The following list consists of cancelled PlayStation games that have been known to be in development. If you have any additional information, please contact the Museum.
3-Decathalon
Publisher: Virgin Interactive
The Basics
Unknown
WHAT HAPPENED?
Unknown
ABC College Football
Publisher: Overtime Sports
The Basics
Unknown
WHAT HAPPENED?
Unknown
Adrenalin Demolition Mission
Publisher: American Softworks
The Basics
Unknown
WHAT HAPPENED?
Unknown
Aeon Flux
Publisher: Viacom New Media
The Basics
If William S. Burroughs had ever decided to try his hand at penning Mad Magazine’s “Spy vs. Spy” strip, the end result would have likely been much like Aeon Flux – the hyper-surreal-ultra-violent animated feature that debuted in ’91 as a series of shorts in MTV’s Liquid Television, before landing its own show in ’95.
Nonlinear almost to the point of defying the description “storyline,” the Aeon Flux television show revolved around its self-named lead: a lanky, black leather-clad super-spy who played both sides of an ambiguous societal conflict. A loose adaptation of the TV episode, “The Demiurge,” the video game would have pit the character against her sometimes lover/sometimes enemy, Trevor Goodchild. Always up to some kind of mischief, Trevor’s would then have introduced the entire planet to the power of The Demiurge – a creature that is, in series creator Peter Chung’s own words, “some kind of divine being who’s neither good nor bad…just all-powerful.” Those who encountered the entity would have had a sort of revelation within its gaze and as a result, would have turned into blue-skinned zombie-like followers. Never really one to conform, Aeon not wanting to be “saved,” might have endeavored to rid the world of The Demiurge’s power. The game’s story would have been told through a series of ALIAS-rendered cutscenes between the levels, as well as through hints provided by characters she encountered. While that may be all well and good, you would still have been left with the question: How do you kill an unkillable being? Well, let’s just say the game’s goal effectively altered the old Eastern saying “If you meet the Buddha in the road, kill him” to “If you meet the Buddha on the road, place him on top of a large missile and blast him into space.”
One quite interesting element almost adapted from the TV program was Aeon’s ability to clone herself (and therefore have multiple lives, explaining the video game convention of being able to die and then keep on playing). However, in order to be cloned, you had to preserve fluid samples of Aeon while she was alive. So not only would you have to find the mechanism that allowed you to create a duplicate, but you would also have to make sure you’re carrying a fluid sample with you at the time. This would’ve acted as a fairly good example of the puzzle-solving aspects of the game, keeping it from being just a simple 3D shooter – though admittedly, Aeon’s various fighting moves and two different modes of shooting (accurate and strafe) would’ve essentially prevented that from happening.
Fans of the animated feature at one point were glad to know that not only were Aeon Flux’s main characters planned within the title, some of the lesser-seen characters in the series would have returned as well. “It sort of tells alternative stories [to the program],” says Chung, “recombining characters from different episodes in ways that they didn’t interact in the show. Part of the reason for that was that some of the characters seemed to have far more potential than they were given in the shows, so we wanted to give them a second chance. Along the way, there were a lot of subplots and incidental things that allow [these] characters to have cameo appearances.”
Even with all this going for it, we questioned whether the game could have held up as an accurate adaptation of the series. The creator thought so. He even flew to France to direct the game’s motion capture shoot, ensuring that the characters in the game would have moved exactly as strangely and spider-like as they do in the TV program. “I couldn’t have expected it to be any closer,” Chung commented, “in terms of a 3D-modeled, computer-generated rendition of the Aeon Flux world.”
WHAT HAPPENED?
Viacom was dissolved when Spelling Entertainment realized it had two video game divisions. Spelling folded Viacom into Virgin, which then canceled all working and planned Viacom titles – Aeon Flux being one of them.
Meanwhile, Cryo reworked the game into a title called PAX Corps, which was released in Europe to poor reviews. No US publisher has signed on to bring the game here.
