Ross Sillifant sent us a lot of contributions, info and interviews about cancelled videogames and their development, from different software houses and for various consoles / PC. To be able to publish all those info we’ll need more time, but to start here’s a first collection of random facts that should be saved in the Unseen64 archive!
Mike Singleton (RIP) was working on Midwinter III, for PS2 and Dolphin (GameCube) working title was Skyfall Year Zero: Total Midwinter. See Arcade Mag Timewarp March 1990 and this tweet by Chris Wild.
Activision CANNED PS1 Hyperblade (A futuristic rollerblading sport game) after almost 12 months in development, Activision unwilling to disclose reasons why it was canned though.
Q) Is it true you had a PC Engine version of Paradroid ’90 all finished and it was to be Hewson’s 1st crack at the emerging console market? If so, what became of it? Was it never released because PCEngine didn’t get a UK release?
Shadowrunner: Do you have any unreleased games on any platforms you’d like to share with us?
Stuart: I did port Rick Dangerous to the Acorn Archimedes, I have no idea where that is.
Shadowrunner: There was supposed to be an Atari Jaguar CD release of Demolition Man and there’s even a really early beta floating around. Do you know how far along it was, and if there would have been differences between it and the 3DO version?
Stuart: The first time I have heard of it…
Stuart: I really liked Ian Stewart and It was a good laugh with Neal Young when he was a producer at Probe. I think my mind is blocking out the pain as I can’t remember anyone I want to dump on. If you asked me at the time I’m sure the answer would be different. Does anyone have the alternate ending to Dynamite Düx ?
Stuart: I worked on some things at Virgin that never came out, I should have paid attentions to the alarm bells going off in my head, LOL.
Interview with Mike Fullton about Jaguar Quake:
Quake didn’t come out on the PC until mid ’96, like 9 months after I had left Atari. By that time, new Jaguar projects were pretty much non-existent. So it seems unlikely that there was anything going there, at least not with ID. It’s far more likely that someone started playing around with the QUAKE source code when it was released.
The big hurdle to overcome for Quake (as well as Tomb Raider) would have been the lack of a texture-mapping 3D library. Having such a library would take development of the game from 0% to about 70% in one jump, so someone saying QUAKE was 30-40% done sounds like they were talking about someone working on a library, not so much the game itself.
Interview with Andrew Holdroyd about Wolfenstien 3D on Sega Mega Drive (Never finished or released)
Wolfenstein was the first project I had in C instead of assembler. I had the source code for the SNES version and after a month of tearing my hair out I realised there was a bug in the C compiler/linker. I don’t think anyone believed me and they sent someone from the software supplier with the intention he would show me where I was going wrong. He sat beside me. I had on my screen the source and object code and I showed him the error. He said ‘Oh!’ Anyway they fixed the problem. The SNES code was really good. It compiled and ran on the Sega with little trouble and then all I had to do was code the final rendering and audio which took only a few weeks. It was a long time ago and I’ve no idea why it was never released.
Q)You ended up working on ‘Escape From L.A’ for Virgin, which was canned, so…what platforms was it due o, how far along did coding get? and why was it canned?
PS1.We hadn’t got very far at all when it was cancelled. I got the impression that early screenings of the movie had shown it wasn’t going to be a huge success!
Q) Moving onto your time at Climax next, you were handed the Dreamcast conversion of N64 Turok The Dinosaur Hunter (something i’d loved to have of seen), again i wonder just how far along coding got/why it was canned and how you felt seeing yet another project cancelled?
Coding never even got started on that game. Canning games before they start or very early into production isn’t a problem and it’s quite common.
I did a Gameboy version of Xor that never saw the light of day!
Interview with Andy Satterthwaite, developer and producer on many games such as Wipeout 2097, Colony Wars, N-GEN Racing, Quantum Redshift:
Colony Wars had actually been in development for about a year when I was finishing on 2097 … it had been developed in the Psygnosis US office, but it was struggling and the team was brought back to Liverpool. […] My recollection of when I first saw the game was of a cube-like spaceship floating in space not doing very much; a gargantuan design document and a schedule that said the team had to do 170 hour days to get it finished. […] We cut the number of missions in half, re-scripted the game, made it wonderful etc. etc.
Q14)You then were signed up by Microsoft to do 2 (?) titles for the Xbox, yet we only ever saw 1, the fantastic Quantum Redshift, could you detail how you came to be working for MS, how they were to work with in terms of pro’s and cons etc?
I believe the game sold about 250,000 copies despite the good reviews; Microsoft said they didn’t get out of bed for less than 500K units, so they no longer wanted the sequel
Wii Speed Racer, I believe the game did quite well though; we actually did produce a demo on PS3 too … that would have been beyond awesome; but the lack of film success nailed that coffin shut.
Top unreleased stuff that I can think of: “Storm Chaser” – something we were pitching during the death of Curly Monsters, A combo of disaster sim, racing/chasing game & pokemon-snap, as you try to take the best photos of twisters destroying stuff.
“Racing Life” – a whole horse ownership/management/racing RPG – this was actually designed with no intention of release, but at the time to get a PS3 dev license you had to get Sony concept approval on a full boxed title, so this was my “full boxed title” that got us that license (and then allowed us to make GripShift as a PSN download)
“Space” – a PSP mobile friendly Elite-like space game
“Arena Soccer” – an indoor soccer game (basically I want to make a 5-a-side Sensible Soccer for mobile, if anyone will let me !)
“Spy Hunter” – an epic reinvention of the midway classic, which Warner Bros were interested in – but not interested enough.
3D Lemmings actually started life as a puzzle game that was created by James Thomas and Martin Hall working under the name Lunatic Software. They were already working for Psygnosis (they did a fantastic job of porting Wiz’n’Liz to the Amiga) and I believe during a code review, someone said could this be reworked to make lemmings in 3D? The idea stuck and the project was green-lit.
Batman Begins for E.A: We were really up against it actually. Initially we thought just two sections would be quite easy but EA wanted each section to last about 10 minutes. On full boost, the Batmobile travelled about 200mph. So for a section to last 10 minutes we had to build about 30 miles of track! All of a sudden we had a mountain to climb. I remember the levels really testing the game engine to the max but I think they turned out pretty well and were a welcome change to the slow pace of the main game. In actual fact, some of the takedown mechanics and ideas were borrowed for the next version of Burnout so I was pretty pleased to hear that!
Dead Space Extraction : Originally, it was meant to be an on-rails shooter very similar to Sega’s The House of the Dead; a very loose story, no cutscenes as such… just shoot, shoot, shoot. This is until we delivered our first vertical slice (a snapshot of what the final game could look like so execs can understand what they are getting and officially green light the completion of the project). Based on what they saw, EA elevated the status to AAA over night and from that point on, everything changed.
There is one game that will be of particular interest to you and your readers. I worked on a prototype for a Next Gen Contra. Eurocom was in talks with Konami and another internal team had made an attempt at a visual style but it didn’t go anywhere, they gave me a crack at it. I threw it all away (sorry lads!) and started from scratch, focusing in on the fundamental mechanics of a run’n’gun game. I decided to take inspiration from Geometry Wars and utilise a twin-stick control system whereby you steered your character with the left stick and aimed and fired your gun with the right stick. It had a semi-auto lock-on that meant you just pointed the stick towards the enemy and it would handle the vertical aiming for you. It meant that we could author the camera to keep the action on screen and always look dramatic while you just jumped around looking cool. We thought it was awesome. As did the Konami producer when he came to see the demo. Sadly, we didn’t get the contract. We were gutted. It’s a game that I’d still love to make one day.
A) When you have been in this business as long as i have you’ll find that a lot of projects fall by the wayside, for example I was in the process of working on an isometric Simpsons game while working at Ocean for the Atari ST and Amiga. That is one that i would have liked to have seen through to the end. Another game that got canned at the last minute was while i was working for a company called Malibu Comics who were soon to be bought by Marvel. The game was based on one of their superhero characters called Prime and was going to be a side scrolling, platform beat-em-up. I still have some graphics for that project. More recently I was working on a golf game starring Spongebob Squarepants and various other characters from the show. The game was pretty much complete but the plug was pulled right at the last minute.
A scan for the cancelled Playstation version of Alien VS Predator, released for the Jaguar.
Interview with Dave Taylor, former ID Software employee that worked on both Wolfenstein 3D and Doom for Atari Jaguar:
Dave Taylor: I don’t recall Quake even being a brain fart of an idea on the Jaguar. I seem to recall that Wolf or Doom or both actually sold at a better than 1:1 ratio with the system for a while, and even at that stupendous sales ratio, I think we still did some pathetic number of sales, like a couple hundred thousand units tops, which with cartridge margins is super not worth the suffering. Between that and all the dev suffering, neither of us was like, “Oh goodie, let’s do some more of that!”
Dave Taylor: Golgotha (PC) was canceled after we ran out of money and went to the public domain. Bits of it were re-used for years in lots of things. Worked on an educational math game I was quite excited about a year and change back written in coffeescript running under node.js, and that was a lot of fun, but I lost the original coder to burn-out (from previous work) and couldn’t finish it under my own steam. Not sure what became of that, but as I was the only one working on it at the end and had written most of the gameplay code, I imagine it’s still on ice.
Q6)ROTOX was planned for the ill-fated Konix Multi-System and indeed work had started on it (i’ve seen youtube footage of it). It was also said to make use of the systems hydraulic chair. Were you directly involved with the Konix version and if so, what were your thoughts on the Konix hardware and it’s chances in the marketplace, had it been released?
A6) I only briefly saw the Konix, then Binary Design went bankrupt and laid everyone off. There was some shady re-organization, and they re-emerged as Creative Materials. So I never got to use the Konix. I never actually saw Rotox on it, but just now looked it up on Youtube (on the “Konix Multisystem – Prototype Footage” video). It does not look like they got very far with it. It was an interesting console, I’m really not sure how it would have done though. Hard to break into a large market with only a marginal improvement. Probably they lacked money.
Q12)Can you shed light on any of the unfinished games (on any platform) you either assisted with or wrote yourself….and how did it feel to see such hard work go down the pan?.
A12) Neversoft had quite a few. There was a Ghost Rider game, which was kind of like a Castlevania game. It got canceled as Crystal Dynamics were going through some re-organization. I can’t say we had time to mourn it, as we immediately went into overdrive writing demos, trying to get work elsewhere. We did an futuristic racing game, a rally race game, a golf game, and a mech 3rd person shooter called “Big Guns“, which we eventually got Sony to let us do, and at about the same time landed the MDK gig. Big Guns was a fun game, but it kind of got designed out of existence by the Sony Producer, and eventually was cancelled. That’s a shame, but then that led to Apocalypse and hence Tony Hawk, so it’s all good.
