Without a Trace: Missing Games
 

Upon looking back on my old Nintendo magazine I had a look a supposed release date list (in which the magazine logged onto IGN and copied... lazy asses) and remembered a game in which failed to materialize. I also noticed that there were sequels to existing franchises which were planned on the system, but never released. So without further crapping on about my experience...

This thread is about games that were planned but canned. As well as games which exist but NEED an update on the 360, PS3 or REV.

My pick is Raven Blade, which was originally intended for the Gamecube. Featuring pretty cool graphics for its time, this promising action-RPG promised the goods from the folks at Retro Stuiods but never came due to Retro studio's problems (staff changes etc).

Now that they're created two Metroid games, with a third one along the way, there shouldn't be any reason why they can't squeeze in Raven Blade, which I believe had great potential. C'mon, how many copies of Metroid Prime did they sell? Enough to be able to start Raven Blade again, IMO.

What other games were planned but canned?

Vectorman PS2. Sure, it looked crap and possibly had little to no relation to the original Megadrive games, but it would've been fun to play anyhow.

Duke Nukem Forever.

Dragon Hopper looked badass (it's currently featured in my desktop picture). But, you know, Virtual Boy.

Kirby Tilt 'n' Tumble 2 looked to be a neat use of the GBA/GCN connection cable, and I would've bought it because I'm a Kirby whore. :(

Secret of Mana 2 (SNES)

Supposively there's a couple beta/preview carts of this game floating around out there for obscene prices. It was over 80% translated/finished by Nintendo.

Earthbound 64 (N64)

Ah, the legend. It's been in develoment since 1997 and still has yet to be released. Either this game is going to be the best ever or is going to suck horribly.
Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans is another notbale example. Blizzard decided to spare us from low quality software to save it's reputation (and our money). The only shame is they never release their incomplete product to show us what might have been.

Ghosthunter for the PS2. Buried under shitty games, this one is pretty damn good.

I'm still waiting for Fear Effect: Inferno, since it's predecessor is one of my favourite games. It's really a shame that it was cancelled, although the rumours that it'll still be released someday continue floating around, I doubt it.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Seiken Densetsu 3 (aka Secret of Mana 2) was released in Japan back in 1995. ROM sites have the translations for this game everywhere. I don't think it would be one of the most popular SNES games on GameFAQs if it was unreleased (of course, you could just be talking about the US release, but the game was not unfinished, just untranslated through offical channels).

Aside from Duke Nukem Forever (it really is taking forever!), I must say Star Fox 2. I know there are ROMs floating around, but still, I'd like to have been able to play it on a console. Consoles >>>>>>> emulators. Nintendo cancelled it and made SF64 instead. Sorry, but that's no excuse to cancel a game that was practically finished in the first place. SF >>>>> SF64. It's a darn shame.

You're right, I was just talking about the US release that was almost finished but never released officially. Only mean't that it was "unfinished" in the officially translated sense. Nothing beats the quirkiness of Nintendo's "lost in translation.". Sometimes it changes the whole story!

Plus, there's still the issue of a couple of unofficial carts of the game out there. >.<

This thread's about games that never got finished/released, not games that are lost in your bedroom.

http://n64media.ign.com/media/news/n...bo/robobox.jpg

COMING SOON. :(

http://n64media.ign.com/media/news/n...techgoneg1.jpg http://n64media.ign.com/media/news/n...techgoneg2.jpg

It probably would have been pretty terrible, but whatever. I was pretty excited in the pants about Rev Limit, too. I mean, it looked pretty awesome back in late 1996. "N64 launch title!" ".. Shortly after launch!" "1999, for sure! Pre-ord-..we've vanished off the face of the Earth!"

http://n64media.ign.com/media/previews/image/revl4.jpg http://n64media.ign.com/media/previews/image/revli7.jpg

http://n64media.ign.com/media/previews/image/revli9.jpg http://n64media.ign.com/media/previe...ge/revli23.jpg

And hey, Sonic X-TREME for Saturn. XXXXXX-TREEEEEEEME. How could they let a game with such a radical hippin' hoppin' bippin' boppin' title fade away. Disaster!

http://www.sonicstrike.net/~se37/gam...ts/xtreme3.jpg http://www.sonicstrike.net/~se37/gam...ts/xtreme4.jpg
I don't even know what's going on in these screens.