Also worth mentioning is the fact the GT Interactive has acquired the rights to the Aeon Flux license, though no game has been announced to date.
Alien vs. Predator
Publisher: Fox Interactive
The Basics
HUNTING SEASON IS OPEN!
Choose your weapon and brawl with the notorious warriors of the big scree! Commission the Colonial Marine and use your weapons and your wits to destroy the base and survive. Be and Alien and use your voracious instincts to defend the hive and rescue your Queen. Or play a Predator and use your grisly arsenal to acquire the ultimate trophy...the skull of the Alien Queen.
WHAT HAPPENED?
Unknown
Armed
Publisher: Interplay
The Basics
The plot for this 2D side-scrolling action/platformer: “In the future, the Earth has been ravaged by global warfare. The few survivors left are constantly at war to gain control of what is left of the once-bountiful planet. You are a lone cyber-agent, hired out by the governing body of your city-state to infiltrate the enemy’s area and take out a rumored weapon of mass destruction.” As for features: “3D-rendered texture-mapped backgrounds, more than seven minutes of cinematic cut-scenes, over 4,000 frames of animation, and each level will be comprised of thousands of tiles, compared to the usual hundreds found in cartridge games.”
WHAT HAPPENED?
Unknown
Barb Wire
Publisher: GT Interactive
The Basics
European developer Cryo Interactive’s Barb Wire (named for the Dark Horse comic and the major motion picture that stars Pamela Anderson Lee) planned to take from screen what screen took from print. The result might have been a 32-bit title for the Sony PlayStation console system. Barb Wire herself was created with live action motion capture and blue-screen assistance, presumably testing the limits of 3D modeling.
The game action was to begin with you assuming the identity of the tightly corseted Barb Wire. As the proprietor of The Hammerhead Bar and Grille of Steel Harbor (a far cry from Venice Beach, to be sure), Barb’s job was to use her bounty-hunting and freedom-fighting skills to preserve the town’s status as the last neutral territory in the second American civil war.
In the originally designed storyline, Ms. Wire was rumored to be a bit of an ice-queen, but the pellicle thawed when her beloved (and blind as a bat) brother Charlie was killed by the Congressionalists – the biological-weapon packing Eastern army dead-set on taking over the country. You would have entered the slaughter as Barb taking up the cause of two revolutionary characters, Alex Hood and Dr. Tyra Armstrong (who enlisted her because of her legendary John Wayne-esque fighting aptitude). Barb would have then set about racing through the streets on her black Triumph motorcycle, plentiful arsenal in tow, battling each and every enemy unfortunate enough to cross her path.
The aerial perspective of this single-player game would have resembled that of Alone in the Dark, offering a gratuitous banquet of motion-captured, pixelated butt-shots to shepherd you through the action. Then, once you’d tire of Ms. Wire’s posterior, you could have assumed the role of one of the crime lords and embark on a mission to hunt Barb down and kill her.
Barb Wire would have been stacked with combat, traps, and challenges that, upon completion, might have allowed you to advance through the various levels. The title’s design had many levels, though the gameplay would have been nonlinear in that you would have selected the sequence of missions and events. You also could put Barb to the test by engaging in multiplayer deathmatch mode, where Barb would’ve taken on all of the bad boys simultaneously.
WHAT HAPPENED?
GT Interactive quietly canceled this title
BioSwarm
Publisher: 3DO
The Basics
The basis for BioSwarm, also known at one time as NRG and Groundwave, was Nasty Radioactive Garbage, or more affectionately, NRG, a Sony PlayStation action title that never came out.
The story began with living, toxic space waste that found its way to earth, animating or, perhaps re-animating, animate and inanimate objects, turning the lot of them into predators.
Through a first- or third-person perspective, you would have selected one of three mech-style ships or one of three more organic, crab-like vessels in which to battle the predators. The mission was to capture the opposing force’s energy by stunning them three times before they had time to rejuvenate themselves. Once you’d stunned them the third and final time, you had to gather their ejected energy and so on, until the last predator was defeated.