Clockwerk is a cancelled puzzle platformer game, which was in development at Next Level Games; the creators of the Super Mario Strikers games, as well as the unreleased Super Mario Spikers. The title was planned to be worked on for multiple unspecified home console platforms during mid-late 2011 (believed to be Wii, Xbox 360 and PS3) , but was never produced.
Two Grumpy Old Men Who Just Want To Retire
The project began towards the start of 2011 and was being worked on in tandem with Next Level’s other main undertaking at the time, which was Captain America: Super Soldierfor the Xbox 360 and PS3.
A poster created for the pitch of Clockwerk.
It was conceived as the story of two old men, Otto & Herman, who work as Hausmeisters (caretakers) in a magical floating clock tower suspended in the clouds called ‘The World Clock’, that governs the flow of time throughout the universe. On their final day before retirement, a faction of evil gremlins attack the tower, dismantling its innards and disrupting the behaviour of time. In order for the grumpy twosome to finally retire, they must defeat the invaders and repair its inner workings.
“This massive floating cuckoo clock was the stage where the story of Clockwerk was to play out. The clock tower was surrounded by a quaint Bavarian style village (elements of which can be seen in the lower right), perched on a circle of clouds, where the retired Hausmeisters spent out their remaining days relaxing and reminiscing about old times.” – Derek Stenning, concept artist.
The Would-be Mechanics
Although the artists involved with the project declined to comment on whether or not the game was intended to be in 3D or 2D, one of them did reveal to us that it would have been “a puzzle platformer with combat elements“. One of the central hooks of the gameplay was that the two protagonists could pull a cord on each of their suits (named “schutzanzugs”) to inflate them. The entirety of traversal in Clockwerk would have been built around this mechanic. Herman & Otto could then ride the clock’s internal railings by rolling or use their ability to float for a limit period of time.
An Original IP by Next Level Games
In the beginning, Next Level had no publisher attached to the project. It had been an entirely original creation from several of the studio’s designers and artists, as part of an ongoing effort by the company to work on more ambitious IP’s. It was never prototyped, but the team produced a plethora of conceptual documents for the game to pitch it to various publishers. These included detailed character bios, such as the ones seen above.
In addition, a variety of concepts for the title’s gremlin foes were put together. The enemy types included “sorcerers” and bomb-wielding “saboteurs”.
“Bird of Prey” Gremlins:
“As one of the main travel mechanics was to roll around, these little guys would cling together to form large “Grem-balls” and unevenly (and painfully) roll around on the rails within the World Clock.”
“Sorcerer type”:
“The Sorcerer type Gremlin was used to command lesser Gremlin types and could conduct various spells and other ranged attacks. He could also transform into energy and used his gear amulet to enter the mechanical workings of the World Clock.”
“Saboteur type”:
“The Saboteur Gremlin type would operate in advance of the main Gremlin invasion force damaging Hausmeister equipment and defences.”
“Leadership types”:
“A page outlining the two leadership strains in Gremlin society, the more modern Officer class and the old priesthood, here represented by the Magus.”
Back To The Drawing Board
After a few months of experimenting with various ideas in pre-production, Next Level began to pitch Clockwerk to various publishing partners. Although developers are tight-lipped as to which publisher in particular it was, sources close to the company say that it was picked up by a “major company” in July. For a short while, the developers collaborated with this third party, working to refine the aesthetics of the game before prototyping.
Their publisher was uncertain of certain aspects of the concepts shown above; chiefly, the appearances of the main characters. The management reportedly requested slight redesigns of the elderly duo in order to make them more appealing to their target audience. To accomplish this, Next Level’s artists experimented, drawing up one of the protagonists with varying degrees of “realism”. From left to right, the image below demonstrates these style tests, as thy got gradually more cartoonish.
They had also started to tweak the designs of some of the gremlins:
A Spanner In The Works
By mid July, Next Level Gams had finalised their designs for the heroic Hausmeisters, but their efforts were not to be realised. According to artist, Derek Stenning, it was discovered that another team within the publisher had been working on a separate game with very similar gameplay mechanics. This had happened completely independently of Next Level’s project in an unfortunate coincidence. As such, the publisher then ended their plans to produce Clockwerk and the project was cancelled in its entirety.
Danganronpa is one of the best hidden gaming gems for PSVita owners. Originally released only in Japan as 2 PSP games in 2010 (Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc) and 2012 (Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair), thanks to the release of the PS Vita collection with both episodes in USA and Europe, western gamers were finally able to enjoy this bizarre Visual Novel. Before to be known with their final title “Danganronpa”, the project was in development for the PSP with a different title: Distrust.
The story behind the development of Distrust is more complex than what is generally supposed. Even if Spike Chunsoft released many images from the beta version of the game, they did not explained why the project was so heavily changed and some features from the original Distrust project were reused not only for Danganronpa, but also for another popular visual novel.
Danganronpa was originally published in late 2010 by Spike, just a year after they released 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors for the Nintendo DS, developed by Chunsoft. 999 was released in English in 2010, where it soon became a cult hit among american visual novel fans, thanks to its gloomy and mysterious plot. Unfortunately it seems that in Japan it was not as well received. When it was first shown Distrust received better feedbacks from japanese gamers, but it seems that in its early development the game had much more similarities with 999.
A beta Execution in Distrust
It is difficult to say to what extent Danganronpa follows the original story of Distrust, but at least we know from these beta screens that the game already had both Class Trials and the resulting executions, as well as an ensemble of 15 characters. Both the drawings and the darker atmosphere of Distrust are in contrast to the more “colorful” Danganronpa. The colors in Distrust were much dirtier and the “Over the Top” executions that can be seen in Danganronpa were not implemented yet. Distrust had much more bloody deaths for the characters, such as the execution of a female protagonist through a guillotine (that does not happen in the final game). The poor girl here, killed by the guillotine, could have been a beta version of Kyoko Kirigiri or Junko Enoshima from Danganronpa.
It seems that Spike and Chunsoft had some disagreements about the style of the game. After a while the design of the characters and the color of the blood were changed.
On the left Beta Distrust, on the right Beta Danganronpa
According to the developers, they have changed the color of the blood to pink in Danganronpa to keep the age-ratings down, but in the end it was a good stylistic choice that perfectly matched the final style of Danganronpa. Even with a pink blood, CERO (the Japanese entertainment rating organization) gave a D rating to the first Danganronpa, so the game could have only be sold to buyers of 17+ years old. The second episode had a C rating, for 15+ years old gamers. Ratings of CERO are often regarded as very random.
If you look at the beta cover for Distrust, it seems that the game already had a D rating from the CERO, so violence and blood could not have been the main reasons for the drastic changes that evolved the game into Danganronpa.
There was a Trust / Distrust mechanic in Distrust
A feature that was changed in Danganronpa is the “Trust / Distrust” system. While we can make our choice in the Hope / Despair in Danganronpa, Distrust was all about trust and distrust. This game mechanics was much more complex than the one in Danganronpa. Something that is missing in Danganronpa (which is also relatively unusual for Visual Novels) are tough decisions that change the course of the story and lead to many different routes and endings. Only once, and only at the end of the game, you are able to make such a decision in Danganronpa, even if it have little effect on the plot. The Trust / Distrust system would have allowed players to gain the trust or the resentment of the other characters. Under this system, different murders and routes would have happened in the game. If one won the trust of a character, they would act as allies in the following investigation. It’s interesting to notice that the Trust / Distrust system was reused in Zero Escape: Virtue’s Last Reward, the sequel to 999.
The Rhythm Minigame that can be found during Trials parts in Danganronpa was already implemented in Distrust, as we can see in the left Screenshot.
Design of the characters in the beta version was changed often to find the more popular one, but in their final designs, Distrust characters kinda resemble their appearances in Danganronpa. Character designer Rui Komatsuzaki stated in the official artbook (in which we can find many interesting unused artworks) how difficult it was to find the designs of the main characters. The first characters that were designed for Danganronpa were Sayaka Maizono and Leon Kuwata, from which he then created all the other designs. These two characters seem to have already been finalized in Distrust and in these beta screens Sayaka and Leon are the only ones that are almost identical in the final game.
Other characters like Byakuya Togami, Hifumi Yamada and Toko Fukawa have since been drastic changed. Even the main “antogonist” of the game, Monokuma, was much, MUCH different in its beta version.
Final characters:
Beta Characters:
Final Monokuma:
Beta Monokuma:
Design of Hope’s Peak Academy was quite different and in Distrust it looked more like a dirty warehouse.
Danganronpa, a game about executions, had many executions itself. We don’t know the official reasons for all these changes from the beta version (Distrust) to the final one (Danganronpa), but we can speculate that Spike Chunsoft decided to make these shifts to differentiate the game from “999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors”, that was not enough popular in Japan. We wonder how Distrust would have been played, with the different characters, an abandoned / dirtier school, more violent executions and different gameplay mechanics, with new plot lines and new endings.
Another huge change in the beta version was the 7 days time limit. Unfortunately we don’t know much about how this could have been used in the game.
A few easter egg remain from the early version of the game, as a well-known music track from Danganronpa that grant its title from the original project.
Only a single beta video from Distrust still exists, that shows all its little details and distinct features. Even if the characters shown in this beta video are not the exact same as the ones in Danganronpa, do not watch this if you have not finished the game, to avoid spoilers.
Original article written by Aufziehvogel in german, english translation and updates by monokoma! Thanks to Dengeki Playstation for the screenshots, GameFAQs users & Jeuxvideo. If you notice more differences or if you own the Danganronpa artbook and can find some other interesting beta designs, let us know in the comments below!
Farstar is a cancelled Playstation space combat simulator which Teknocrest, an american software house, was working on in 1994 on Taito’s behalf. Just like Brimstone and Lufia for Genesis / Megadrive, however, the project got never completed. Fortunately, the programmer that was developing it preserved a video of the game:
Here’s some footage of a Playstation game called “Farstar” that I was working on back in 1994, I think Taito was planning to release it as “Starship Fantasy” or something like that, it was even listed in Famitsu as coming soon for a time.
It was supposed to be a mix of Wing Commander/Star Trek/Starflight. At least, that’s what I was trying to make. It was pretty ambitious for its time…maybe too ambitious.
Anyway as you can see it’s pretty shitty and was cancelled. I guess I just wasn’t a very good programmer back then…
For more informations check the topic on opa-ages.
Driver 5 is a cancelled racing game which was, for a short period of time, in the works at Sumo Digital, the developer of the Sonic & All-Stars Racing games. It would have been published by Ubisoft and released around early 2011 on Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii.
In January 2010, Ubisoft released a financial forecast for their next fiscal year, detailing a number of their scheduled releases. Among these were some vague plans to release an untitled fifth entry to the Driver series, although no other information was provided at the time. Behind the scenes, it was around this point that Driver 5 (a working title) was in pre-production at Sumo Digital, who had been contracted externally. Previously, Sumo had partnered with Ubisoft to produce Driver ’76 on the PSP, who they worked on alongside Ubisoft Reflections.
