Support NeoGAF

[VGEsoterica]

If you were alive in the 90s and you read Edge magazine (or basically any gaming magazine) then you were inundated with previews for ClayFighter on the 3DO M2. It was basically all magazines showed for a few months with super high resolution screenshots of a game that looked MILES AHEAD of anything else on the market. It was one of the supposed "killer apps" for the M2...a system that would be more powerful than PSX/Saturn/N64

and then...it disappeared along with the 3DO M2, relegated to our memories. Sure the game was pivoted to the Nintendo 64 where it landed with a solid THUD and was quickly forgotten about outside of the extremely hard to find Blockbuster exclusive release of Sculptor's Cut...but it came and went with little to no fanfare.

But that hasn't stopped me from hunting the 3DO M2 version down if anything exists because its still FUN to hunt for bad prototypes...even if you know that if you find it you won't exactly be having much fun.

It's a prime example of "lost media" except I think I actually found the media!

But what other examples GAF do you have of famous cancelled games? Titles that were heavily previewed and talked about...that then just went POOF? The Scalebound of the gaming world

 

[Bumblebeetuna]

Thrill Kill on PSone (killed by EA)
Propeller Arena on Dreamcast (killed by Osama bin Laden)

 

[VGEsoterica]

Thrill Kill on PSone (killed by EA)
Propeller Arena on Dreamcast (killed by Osama bin Laden)

At least we have those now though playable which is nice

 

[TheMan]

Propeller Arena on Dreamcast (killed by Osama bin Laden)

The terrorists really did win didn’t they

 

[Herbspiceguy]

Earthbound 64 comes to mind. A gaming mag had a short article on it with some screenshots and got me hyped.
And 2nd, Ultima Online 2. A sequel to the MMORPG I was playing with Todd McFarlane art was mindblowing.

 

[ReBurn]

In the case of ClayFighter it was maybe more the game than anything else. I played it on SNES and once you were past the novelty of the claymation you were left with a pretty meh fighting game. I think the thing I enjoyed the most was that digitized rock song intro they had. I have a really hard time seeing ClayFighter as a killer app that would have actually boosted 3DO or any other console from that generation.

But yeah, the magazines showcased a lot of games that never really materialized or if they did they were not what the magazines hyped them up to be. I always figured it was more the magazines over-hyping projects too soon more than games vanishing.

 

[Interfectum]

Earthbound 64 comes to mind. A gaming mag had a short article on it with some screenshots and got me hyped.
And 2nd, Ultima Online 2. A sequel to the MMORPG I was playing with Todd McFarlane art was mindblowing.

Damn man I forgot about Ultima Online 2.

 

[diffusionx]

Blizzard has two, Starcraft Ghost and Warcraft Adventures

Probably the biggest one that people still want most today is Prey 2.

 

[Unknown?]

Really wanted to see what Agent was about and a playable version of The Getaway 3.

 

[Interfectum]

Blizzard has two, Starcraft Ghost and Warcraft Adventures

Soon: Warcraft Arclight Rumble

 

[VGEsoterica]

Earthbound 64 comes to mind. A gaming mag had a short article on it with some screenshots and got me hyped.
And 2nd, Ultima Online 2. A sequel to the MMORPG I was playing with Todd McFarlane art was mindblowing.

Earthbound 64 hurts because you know it’s just sitting somewhere at Nintendo doing nothing

 

[drganon]

All the versions of duke nukem forever that got canned before gearbox crapped out their version.

 

[Heimdall_Xtreme]

I remember the first Snes game was good, I rented it at Blockbuster... Clayfighter 63 1/3 was crap as a launch game as a sequel, the fatalities were a fiasco, not even Earthworm Jim was enough in the game.

 

[nkarafo]

I never liked any of the clayfighter games because the whole point was the claymation style. And i was expecting it to look and move like claymation. But while it sort of looked OK, it moved like a regular videogame with very few frames of animation. Something like Donkey Kong Country with it's pre-rendered sprites and smooth animations looked much more claymation-y than Clayfighter.

