Video Game Graveyard

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.

11th Hour

Publisher: Virgin Interactive

The Basics

The 11th Hour is the sequel to the widely successful game, The 7th Guest. This time you play the role of Carl Denning, boyfriend to the reporter Robin Morales. Robin has mysteriously vanished while trying to delve into the secrets of the rotting mansion of the once evil mastermind, Henry Stauf.

The game features new puzzles, redone graphics and indeed an improved engine - much smoother, with 16 bit graphics and an entirely new soundtrack. The basic gameplay is still similar to its predecessor: the player walks through the mansion, watches FMV sequences and solves logic riddles. The so-called GameBook, a laptop, can be consulted to receive puzzle hints.

WHAT HAPPENED?

Unknown

3-Decathalon
Publisher: Virgin Interactive

The Basics
Unknown

WHAT HAPPENED?
Unknown

Aaron Vs. Ruth: Battle of the Big Bats

Publisher: Mindscape

The Basics

This pairing of baseball’s all-time home run leaders was released on the PC in mid-1997, but Mindscape never shipped the promised PlayStation version. The game features eight “teams” of 36 current and all-time All-Stars, with their real-life appearances meticulously recreated (in other words, Ruth looked like Ruth, et cetera). Alas, the reviews were mostly thumbs-down, and Mindscape eventually exited the PlayStation market after shipping an unbroken series of mediocre or outright crappy games.

WHAT HAPPENED?

Unknown

ABC College Football
Publisher: Overtime Sports

The Basics
Unknown

WHAT HAPPENED?
Unknown

ABC's Monday Night 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 Virus

Publisher: Vic Tokai

The Basics

This point-and-click outer-space adventure was reviewed in the April ’96 issue of PSExtreme and slammed to the turf, but the product never shipped for the PlayStation (a PC version made it to market).

WHAT HAPPENED?

Unknown

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

Athenor

Publisher: Psygnosis

The Basics

Athenor was almost your one chance to become a Greek god. This Psygnosis title was planned asa Greek mythology-inspired battle arena in which you were to take on beasts such as the Minotaur, Gorgon Medusa, and the Hydra in order to become a hero.

WHAT HAPPENED?

We’re not exactly sure why this game was canceled.

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

Beavis and Butt-Head Do Hollywood

Publisher: GT Interactive

The Basics

Beavis and Butt-Head are not role models. They’re not even human. They’re cartoon characters. Some of the things they do would cause a person to get hurt, expelled, arrested, possibly deported. To put it another way: Don’t try this at home.

Well, actually, you might have been able to try their tricks at home, but GT Interactive pulled the plug. Already stars of some latter-day SNES and Genesis games, Mike Judge’s gruesome twosome almost made the jump to 32-bit.

Humor is obviously the most important element of any game starring these two. Yes, you need the graphics to be recognizable, but underneath all the icing, you need to ensure that the underlying game is rooted firmly in adolescent, ridiculous humor. And B&B was designed very much with that in mind. The game was set in Hollywood. The plot went something like this: After the guys had finished work on their latest movie, they found they didn’t have any money with which to get home, so they took odd jobs on film sets in order to make cash. Conveniently, there were all sorts of movies being made, so B&B could have traveled through some varied environments with vaguely “filmy” themes.

At its heart the game was a simple 3D graphic adventure with smallish locations that contained tasks that melded platform elements with puzzles and stupid jokes. The gameplay itself wasn’t particularly hilarious (although some of the puzzles were reasonably chuckle-worthy), but what really stood out was the interaction between Beavis and Butt-Head. You didn’t just control one character or the other; you actually controlled both. By switching between the two, you could manipulate objects, lure things, push things around, and distract people. It wasn’t spectacularly original in concept, but it was refreshing to see the idea used in this context.

WHAT HAPPENED?

GT Interactive decided to clean house and save some money. Beavis and Butt-Head didn’t do Hollywood, or the PlayStation, for that matter, and were kicked to the curb with other GT console titles.

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.