Concept art for Driver 5.
Christian Bravery of design studio, Lighting Lights, was brought on board to draft concept art for the Driver 5 project.
“It was interesting to be involved at the beginning and the end of this project and something I’d love to do more often.”
The lifespan of Sumo Digital’s Driver 5 was brief, as it never moved past pre-production. It was cancelled when Ubisoft elected not to partner with Sumo Digital on it, instead giving the project to Ubisoft Reflections. Reflections would then go on to create Driver: San Francisco.
By the looks of it, this original vision for the game would have incorporated destructible environments of some sort. The concepts show Tanner’s surroundings crumbling around him as he races away from his pursuers. Perhaps this was a small stepping stone towards Sonic & All Stars Racing: Transformed, which incorporated a similar concept of tracks that would dynamically change and fall apart as the race progressed.
Ragnarok Online II: The Gate Of The World was the sequel of the popular MMORPG Ragnarok Online, in development by Gravity and Team Mercury. After entering a closed beta testing phase in 2006 and continuing through 2010 in Korean open beta testing, the game was reworked multiple times due to its poor initial reception. The game itself was created with the Unreal Engine 2.5, giving the game an nice Anime-looking graphic. The Gate Of The World was planned for have 3 different races: Norman (Humans) Ellr (Sort of Super deformed style character) and the Dimago (Sort of Pale Humans who featured a stylish combat style).
Ragnarok Online 2 featured even a changeable job system, making player to be able to change job in any town. The jobs available in the Beta(s) were: Novice, Swordsman, Thief, Clown, Soldier and Magician. Gate Of The World was scrapped for create Ragnarok Online II: The Legend Of The Second, who ironically closed in Korea in 2011 because there were not enough players.
With January’s donations from our patrons and other awesome people, this month we have reached our $300 goal to pay the servers for 2015! We are super happy to be able to keep the site online for another year with the help of our readers and friends and would like to thank youall for the support!
We also reached our second goal on Patreon, meaning Tamaki will create more Unseen64 Podcasts for all our patrons as a big “thank you!” for their help. There are some more goals in our Patreon page, as the creation of better documentary videos for beta & cancelled videogames, and even if we are still far away from the $250 goal to fully work on the Unseen64 Book, we are already starting to do some early organization for its content. You can give us your feedback about what you would like to see in the U64 Book in our forum.
Donations will now be put aside to pay the server for the next year too ($300) and when we’ll be financially secure enough to keep Unseen64 online in 2016, we can then hopefully start to work more on the Unseen64 Book.
2015 Server: 100% funded, thank you!
17%
Current: $51
2016 Server Goal: $300
If you have suggestions and feedbacks, let us know in the comments below! :)
In 1998, Nintendo of America’s internal team, Nintendo Software Technology developed a pitch to lock down exclusive access to the Harry Potter rights. Had it been successful, Nintendo would have secured the rights to produce all adaptations of the book series for the indefinite future in video game form; potentially preventing the eventual movie adaptations from being created altogether.
Nintendo’s vision for Hogwarts.
According to one former artist of the studio, a sudden order from Nintendo’s management halted work on their three titles in development at the time (Ridge Racer 64, Bionic Commando and Crystalis) when news arrived that the license was to be auctioned off. This was a blanket license covering all formats of adaptation, including not only video games, but TV and film as well.
“The license went up for sale and all these major media companies were putting together pitches.”
The studio was then split into two: the primary group focused on devising on a pitch for a third person adventure title, whilst a smaller team worked on a potential game based around quidditch. The latter division reportedly included Marvel comic book artist, Adi Granov, who was responsible for character art.
Hogwarts Express concept art by Nintendo ST.
Nintendo ST aspired to develop the adaptations themselves, with versions planned to be released on Nintendo 64, Gameboy Advance and later Gamecube; as well as any of Nintendo’s future platforms further down the line. These releases would have coincided with the launch of each new book.
“All together it was only a week of insanely furious scribbling things to the digital artists to create animations for mock game demos”
The license holder, JK Rowling, agreed to view Nintendo’s presentation, but this was not without some trepidation among the members of Software Technology. Our source alleges that there was a disagreement at one point over which art style would be most appropriate for the franchise. Towards the start, there was a push for character designs inspired by those of the first book’s cover art by Thomas Taylor. However, it wasn’t long before the studio’s higher-ups took against this idea and forced it in a different direction:
“…it went against all my instincts based on what I had read quotes from JK about keeping it strictly British, and I had to revamp my initial designs and go more manga/Japanese – I had a big fight about that, but my boss insisted”
Hagrid’s Hut concept art.
We have unfortunately been unable to post images of these characters, since Nintendo would not allow its artists to share any of them publicly.
According to our source, the crew developing the quidditch game proposal had wanted to follow a similar route with regards to character design:
“[Name redacted] did get to do a more realistic take – I remember his Hermione being really nicely realized, but I doubt he saved anything from those days.”
Ultimately, Nintendo’s bid was declined by JK Rowling. Our source revealed that the writer turned it down in favor of several other proposals by media giants with greater resources, such as Disney and Universal. Whereas Nintendo was only able to offer forays into the realm of video games, these larger companies had the ability to spread out into TV and film; as well as gaming.
There are some big projects coming up on Unseen64, so we really need to expand our staff for more help (currently, we are only 4 people and 3 are Italians!). We would like to “hire” some new intern editors who are interested in writing articles for the planned Unseen64 Book; a volume in which there will be interviews with developers, articles and a collection of some of the most interesting cancelled games from the 8-bit consoles to the Xbox 360 / PS3 generation. It’s a long-term project, but we need to start as soon as possible.
We are searching for someone that is English mother-tongue (or that could write in English very well), who likes to write about video games (please, keep in mind: there will be A LOT to write) and who is capable of and passionate about digging up obscure info. He or she should be able to write at least 1 new article every 2 weeks. Intern editors will try to expand some of the descriptions for cancelled games that we have in the Unseen64 archive; finding more info and writing better / deeper articles for the book. There is a lot of work to do for the book and there’s no pay as we are a 100% non-profit website, but we will send a free copy of the Unseen64 book to those who fully worked on it. Are you interested?
Heroes, as it was tentatively titled, was a cancelled video game based off the ABC TV show of the same name. It was being developed by High Voltage Software and would have been published by Ubisoft. The title was planned for releases on PS3, Xbox 360, PC and Wii.
Heroes: The Video Game
Shortly after the successful first season of the Heroes TV series concluded in May 2007, Ubisoft entered talks with ABC Studios to use the license for a video game adaptation. This was to be the second ABC property Ubisoft would adapt following the development of LOST: Via Domus, which had began earlier that year in February. While Ubisoft’s Montreal division was busy working on that game, the publisher reached out to external developers including High Voltage Software.
At the time, High Voltage already had experience with developing TV tie-in games, including the Family Guy video game, and was therefore “a natural choice for Ubi”, one developer recalled. Ubisoft successfully negotiated a deal with ABC, which they announced in June, but the final decision to secure High Voltage as its developer was made over the following few months without ever being revealed to the public.
High Voltage Software’s Vision For Heroes
Just as LOST: Via Domus introduced an original character, Elliot Maslow, as its protagonist, the Heroes video game would have centred around a new female character of High Voltage Software’s own invention. Given how short the project’s lifespan was, it appears as though this redheaded heroine was yet to be named, but you can see some concept art of her below.
In the vein of Ubisoft Montreal’s character, this new member of the Heroes mythos would have acted as the player’s vessel through which they could explore the world of the show and interact with its extensive cast of superhumans. She would have enabled High Voltage and Ubisoft a higher level of creative freedom as they attempted to delve into the Heroes universe without too greatly interfering with the pre-established lore.
The plot of the Heroes video game was partway between a direct adaptation of the show’s premier season and an original story. Whilst the entire narrative of season one was unfolding concurrently, its protagonist would have been dealing with her own issues, in addition. It is our understanding that the character’s backstory had yet to have been figured out at the time of cancellation, nor were the exact nature of her powers.
Biting Off More Than They Could Chew
After a brief period of pre-production, Heroes had been sharply thrust into development at HVS. Prototyping began with the Xbox 360 as the lead platform alongside direct ports to the PS3 and PC planned for simultaneous release. A version for Nintendo Wii was also outlined, but production on it was never started.
The future version of Hiro Nakamura from the game.
The Heroes video game had been in full development for no more than a month when the team’s management made the decision to abruptly terminate the project. High Voltage had intended to singlehandedly develop every version of the game themselves, but they soon released that the company’s resources were insufficient for such a hefty task.
“I think it was their first try to create high end game at that time, because HVS did only low budget games and kids games. After a month, they realized that it would have taken much longer and they canceled it.” – Former High Voltage Software employee
According to another former developer of High Voltage, very little had been complete at the point of cancellation.
“There was one more character done and some environment work, but it was not in any kind of playable state”
When asked if the title might have held any similarities to Ubisoft’s LOST game, the source asserted that this was not the case and that the two were entirely separate; contrary to rumours. High Voltage’s game was apparently planned to belong to the third person action/adventure genre with a “heavy focus on storytelling”.
Heroes On Hold
Following cancellation at HVS, the game’s assets returned to Ubisoft around August 2007. From this point, the project was effectively in limbo as the publisher considered the future of their Heroes tie-in. Ubi retained the license for some time after this with the possibility of contracting a new team for it still on the table.
According to one source related to the project, these plans were reconsidered when the TV series began to experience a decline in popularity. Season two of the show began airing in September and it was met with a lukewarm critical reception, as well as a slight drop in ratings. Ubisoft still had plans to potentially create the game had it recovered, but by the third season in 2008, it had experienced a much sharper fall in viewership.
Ubisoft’s plans for Heroes were scrapped altogether around October, 2008. A month later, they announced publicly that the project was dead and that the license had been reverted to ABC.
Mega Man Universe is a cancelled action game that was being developed by Capcom for XBLA and PSN. Officially announced in july 2010 with a mysterious video made by Iam8bit…
the game’s first gameplay video was unveiled at PAX 2010, showing three different levels and some of the selectable characters, among which stood out “Bad Box Art Mega Man” and Ryu from Street Fighter, the latter just as a teaser, though. Arthur from Ghost n’ Goblins was planned to be playable too.
Six months later Mega Man Universe was playable at TGS 2010, where its main features were introduced in more detail.
The same three stages from PAX, created only for demonstration purposes, appear here too, each one representing a different difficulty level (Easy, Normal and Hard).
However, the biggest novelty for the series was an editor where players could create new stages by dragging and dropping blocks, items, enemies and then share online their creations.