There were five levels, which progressed in difficulty; however, you could have started on either end of the spectrum and worked your way through. For example, you could play through the levels starting with Silicon Slums, then move through Viva Las Vegas, Polar Necropolis, Auto Wrecking Yard, and eventually the final bout in The Radiant City. Or, you could’ve begun with Auto Wrecking Yard, and worked your way to Radiant City backwards. Whichever path you chose, you could have played either a mission-based game or campaign levels.
WHAT HAPPENED?
3DO canceled the game, as it was appearing to be the weakest in the company’s console lineup.
Clay Fighter X-Treme
Publisher: Interplay
The Basics
Those with fond recollections of Interplay’s twin 16-bit satires of the fighting genre, Clay Fighter and sequel C2: Judgment Clay, almost had cause to celebrate, with Clay Fighter X-Treme. Was this to be old-time stop-motion animation artist Ray (King Kong, Jason & The Argonauts) Harryhausen’s dream…or nightmare? We’ll never know.
Originally planned for Matsushita’s vaporware 64-bit gaming system, Interplay’s onetime “Clay Fighter 3″ was transformed into two virtually identical games on two quite disparate systems: Clay Fighter 63 1/3 for the Nintendo 64 and Clay Fighter X-Treme for the Sony PlayStation. Why was Clay Fighter popular enough to justify an update? Silly as the concept seemed, Clay Fighter was popular with parents who found malleable, bloodless clay far less offensive than the familiar “spine ripping” sights seen in some fighting games.
What made these titles exciting, though, was that Interplay took the fighting game aspects of the series seriously. While the latest Clay Fighter remained a 2D fighter, new elements such as 3D polygonal backgrounds, unconventional sight gag special moves, and breakthrough walls updated the game. The title also boasted an entirely new fighting engine, which Interplay touted as being as complex as any of the top fighters (the old games were based on a more simplistic, side-scrolling engine).
The story began in the sleepy burg of Muddville, where a meteor crashed down outside the town limits, spilling forth a sea of green claymutagen upon impact. The town then went “clazy;” buildings, people, and animals turned into animated clay. To make matters worse, the local community college professor, Dr. Kiln, became horribly evil and began creating powerful, mutant clay servants. The game picked up in a brand new locale (the mysterious “Klaymodo Isle”), and from there the battle began for Clayfighter 63 1/3 and would’ve begun for X-Treme.
The cast combined a mix of new characters and old favorites. There were four returning characters: Ickybod Clay, a crazy scarecrow; Bad Mr. Frosty, who’s heart was as black as a Cola Slushee (well, OK, dark brown); Bonker, an insane clown minus his posse; and Taffy, a circus expatriate who had a score to settle with Bonker. There were new characters planned as well: Dr. Kiln, the often-mentioned but never before seen evil genius who planned to turn the entire world into clay; High Five, Dr. Kiln’s severed hand, which took on a grisly, mutated life of its own; and LockJaw Pooch, a Dr. Kiln experiment gone horribly wrong. Also included, most likely as hidden characters, were Boogerman and Earthworm Jim (popular faces from Interplay’s past).
WHAT HAPPENED?
The reason that Interplay decided not to develop it [Clay Fighter X-Treme] is because it was not on schedule for release simultaneously with the N64 version. Rather than have it be perceived by PlayStation consumers as a late port, they decided to stop the project and focus on ensuring simultaneous releases for our other cross-platform titles.
Cyber Gladiators
Publisher: Sierra
The Basics
Cyber Gladiators came out on the PC, but the PlayStation version never arrived. The game would’ve been a one- or two-player fighting game with rendered graphics and detailed animations.
WHAT HAPPENED?
Cyber Gladiators quietly disappeared from Sierra’s lineup.