Bloodshot

Publisher: Acclaim

The Basics

Bloodshot, an arcade-style 3D shooter, would have placed you, as the title character, into a futuristic environment called the City, where you would encounter familiar faces from the comic book, such as Simon Oreck and Stroheim. Throughout the 20-plus expected levels would be varying types of vehicles (like cars, jeeps, motorbikes, tanks, and trucks) for you to mobilize against the enemy – the organization that made you. Certain areas of the game were only going to be open to you if you had the right vehicle. Your weapons stash included about 22 various arms, such as the screamer, a nasty sonic toy; the microwave projector, which would have melted all kinds of metal and body parts; and the flechette, with hundreds of small C4 darts. You would have been able to run in one direction and shoot in another because Iguana had installed a multidimensional firing system.

Hard Nanite power-ups would have enhanced your chances against the enemy. Hard Nanite was a completely moldable substance; when Bloodshot encountered any Hard Nanite object, he would have absorbed those Nanites into his own and could have later reproduced the object. So any weapons, information, vehicles, or technology that he have came into contact with, would be absorbed and then reproduced – enemy toys included.

A few of the power-ups available were the vampire, which sucked all the energy out of nearby objects and gave it to Bloodshot; the harbinger, which caused temporary insanity in his enemies; the sentinel, which acted as a shield; and the MTCS, or the multi target combat system, which would cause Bloodshot’s Nanites to shoot offscreen aggressors while he was busy shooting bad guys. A four-player mode was planned as well.

WHAT HAPPENED?

In January of 1999, Acclaim had officially ceased development of Bloodshot. An Acclaim spokesman said that the game didn’t pass a “green light evaluation,” and the game’s future was in fact uncertain. The evaluation was to determine the game’s viability in the market. In the form it was in, Bloodshot did not pass.

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.

Colliderz

Publisher: ASC

The Basics

Colliderz was a clever futuristic hockey type game, and that’s about all we know of it.

WHAT HAPPENED?

ASC killed the title in 1997 because it had witnessed the failure of BallBlazer and a similar title and worried for the livelihood of Colliderz. But the company also said the real reason it killed that game was because it just wasn’t fun (and that it looked pretty crappy too).

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.

Dark Net

Publisher: American Softworks

The Basics

One of several games killed when American Softworks became ASC Games, Dark Net was an isometic 3D shooter where you played as one of four students who unexpectedly get sucked into cyberspace (hate it when that happens) and battle it out with bizarre Cyboid creatures.

WHAT HAPPENED?

Unknown

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

Deadline

Publisher: Psygnosis

deadlineThe Basics

Deadline was to be a single-player action game in the form of a mystery game. It looked like a cross between Steel Harbringer and Project Overkill.

WHAT HAPPENED?

The game quietly disappeared from Psygnosis’ lineup.

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.

Death Drone

Publisher: Viacom

The Basics

The Death Drone story was originally something like this: In the over-populated, crime-ridden future, convicted criminals are given their choice: death or possible fame by playing a death-game. Death Drone would have featured two perspectives as you piloted your vehicles through the open 3D environment that would have allowed you to roam freely instead of sticking to pre-designated tracks. Taking all this and mixing in a variety of realistic physics to base the combat on might have produced a well thought-out title. Or another Twisted Metal clone.

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 – Death Drone being one of them.

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.

Duckman

Publisher: Playmates

Duckman, the hero, of sorts, of the USA Network animated series would have starred in this single-player graphical adventure called Duckman: The Legend of the Fall. You would have controlled Duckman and guided him through puzzles and away from traps, all the while attempting to outwit King Chicken – Duckman’s arch nemesis. The game would have offered more than 40 locations and 80 different scenes to explore, all of which took 10,000 frames of hand-drawn animation to create. About 35 characters from the show, including Bernice, Ajax, Charles, Cornfed, and Mambo would’ve populated these locations. The character’s voices would’ve been provided by the show’s original actors, as well.

WHAT HAPPENED?

Playmates canceled the title for unknown reasons.