Irrational's The Lost. It was a third person survival horror-type RPG by the people who developed System Shock 2. Sure, RE4 probably would have walked all over it anyway, but it could have been fun.

I remember someone was making a video game version of The Shield. It probably would have been crap, and it was gonna be released for a system that I don't even own (Xbox), but I still would have liked it to at least come out.

Secret of Vulcan Fury.

I wanted this game BAD. And then the release date got pushed back. And then it got pushed back again. And then it got cancelled I guess and eventually Interplay went under and I guess they took it with them.

Too Human. Oh wait.


As far as games that exist and NEED an update. Demon's Crest. Oh man that game would kick so much ass with Devil May Cry style gameplay, polished storyline, and some great psuedoRPG elements. It would make a fantastic action RPG.

Duke Nukem Forever.


Yah, I doubt this game will ever come out.

I still hope that Duke Nukem Forever will just pop into stores overnight or something, totally out of the blue. The Duke must return.

I know Mother 3 is finally coming out in Japan, but I still want my Earthbound 64.

Kumite. It was supposed to be a PSX fighting game I believe based around limb specific damage points, which ended up in Tao Fang. Well I guess if that's any indication...then maybe it's a good thing Kumate never came out.

http://www.gamespot.com/gamespot/fea...saturn_08.html

Reading that...it was definitely ahead of it's time concept wise.

I'd like to know where Bomberman 64 the Second Attack went.

I heard it was released, but no magazines reviewed it and I never found it in stores. :(

Yeah, it shared the same fate as many other N64 games that came out in 2000. Super limited releases ahoy. IGN didn't seem to think much of it, but it's IGN, so who knows.

I'm still waiting for Valkyrie Wilde: Full Frontal Assault. :D

I rented it. Beat it, too.

Can't remember how fun it was. :(

The Van Buren Project, i.e. Fallout 3. I heard this is back in production again, though. We will see.

Also, there is a prototype cart of Kid Icarus II floating around out there.

Oh my, I just remembered another game I was really anxious for, but was subsequently canned despite its awesome premise.

That game was Simsville, where it integrated the building aspect of SimCity with the citizen managing aspect of The Sims. This time however, you had to build a little neighbourhood instead of a large city, and it was important to tend to the needs of your citizens. If the neighbours like each other, for example, the community prospers. You could also import your characters from The Sims into your town.

Seeing as how I love SimCity the The Sims, I was really looking forward to getting my hands on this title, until Maxis went ahead and cancelled it. Their reasoning behind the move was because it 'didn't fit their purpose,' which in my opinion is absurd.

To appease the people who wanted to play Simsville, they put in a Sim aspect in SimCity 4, but it failed miserably. You couldn't do anything with those Sims whom you've imported into the city. It looked like that feature was simply tacked on at the last minute for lack of anything better to do. Grrrr....

Here's an image of the game that will never be:

http://img.gamespot.com/gamespot/ima..._screen001.jpg

*sigh*

Sonic Crackers is another example, it was a proof of concept ROM, which later became Knuckles' Chaotix. The ROM currently is floating around the numerous ROM sites and is very very rough. It's interesting that they ditched this game in favor of the 32x Chaotix.

Ultra Descent. I was watching that game in the "upcoming games" list in Nintendo Power for years, back in like Jr. High. Then one day it vanished and I slit my wrists.

They didn't ditch it... just removed Sonic and Tails in favor of introducing a zoo.

Well, let's see.

Capcom Fighting All-Stars was canned due to negative feedback (even from those who never laid a hand on the beta) and due to a big money loss. Which is also why Dead Phoenix and Red Dead Revolver were canned. Rockstar picked up the RDR license a couple years later, though.

Capcom Fighting Jam was released in its place, which didn't please any of the fans at all.