 

[VGEsoterica]

All the versions of duke nukem forever that got canned before gearbox crapped out their version.

But now we have the “real” Forever and wow is it better than what Gearbox did

 

[PaddyOCanager]

Agent.

 

[GymWolf]

Was thrill kill ever released to the market?



I played a version of it...

 

[DeepEnigma]

Was thrill kill ever released to the market?



I played a version of it...

No, but I did have a modded PS1 and a disc of this. Chinatown was banger back in the day for finding some great stuff.

 

[Shtef]

I remember seeing final fantasy 7 n64 screeshots. No idea what happened there.

 

[GymWolf]

No, but I did have a modded PS1 and a disc of this. Chinatown was banger back in the day for finding some great stuff.

Was it scrapped in favour of the wutang game with similar mechanics?

I would love to see modern media trying to deal with thrill kill

 

[VGEsoterica]

Was it scrapped in favour of the wutang game with similar mechanics?

I would love to see modern media trying to deal with thrill kill

Yes but the basically finished Thrill Kill is available online too so you can 100% play it

 

[DeepEnigma]

Was it scrapped in favour of the wutang game with similar mechanics?

It was scrapped at the time when EA deemed it too violent. Yes, there was a very short dark age in gaming. Now we see Mortal Kombat, The Last of Us and many other games that one wouldn't think that ever was a thing.

Thrill Kill: The Story Behind the Banned PS1 Fighting Game

Thrill Kill is one of the most controversial games of the 1990s. The fighting game was so graphic that it never received a physical release

www.cbr.com

Why was thrill kill Cancelled?

However, one game, the infamous Thrill Kill, was so graphic that equally infamous publisher EA prohibited its release. Thrill Kill is one of those games that did everything it could to shock audiences. It had excessive blood, violence, sexual themes and even cannibalism.

Now our dark age is sexy females. But just the little white blonde ones.

 

[GymWolf]

Yes but the basically finished Thrill Kill is available online too so you can 100% play it

Already played many years ago.

 

[SomeGit]

It’s not technically cancelled since the PS2 version of it came out, but I’d love to see a leaked version of Soul Reaver 2 on the Dreamcast.

Either that or the rumored VF3 port for Saturn. Black and White for PS1 also, I remember the OPM talking about it non-stop until it was cancelled.

Properly cancelled, as in no version came out, would be BC on Xbox, though I think that wasn’t ever anywhere near complete enough to be playable.

 

[poppabk]

Sadness - if you believe they ever made anything.

 

[VGEsoterica]

Already played many years ago.

Nice

 

[HL3.exe]

R* Agent. Curious what they were up to.

Prey 2. F**k you Zenimax.



This still looks great 12 years later.
And making your gun, besides firing, also a social tool to intimidated or de-escalate situations with story consequences, is still uncommon in any First Person action adventure, to this day. Weird that a 'Immersive Sim Bounty Hunter' concept with so much potential still hasn't been made in 12 years.

 

[sloppyjoe_gamer]

"Clayfighter, Clay Clayfighter....hit em slap em they don't care!!"

 

[gordy]

I'm still waiting for the Bob Ross painting game on the Wii

 

[VGEsoterica]

I'm still waiting for the Bob Ross painting game on the Wii

Wait was that actually a thing

 

[VGEsoterica]

R* Agent. Curious what they were up to.

Prey 2. F**k you Zenimax.



This still looks great 12 years later.
And making your gun, besides firing, also a social tool to intimidated or de-escalate situations with story consequences, is still uncommon in any First Person action adventure, to this day. Weird that a 'Immersive Sim Bounty Hunter' concept with so much potential still hasn't been made in 12 years.

Prey 2 had so much promise. What we got out of the reboot was forgettable AF

 

[HL3.exe]

Prey 2 had so much promise. What we got out of the reboot was forgettable AF

Nah, Prey (2017) was a great Immersive Sim. But that game was already in pre-development regardless of Prey 2. They where just re-assinged/force to use that name after Prey 2's cancellation, as it's creative director mention here and wasn't happy about that mandatory choice.