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

Extreme Dreams

Publisher: CAPS

The Basics

It’s another failed product with the term “Extreme” in the title. You would’ve played as Dim in this single-player action-racing game.

Dim was designed to be just as his name implied: a muscled-up guy on a rocket board with all of the advertising-worthy buzz-lingo attitude a polygonal character can pack. You would’ve cruised around on the board, avoiding obstacles and such. The game would’ve been filled with cartoon-like art and comedy-bound commentary. With all of the landscapes potentially rendered in real time, they would have been created to add to the depth of the game. Apparently, some of the backgrounds were going to morph into other graphic displays, as well.

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.

Hellraiser

Publisher: Konami

The Basics

According to EGM’s West Coast editor, Wataru Maruyama (who participated in the project as an artist), the Hellraiser game was loosely based on the movie by the same name, and would have revolved around the goal of your character collecting “charms.” Although the license would suggest fairly gory creatures with chains and piercings, the development teams were told to let their imaginations run amok and create whatever they thought the creatures should look like. The only prerequisite was that the characters needed to resemble whatever their assigned names were. The only character that had to be drawn exactly was Pin Head.

WHAT HAPPENED?

Maruyama explained why the game apparently wasn’t picked up: “According to the developer, Konami pitched the game and the Hellraiser people didn’t bite or wanted too much money. [The developer's] not entirely sure. A small attempt was made to change the game enough to avoid lawsuits, but the whole project was scrapped. [The developer] didn’t know why Konami looked for artists here [US] since development would have taken place in Japan. As legend goes, it was slated for Japanese PC (probably 9801 series) and as a Super Famicom title.”

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

Incredible Idiots in Space

Publisher: ASC

The Basics

Incredible Idiots in Space was to be a comedy adventure complete with talking toilets and other such slapstick touches. Thirty-six different alien life forms would have participated in the game and you would have been able to select your own dialog when talking to them. IIIS would have supported two players.

WHAT HAPPENED?

ASC didn’t really believe that the PlayStation market was ready for a comedy game. The humor was very Simpsons- like at the time, and could probably be compared to South Park now.

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.

The Journeyman Project: Pegasus Prime

Publisher: Acclaim

The Basics

The Journeyman Project was originally released back in the early ’90s, and was one of the very first CD-ROM games for the Apple Macintosh computer (back when people actually shipped games for the Macintosh). The action/adventure was later converted to the PC, and has since spawned two sequels. As is the trend in this retro-update era, Presto Studios decided to heavily revamp the original game with new graphics and sound and touched-up gameplay. Tragically, the game never found a home, although Acclaim looked to be the publisher at one point.

WHAT HAPPENED?

Unknown

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

Kumite: The Fighter’s Edge

Publisher: Konami

The Basics

Kumite: The Fighter’s Edge was to be a 360 degree fighting game with realistic characters, fluid motion during combat, and fighters who reflected physical damage during battles. The game was touted as the next generation fighting game – something to move the genre along and break the mold.

Kumite was definitely not going to be your kick-punch-block type fighter. Instead it was to be based on various types of real martial arts fighting styles such as Tai Kwon Do. The game’s graphics, even early on, were forming into what might have been considered a step forward at the time, with complete 360-degree character rendering for full character movements in 3D. This would have allowed you to sidestep your opponent’s attacks and also cross into and around him to allow you to perform side and rear attacks.

The character design plans were also relatively innovative. The fighters were to be rendered with enough detail that you would be able to measure at what location on the fighter’s body you landed your attack, and to what degree you injured him. This would have been done through animated texture mapping. Bruises would have actually appeared after three degrees of damage.

Also, the combat moves would have streamed in from the CDs in sets. And there were special moves in the game that you didn’t have access to but would have found out about through codes. Then you could have loaded them into the game on the fly. Some of the special sets planned were weapons moves, so if you were playing an opponent and he hit a special set of buttons, a whole new set of moves for this weapon would have loaded.