Deadly Skies
Publisher: JVC
The Basics
Deadly Skies pits you in deadly one-on-one aerial combat with your choice of eight of the world’s finest jet fighters as your weapon. Each fighter comes equipped with a fully qualified pilot, hailing from a variety of different countries. The mission is to win two out of three dogfights with your opponent, progressively working your way through more challenging matches until you rule the ‘deadly skies.’ It was kinda like Street Fighter in the sky, really.
WHAT HAPPENED?
Unknown
Deadly Honor
(aka Steven Seagal: The Final Option for SNES)
Publisher: TekMagik
The Basics
Slap an action star’s name on a video game and people are bound to pay attention, at least at first. But the problem is that this game went through an SNES incarnation before it wandered into PlayStation and N64 development, and then it never came out for any of the systems. Deadly Honor was TekMagik’s upgrade from the SNES game, Steven Seagal: The Final Option, the company was working on. If Deadly Honor was to be somewhat along the lines of The Final Option, it would have placed you as Steven Seagal in a game loosely based on the star’s action films, such as Under Siege, Hard to Kill, Marked for Death, and so on. The game was to be an action game where you ran around doing a lot of damage. What’s notable about the game is that it was reportedly being created from digitized film footage and was to use AnimaTek’s Caviar technology – a surface pixel real-time rendering engine, to create realistic figure and object animations.
WHAT HAPPENED?
The game was in development for the SNES and supposedly had a couple of complete levels, however TekMagik announced Deadly Honor for the N64 and PlayStation, and you can guess where the SNES game went. Ironically, the N64 and PlayStation games never saw the light of day either.
Down in the Dumps
Publisher: Philips
The Basics
Down in the Dumps was to be a single-player adult cartoon adventure set on a stinking rubbish dump. The title would’ve featured a near-seamless transfer from cinematic sequences to interactive sessions. DitD might have been a pretty cool game, with a potentially witty script and well-cast voices. The game would’ve also allowed you to record the cartoon sequences so you could play them back later.
WHAT HAPPENED?
Philips canceled its console plans, and Down in the Dumps went exactly there.
Elric
Publisher: Psygnosis
The Basics
Based on the popular book series by Michael Moorcock, Elric, which was being developed by Haiku Studios, was to be an overhead adventure/RPG game. Similar to Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain and the popular PC game Diablo, the game hoped to immerse players in a 3D fantasy/role-playing world on a mystical quest to bring down evil forces.
Rather than creating a new property, Psygnosis was bringing Michael Moorcock’s Elric character to video-game consoles for the first time. The science fantasy book series has many installments, and the character of Elric has quite a history. Elric, an albino warrior and the last of the Menilbonean emperors, kills his opponents with the soul-stealing rune sword Stormbringer. Condemned by the gods to battle everything (and everyone) in his path, Elric is one bad mother.
The game contained nine levels for you to explore on your quest to bring Elric’s beloved Cymoril out of her eternal sleep. Battling through a variety of dungeons and villages, you had to defeat the dark wizard Almon and complete the Cross of Chaos, which had to be set on Cymoril’s coffin to wake her. Using an array of weapons and spells, the game played like an adventure game with added RPG elements. Additionally, a variety of monsters and enemies provided plenty of things to hack and slash while you learned new spells and picked up a variety of helpful objects.
The graphics in Elric looked impressive, and the game looked to be one of the better RPG-type games on the horizon. All the action was took place in real time (using an overhead view similar to Legacy of Kain), and the 3D graphics were rendered on the fly. Word has it that Haiku Studios was also working on a split-screen mode that would let two players go through the game at once. RPG fans would likely have enjoyed Elric, and players with more mainstream tastes would likely have found it more accessible than most other games in the genre. The game was originally scheduled to be released during the first quarter of 1998.
WHAT HAPPENED?
