It looks like Phatfish wasn't the first person to try to catlogue all the unused beta units. I recently found this website which is basically a time capsule of the late '90s internet. The last piece of news posted on that site was on March 21, 2000. Also note further down on the page they talk about an AoE game coming to the then unreleased "X-Box".
Anyway, the reason why I am posting it is because it has several pages of unused alpha graphics (units, buildings, and technologies) along with descriptions of what they are. Some of them I haven't even seen before on Phatfish's website. The site also contains interviews with prominent people from the '90s AoE scene, including the creator of SLP Studio. Interestingly the site also mentions a bunch of other AoE fansites which no longer exist anymore (but I assume were popular back in the '90s). Oh, and AoEHeaven gets several mentions too (including a link to the old gamestats URL).
Here are some of the most interesting links:
Unused/alpha buildings with explanations:Page 1, Page 2, Page 3, Page 4, Page 5
Unused/alpha units with explanations:Page 1, Page 2
Unused/alpha technology graphics with explanations:Page 1
Animations (presumably of unused/alpha assets):Page 1, Page 2 (page 2 is just a single gif).
Interviews with "Influential Agers":Creator of SLP Studio, List of all the interviews (the list page links to interviews of various internet-famous people from the AoE scene)
A page containing an dictionary of popular AoE-related terms from the time and a list of important people in the AoE scene. The list of important people includes our very own Archangel! Also, interestingly they mention an old fansite called MFO (Mr Fixit Online). I managed to track that website down to some forums that are still active as of 2015 but they are dedicated to some racing game now (called F-Zero) and no longer have any AoE-related content. I found a tumblr blog related to MFO which does mention their history with AoE though.
This page talks about ES's Sandyman mentioning another game that ES was working on which was not an RTS! The page also includes a reference to the Y2K bug.
The website also has a bunch of AoE2 related unused/alpha stuff so that might be worth checking out too!
StormComing (to me): "Seems like you're way under-ranked"
Check out my series of guides for the scenario editor in the link below! | Best Otto TR score
The definitive collection of my scenarios, along with my scenario editor walkthrough, recorded games, and much much more!
Anyway, the reason why I am posting it is because it has several pages of unused alpha graphics (units, buildings, and technologies) along with descriptions of what they are. Some of them I haven't even seen before on Phatfish's website. The site also contains interviews with prominent people from the '90s AoE scene, including the creator of SLP Studio. Interestingly the site also mentions a bunch of other AoE fansites which no longer exist anymore (but I assume were popular back in the '90s). Oh, and AoEHeaven gets several mentions too (including a link to the old gamestats URL).
Unused/alpha buildings with explanations:
Unused/alpha units with explanations:
Unused/alpha technology graphics with explanations:
Animations (presumably of unused/alpha assets):
Interviews with "Influential Agers":
The website also has a bunch of AoE2 related unused/alpha stuff so that might be worth checking out too!
Check out my series of guides for the scenario editor in the link below! | Best Otto TR score
The definitive collection of my scenarios, along with my scenario editor walkthrough, recorded games, and much much more!
[This message has been edited by anterior2 (edited 10-09-2015 @ 08:57 AM).]