At one point, we learned of about ten of the characters: Karambi, whom the story centered around; Marshall; two female characters, Lu and Yamashita; Morgan; Reese; Master Lo; Pal; Otaki; and Kim. And where would these guys fight? Their neighborhoods. Karambi, for example, would have battled in the mountains of Indonesia and Marshall faced-off in Arizona. The environments could have been compared to those in Tekken and Soul Edge. 47-Tek also had some interesting plans for the sound and music.

Kumite wouldn’t have been a fatality-wielding, finishing move fest, but rather a realistic fighter, focusing on actual martial arts. The game also would have included special characters and moves and different endings for the various characters.

WHAT HAPPENED?

Konami never officially said why the game was canceled.

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.

Mace: the Dark Age

Publisher: Midway

The Basics

The arcade port of Mace: The Dark Age would have been to 3D fighting games what Doom was to first-person shooters: the darkest of a dark genre. It was originally set in the 14th century (though not based on actual events), where feudal princes and warlords ravaged the land at the bidding of rogue demon Asmodeus, who fed off the death, despair, and disease they caused (the wicked princes and evil warlords were known as “the Covenant of Seven”). In return, the demon granted them limited power beyond that of normal human beings – but that was just not enough for them. They all craved the source of Asmodeus’ power, the ancient artifact known as the Mace of Tanis and schemed to wrest it from him. Meanwhile, a few warriors emerged from the oppressed masses, intent on either destroying the demon and the Seven to free their countries or using the Mace to rule themselves.

The basic characters which would have been available for play were: Lord Deimos, an armor-clad member of the Seven who planned to expand his kingdom; Al’ Rashid, an assassin hired to bring back the Mace; Koyasha, a young female ninja sent to kill Asmodeus; the Executioner, a sadist with a megalomaniacal itch; Mordos Kull, a mercenary orphaned by the Seven who vowed revenge; Takeshi, a samurai entrusted with the twin tasks of keeping the evil from spreading to Japan and finding his lost brother Ichiro; Namira, the lost princess of Arabia who seeks vengeance against Al’ Rashid and the Seven; Ragnar Bloodaxe, a huge Viking warrior with only Lord Deimos’ blood on his mind; Taria, an evil sorceress and daughter of one of the Seven, who wanted to take her father’s place; and Xiao Long, a blind monk who sought to destroy all evil, including the Mace. In the arcade title, four more characters were available through a Tekken-like time release process and two through codes. These characters included the undead paladin, Lord Dregan; the evil samurai Ichiro (hey, isn’t he somebody’s brother?); the hulking winged demon Hell Knight; a medieval conception of Marvel Comics’ Iron Man, War Mech; the stone gargoyle sub-boss, Grendal and Pojo, “the amazing fighting chicken.”

WHAT HAPPENED?

Mace was canceled because it just wasn’t capable of looking good enough on the PlayStation, and Midway wasn’t happy with how it was turning out. It was released on the Nintendo 64 only.

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.

Marvel 2099: One Nation Under Doom

Publisher: Mindscape

The Basics

Is there any future to the future? That’s what you, the player, might have decided in Mindscape’s Marvel 2099: One Nation Under Doom for the Sony PlayStation. Based on Marvel Comics’ 2099 line of comic books, this game would have taken place in a bleak, dystopian future where major corporations controlled a polluted, “used car” tech-intensive planet that was set roughly 100 years after the normal Marvel family of titles. As luck (and sales quotas) would have it, future counterparts to modern Marvel characters would have popped up, many intent on changing the world. In some cases, these heroes and villains were limited to parallels of same-named forebears (like Spider-Man 2099, Daredevil 2099, and Punisher 2099), while others (such as The Fantastic Four 2099 and Doom 2099) were being designed as time-travelers from the 20th century – or possible clones of the originals.

