling it
http://dreamcast.ign.com/articles/098/098281p1.html
After seeing the game, it seems a bit ridiculous that it got cancelled...but go back to 2001 and the aftermath of the terrorist attack, its not too difficult to see why SEGA cancelled it...still a shame though
Propeller Arena at its heart is a WWII themed dog fighting game with Arcade style play. Picture a mix between the gameplay of Crazy Taxi and Star Fox and you'll have a slight feel for how this game plays. The Crazy Taxi influence is quite strong, from the character design to the Training modes. However there is no carting passengers around at break neck spees this time just good ol fashined machine gun fire.
There are several modes of play, Championship, Quick Battle, Training and Network.
Championship pits you against 5 other players over the course of 10 stages. Rounds last 5 minutes each or until someone scores 10 kills. You're ranked by the number of kills you attain by the end of the round. 1st place gets 10 points, 2nd 4, 3rd 2, 4th 2 and 5th 0. You have to be 1st or 2nd at least, and points carry over from previous rounds. So its possible to get last as long as you have enough points to stay on top (like mario kart). As far as I know there are 8 arenas to play, but perhaps beating the game unlocks hidden ones...
Gameplay is pretty straighforward, but a couple twists are added to make it difficult to master (more on those later).
The plane handles pretty unrealistically, but that's what you'd expect from a game like this. You can brake and speed up pretty easily and make nice coasting turns. Its actually pretty hard to keep anyone in your sites for long at the higher difficult levels. There is just one generic machine gun, and the only aspect of this that varies from player to player is the spacing of the guns on the plane. The bullets look like the hyperblaster fire from quake 2. The HUD displays your Speed (SPD), Damage you've taken (DMG), and Power (PWR) at the bottom of the screen in nice multi colored bars. SPD and DMG are self explanatory, but PWR is related to one of the twists I spoke of earlier...At the top the other players health and names are displayed.
Stunts can be performed if you have enough power, these vary from sharp turns to loops and power slides. There are quite a few and each is executed by specific key combination and then hitting the "trick" button. For example, to perform a 90 degree turn is similar to execting Ryu's fireball. These add a huge amount of depth to the game, and must be mastered in order to beat the game or own your friends in multiplayer.
Another twist is the "Tail" type mode that occasionally happens if you keep someone in you sites within 100 meters, or perform a trick that lands you right behind them within this distance. The annoucer yells "chance time" and if you hit the trick button fast enough you zoom in on the person and tail them mercilessly until they're downed. I'm not sure if the other person can escape this, probably by doing a counter trick.
Yet another twist are the flashing crates that are spread in a circular pattern at some location (which changes, as the crates dissapear and reappear in different spots). Shoot these and a power up appears. The crates are Green, Yellow, and Red and spawn a random power up from a selection of similar types, depending on the colour of crate. Green power ups are defensive, Yellow seem to change a gameplay aspect, and Red are offensive. Here's a list of power ups I've found so far:
Green
Heal (restore health)
Hyper (increase speed?)
Power (restores power bar)
Yellow
Freeze (no one can turn except you)
hard belt (not sure...not sure if that's what its called either)
Reverse (everyone's controls are reversed except yours)
Red
Missile (lauches a big missile that attacks the closest person)
Homing Missile (launches a pack of seaker misslies)
Bomb (unloads a big bomb with a huge blast radius, anyone caught in it takes damage)
Hot Potato (shoot it to someone else before time runs out)
There might be more...
The character design in this game is probably my biggest knock against it. They all have annoying voices and horrible stereotypical actions and phrases. Fortunately you don't have to deal with them that much, and the planes they fly in are modelled nicely. The characters are:
Eagle Jam (patriotic american stereotype...pretty bad)
Shameless Cats (sleazy chick, with lines like "can you handle me?", my favourite of the bunch though
Muscle Bros. (Just grunts a lot)
Pizza Fat (A fat redneck moron, who constaly babbles about pizza..and apparently lacks respect from his father...Why AM2 would think people would play this loser I have no idea)
Pengo Jets (purple haired fruit)
8-Bit Beat (Techno junky with metallic hair)
Hex Candy (Annoying tween, with a "shoot me now" type voice)
Golden Kinfe (Old guy, who keeps reminding you how old and useless he is)
The stages are gorgeous:
Stage 1: Airport
Cool looking airport with a nasa shuttle and other shuttles lauching all the time. SEANA is written all over the place in the Sega logo font...any idea what that is?
Stage 2: Red Valley
Obviously inspired by the grand canyon, pretty cool, nice lighting effects with the sun.