Unknown
Future Strike
Publisher: Electronic Arts
The Basics
This PlayStation version of EA’s Nuclear Strike came out in 1997, and THQ’s N64 version came out in 1999. Somewhere in between, a sequel, Future Strike, was in development by EA for the PlayStation. The game would have continued the long-running Strike action game series, only it was canceled before the N64 version game even shipped.
WHAT HAPPENED?
Electronic Arts stated back in January of 1998 that the game formerly known as Future Strike (mentioned at the end of the last Strike title, Nuclear Strike) would no longer be part of the company’s Strike line.
The reason? EA decided that it should not be constrained by the theme of the series. “Now, there’s no ceiling to what they can do,” a representative commented at that time. And what the company did was develop a game called LAPD 2100, which then became Future Cop: LAPD, also for the PlayStation. The action game shipped in August of 1998 and turned out fairly well.
HyperBlade
Publisher: Activision
The Basics
This future-sport game was released on the PC, but did so poorly that Activision canned its conversion plans. The game was billed as a mix of Jai Alai and Lacrosse, although it also shared similarities with the PlayStation future-sport titles League of Pain and Pitball. (It also stole a fair share of gameplay inspiration from the 20-year-old movie Rollerball, which basically spawned the entire future-sports genre.) Put bluntly, Hyperblade simply didn’t play well enough to compete with “real” sports games.
WHAT HAPPENED?
Unknown
Island of Dr. Moreau
Publisher: Psygnosis
The Basics
The Island of Dr. Moreau might have been a bit like taking a field trip through H.G. Wells’ brain. Psygnosis never said much about the movie-to-home-game, other than offering enthusiasm-building lines of description such as “Manbeasts yearn for the warmth of fresh blood. And it’s yours they can smell. Feel the fear as it grows inside.” But we do know that it was to be a 3D action-adventure game with real-time rendered characters and hi-res FMV backgrounds. The FMV would’ve included real actors in motion-captured sequences.
WHAT HAPPENED?
It’s said that the French developers made the game look gorgeous, but the playability wasn’t there, so Psygnosis scrapped the project.
Killing Time
Publisher: Acclaim
The Basics
The 3DO version was one of the system’s best games, with wonderful level design, an outstanding soundtrack by Bob Vieira, and an excellent storyline backed up with excellent full-motion video, which appeared within the game as ghostly projections. There’s also a PC version available, but it plays like crap.
WHAT HAPPENED?
Unknown
Legion
The Basics
Very little is known about Legion, besides the fact that it would have been a 3D platform shooter that took place in the year 2028. Your objective would have been to save any existing humans (or life in general) on post-apocalyptic Earth. How would you have done it? With a reportedly huge arsenal.
WHAT HAPPENED?
The apocalypse must have been postponed or canceled, as the game just quietly disappeared from the PlayStation’s lineup.
Major Damage
Publisher: Capcom
The Basics
It may have been a comic game, but nota kiddie game. Major Damage would have taken the 2D shoot-em-up formula and added a sense of humor, supported mainly by the cartoony rendered characters, enemies, and city landscape. Major Damage would’ve placed a premium on one- or two-player simultaneous mass destruction, in which anything on the screen would have become a potential target: buildings, windows, garbage cans, etc. Also, items in the background were planned as destructibleoccasionally revealing power-ups if destroyed.
WHAT HAPPENED?
Major Damage was canceled once Capcom halted US development plans, shortly after the disappointing performance of its Fox Hunt title.
Megarace 2
Publisher: Mindscape
The Basics
Megarace 2 would have been a racing game where you could play alone or against a friend on tracks that lifted you quite a ways into the skies. In Megarace 2, you would have raced on a track of eight opponents – each fully equipped to drop oil slicks and mines and destroy anyone in his or her path with a slew of missiles and other such projectiles.
The vehicles were to be 3D rendered, within six environments, from Tibet and outer space to a bayou and a futuristic foundry. TV guy Lance Boyle was written in for the voice work.
WHAT HAPPENED?