With the entire world as its stage, the game’s plot would have loosely played out 1995′s “One Nation Under Doom” comic storyline, told through impressively rendered cutscenes. In it, the decidedly Machiavellian Dr. Victor Von Doom has wrestled control of the United States from its corporate-controlled puppet government and declared himself president. Meanwhile, Anthony Herod – a villain of such epic proportions that even Doom is put to shame – has begun machinations to destroy not only this new head of state, but also dominate the entire world. Trapped in the middle of this conflagration, you would have controlled a group of superpowered beings using them to return some semblance of freedom to the planet.

Much along the lines of Playmates’ Skeleton Warriors or Acclaim’s Iron Man/XO Manowar, this would have been a 2D side-scrolling game with 3D rendered characters. But unlike the aforementioned others, it would have given you the choice of a whopping eight different heroes to play, including Spider-Man 2099, Hulk 2099, Thing 2099, Punisher 2099, Ghost Rider 2099, Daredevil 2099, and characters from the X-Men 2099 team. If nothing else, this title promised quite a bit of variety and replayability for those of us who never really got over our side-scrolling platform-game fixation.

WHAT HAPPENED?

Mindscape went through reorganization and trimmed back all console titles. Marvel 2099 was one of the games to go.

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.

MELT

Publisher: ASC

The Basics

While searching to kill Eddie, the so-called “ultimate evil” and mascot of the band Iron Maiden, you would have traveled through 50 different worlds in an attempt to take his energy pods before he destroyed the universe. That’s about all we know of this single-player action game that never came to be, besides the fact that it was supposed to feature music by Iron Maiden.

WHAT HAPPENED?

Unknown

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

MVP Baseball

Publisher: Data East

The Basics

Data East bailed the PlayStation market in mid-’96, and they took this simulation of the Great American Pastime with them. Phooey.

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

NBA ShootOut 99

Publisher: 989 Studios

The Basics

While ShootOut 97 was met with acclaim, ShootOut 98 was a definite disappointment, something that 989 was hoping to avoid with ShootOut 99. The game was based on the same engine, with a few new features – like all-new 3D players and arena models, as well as a TV-style presentation. Ian Eagle, the New Jersey Nets broadcaster, was scheduled to do the play-by-play, and there were a number of new motion captures, including those from Bo Outlaw, Jason Kidd, Robert Horry, and Brevin Knight.

Features you might be familiar with that would have returned were the complete NBA license, so you would have gotten all 29 NBA teams, total control dunking (updated), icon cutting (updated), icon passing (updated), realistic player performances and sizes, full-season and game stats, and the standard modes – exhibition, tournament, All-Star, playoffs, and the finals.

WHAT HAPPENED?

Sony originally delayed the release of NBA ShootOut until December 1998. Then, on February 2, 1999, 989′s ShootOut ’99 was canceled because of “quality issues,” and the development team moved toward development on ShootOut 2000, which was released late November 1999.

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.”

Pinky & The Brain

Publisher: Konami

The Basics

Warner Bros.’ Animaniac characters Pinky & The Brain almost made their video game debut on the Sega Saturn and the Sony PlayStation, but it didn’t happen. Brain, of course, is the smarter of the mouse duo and uses his genius to devise plans for taking over the world. Pinky, on the other hand, isn’t all that interested in world domination; he just hangs out with his pal Brain and usually fouls up his partner’s plans. The Saturn version would have generally followed this storyline in the planned single player action game.

WHAT HAPPENED?

Quietly canceled.

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.”

Prince of Persia

Publisher: Avalanche Software

The Basics

Prince of Persia 3D was to be based on Red Orb Entertainment’s PC version of the game, which shipped in August of 1999. The redux of the game series, which started in 1989, would have used character models and animations from the most recent PC title.

Prince of Persia 3D features a storyline co-authored by Jordan Mechner, the creator of the original Prince of Persia. It revolves around you, the prince, attempting to save your true love, the princess, from the evil Assan. Mindscape stated that the game would have been altered slightly for the PlayStation, by increasing the emphasis on action. “We recognize that the PC and PlayStation customers have different preferences,” said Mindscape. “We intend to provide the PlayStation enthusiast with an experience that appeals more directly to their tastes, resulting in a product that combines the fast-action combat with the depth and immersion of a classic action-adventure game.”