Six characters (classic Mega Man, universe Mega Man, “Bad Box Art” Megaman, Gust Man, Chop Man and Metto Man), were available in this build, each one with their own abilities (life energy, weapons energy, shot, move and jump). Every robot could also equip items such as the energy tank or choose a special weapon.
In this screen we can see that the player could make entirely new characters by combining the various body parts and thus their abilities.
DLC characters such as a Mega Man version of Gachapin were also planned.
However, after about half a year, Capcom announced in march 2011 that the game was cancelled. In a IGN interview, Christian Svensson, at the time senior VP of Capcom America, said that the project was shelved due to its low quality:
Svensson: It was pretty far in production. I will say that we weren’t pleased with where it was, collectively at Capcom as a product from a quality standpoint.
In october 2014, Rockman Corner discovered a patent related to the game:
Universe would have allowed creators to adjust enemy behavior, their movement patterns and how much damage they dealt to the player.
The patent sheds new light on a quality assurance system, once designed to deter impossible to beat stages. Mega Man Universe required players to actually beat their homemade stage before sharing it online.
DJ Hero: After Party is a cancelled spin-off to the original DJ Hero game, which was briefly being worked on by Zoë Mode, the UK based subsidiary of Kuju Entertainment, for Activision in 2009. It was proposed as a game for the Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii.
Another Spin On DJ Hero
As FreeStyleGames was in the final stages of developing the first DJ Hero, Zoë Mode set a team of artists on formulating ideas for a spin-off game to it in July 2009. The developer had, in the recent past, created other such music games as Rock Revolution and Disney: Sing It! when the project began.
Leading Light, the design studio of Christian Bravery, was contracted to help make concept art for the company, as the vision behind game was steadily being realised. Together, they imagined an alternative approach to the formula of DJ Hero, one developer explained.
“It would have had a very different vibe to it than the other games. We wanted it to have its own personality and feel. More relaxed and laid back.”
DJ: After Party would have made for a more casual-friendly approach to the series. Another developer described the possibility of it being made up of “slower, more up beat” tracks, although work on the title never got as far as assembling a set list.
The general idea behind it was that most of the show venues, as you might imagine, were after parties. Leading Light and the developers put together images of some of the events, which included celebrity wedding receptions, boat parties and a private luxury island.
Activision allowed the developer to use the DJ Hero license in developing conceptual documents and a prototype demo for their potential spin-off, as well as the opportunity to present a proposal to their management. Zoë Mode ended up working on the concept for a few months before Activision ultimately decided against pursuing the project, rejecting the pitch in October 2009; the month of DJ Hero’s first release.
According to one artist, the concepts were, however, retained by Activision and some of their ideas were later used in DJ Hero 2.
Do you know Lobotomy Software? If you played Exhumed / PowerSlave on Saturn or Playstation, you probably remember that it was a real masterpiece, a Metroid-alike adventure in first person view, before Metroid Prime even existed. Lobotomy were founded in 1993 and they released some other games like the successful Sega Saturn ports of Duke Nukem 3D and Quake, that shown to the world what the 32Bit Sega Console was able to do with 3D graphic when great developers were able to work on great games.
They were also planning 2 new original games, Aquaria (Nintendo 64 + Playstation) and Exhumed 2 (Playstation), but unfortunately these were cancelled before being completed and gamers will never be able to enjoy them. In 1998 Lobotomy’s talented developers were acquired by Crave Entertainmentand the team was renamed to Lobotomy Studios, to work on a Caesar’s Palace game for the Nintendo 64, but after a year of development the game was postponed and eventually cancelled. As we can read on Wikipedia, at that point Lobotomy Studios was closed and employees were let go or given the option to be relocated to another position at Crave Entertainment.
Thanks to our friend Ross Sillifant we are able to publish this interview with Brian McNeeely, one of the main Lobotomy Software developers that worked on all their games, to ask him about his memories on their released projects and their cancelled titles. And if you still don’t know why it’s such a shame that we lost Exhumed 2 and Aquaria, please take your time and watch the video below (created by Tatsu from Lobotomy Software Blog), to understand why Lobotomy Software was one of the most talented development team in the mid ’90, affected by an unlucky fate.
Interview with Brian McNeely by Ross Sillifant
Before we get started, i’m going to try and ‘avoid’ as many technical-based questions as possible, or least phrase them in a more general manner, as i think these type of questions would be better suited to coders like Ezra Dreisbach, with your goodself i’m looking more for the insights into the company itself, hopefully being able to get a few rumours from the press cleared up etc etc.
Q1) Starting with the standard, cliched opener, Brian, please introduce yourself to our readers, in terms of your background, if you could be so kind.
Brian: Thanks for this opportunity Ross. My name is Brian McNeely (my name was actually Brian Anderson up to around 1996 when I changed my last name to McNeely, which is my birth name). I’ve been working in the gaming industry since January 1989, when I was hired at Nintendo of America as a Game Play Counselor. It’s hard to believe that was over 26 years ago! I look back at those days as a golden era both in the gaming world and in my career, and I feel very lucky that I was at Nintendo’s epicenter during that period. The NES, SNES, and Gameboy hardware and software were all the rage, and I had the privilege of playing those games full-time and helping gamers all over the world with game tips and “counseling.” It really was a ton of fun. I love what I do now and what I’ve done since then, but that was one of the best times of my life for sure.
When I look back at that experience I realize more and more how it was essentially an education in game design fundamentals. Over the course of several years I played hundreds of games while on the job, many of them to completion, and some of them multiple times. Simultaneously I was taking calls from people non-stop all day long, helping them with solutions, gaining new insight from them, and discussing games. As the years developed I reached a point where I had memorized a large amount of answers to nearly all questions that came through across the majority of available games. And it wasn’t that I was just memorizing answers, I was also absorbing knowledge and experience through many unique perspectives and sharing that information with others. There was also a competitive side to the job where Game Counselors pushed each other to find answers and finish games. It was a very unique job in that you had to be able to visualize, over the phone, where in a game the caller was and what they needed to progress based on a few key points of information they provided, and then piece everything together into a mental (and verbal) solution to the puzzle. The constant bombardment of calls was the tough part about that job, but helping people with a shared passion made up for it.
Through it all I was able to gain a lot of design insight into what makes a game fun, what frustrates the player (for better or worse), the importance of rewarding the player, pacing, difficulty, the relationships between art and game play and audio and technology, level design, progression, etc., etc… I could go on and on but I’ll stop by just saying it was awesome and I learned a lot.
Q2) I’d like to start the interview, proper as it were by asking about how Lobotomy in effect came to be. You’d been working under the security as it were, of Nintendo Of America, for some 4 years?, before deciding to ‘break out’ and go it alone. So, i wonder just what the reasons for setting up your own were (perhaps you’d always had vision of the games you wanted to make, yet knew you’d never be ‘allowed’ to make them at Nintendo?, so you needed the creative freedom perhaps?) and also, if it’s ok to discuss it, the sheer scope of stepping out into a very cut throat industry, setting up a new studio and having to prove yourselves. Could you talk us through the thought processes involved, risks you knew you were going to take and indeed the timing of starting the company?
It all started with Paul Lange, the founder of Lobotomy. It was his idea to break away from Nintendo and start a game development company. We had been working together as Game Play Counselors for a while before we each eventually moved into different departments of the company. After a couple of years there I started going to art school full time and working at Nintendo part time at nights, and I wasn’t entirely sure what my future held. I knew that somehow I wanted to combine my two passions (art and game design) into some sort of career in game development, but the process and the companies that did it were somewhat of a mystery to me at that point. This was before schools offered any kind of education specific to game development, and finding job openings at development companies was very rare.
So when Paul approached me at Nintendo with his idea to break out and start a new game development studio I was thrilled. He also recruited two other Nintendo friends, and I recruited a couple of my good friends from art school, and we all began preparing to actually do it. When Paul quit his job at Nintendo and began laying the groundwork for the company the reality of it all hit. Shortly after Paul left I also quit my job and our initial small group began working out of Paul’s apartment. We initially had to learn how to use the art tools available at the time (Deluxe Paint and Deluxe Animator), and so we worked together to figure out how to make digital art for games from the ground up. One of our first projects was a SNES boxing game demo similar to Punch Out but based on the career of Joe Louis, so it had a retro feel about it. Once we had that demo up and running in playable form we were ready to begin shopping it around.
Q3) Sticking with the above, once the company was ‘up and running’ how difficult was it, to become an established name or serious player in the industry?. How did a young, unknown to many i guess, company, like Lobotomy, go about ‘selling itself’ to the industry?. Did you take along tech demo’s or early versions of planned games and try a kind of ‘we are making THIS or can get hardware to do that… and feel it’d be ideally suited for your company to publish/or be suited to a conversion of.. your planning’…?. It’s something i’ve always been interested in learning more about, just what it took for fledgling companies to get a foot on the ladder as it were, with in the industry. Did your work for N.O.A hold you in good steed?
It was definitely difficult at first, but also exciting. We reached out to some of our contacts we had established while at Nintendo, and we hired an agent to help us find business. The first year or so was pretty tough, and honestly we were willing to do just about any type of game project to get the business moving. We tested games for various publishers to make ends meet, and we attended CES in Vegas and Chicago (this was well before E3 existed), and we met with various publishers to show them our SNES boxing demo. We also continued creating additional SNES demos to show more of what we could do, including a pinball game using a jetpack Pig as the ball called “Pigball” (using SNES Mode 7 for the playfield) and a side-scroller we called “Hippie Man” in which you controlled a hippie with flapping wide leg pants. The hippie man was actually me. I borrowed a pair of vintage wide leg pants from my girlfriend’s dad and we filmed me running on a treadmill from the side. Then I literally traced the frames over the video using tracing paper taped to a television, scanned the images into digital form, and cleaned up each frame pixel by pixel to create the main character animations. I really wish I still had the ROM of that demo.
We eventually landed our first contract with Crystal Dynamics to port a game called The Horde to SNES, which we finished, but sadly was never released. I don’t remember the exact details of how that played out, but I think by the time we finished the game Crystal Dynamics had decided there was no market interest in the game. A couple of other notable early projects that helped get us going were Microsoft Soccer and Magic School Bus Explores the Solar System, both for Windows 95. Obviously, neither of those were dream projects, but they helped pay the bills. Our ultimate goal was to start our own project, and to get closer to that we got our hands on the “Build” engine and started working on concepts for a first person shooter.
Q4) Ok, lets look at the games, Lobotomy 1st leapt to UK Gamers attention with Exhumed (Powerslave in USA)…and to many kinda put the Sega Saturn on the map, in terms of it being able to handle FPS (and in style). Are claims game was originally planned as a PC FPS, called ‘Ruins‘ true? and also you originally just planned to port the PC version to Saturn?. If so, what made you change your mind and turn the console versions into something of a FPS with more depth than your average FPS of that era?.