Mindscape trimmed back console titles and Megarace 2 was one of the games to go. A PC version was released.
Mindscape Golf
Publisher: Mindscape
The Basics
Unlike many Mindscape products, this idea wasn’t completely cliched or stupid–a golf game with completely made-up and invariably outrageous courses. But rather than stray into the Zone of Originality, Mindscape killed the project and continued to focus on cranking out bland space shooters.
WHAT HAPPENED?
Unknown
NCAA Football: Saturday Showdown
Publisher: Mindscape
The Basics
Considering the waking nightmare that was Mindscape’s NCAA Final Four, it’s undoubtedly a very good thing this game never appeared.
WHAT HAPPENED?
Unknown
Omikron
Publisher: Eidos
The Basics
This PlayStation action-adventure game from Eidos was being pared down at one point, perhaps when the company realized it was too ambitious for the PlayStation environment. When we first spoke with Eidos, we were told that the game was going to have something of everything – an excellent fighting engine, amazing puzzle-solving capabilities through a revolutionary new system called IAM, and tremendous shooting action. Well, when we went to Eidos and saw the game firsthand, things had changed significantly – gone was the claim of a Tekken-style fighting engine and the word IAM was never mentioned. The developer had finally realized that it had taken too much on and decided simply to make an action-adventure with a few RPG elements, a few puzzle elements, and a solid hand-to-hand combat system.
Omikron was the name of the city you’d be roaming. You – playing actually as yourself – were to inhabit various bodies throughout the game. Each time one of them died, you’d hop into a new character (usually the first person who touched you, although you’d also have reincarnation spells to use). There would have been about 50 different characters available for inhabitation, but you wouldn’t need to inhabit all of them to finish the game. You’d move through four separate chapters as you tried to evade the demons that wanted to take your (and just about everyone else’s) soul.
The game had a ton of dialogue, and you’d interact with numerous NPCs – like Kay’l’s wife, for example (Kay’l being a cop and the first body you’d inhabit). The game had real-time facial motion capture, so the idea was that you’d feel more attached to – or least more interested in – many of the characters you came across because they’d seem more real. But Omikron was still going to be basically about action; the weapons inventory was large, but you would have had to fight some of the boss characters hand to hand. You’d have four essential combat moves – a high punch, a low punch, a high kick, and a low kick. Not exactly Tekken, but at one point the combat system looked relatively solid. You’d also do things like drive futuristic vehicles and solve puzzles.
WHAT HAPPENED?
There had originally been rumors floating around the Net saying that Omikron had been put on hold. Then Eidos made it official by announcing that instead of being put on hold, the project had been cancelled. One Eidos source said, “Yes, it’s true. It was mainly an issue of so much art and too much detail for the PlayStation to handle.”
Perfect Weapon 2
Publisher: ASC
The Basics
Perfect Weapon 2 was probably best described as the sequel to Perfect Weapon. The game was originally called Final Weapon, but never made it past the concept stages.
WHAT HAPPENED?
ASC didn’t really say why the game was canceled, but admitted, “Of all of our games, this is one that you could one day see on the market on some new system down the road. But for now, it’s just a document.”
Propaganda
Publisher: Virgin Interactive
The Basics
Conceived at the peak of Virgin’s money-spending frenzy (such as the $10+ million they frittered away on the point-and-click adventure Toonstruck, a critical and commercial bomb), Propaganda was apparently a driving/shooting game in the Twisted Metal vein. Virgin was always secretive about the product, most probably to disguise the fact that the game design was seriously flawed or nonexistent.
WHAT HAPPENED?
Unknown
Raze
Publisher: Interplay
The Basics
Interplay planned to break the conventions of fighting games in not one, but two, ways with its PlayStation title Raze. To begin with, Raze would have been a four-player fighting game, and yes, those characters would’ve shared the same screen. Second, it was purportedly a true 3D fighter, much like Square’s Bushido Blade, where characters could climb, run, and jump in a three-dimensional world. Unlike BB though, they would actually have to turn and attack their foes manually; there was no cheap default for them to fall back on.