WHAT HAPPENED?

The PlayStation version of Prince of Persia 3D was canceled to allow developers to focus on appealing to Dreamcast enthusiasts with the coming DC version instead.

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

Quake

Publisher: GT

The Basics

C’mon. It’s Quake we’re talking about. First person shooter and all of that.

WHAT HAPPENED?

GT says Quake for the PlayStation was never officially announced and that its development was a rumor that leaked out somehow. Activision said at one point that GT was working on something Quake, and that id wasn’t happy with GT’s treatment of it. In any case, this version for the PlayStation never came out, regardless of the story.

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.

Respect Inc.

Publisher: Psygnosis

The Basics

Respect Inc. was initially developed by a third-party developer. It was a nice concept (a Mafia strategy game where your success was measured by respect gained), though how well the ideas would have transferred into gameplay is debatable. The graphics were a little clunky, too.

WHAT HAPPENED?

According to Psygnosis, the game was put into review and consequently killed.

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.

Return Fire II

Publisher: MGM Interactive

The Basics

MGM Interactive’s long-time-coming 3D action-strategy title for the Sony PlayStation, Return Fire II (the sequel to Return Fire, which appeared on the 3DO, PlayStation, Saturn, and PC).

Basically capture-the-flag with high-end ammo, RFII was being developed under the tutelage of the original creator whose team had reportedly stepped up the graphics, multiplayer capabilities, combat interaction, enemy AI, perspective, and the level of strategy needed to beat the game. In single- or multiplayer mode, you would have battled from a behind-the-vehicle or behind-the-wheel perspective, creating, perhaps, a more immersive playing field experience.

Pitted against intelligent opponents (who were notably more intelligent this time around), you would have been equipped with a stockpile of vehicles, such as helicopters, PT boats, and jump jets launched from an aircraft carrier, tanks, and four-wheel drives. These transports would handle differently in each environment, from city streets and jungles to deserts and the arctic. Active weather conditions and landscape features, such as mountain ranges and bodies of water, also influenced the controllability of vehicles and availability of access to enemy troops.

RFII also included more missions than the original, analog control, new vehicle designs, and enhanced gameplay, as jet fighters couldhave engaged in dogfights.

WHAT HAPPENED?

MGM Interactive pulled the plug on Return Fire II for the PlayStation, saying that the project would be a huge undertaking for the system. A spokesperson for the company said that the game would be released for the PC only.

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.

Rollerball

Publisher: MGM Interactive

The Basics

Based on the ’75 sci-fi classic by the same name, Rollerball rolled all the strategy of today’s most popular team sports and the action of a demolition derby and kickboxing match into one. Set in 2098 (ten years after the events of the film), the game had you managing teams from around a world where wars are fought on the court instead of on the battlefield.

Goal points were amplified by how many times a team could successfully circle the court (grabbing hold of a team-controlled motorcycle helped) and score without giving up the ball at all. Once a goal was scored, two opposing team players had a few moments to beat the living hell out of each other for bonus points. Injuries and fatalities garnered huge bonuses. In fact, beating up on your opponents earned you as many points as dunking the ball.

From what we’d played of the game’s early stages, this title was unlike other futuristic sports games in that it was not dreadfully boring. It had moments of entertaining cartoon violence more along the lines of a wrestling event than, say, Virgin’s Thrill Kill.

WHAT HAPPENED?

Rollerball was being developed for MGM Interactive before the publisher layed off its employees and shut down operations. Rollerball was lost in the shuffle.

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

ShredFest

Publisher: EA

The Basics

EA’s Shredfest was a snowplay version of Road Rash – in effect, a sequel wherein you did the same stuff in the snow and on snowboards as you did on the road on bikes. Minimal information was released, and some even reported seeing snowboarders in action, whacking up other snowboarders on the way down the slope. As far as we know, mocap sessions were completed using actual snowboarders.

WHAT HAPPENED?