Yes it’s true the game began as a PC FPS called Ruins. Paul wanted to make something with an Egyptian theme, so we started developing the game using the Build engine for Apogee in tandem with three other games they were making using the same engine. The other three games were Shadow Warrior (ninja theme), Duke Nukem (sci-fi theme), and Blood (horror theme). Our Egyptian themed game rounded out the “theme spread” for this set I guess, or at least I think that’s what Apogee’s original vision was. Eventually the product changed hands on the publishing side and we continued development on 3 platforms: PC, Saturn, and PlayStation. Playmates Interactive published the U.S. versions (“Powerslave”), and BMG published the game in Europe (“Exhumed”) and Japan (“A.D. 1999: Pharaoh’s Revival”).
The PC version was well underway when we began planning the Saturn version. I don’t remember why we started with the Saturn version first over the PlayStation version, but it became our lead platform between the two consoles. At first is seemed reasonable that we would attempt to just port the game to the Saturn, but I realized we had a great opportunity to do something different with the console versions of the game that could break away from what was typically expected for first person shooters at the time. There wasn’t really a push at that time to cater first person shooters to console gamers, and for the most part the console FPS selection was very limited. I remember specifically there was a huge hole in that area on the Saturn, and I may be wrong about this but I’m pretty sure the only FPS available for Saturn when we began development was a game called Robotica, which I played in detail to see what we would be competing with. It became clear that if we struck in a certain way we could really run away with something great that hadn’t been done at all up to that point.
There were a few key areas where I saw lots of opportunity to expand the FPS genre on consoles. One of them was controls and mobility, and so we set out to speed up movement to feel more like a jog, and also allow the player to make soaring jumps. This allowed us to take a fresh approach with level design and factor in more dexterity and “3D FPS platforming” style of game play. Another area was the overall structure and progression of the game. I wanted to avoid a linear experience, and instead offer a feeling of exploration and accomplishment, so we designed the “artifact system” in which the player discovered artifact items to gain permanent new special abilities so that they could gain access to areas of the game previously impossible to reach. The world map was added to help reinforce the setting and game world and navigate the level structure. All of this was kind of a nod to Metroid and several other games, so it wasn’t a new concept by any means, but it was new to the FPS genre and seemed to fit well for console gamers.
Q5) Sticking with Exhumed, the Egyptian setting was fantastic!. I’ve always wondered if this was a deliberate ploy, ie the setting lended itself brilliantly to level/creature design, helped it stand head and shoulders above the more generic FPS crowd etc. Were you / members of the team into the whole Egyptian mythology i wonder?. Also how much research into the mythology aspect made it into the game?.
At the time there weren’t many games that utilized the Egyptian setting, and I’m pretty sure that was a motivator for Paul in his decision to go that route, and I don’t think there were any Egyptian themed FPS games at all so we knew it would make the game more unique. All of us thought it was a great idea, but none of us were experts in Egyptian mythology so we did as much research as we could to find ways to tie it into the game, but the tie-ins were very loose.
For the most part the mythology connections were built around the artifact system, and the abilities acquired with them. For example I knew I wanted a mask-like item that would give the player the ability to breathe underwater, but wasn’t’ sure what to call it. I researched Egyptian mythology and found “Sobek,” the God of the Nile. He had an alligator head and was referred to as a water-related deity. It sounded good to me, and the water connection was there, so the “Sobek Mask” was born.
It’s funny to look back at how simple all of it was though. The most important part was to make everything somewhat authentic. Although not incredibly deep, we implemented enough legitimate reasoning to make the Egyptian setting seem more believable.
On a side note we literally got into character to make a lot of the character assets for the game. All of the enemies and first-person weaponry art were digitized clay models and human actors and then touched up. To make the Mummy I dressed up in a mummy costume and we used a video camera to capture all of the frames using a makeshift set with a few desk lamps and a black felt backdrop. One of our artists (John Van Deusen) was Anubis, and all of the first person hands were mine which John touched up to look veiny and rugged.
Q6) Playstation Exhumed always seemed something of a ‘remix’ edition, rather than straight conversion, again i’ve always wondered if this a deliberate move on your part or.. did Sony themselves ask for any (specific) changes to be made to PS1 version and if so why?.
There were a few reasons for the differences between the PlayStation and Saturn versions. The PlayStation engine didn’t allow us to display quite as many polygons on screen, and so we had to redesign all of the levels to accommodate this limitation. Although the final PlayStation layouts were slightly more confined overall, they were also more refined and had better balance in my opinion. The process of revising the levels presented the chance to add more polish to the flow and pacing of the game.
Sony never asked to make the games significantly different though. They only asked for one thing: “Add one unique piece of content exclusive to the PlayStation version.” To satisfy this we changed the art of the spider enemies into scorpions, and that was it.
Q7) I’d like to ask of about your personal experiences working with both Sega and Sony. Reasons being that both suffered from some poor FPS conversions to their hardware (Saturn Doom / PS1: Hexen and Duke Nukem 3D) and i wonder if you were ever in demand from either and what conflicts that might of caused, IE could’nt do PS version of game until Sega version finished due to contractual obligations. Plus is it true Sega Of America originally turned down Powerslave (Exhumed)? if so, why?.Also Sega seemed unconcerned about things like censorship in games like Duke Nukem 3D, Nintendo by comparison censored the N64 version, did Sony ever ‘differ’ in attitudes to Sega i wonder?
I could be wrong about these answers because it was so long ago, but I’m pretty sure we had a contractual agreement with Sega for the exclusives of Quake and Duke Nukem, and so PlayStation versions weren’t an option. As for Sega of America turning down Powerslave, I honestly don’t remember if that happened or not. Regarding censorship, I didn’t get the chance to work with Sony in that area so I can’t say what their stance was as the time. Needless to say we were all glad the strippers made it into the Saturn version of Duke Nukem because that game was nothing without them.
Q8) Sticking with above, how did you find working with the European and American ‘arms’ of both Sega and Sony and did the ‘press reaction’ influence the feelings of either?.Over here the UK Press (Saturn specific in particular) seemed to love you guys, big previews, covers screaming about your conversions, interviews etc etc, did this give Lobotomy a certain degree of ‘clout’ as it were?.
We were thrilled with our popularity in the UK, but unfortunately things weren’t the same in America. I think the main reason for that was because Playmates and Sega of America just didn’t push the game here. They only published a limited number of Powerslave copies, and so no one really knew about it. Add to that the press coverage in America was nothing compared to Europe and as a result the game didn’t receive very much attention and exposure.
On the flip side though, the exposure we received in Europe was fantastic. That was a great time for us, and to see Exhumed being enjoyed by so many was incredibly rewarding.
Q9) I recently stumbled across an interview from the time, with Ezra talking about the Playstation version of Quake being finished, but sadly never released, despite being superior to the Saturn version, it seemed to be felt ‘unwanted’ as it were, game deemed too old hat and this had a killer blow on the company.This must have been a horrendous period for yourself and the team, can you talk us through how you came to be working on PS1 Quake (as we’d been reading in UK at the time 7 developers had tried, failed to get game running on PS1 etc etc, it simply was’nt going to happen).
Also any ideas as to why the FACT you had converted Quake to PS1 and just how fantastic a conversion it was, has gone so undiscovered for so long?. I’ve read interviews/features/articles on Quake in Gamestm, Retrogamer Magazine etc, yet no-one seemed aware of missing PS1 version, which is most odd. Plus is there ANY chance of source code being sat somewhere and if so, could it ever be released/preserved?
At this point I honestly don’t remember a lot of the details about our PlayStation Quake version. I do remember that it was a surprise, and I think Ezra just casually said that he had done it one day. It wasn’t that much of a surprise though because our engineers were awesome and so it was kind of expected that they routinely did the impossible. I do know that it didn’t have a negative effect on the company though, so I don’t know where that perception came from. I suppose the negative impact of not landing a contract for it was a factor, but it definitely was never seen as a killer blow of any sort.
Q10) Regarding Saturn Duke Nukem and Quake conversions… i’d of thought after Exhumed, you’d of been Sega’s 1st choice for getting the contracts to convert these 2, but claims suggest others had started at least one of these, but it was’nt very good. Without naming names :-) just how far along had earlier attempts gotten and how did it feel to be 2nd or 3rd choice? or were you, as a company, just bloody glad to have landed the contracts, period?.
The way I remember it is that a handful of developers were being considered and that it took the right person in the right position to recognize who would be the best fit for the job, and so we were chosen. We were definitely very happy to get the business, but it was bittersweet because we had hoped to be in a position where we could develop our own games without relying on ports to keep the business running.
Q11) I’d like to talk about a few other ‘Lost Games’, if i may: We know Lobotomy were a fantastic team and turned out simply stunning products, time and time again, so we were gutted to see ‘Aquaria’ get canned. Can you remember much about the game itself (it was often refered to as being similar to Saturn Nights, but set underwater) and just how far along development got and also what caused it to be cancelled?.
We had a playable demo of Aquaria up and running on PlayStation. It was a free roaming third person underwater adventure game where you controlled an alien merman character. The Nights comparison ties into how fluid the controls were. You could do various dolphin-like acrobatics to maneuver through the environment. In addition to the playable demo I had the majority of the design pretty much completed but when the company began to close its doors we had to stop development. At one point we were contacted by Sega to possibly make the next Ecco the Dolphin game and we sent them our Aquaria prototype, but that never panned out. If you’ve ever played Ecco the Dolphin Defender of the Future you can get a pretty good idea for how the core character controls and camera system for Aquaria were designed.
Q11b) Next up: ‘Mutant Chronicles: The Mortificator.’ This seemed to be a game that the fans of the series really wanted, i wonder if you can remember if the game would of been more action-orientated or more RPG based?
Although we never got past the very early stages of development, it was shaping up to be an action-oriented FPS. We showed a playable demo at E3 one year and it’s unfortunate we couldn’t finish the game because we were having a lot of fun with it.
Q12) The closure of Lobotomy was a crippling blow to so many of us here in Europe alone, it simply seemed unthinkable, you were THE premier console developer to many of us, the ‘Darlings’ of the UK Magazine world, what future projects were you looking at? (Exhumed 2 perhaps) and on what formats were they planned for? Dreamcast maybe?. On that note, could you detail ANY OTHER lost games you’ve been involved in, over the years? (any format).
We had started development on Exhumed 2 for PlayStation, which was going to be set in ancient Egyptian times and centered on the main character Horus. It was in third person perspective, entirely 3d, and we had a playable demo up and running, but again the timing was off and we had to stop development. Looking back I regret the decision to go with third person instead of first person, because we were moving too far away from what we were really good at, and I think we would have had more success if we had done a true FPS sequel. Other than that I don’t remember any other lost games that haven’t already been mentioned.
