Cancelled Games You Wish Had Been Released - I Can't Think of a Good Subtitle

This isn't exactly a cancelled game since it was eventually released on the 3DS, but I would've loved to see the Nintendo DS version of Fantasy Life. I'm a huge fan of EarthBound/Mother style sprites and graphics, and the early WIP screenshots look very cute!
fantasy-life-ds-2d-4.jpg
fantasy-life-ds-2d-5.jpg
fantasy-life-ds-2d-7.jpg
 
Last edited:
  • Like
  • Agree
  • Informative
Reactions: Sundae, Buttigieg2020, Coolio55 and 4 others
My choice would originally have been Mech Assault 3 (Mech Assault was an Xbox Live launch game that was a third person shooter spin-off of the battletech franchise. Really solid third person shooter). But, after some leaks that were uncovered about the cancelled Mech Assault 3, and how much it was planning to radically change things from both 1 and 2, my choice now would be Battlefront 3.
 
  • Like
  • Informative
Reactions: Dead Mime, Sundae, ShortBusDriver and 1 other person
while not exactly cancelled, but i would love to play a version of the 2002/2003 version of Half-Life 2 where its tone was a lot more drastic than in the final game
 
  • Agree
Reactions: Mazinkaiser
The original Xbox game The Unseen, about a goth girl fighting monsters and wielding magic,

I'm guessing it was canceled due to similarities with Sony's Primal, but first party Xbox games could have used a female protagonist in the early days for variety's sake (back when female protagonists were cool)

And speaking of which, I also wish Microsoft hadn't canceled Perfect Dark 3.
 
Last edited:
  • Informative
  • Like
Reactions: Pissmaster, Ghostapplesause, Owen Grady and 3 others
I've just recently found out about that, but it seems that Obsidian had a pitch for "Alpha Protocol 2" even before the release of part one. Well, you can guess why it never happened, but I would've endured the shitty gameplay for the story alone.
 
  • Informative
Reactions: Prokhor Zakharov, Pargon and Pissmaster
Decay seemed like a really cool game, it would have been a FPS RPG of some kind where you play as a hitman.

Peep these screen and guess what year they're from:
games Decay-Insomnia-Software-PC-Cancelled-1.jpg


games Decay-Insomnia-Software-PC-Cancelled-21.jpg


games Decay-Insomnia-Software-PC-Cancelled-34.jpg


That's right, early 1999, way before the Dreamcast even.

Geometry wise it is very low poly, a step up from the PS1, but that is masked by fantastic lighting and good textures.
games Decay-Insomnia-Software-PC-Cancelled-5.jpg


They were one of several developers with a demoscene background that in the late 90's started having ideas about realtime raytracing. Look at all those shadows! I strongly suspect that they're software rendered because of demoscene ideas. Outcast and Trespasser was two other games that were built around exotic software rendering techniques, both got 3D accelerator patches, both ran worse with them.

It sort of came out many years later as New World Order, a crummy multiplayer shooter that looked fantastic in 3% of the locations, like you could find a corner of the map that looked great, and super bland everywhere else.
 
  • Informative
  • Like
Reactions: JuanButNotForgotten, Xenomorphs Are Cute, Sundae and 2 others
I wish we had gotten Will Wright's original vision of Spore. He had wanted to do something that was based on science with gameplay that was more complex and would give players a different experience every time they played. The game even had an 'aquatic stage' planned between the cell and creature stages. However it had to be dumbed down and made cuter for mass appeal as per EA. A lot of the content was cut out, and as a fan of god games I can't help but wonder what could have been.


The dick monsters and memes were great, though.
 
  • Feels
  • Like
  • Informative
Reactions: Inside your walls, Dr. Jaime Reyes, Prokhor Zakharov and 15 others
喪女 said:
I wish we had gotten Will Wright's original vision of Spore. He had wanted to do something that was based on science with gameplay that was more complex and would give players a different experience every time they played. The game even had an 'aquatic stage' planned between the cell and creature stages. However it had to be dumbed down and made cuter for mass appeal as per EA. A lot of the content was cut out, and as a fan of god games I can't help but wonder what could have been.


The dick monsters and memes were great, though.
Click to expand...
You and everyone else. Hence why the reception was so poor: everyone was expecting early build Spore, only to buy a game that was a less complex versions of Civ and Alpha Centauri plus the remains of early Spore. EA was lucky they released the Creature Creator to get even positive memes out of it.
 
  • Like
  • Agree
Reactions: Pissmaster, 喪女 and Sundae
Final Fight: Seven Sons. A cell-shaded beat 'em up that looked and apparently played, like a true successor to the Final Fight series. Instead, what we got was Final Fight: Streetwise.
 
MysticMisty said:
You and everyone else. Hence why the reception was so poor: everyone was expecting early build Spore, only to buy a game that was a less complex versions of Civ and Alpha Centauri plus the remains of early Spore. EA was lucky they released the Creature Creator to get even positive memes out of it.
Click to expand...

I believe they cut so much out of the original because EA wanted to put that content into expansions for more money. In the end they got a husk of a game that everyone got bored of. Will Wright eventually left Maxis to due to limits on creative freedom by EA and the DRM scandals and backlash.
 
  • Feels
Reactions: JuanButNotForgotten
Last edited:
  • Feels
Reactions: Exuvia, BrunoMattei, Dom Cruise and 5 others
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back