EA released a snowboarding game for the PlayStation, but it wasn’t ShredFest or even distantly related. What happened to ShredFest? It hasn’t appeared yet, and it was supposed to come out in 1996.

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.

Star Wars: Episode 1 Racer

Publisher: LucasArts

The Basics

If you haven’t seen the successfully released Star Wars: Episode I Racer on the N64, the title takes a 15-minute segment of the film and turns it into a full-feature game. As its name suggests, Racer is an arcade racing game. Based on the N64 version, the PlayStation game worked something like this: You enter the podrace, a tournament that is much like “the Ben Hur chariot race meets… Star Wars.” In Racer, each contestant drives a vehicle made of a small cockpit that’s literally dragged behind two or more huge starship engines. These vehicles speed upward of six hundred miles per hour and never go much higher than a few feet off the ground. When the LucasArts developers first read the film’s script, the podrace scene must have been the unanimous choice to adapt for the introductory game of the “new franchise,” and, of course, much has been added to the ten-minute scene. Instead of simply racing the course on the desert world of Tatooine, you have seven additional planets and more than 20 tracks to race, as well as more than 20 pilots besides young Anakin Skywalker to race as. The gameplay is much like other futuristic-style racing games out there (yes, I know it’s set in a time “long, long ago,” but bear with me), such as Psygnosis’ Wipeout XL and Nintendo’s F-Zero X, except that in this game there are no power-ups to acquire, and you can’t use offensive weapons against your opponents, at least until you unlock the main boss as a playable character. You compete in a series of tournaments made up of four or more races each. If you place fourth or better, you can continue to the next race and earn money to buy upgrades to your podracer, which you’ll need to hold your own against the increasingly tough AI opponents. The main feature that Racer offers over its competition is a feeling of speed beyond that of the few games that actually meet its 60-frames-per-second frame rate – on the N64. Would it have on the PlayStation? have what? That was LucasArts’ original goal.

Back to the released game. You’ll come upon obstacles such as boulders or large spacecraft so quickly that you’ll be gasping at your skill or luck when you manage to avoid them. But what makes the speed fun is its combination of a fantastic physics engine and great controls. You use the analog joystick to steer your ship, the A button acts as the gas, the B is the brake, the Z trigger creates a powerslide, and the right shoulder button deploys the repair droids to fix damage. Incidentally, this button slows you down when in use. Leaning completely forward on the joystick will build up a turbo boost, which is offset by the fact that leaning back and side-to-side will give you tighter turns. It’s a simple and elegant setup, really. Even with a few complaints lodged against it, Racer on the N64 was an incredibly fast, superfun game to play once you got a few levels into it. It’s better than F-Zero X, its closest competition on the N64, and it even approaches the PlayStation uberfuturistic racer, Wipeout XL. The game is even better than the scene from the movie that inspired it, and that’s a big compliment indeed.

WHAT HAPPENED?

A few short hours after posting our story that LucasArts’ Star Wars Episode 1: Racer was coming to the PlayStation, word of its cancellation showed up on an Internet message board. Apparently, LucasArts made it official at that point that the PlayStation version had indeed been halted.

LucasArts was tied to an agreement with Nintendo that prohibited the game from being released on any competing system for a specific number of months. It had been the company’s intention for quite some time to release the game on the PlayStation after its agreement with Nintendo ran out. LucasArts had hinted at the PlayStation version several times at E3, and in the months following the show. Work had indeed begun on the game.

Then came the following statement:

“While succeeding in both commercial and critical acclaim for the PC and N64 versions of Star Wars: Episode I Racer, LucasArts Entertainment Company will not proceed with the extension of the game for the Sony PlayStation platform. Instead, the company is refocusing its resources in anticipation of new Star Wars Episode I titles, both for current and emerging platforms.”

LucasArts reps decided that its manpower would be better used developing titles for next-generation platforms. At the time of cancellation, a spokesperson claimed that LucasArts had plans to develop titles for the PlayStation 2, the Nintendo GameCube, and the Sega Dreamcast.

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.