Q12b) Also, i ‘assist’ with Lost Games sites like Unseen64 and Games That Were’nt (GTW). These guys pour blood, sweat and tears into researching and preserving lost game material and i’m hounoured to give of my time to assist where i can and people like your goodself giving of your time is an utter godsend. Do you have any source material (images, design docs, video drawings etc), you feel happy to pass on, so they can be preserved on these sites? i ask as i recently interviewed Farran T (Jaguar Mindripper) who’d deleted all his Atari docs and the images were lost forever :-(
I’ve included some old sketches and art from some of our projects with this interview. Enjoy :)
Q13) Did Lobotomy find itself more at home to a particular target market? ie did European gamers perhhaps ‘get’ your games more than those in the USA? if so, what would you put differences down to? marketing support from publishers (ie did Sega Europe push your games harder than Sega USA), gamers tastes? press coverage? or all of the above?
I attribute the popularity differences to media exposure and available units. There was a distinct media buzz about Exhumed in Europe that didn’t exist in America, and they were the exact same game. Add to that the sheer number of printed copies available in Europe compared to the few thousand available in America, and you can see how the game’s success had a vastly different outcome in each territory.
Q14) I mentioned this already, but at the time, you were the ‘darlings’ of the PS1/Saturn press, lot of interviews etc, were you ever miss-quoted? i ask this as looking into lost games and being a once avid UK mag.reader, the amount of quotes that were altered to suit a writers viewpoint or simply incorrect or even made-up, are startling over the years and it still continues.Did you ever read something and think, hold on, i never said that!
I’m sure there are a lot of articles that I’ve never seen so I can’t say for sure, but all of the interviews I’ve read have been accurate from my perspective.
Q14) Finally, do you keep in contact with your old team mates?. What are you currently doing yourself? (any future plans) and any messages for your legions of fans out there? (for so many of us, Lobotomy are true legends).
I still keep in touch with a lot of my old team mates from Lobotomy (we call each other “The Lobotomites”). We share never-ending stories and jokes and memories from those crazy times. We used to refer to our office as a development fraternity. We were a group of talented and unique guys, working insane hours, shooting from the hip, determined to make something great. Those were some of the best times of my life.
I returned to Nintendo about 9 years ago to work in game development (Nintendo Software Technology to be specific). I work with one of my very good friends and Lobotomites Kevin Chung, whom I’ve known for 25 years. We reminisce about the Lobotomy days frequently, often leading to laughter-induced stomach pain.
I fired up Exhumed the other night on Saturn for the first time in about 15 years, and I thought “damn this game looks old!” And then I started playing it and thought “damn this was a pretty good game!” And then I kept dying and I thought “damn this was a pretty difficult game!” And then I wanted to keep playing. I suppose that was a taste of what it was like for someone playing the game for the first time in 1996, minus the looking old part. I’m just glad so many gamers stuck with it and kept playing, because it was almost unfairly difficult. It was definitely designed for the more hardcore gamers. Without question though it was a great experience to make the game and work with so many great people. And although Lobotomy didn’t make it in the long run, at least we had the chance to provide something special to gamers that we were proud of and that we would want to play ourselves.
Huge thanks to Brian for taking part in this interview. Many, Many thanks.
The original Dino Crisis was a widely popular survival horror (marketed as survival panic) game developed by Capcom and released on the original PlayStation in 1999. It was created by the same team that made the first Resident Evil game and contained many of the same tense elements but focused on more of an action feel.
A portable version of Dino Crisis was being developed for the Gameboy Color by British studio M4 Ltd, who had released Tasmanian Devil: Munching Madness and were due to release Jerry McGrath Supercross 2000. M4 stated that the game would not be complete until Q4 of 2000 but development had started early in the year, this was reported by IGN who spoke to the developers. M4 said that Dino Crisis for the GBC would be a top down adventure rather than how the original was, it would also be developed exclusively for the GBC by-passing any kind of black and white compatibility. Virgin interactive handled development for Capcom in the UK and so they were handling this game, there was no word on where it would be released. M4 Ltd version of Dino Crisis GBA was never released, but they developed top-down Resident Evil Gaiden, published by Capcom in 2001. It’s currently unknown if this version of Dino Crisis could have been reworked and relased as Resident Evil Gaiden.
This is not the only version of a GBC Dino Crisis that can be found on the web though, as on two separate Spanish websites Vandal and Dino Crisis Wiki the game was reported to be being developed by a different studio. This other cancelled game was said to be being developed by the now missing Fluid Studios another British developer who released games such as Top Gun: Firestorm (GB) and Army Men: Air Combat (GB and N64). This was also said to be being developed late 1999 early 2000, for the GBC.
There are a few more details for this version of the game though: it would not be a top down adventure but rather using static backgrounds and images accompanied by text sequences. Some presumed screenshots from Fluid Studios’ Dino Crisis seem to have been leaked online too, but we don’t know their source. These sites also report that the game was to be 7 maps with 100 rooms in total. There were to be four characters in the game Regina, Rick, Gail and Dr Kirk all who appeared in the original game on the PlayStation. Also it was said that there was going to be five types of dinosaur two unspecified with the others being the Tyrannosaurus Rex, Velociraptor and Pteranodon.
Both of these studios no longer exist and there is not much else reported on why these games were cancelled, but Capcom also cancelled the unreleased GBC version of Resident Evil and so it may be that they did not think that the versions would uphold the popularity of the originals.
Hotline Miami is a 2D top-down action video game developed by Dennaton Games, a team composed of Jonatan Söderström and Dennis Wedin. The game was published by Devolver Digital and released on October 23, 2012 for Windows PCs. Hotline Miami is the final product of a development process starting back in 2004, when Swedish developer Jonatan Söderström (better known as cactus) began working on one of his many videogame projects called Super Carnage.
Cactus stated, in an interview with PC Gamer UK (Issue 247):
What was the original idea for Hotline, why did you want to make it?
JS: My original idea, when I made the first prototype called Super Carnage, was just to make the goriest game I possibly could, with as many weapons as possible. I was only 18 at the time so it was a pretty silly and incomplete idea.
Cactus was inspired by different games for this prototype, especially by a number of games from Japanese developer Ikiki, another prolific mass-producer of indie games like him. Hakaimanin particular, with its top-down style and gore grapichs, was one of the main influences (even for the enemies’ patterns and AI).
Cactus also stated that he really liked the game Nikujin (also made by Ikiki), featuring a naked ninja, because he gave him the feelings of possessing all the abilities from the beginning of the game, not acquiring them through the game but trying to master them from the start, as he said in the same interview with PC Gamer UK:
I really wanted to capture that feeling of always being outnumbered and having to master the controls and plan your actions to beat a level.
A beta demo of the game was released by cactus on gamermakergames.com forums. At that time (2006) the game looked like this:
This video comes from a livestream held by Nigel Lowrie, a member of Hotline Miami’s publisher Devolver Digital. The mechanics are there (2D top-down visuals, combat system, enemies behavior) but the game’s style is completely different. We can see a number of details dropped from the final game: starting from the weapons available, a lot of them (like the grenades, the flamethrower and the minigun) were cut because they didn’t fit the theme of the final game, according to the developers. In this prototype the character starts naked (a reference to Ikiki’s naked ninja in Nikujin), because cactus thought about a reward system based on what types of clothes and weapons you would equip through the game (for example, a bonus like a bulletproof vest would give you less points).
Images, Super Carnage (2006 build):
The unused grenades in Super Carnage
The unused grenades again
The unused minigun in Super Carnage
The unused minigun again
The unused flamethrower in Super Carnage
The unused flamethrower again
The unused flamethrower again
At this time there was no plot whatsoever, it was only a gameplay prototype. This build was shown to Dennis Wedin, with whom Söderström collaborated on the project Keyboard Drumset Fucking Werewolf. Wedin is a big fan of top-down shooters, and he was very intrigued by the prototype so, as he recalled in a conference at Fantastic Arcade 2012 (all the quotes down here come from this interview):
I went back to my apartment for two weeks and just made all the basic animations for the game.
Wedin’s visuals were influenced by a bunch of other games like The Chaos Engine, Gauntlet and Loaded(these pictures were shown by Wedin himself at Fantastic Arcade 2012).
The Chaos Engine
Gauntlet
Loaded
However, plot elements like settings, characters and overall style of the game were not influenced by videogames, rather than other types of media.
Drive, a movie by director Nicolas Winding Refn starring Ryan Gosling, was the inspiration for the main character, Jacket.
After we had been working on the game for a while, we looked at some clips from the movie and we realize that one of the scenes in the film, where there’s like the decisive moment where the movie can go one way or another. The movie goes one way, and I guess that the game is what would have happen if it had gone the other way. […] So, this is pretty much the basic set-up for each level in the game: you’re just standing outside with the mask on, and there are all these people inside that you are going to kill. And they are all assholes!
One of the first ideas for the plot and the storyline was based on the comic series Kick-Ass, written by Mark Millar and illustrated by John Romita, Jr.
cactus: The codename we had for the game when we started working on it was based on Kick-Ass, because it’s about this people wearing mask and killing people.
Dennis: From the beginning the game was just only gonna be like six levels, or something like that, and the plot for it was that you wanted to be on this superhero group, and you had to do like a test for them to convince them that you can be in their squad. So that’s were all the disguise-thing come from I think.
The violence in the comic book was an inspiration for the enemies’ execution by Jacket.
The setting and the style of the game was then heavily influenced by a 2006 documentary directed by Bill Corben called Cocaine Cowboys, depicting the cocaine-flooded Miami of the 70s and 80s, where mass-murders and criminality were an everyday affair (which inspired other movies like Scarface).
A later build titled Cocaine Cowboy (in Russian text) was then created, and it features a notable resemblance with the final game. This prototype has 10 levels, some them are less-decorated stages from the final game. This video is coming from the same livestream of Super Carnage (Cocaine Cowboy appears after the first prototype).
However there are also a bunch of differences: there are no masks, yellow walls (where you can shoot through) are more used in this build, the character often starts in bathroom (like the old Super Carnage prototype, the door sound effect is also the same). The music of the stages is Lady (Original Version) by Chromatics which was supposed to be in the final game, but later cut because it was too expensive to license. Fun fact: using the spacebar to do the ground execution makes the game going back to the main menu. Also, Jacket is different from the final, the enemies use Jacket animations (we learn from the developers that in the beginning the enemies were going to have only shooting weapons).
Images, Cocaine Cowboys:
Jacket appearence was based on Eddy Murphy‘s character from the movie Beverly Hills Cop, whereas the Russian mobsters (with white jacket and blue shirt) were based on Miami Vice‘s characters.