Stage 3: Tower City
The stage that probably got the game cancelled. It doesn't really resemble new york, but has a big tower in the middle which you crash into a lot if you're sloppy with the stunts.
Stage 4: Sky High
Open blue sky, the clouds are nicely rendered
Stage 5: Ice World
Like fliying over the North Pole, cool ice flows.
Stage 6: Volcano
Like flying over an active volcano. Fireballs fly out the top and can kill you.
Stage 7: Old Castle
More like a fort, this is a tricky level due to all the structures. Again misplaced stunts will end your flight short
Stage 8: Phantom Island
Tropical Island at night, with awesome lightning effects that arc across the sky. Not sure if they hurt you or not.
More info about the levels and characters can be found here:
Propeller Arena Aviation Battle Championship
Week1
http://dreamcast.ign.com/articles/096/096304p1.html
Week2
http://dreamcast.ign.com/articles/096/096518p1.html
Week3
http://dreamcast.ign.com/articles/096/096692p1.html
Quick Battle mode of play lets you set up a game against the computer or a couple of friends. Each player chooses a plane and then a stage and play continues like in Championship mode. For 2 players the screen is split vertically down the middle. Computer players are still present, not sure if there are always 6.
Training mode is reminiscent of Crazy Taxi and features 3 styles of play:
Stunt
The key combinations for various stunts are shown in a window and you try to complete them succesfully before time runs out. If you can link them together to form "combos" you'll greatly increase your score. There are 8 levels to complete and this is a good way to learn the different stunt combos in the game!
Challenge
Each level has a different scenario to complete. The first has you shooting down missiles before they reach the ground and blow up the air port. These are damn hard. 8 Levels in total as far as I know.
Agility
You have to fly through rings in a specific order under the time limit. Also pretty hard!
Network menu option opens up Propeller Arena's network Options. There is Network play, Ability to upload your training scores, BBA settings and you can set your Handle that other online players can see.
Last but not least is the options menu which lets you set your controls, play Background music, enable jump pack support, load/save data to VMU (it takes 10 blocks btw), and choose your difficulty (hard/normal/easy) and number of continues (3,5 or 10)
The Background music is an assortment of alternative and rock. Here's the tracks that made it to the game:
1. Wake up with a smile
Consume/Fat Wreck Chords
2. King Kong Song
Consume/Fat Wreck Chords
3. Bite the Hand that Feeds
Zero Down/Fat Wreck Chords
4. Going Nowhere
Zero Down/Fat Wreck Chords
5. Life Size Mirror
No use for a name/Fat Wreck Chords
6. Lies can't pretend
No Use for a name/Fat Wreck Chords
7. Shaving Your Life
Mad Caddies/Fat Wreck Chords
8. My Life Inside Your Heart
Rise Against/Fat Wreck Chords
9. The Art of Losing
Rise Against/Fat Wreck Chords
10. Angel High
AM2 Original
11. Justify
AM2 Original
12. Take it High
AM2 Original
13. Fighter Flyer
AM2 Original
14. Lookin' for U
AM2 Original
15. No Return
AM2 Original
16. Ride the Wind
AM2 Original
17. She Says this
AM2 Original
18. The Battle
AM2 Original
19. This Trips
AM2 Original
20. Good Time Wings
AM2 Original
21. Survivor
AM2 Original
Not really my kinda thing, but they suit the game well. Good dogfighting music.
The sound effects are pretty good as well, the plane engines whine appropriately to how fast you're travelling, the bullets have a satisfying rattle and explosions are intense. The voices are pretty annoying, and so is the radio chatter they create whenever you get downed by the computer, or manage to down someone yourself.
Extras
Beating the game through and accomplishing different tasks can unlock "secrets" in the game, here's whats been found so far.
Thanks to ShadowofBob:
Unlock Shadow by beating the game twice on normal with the same plane.
Unlock Sol & Ray by beating the game three times on noraml with the same plane.
Unlock Lil' Susie by beating all the Propeller Agility Challanges.
Unlock HKT-7700 by beating all the Propeller Stunt chanllenges.
You unlock the Extreme difficulty level at the same time you unlock Sol Ray.
When you beat all Propeller Challange courses you earn the Air Shark Blimp.
In order to get any of the Stunt, Challange, and Ability unlockables you must have Shadow and Sol Ray unlocked.
Try them and do it for every character.
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As more are found I'll add them!
Well that about does it, hope someone finds this useful. Comments and corrections appreciated. Stupid posts that will get this locked are not.
PeacE
Kurous
...not v0.7.3?