Starcraft 2, I've seen screenshots, and release dates, but nothing ever surfaced, same with Starcraft: Ghost. I'd LOVE to see a starcraft 2, or an FPS set in the universe like Ghost.

One game that was also half-scrapped was deus ex: clan wars. This was what now is Project: Snowblind. It was supposed to be the third Deus Ex game, after the second bombed badly. The game started going so shittily though that Warren Spector quit the design team, and the Deus Ex part of it was scrapped, leaving the empty barren wasteland of terrible gaming[savepoints, on a pc game, eugghhhhhh!] that is Project: Snowblind.

The Van Buren Project, AKA Fallout 3, is officially dead. It will never be revived, as the team making it has disbanded and all the work that they had put into it was basically scrapped. They even got as far as having a working 3d engine and game world. However, Bethesda (creator of the Elder Scrolls series, including the upcoming Oblivion) has acquired the rights to Fallout and said that they will be making Fallout 3 on the Oblivion engine, and hinted that the game would be first person instead of isometric. So...Fallout 3 may still be alive, but Van Buren is dead.

Star Fox 2 was my other big one. After playing the ROM of the near-final version, I simply can't understand why they stopped working on it at that stage. It has many features that even Star Fox 64 was missing.

Starcraft 2 has never been in development, as far as anyone not at Blizzard knows. No release dates. No screenshots. Nothing.

Starcraft: Ghost, however, is just being delayed to all hell. It's still on track for a release this year. I'm afraid it might turn out like Warcraft Adventures though, finished but never released.

On that note, I'd really like Blizzard to release Warcraft Adventures anyway. I'd love to see why they thought it wasn't good enough for release in the first place.

DragonKind
Some new company (TriLunar) popped up on the scene all of a sudden and had an awesome vision for an action rpg and other games.

http://img221.imageshack.us/img221/661/2860oj.jpg

They only had AWESOME concept art to back up their claims ( more here: http://www.joemadfan.com/gallery/p17_sectionid/15) but needless to say, I was extremely exited. They left the industry as quietly as they came though.

On a less technical note, after finishing Kabuki- Quantum Fighter (NES) the main character said "thank you for playing, look for me in my next adventure"..... but alas... he has yet to appear in a second adventure...

I certainly hope you're just being silly.

From what I've gathered, Star Fox 64 WAS the reason they canned it. They wanted to use a new Star Fox game as one of the big selling points of the N64, and releasing another SF game right before the 64's launch would make gamers less anxious to run out and get the 64. Intentional market starvation, you could say. Not one of Nintendo's better decisions.

I've always wanted to see what the original Japanese version of Monster Party looked like. The game we got in the US was pretty heavily modified from what looked like a rather gruesome little game. Unfortnately, for reasons unknown, the Japanese version was never released, and no prototypes have ever surfaced.

MARIO PAINT 64 looked pretty cool back then, but they didn't announced an update for GAMECUBE which I'm pretty sure they kept for the REVOLUTION and that weird, but fun-looking controller.

http://www.nesworld.com/pics/hell.jpg

i wasn't ever really looking forward to it, but it would have been cool.

Starcraft : Ghost, I'm hoping this doesn't turn into Duke Nukem Forever :doh:

As for those curious about Warcraft : Lord of the Clans, Blizzard turned it into a novel instead, http://www.blizzard.com/books/lordof...-excerpt.shtml

Yeah, they could have at least given the Sonic Team one more shot at a Genesis Sonic game, instead of having them drop out of Sonic games for four years, which guarenteed us lots of crap in between.
I'd also like to give a shoutout to Sonic 2 Beta. While most of the game made it inot Sonic 2, it's a shame the Hidden Palace, Wood Zone, Cyber City Zone(aka Genocide City Zone) never made it into the final game (which is why I'm eagerly anticipating version 2.0 of this hack).

I too wanted to see Capcom Fighting All Stars and was more disappointed with CFE. The 3D screens for CFAS looked so awesome...it really angers me now that they decided to scrap it!