Eddy Murphy’s jacket inspired the jacket of the protagonist
Miami Vice inspired the Russian mobsters
Last, you can notice something strange on the first Hotline Miami trailer:
The playable character here is the Pig Butcher, one of the protagonists of the sequel, Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number. I don”t know if there was a plot change or this character was just a placeholder.
Shadow Realms was a cancelled online action RPG in development at BioWare Austin. It was originally scheduled for release in fall 2015 exclusively on PC with no immediate plans for a console port. The title’s cancellation was announced on February 9, 2015. However, thanks to multiple anonymous contributors related to the project, we have been able to preserve a plethora of insider information about it that was never disclosed by BioWare officially.
It was a game conceived by BioWare Austin in late 2013 as a 4 v 1 online multiplayer experience; with full production commencing by early 2014. According to one former employee of the company, its realization long preceded the announcement of other 4 v 1 titles, such as Evolve. Despite countless comparisons between the two by the press and consumers alike, our source emphasised that two were thought of completely independently of one another.
The World of Shadow Realms
BioWare Austin’s team envisioned a universe wherein Earth existed parallel to another world dubbed ‘Embra’. This alternative realm was populated by all manner of monsters inspired by gothic literature, including werewolves, gargoyles, wraiths and even zombies; as well as rejected creature designs from Dragon Age: Inquisition, repurposed. The story of Shadow Realms was to chronicle the discovery of Embra at the hands of a group of gifted teenagers in the 21st century. Soon realising they possess the ability to wield powerful magics, they are faced with the task of repelling the dark forces of Embra, whose invasion threatens the fate of Earth itself.
The narrative setup and general world building of Shadow Realms was to unfold via a series of live action trailers leading up to release, as opposed to traditional in-game cutscenes, our source revealed. The first of these short videos was titled “Chosen” and went live on August 13, 2014:
With its inspirations heavily set in modern youth fiction, it was the Austin team’s attempt to piggyback the trend brought about by the popularity of such phenomena as Harry Potter and the Twilight series. This mini web series of sorts would have depicted a diverse cast of young adults wrestling with their newfound powers and the responsibility they were reluctantly inheriting. Some would rise to the task, excited by the macabre domain before them, while others would recoil in terror.
On a conceptual level, the Austin developers were focusing on a juxtaposition of modern and fantasy aesthetics. Whereas some missions would take warriors into the grim depths of the shadow realms, other conquests took place in real world settings back on Earth; like an office block or an underground subway station. Each player was presented with a wealth of customisation options, too, and would have been offered the freedom to mix regular modern day clothing items such as hoodies with a variety medieval armour pieces collected throughout. We were informed that the majority of the game’s modern clothing was made to replicate real clothing brands, although no actual product placements were present.
Diversity was a key factor during development and the character creation tool would have reflected that. A wide range of ethnicities, body types, accessories, tattoos and other more off-the-wall customisations like devil horns would have been at your finger tips. Our source added that there were options for transgender characters included, as well.
Earth Vs Embra
The core gameplay of Shadow Realms involved a team of four heroes fighting against a player controlled enemy named the ‘Shadow Lord’ and every quest was styled as either a dungeon or arena type mission. These were almost entirely linear environments with the occasional opportunity to take an alternative route or uncover a hidden loot area. Heroes had the goal of battling through these stages and defeating the culminating boss enemy, whilst the Shadow Lord player would have to do everything in their power to prevent this.
Shadow Lords had an extensive array of dark sorcery at their disposal to get the job done. They could lay traps, summon computer controlled monsters and even perform direct attacks of their own. Whether you were taking up arms as a warrior of Earth or Embra, each class had its own unique skill progression with unlockables attached. Human characters were divided into eight different class types with a separate tree for playing as the Shadow Lord. Every hero class had some form of fixed magic available to them, although their choice of weapon was up to them.
BioWare’s Jeff Hickman said that the premise of the title was a deliberate callback to the table top RPG‘s of old:
“This game brings us back to our roots in the realm of classic Pen and Paper RPG, but also delivers something that’s completely new and innovative for our fans.”
In-game screenshots:
BioWare’s Unrealised Plans
The payment model to be used by Shadow Realms was never announced by BioWare in any official capacity, despite being discussed openly with the press. Our source close to Bioware revealed that there were various other considerations throughout development but it was, indeed, going to be a ‘free-to-play‘ game. Microtransactions were planned to be in place for those wanting a valuable premium currency to gain unlocks at a faster rate, but the whole multiplayer experience would have been accessible without paying a penny to start off with.
One former BioWare employee also divulged that were talks of a single player component being implemented:
“Multiplayer came first, so story was not a huge push, but it existed. [There were] no set characterizations but that could have changed for the single player experience if they went forward with that. Think TF2.”
Ultimately, this solo mode never moved past the drawing board. For the remainder of development, the team’s time was spent mostly on polishing the 4 v 1 multiplayer, which had been at the heart of the project since its inception.
There were plans, we have been told, to support it for years to come with both free and paid expansions.
Mixed Reactions
It was in June 2014 that word of the game began to reach the fellow branches of BioWare, as the Austin team started to show off their creation. Our source shared that it was somewhat far along at this point with “decently modelled characters and levels”. However, the underlying first impressions of it were distinctly lukewarm among the other offices it was shown to. This made for a stark contrast with the excitement building for another new IP the company was working on, which the developers were greatly enthused about.
“Many YuGiOh jokes were made around the office when we learned of it”
This general lack of goodwill towards the project internally extended to the staff hired to test the game’s alpha build, who were apparently left equally uninspired by it. Complaints highlighted such aspects as the shallowness of the combat.
Two months later, the title’s first gameplay video debuted at Gamescom 2014 during EA’s presentation on August 13, 2014. It was observed that initial reactions to the reveal among Bioware fans online and at the show ranged from tepid to outright negative – an unanticipated low for the company, our source disclosed. Once it was in the hands of the public via demo kiosks at the event, the indifference shown towards it continued, but Bioware refused to address the issues taken with it. Members of the press such as the team at Gamespot, on the other hand, were marginally more positive.
The Demise of Austin’s Experimental New IP
After its first showings, feedback sourced from these events pushed back the schedule of Shadow Realms as the team worked to improve the game’s foundation. By October 31, they would announce that its closed alpha preview was being postponed indefinitely, after previously pledging that it would be made available in the coming months. On their official microsite for the title (now defunct), Senior Producer Dallas Dickinson saved face as things began to fall apart behind the scenes:
“The thing is, feedback was so good it made us want to do more, to get a bit further down the road, before opening Shadow Realms up again. We got so many excellent questions about what the game will be, beyond just the multiplayer piece that we’ve revealed, and we’d like to be able to show you some answers rather than just telling you what the answers will one day be. But we need a bit more time. We’ve taken a deep look at the state of the game – what it is now, what we intend it to be, and most importantly what it could be – and realized this is an opportunity to take a great game and make it even better before bringing it back for more feedback from you.”
Production continued for the final months of development as publisher EA began to lose confidence in the project and its future lay in jeopardy. For the remainder of 2014, Austin’s team was apparently “oblivious” to the likelihood of it being dropped altogether. Their community manager, Eric Musco, would even come out to confidently deny this, saying that it was “absolutely not cancelled” on Reddit in December.
This would change on January 5, 2015 when the word was finally out and Shadow Realms was officially dead. The developers became a part of a complete studio refocus which involved transitioning them into development on Star Wars games, contributing to Dragon Age: Inquisition add-ons and their next new IP. One result of this was a number of departures from the company; the most notable of which being their aforementioned director of production, Mr Dickinson.
BioWare waited over a month to announce its discontinuation when on February 9, they released an entry on their blog, confirming it:
“We’ve made the decision to not move forward with development of Shadow Realms. We fully recognize that this news is disappointing to some of our fans, so I want to explain more behind this decision.
While the team did amazing work on the game concept and we got lots of great feedback from our fans at events and through other game testing, right now there are other projects for the team to work on within the BioWare studios for the coming year and beyond. We’ve got an incredibly talented team here at the Austin studio, and they are excited and already deep on new projects within the BioWare family, ones that will make some great BioWare games even better.”
On February 23rd, EA killed the Shadow Realms microsite that originally hosted the above statement to save money on server costs, in addition to removing almost all references to the game from their official sites.
Frank Herbert’s Dune: Ornithopter Assault is a cancelled flying / shooter game made by Soft Brigade that was going to be published on the Gameboy Advance by Cryo Interactive. Development of the game started in 2001, but in summer 2002 the project was shelved, even if it was basically finished (all the missions are completable), before submission to Nintendo due to Cryo’s financial difficulties.
This is the game’s fact-sheet that could be found in the official website, now offline:
Trained by Gurney Alleck, the most efficient and honoured officer of the House of Atreides, you are going to become a specialist in piloting and fighting ornithopters. Involved in all-out war for the spice, you must surpass all of your flying skill to survive the fall of the House of Atreides and help Paul and the Fremen in their fight for Arrakis.
Spectacular 3D Universe on Advanced Game Boy, seen from the cockpit of the ornithopter.
More than 20 different missions with various objectives simple recounting, escort duties, guarding, destroying troops and buildings, capturing vehicles, collecting spice and water, etc.
5 solo and multiple player modes (using 2 cable linked Advanced Game Boy) with various levels of difficulty solo mission, campaign, joint campaign and deathmatch.
The first adaptation of Dune, the most famous of all science fiction universes, on hand held console.
Lost Legion was set to be a squad orientated first-person shooter game based in a sci-fi world on a desert like planet set in the year 2563, being developed by ZZICT, a studio founded by former Crytek developers that worked on the cancelled Silent Space game. This was going to be ZZICTs first PC game and was being developed sometime in 2001 and beyond. Lost Legion was meant to concentrate heavily on realism in the fact that players would die very easily from enemies and would be quickly overwhelmed in close-quarter combat.
The game play was expected to be that the player would issue commands to a squad under their command, it was said to be from 5-10 members. This would be handled in a similar way to Unreal Tournaments GUI, using a hot key the player would bring up a list of commands that they could then issue to all or some of their squad. There was to be several different mission objectives for the player such as reconnaissance (photographing the aliens) rescue missions, search and destroy, capturing and holding a position and capturing aliens for study. As the player could quite quickly become overwhelmed this missions were going to rely heavily on stealth and forward planning.
Lost Legion was said to be based on Starship Troopers, Aliens, Rainbow six and Counter Strike, ZZICT also wanted to tap into the current market trends of the time of outdoor scenarios, teamwork based action and a fear inducing atmosphere.
There is very little information on ZZICT and their company website is no longer available, it can be accessed using the Wayback Machine but there is no more information about the game. This was their only planned and first game, they have developed nothing since.