The title was conceptually set in TSR’s Forgotten Realms role-playing and would have used such D&D standbys as magic, rings, artifacts, and the building of character attributes, which were savable to the PlayStation’s memory cards. The game’s storyline, however, was never set in stone.
WHAT HAPPENED?
Raze quietly disappeared from Interplay’s lineup. It is assumed that something went wrong with the approval process with TSR’s new owners, Wizards of the Coast.
Rebel Moon Rising
Publisher: GT Interactive
The Basics
Rebel Moon Rising was to be a first-person futuristic shooter for the PC and PlayStation. However, the PlayStation version was canceled after the PC version failed to do very well, largely due to the fact that if you didn’t have MMX, you were out of luck. That’s right, the game actually required the high-end processor to work at all on the PC.
WHAT HAPPENED?
In June 1997, GT Interactive officials announced that it had officially canceled the PlayStation version of the first-person shooter Rebel Moon Rising. It’s likely the decision was reached because of the poor reception the PC version (which was MMX only) garnered.
Rocket Jockey
Developer: Rocket Science Games
The Basics
Rocket Jockey was a 3D driving, fighting, and sports game planned for the PlayStation and the PC that only made it to the PC. In descriptions that make it sound like a futuristic king-of-the-hill game like you played in third grade, the game was to include three modes of play: rocket war, rocket racing, and rocket ball.
Based on the PC release, in rocket war, you competed in ten levels of head-to-head combat with others, with the last person alive winning the match. In rocket racing, there were ten levels of obstacle courses for you to survive, and all while your opponents tried to do the same. And in rocket ball, you competed in what appeared to be a hybrid of more traditional sports such as polo and lacrosse, although the ball constantly changed textures, from being a wrecking ball, for example, to a Jell-O ball.
WHAT HAPPENED?
Rocket Science went out of business, and Rocket Jockey was only released on the PC.
Shining Sword
Publisher: American Laser Games
The Basics
American Laser Games made their mark in the coin-op industry by cranking out laserdisc-driven full-motion video light-gun shooters with adult-video production values and wild overacting. Thing is, while their shooting games were (not really) worth a few bucks in quarters at the arcade, they were most definitely not worth forth or fifty bucks to earn–something ALG inexplicably failed to realize. The company also started up a very ill-fated Games For Girls division–I guess the same people who made their fortune appealing to the testosterone set arrogantly and foolishly thought they could hit upon the ever-elusive formula for producing games that women will actually play. Shining Sword was an action/adventure with plenty of one-on-one combat and what looked like a swank 3D engine, but it croaked as the result of ALG’s mismanaging themselves into the ground.
WHAT HAPPENED?
Unknown
Speed Tribes
Publisher: THQ
The Basics
Enter the bio-organic world based on Nemicron’s graphic novel, where the speed of your machine is the key to your survival. That was the sell phrase, but the game never came out. The developers used real-time 3D mixed with an element of strategy to begin creating Speed Tribes. The game would have delved into the violent domain of aerocycle riders. After joining up with one of the six tribes, you would have honed your skills so you could overcome all obstacles thrown your way. You’d also battle head-to-head in arena play or you’d have faced the enemy on its own turf – ultimately confronting the leader in the deadly blood run arena. Multiple gameplay options would have included one- and two-player, as well teamwork and combat modes. Your task was to be simple: survive.
WHAT HAPPENED?
The game was quietly canceled.
StarCon
Publisher: Accolade
The Basics
Colony Wars: Vengeance almost had a bit of competition within the mission-based space-shooter genre with Accolade’s StarCon, a spinoff of the old Star Control series.