Starfleet Academy

Publisher: Interplay

The Basics

Starfleet Academy never saw the light of day on the PlayStation, and frankly, we’re not really sure why Interplay decided to start publicizing Starfleet Academy nearly three years before its eventual release for the PC. But one thing’s for sure: When you start the hype machine that far in advance, the final product had better deliver all the goods as promised, and then some. Here’s a bit about the unfortunate PC game that managed to surface.

In all fairness to the folks who worked on Starfleet Academy, part of the reason for the long incubation process was that the project was put on hold while the game’s producer worked on other titles. But that doesn’t change the fact that Starfleet Academy looks and plays no better than space combat games from two years ago – and when expectations are as high as they were for this game, that’s not gonna cut it.

Starfleet Academy put you in the Federation uniform of the sheepish David Forester, who just arrived at Starfleet Academy’s Command College in San Francisco. Forester was the commander of a group of cadets with a lot of potential – and a lot of emotional baggage. Two team members got into a squabble at the very first team meeting, and that was just the first of a series of problems involving each and every member of your crew. Added to this the appearance of a reactionary group at the Academy called the Vanguard, who believed all the Federation’s problems with the Klingons and Romulans could be solved through brutal retaliation – and the fact that one of your team members sympathized with this isolationist group – and you can see these aren’t going to be carefree school days.

In addition to keeping your cadets on track, you also met Star Trek luminaries such as Hikari Sulu, Pavel Chekhov, and of course the legendary James T. Kirk. All the scenes involving characters at the Academy were handled with full motion video, something of a letdown for those under the impression that the game gave you a chance to move about your quarters or throughout the Academy. And interaction was limited to selecting dialogue responses and then sitting back to see how well you chose.

WHAT HAPPENED?

The game is currently available for the PC and was originally expected for the PlayStation. Interplay sources say, however, that the PlayStation’s 2MB system memory capabilities fall short of what would be needed to make the title work.

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.

Ted Shred

Publisher: IBM

The Basics

Riding on the cusp of “extreme” sport popularity, Ted Shred was yet another title that promised to be the “most radical” game ever and ended up face down in its own hyperbole. The game was essentially designed as a 3D side-scrolling action game including surfing, kayaking, skateboarding, jet skiing, and the likes. And since such sports wouldn’t be “extreme” without a cast of characters, the gamewould’ve featured those, too. Vulgaar was the arch villain and bad, bad landlord of the isle of Loki-Loco, and his clan was to be called the D.R.I.P. (Dirty Rotten Incompetent Punks). You would have battled from behind the persona of Ted Shred, the “coolest, most radical extreme surfer ever to shred the ocean blue.”

What did sound pretty cool was that Digital Domain, the special effects creators behind Apollo 13 and True Lies were animating this title. The game would’ve included eight levels of Crash Bandicoot-style gameplay.

WHAT HAPPENED?

Ted Shred quietly bit the dust.

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.

Virtual Gallup

Publisher: Sunsoft

The Basics

Virtual Gallup was to be a realistic 3D-rendered horse racing game in which you controlled the horses as the jockey. Racing well would’ve won you points to use to upgrade your horse’s speed, stamina, dash, and gait, which would’ve increased your horse’s chances of being victorious in the next race. The developers planned to store racing statistics in the game’s database, which was designed to keep track of the past three years of racing.

WHAT HAPPENED?

Virtual Gallup disappeared for no apparent reason.

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.

Werewolf: The Apocalypse

Publisher: Capcom

The Basics

Werewolf: The Apocalypse was an action-adventure game that would have brought to life the White Wolf role-playing game known as the Storyteller series. In single- or two-player mode, you would have navigated through six worlds as one of seven Garou characters, each maintaining the forms of human, wolf, and werewolf simultaneously. Each character’s abilities directly reflected that character’s abilities in the Storyteller game. This was planned as a 3D game, seen through a three-quarter perspective with roaming cameras and multiple paths.

WHAT HAPPENED?

Capcom stated that the game tried to be too much of everything, combining too many genre elements that didn’t work well together.

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.