As we can read on Rage Wiki, John Carmack stated that he still plans to do a sequel to RAGE after Doom 4 ships:
“After Rage certifies, the heavily-lifting code team will be migrating over to do new systems (for the Doom team). Building up the new team has been challenging to bring that many new people in and bring them up to speed” […] “We’re going to migrate more of the RAGE 2 team people, and then we’re going to roll onto RAGE 2.”
On August 4th, 2013 at Quakecon 2013, RAGE co-founder Tim Willitshas mentioned that RAGE 2 is “Not dead”.
“I’m proud of what we did, I’m proud of the universe that we built. The franchise is not dead. We’re not doing anything immediately with it, but when I designed the universe, I designed it in such a way that it would be easy to step back into. I’m still proud that we did something that was different – it wasn’t like the games that we’ve done in the past.”
Willits also said that Rage’s development fueled innovations in ID Tech 5 that continue to pay off as the engine is adapted for use on next-gen consoles and in other Bethesda products.
As ID Software are now dedicated to create games for the new consoles (PS4, Xbox One, PCs), probably if / when RAGE 2 will ever be released it would be much different from its PS3 / Xbox 360 version. It’s fun to notice that there is an hidden Rage 2 Easter Egg in the original RAGE. During one of the missions in Dead City Centrall, a poster can be seen with “50% less on Rage 2, Doom 5!” on it.
Our friend Ross Sillifant send us a lot of contributions every week, with info and interviews about lost videogames and their development, from different software houses and for various consoles / PC. To be able to publish all those info we’ll need a lot of time so we are adding these in the Unseen64 archive in different chapters, here’s the second part, be ready for a lot of obscure unseen games and canned ports of popular titles!
Prolific’s Return Fire 2 was also planned for Playstation 1 as well as PC. Edge Issue 58 has it previewed under PC/Playstation. PSX version was never released.
‘We did an futuristic racing game, a rally race game, a golf game, and a mech 3rd person shooter called “Big Guns”, which we eventually got Sony to let us do, and at about the same time landed the MDK gig. Big Guns was a fun game, but it kind of got designed out of existence by the Sony Producer, and eventually was cancelled. That’s a shame, but then that led to Apocalypse and hence Tony Hawk, so it’s all good.’
About the cancelled UNITY for GameCube: Jeff Minter’s chief sponsor at Lionhead, Pete Hawley, left whilst Jeff was working on Unity, and Jeff carried on for a while, but as he did Lionhead were getting closer and closer in regards to the relationship with Microsoft and Pete thinks Unity simply did’nt fit in with Microsoft’s plans for what MS wanted Lionhead to develop for their xbox hardware and instead let Jeff loose to develop it as the Virtual Light Machine for Xbox 360 instead. Pete also talked of how he so badly wanted Aphex Twin on-board to do the music for Unity, as that was “The Missing Piece”
Native was stopped because it was a Jag Server game (underground – so no official tools, no alpine, no cart, no CD) ALL code had to be loaded up in one go to ram so thats everything, in 2MB – it’s just not enough ram… on a bank switched cart there’d be AMPLE room, but Duranik are no longer interested in the project and nobody who’s taken it on later has really done much with it. […] Hmmm so this game could not be put onto a cart….Well even if they do bankswitching for it, They still didnt have enough work RAM he said …So did this 1 level game max out the RAM on the Jag for the 1 level so no Music/Weapons/Bosses….rotation effect could be added? Duranik did not have an official dev kit. That means they did not have the compression tools to put this on a 2 meg cart.
These would have been launch/initial wave of games for the3DO M2 according to EDGE:
Descent-Interplay.
Disruptor (also planned for 3DO)
Return Fire 2 (layter changed to PC/PS1, only PC version made it).
Top Gun (Spectrum Holobyte-supposed to make the WIP N64 version ‘pale by Comparison’)
M2 powered arcade beat em up (Williams ent)
Wing Commander IV (Origin)
John Madden ’98, NHL Hockey, Road Rash, Olympic Soccer (Silicon Dreams)
Undecided:Crystal Dynamics, Capcom and Acclaim.
Infogrames’ Chaos Control was originally also planned for 3DO and Mega CD. Source Edge Prescreen Nov’93
From same Edge issue: Activisions’ Return To Zork was down as PC CD and Mega CD (planned), later a Jaguar CD version was announced. We have no idea if any work was ever started on it.
Namco’s PC Division in November 1995 announced it would be porting games such as “Rave Racer,” “Air Combat 22″ and “Tekken” to PowerVR. Rave Racer PC demo was shown running in 640X480 and at 30 FPS on a Pentium 133 PC:
“Rave Racer was the third coin-op arcade game in the Ridge Racer series, and was released for arcades 1995. Rave Racer is not to be confused with the similar sounding Rage Racer on PlayStation. They were two different games. None of those games were ever released for PowerVR cards on PC and only Rave Racer was shown in a very early state of development at trade shows in 1996. By 1997, it had become clear Namco had no intention of releasing these games because they did not say a thing about them, ever again, as if it never even happened.”
EDGE magazine’s preview of Last Ninja on PSX (title also announced by System 3 for PSP and Dreamcast).
Alien VS Predator: heres what seems to be the only shots of Rebellions PS1 version of the Atari Jaguar game. Enjoy:
DC-UK magazine Feb 2001 reported on playing early version of Max Steel (based on ‘popular USA Animated series‘) being coded by Treyarch. Game looked to be ‘inspired by’ likes of Metal Gear Solid and Syphon Filter .They had initial concerns over repetitive nature of puzzles and also whilst you had a lot of weapons at your disposal, there seemed to be very little difference in the effects they had.
Dreamcast version of Worlds Scariest Police Chases (was due late 2000) was CANNED along with PC version, by Fox Interactive when developers, Teeny Weeny Games, went bust (PS1 version being done by separate developer).
Geoff Crammond’s Grand Prix 3 PC had a poster at the Hasbro stand at the 2000 ECTS show, proclaiming it was coming to Dreamcast, yet when asked Hasbro said it was a mistake, they were’nt supposed to be saying anything about the DC conversion at ECTS as it was too early. In the end, the conversion was canned.
Virgin Interplay announced (upcoming) PC game Evolva (Strategy game) was also Dreamcast bound, it’d been in development for 2 years already by Computer Artworks, when DC-UK magazine broke the news (april 2000). Unfortunately, this was never released on SEGA’s console.
Cancelled Gears and Guys (AKA Gears & Guts) by Gremlin Interactive for Playstation and Saturn: game was a racer, with player picking 1 of 6 beefy pick-ups, then racing over 6 different off-road tracks. Circuits were based on a grid, rather than linear layout, cue shortcuts, secret routes etc. Trucks themselves reacted to real world physics. Game expected to run between 25-30 FPS. Coder was Niall Dunne. The game could have evolved to be released as Hardcore 4×4 for Playstation only.
Bioware told DC-UK (July 2000) that Baldur’s Gate was ‘In Japan as we speak’. I have always taken this to mean they sent Sega Japan a preview copy of the PC to version, to evaluate for POTENTIAL conversion to Dreamcast, rather than actual DC version sent.
In same issue, Heavy Metal FAKK2 by Ritual Entertainment was rumoured to be coming to DreamCast from PC in early 2001.
Also, Poptop’s Tropico was said to be Dreamcast headed as well as PC, but no release date given.
SWAT3 (Sierra) at E3 2000, Sierra refused to confirm a Dreamcast version, yet SEGA had a DC version of Swat 3 running on its Dreamcast stand only a few meters away.
In Retrogamer magazines Making of Medievil (playstation) developers say they put forward the Proposal of Medievil 3 on PS2, but nothing came of it.
Rather techy details here on cancelled Kasumi Ninja 2 Jaguar CD
In this interview with Paul Carruthers (Acclaim, Logotron, EIDOS) we can read about the cancelled XOR on GameBoy, Turok on Dreamcast and Escape From LA PSX. Would sit nicely on your site (a link to it) plus you can add the 3 games to your archives.
Q) Moving onto your time at Climax next, you were handed the Dreamcast conversion of N64 Turok The Dinosaur Hunter (something i’d loved to have of seen), again i wonder just how far along coding got/why it was canned and how you felt seeing yet another project cancelled?
Paul: Coding never even got started on that game. Canning games before they start or very early into production isn’t a problem and it’s quite common. It’s quite a different matter when you’ve been involved in a project for a long time and have invested some of your personality in it. I’ve been fortunate to have very few of those.
Q) You ended up working on ‘Escape From L.A‘ for Virgin, which was canned, so…what platforms was it due o, how far along did coding get? and why was it canned?
Paul: PS1. We hadn’t got very far at all when it was cancelled. I got the impression that early screenings of the movie had shown it wasn’t going to be a huge success!
There were various unreleased versions of Paradroid: from the C64 original said to be ported to the GBA by Jester Interactive, with plans for a ‘proper’ PS2 version afterwards (they’d consulted Andrew Braybrook), to Empires A1200 Enhanced version of Paradroid’90 to the aborted PC Engine version of Paradroid, which would have featured a 2-player co-op mode, a la Gauntlet.
Walker on the Atari ST: it was being converted by Brian Watson, who converted Menace from the Amiga to the ST, had started working on it, but abandoned it due to him considering college more important and it was being very clear that the home micro market was being killed off by the console market.
Rogue Trooper (Ross Sillifant): What happened to the MD/Genesis version of It Came From The Desert? I believe it was a very different game in terms of plot and gameplay, being more akin to an overhead shooter. Why the changes to game format and further canning of project?
Bob: I don’t remember! (getting old)
Rogue Trooper: It’s been claimed that when S.D.I was in process of being ported to another format, it’s release was delayed as the company had asked the programmer to add extra features and such needed extra time, is this claim true? If so which format was it and what extra features did you ask for and why?
Bob: The port referred to has to be the C64. It was never completed, not because we asked for features, but because the programmer was not up to the task (he later became quite good)
Yves Grolet quit Appeal at the very start of development of Outcast 2, over a disagreement on the way to handle the sequel (and he’s professional enough not to go into any more details, it seems). 2 years after he left, Atari/Infogrames, much to the disappointment of everyone, decided to cancel the project.
Chris Stamper (Rare) was working on a concept for an arcade game called Diggers (?) which would have been a Killer Instinct type fighter, but with JCB’s excavators as the fighters, using swing shovels / buckets to smash the crap out of each other.
Rogue Trooper: MegaDrive Gods improved on ST/Amiga version (faster, 64? colours etc) yet seemed to fall foul of Sega Europe quality control. Any ideas what went on there?
Mike: It was a long time ago now, but as I recall it related to the increase in difficulty due to the higher speed.
Rogue Trooper: Is it true Jeff Minter approached you guys when you set up the Renegade label? IF so, what happened there?
Mike: That’s too far back to remember, but it could have been fun.