You played as either the Hyperium or the more sinister Crux, then – if you wished – you could go back and play as the other. Better yet, you could have played as one, and your friend could have been the other in a split-screen head-to-head competition. The head-to-head play was without a doubt the major feature that stood out in StarCon, and the feature that Psygnosis’ Colony Wars, itself an excellent-looking game, lacked. Cooperative play was also available.
The single-player mode was the mission mode. Missions were nonlinear, so you could choose the order in which you wanted to progress. Plus, after you finished the game, you could go back to missions you’d already played with your more powerful weapons and ships and uncover some secrets you couldn’t access in earlier levels.
Weapons included the particle beam laser turret, cannon turrets, and homing bolt targets, while fighter ships on your carrier (you had up to six) included the fast, maneuverable hawk and the powerful, heavier griffon. A third fighter, called the raven, would have been in place in time for the final product.
Two missions were in place in the early copy of the game we had received. In one mission, to keep the Crux from bombing your planet, you had to steal their bomb – then use it against them. The second required you to kill a Crux leader. Both were fun.
WHAT HAPPENED?
Accolade announced that StarCon had been put on hold for the time being. “The team will be spending the next few months reevaluating the design with the hopes of coming up with a stronger game,” a company spokesperson said. However, when we followed up with Accolade, no progress had been made, although a formal “This game is canceled” did not fall from the company’s lips.
Surreal
Publisher: ASC
The Basics
Surreal was to be a single-player action game with puzzle elements. You would’ve traveled through various periods attempting to solve riddles within real-time 3D graphic backgrounds, while attempting to defeat other characters.
WHAT HAPPENED?
Surreal just quietly disappeared from the PlayStation roster.
Viper Red Sector
Publisher: New World Comp
The Basics
What is this all about? Yet another creation of mankind goes bad and turns against its creators in Viper: Red Sector, a game of flight simulation and aerial combat. You would’ve played the role of the only fighter pilot on earth whose brainwaves could control a squadron of robot fighter planes, which were designed to eliminate a race of irate synthetic humanoids. You would’ve guided these planes, one at a time, against the enemy in six campaigns and more than 40 sorties. Your planes wouldn’t have flown on rails: You would have swooped your fighter anywhere you wanted through the game’s texture-mapped environments. Advanced AI, too.
WHAT HAPPENED?
Viper Red Sector was canceled without explanation shortly after 3DO purchased New World.
WCW/NWO Live
Publisher: THQ
The Basics
In a mad dash to make the most out of its expiring WCW license (Electronic Arts took over in 1999), THQ tried to prep WCW/NWO Live for release at the end of 1998. Since it was coming from Tomy, we surmised it contained at least some part of the Toukon Retsuden 3 engine. More than 30 wrestlers were present in the game, but only half of them were from the WCW or NWO. The rest of the roster was filled with Japanese wrestlers. You could create your own wrestler, specifying height, weight, clothes, hair, moves, rants, and tattoos.
The game reportedly ran at 60 frames per second at one point, even in the four-player mode. The game was to contain signature finishing moves and real entrance music, giving the game a realistic (well, as realistic as you can get in a wrestling game) look and feel.
WHAT HAPPENED?
THQ’s WWF Smackdown! for the PlayStation used a variation of the Toukon 3 engine originally intended for the deceased WCW/NWO Live.
Wetlands
Publisher: New World Comp
The Basics
Wetlands was to be a single-player futuristic adventure game packed with action and mystery. You would have taken on the role of a tracker who had been hired by a distant planet’s authorities to recapture a dangerous escaped prisoner. The prisoner was to have left only one clue behind, a note reading, “Wetlands. April 6.” As the tracker, you would have had to journey to the water-covered planet Wetlands and track down the prisoner before the April 6 deadline. Your pursuit would’ve taken you above and below water and through various underwater facilities, all the while fending off thugs and solving mysteries. The game’s graphics were originally created using roto-scoped cel animation techniques.
WHAT HAPPENED?
Wetlands was canceled without explanation shortly after 3DO purchased New World.
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