Prey Director Thought Using That Name Was A 'Mistake,' Was Assigned By Bethesda

Former Arkane director Raphaël Colantonio recently explained how awful he felt about using the Prey name for the 2017 imsim

kotaku.com

'Typhon' or 'Psycho-Shock' where rumoured to be the real names.

 

[Sophist]

True Fantasy Live Online. A Japanese MMORPG for the very first Xbox console. Seemed to be a huge budget, it was the beggining of online gameplay on consoles. It had vocal chat and all.

True Fantasy Live Online - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[VGEsoterica]

Nah, Prey (2017) was a great Immersive Sim. But that game was already in pre-development regardless of Prey 2. They where just re-assinged/force to use that name after Prey 2's cancellation, as it's creative director mention here and wasn't happy about that mandatory choice.

Prey Director Thought Using That Name Was A 'Mistake,' Was Assigned By Bethesda

Former Arkane director Raphaël Colantonio recently explained how awful he felt about using the Prey name for the 2017 imsim

kotaku.com

'Typhon' or 'Psycho-Shock' where rumoured to be the real names.

Why they tried to shoehorn the Prey franchise into that game is beyond me. Hobbled the game and the Prey franchise all in one go

 

[HL3.exe]

Why they tried to shoehorn the Prey franchise into that game is beyond me. Hobbled the game and the Prey franchise all in one go

Because they couldn't give a fuck about the previous, only the name alone had some value. Tbh, the first Prey (2006) was mid as fuck, even at release. Linear shallow Half-Life clone, filled with portal gimmicks and bad vehicle sections.

But that's why I looked forward to the sequel, because they presented a way more interesting premise. Taking the bounty hunter side stuff in Red Dead Redemption and build that into it's own interesting game with open-ended structure.

 

[Beechos]

I think tattoo assassins was a mortal kombat clone that was finished and never released.

 

[calistan]

Blizzard has two, Starcraft Ghost and Warcraft Adventures

Probably the biggest one that people still want most today is Prey 2.

Starcraft Ghost was in a pretty advanced state and I think mostly produced by an external studio, so I bet it's out there somewhere.

I played it at a couple of different E3s back in the day. I also took these pics at Blizzard HQ, 2004 - lots of Starcraft Ghost material, it's a shame that nobody got to see it. Interestingly, on that visit they were talking about how they'd recently hired a fan who knew more about Warcraft than anybody at the company, and he was putting together a giant database of Warcraft lore - I think that was the genesis of World of Warcraft, so clearly they had bigger things on their plate than some little Gamecube shooter.

 

[VGEsoterica]

I think tattoo assassins was a mortal kombat clone that was finished and never released.

thankfully it was dumped though so you can play it

 

[Team Andromeda]

For me, I really wanted to see Flying Nighmaries on the Mega CD, WaterWorld on the Saturn (said to have the best water effects out of any 32Bit title) Space Junk on the Mega CD and then BC on the OG XBox

​

 

[Draxon Gamer]

I never liked any of the clayfighter games because the whole point was the claymation style. And i was expecting it to look and move like claymation. But while it sort of looked OK, it moved like a regular videogame with very few frames of animation. Something like Donkey Kong Country with it's pre-rendered sprites and smooth animations looked much more claymation-y than Clayfighter.

Interplay never gave the series genuine funding until Clayfighter N64 and that was still low.

They spent a lot of the first games money on the audio song, and rushed the 2nd game out with minor tweaks because of the late growing popularity of the first game and to make a pun on Terminator 2 which was still a popular movie.

I'd be down to see a claymation game in any genre with enough funding to make something out of it. I liked the concept but the ambition wasn't there.

R* Agent.

The copium and hope for that game year after year was brutal, one guy on some forum uploaded a video and broke his PS3 over a lack of Rockstar and Sony addressing the game, there were people who were suffering actual depression admittedly when Sony would have event after event with no mention of it, and then Rockstar came out much later making a statement it wasn't dead adding fuel to the fire. We are now in 2023 it's long dead..

People were sucked way into the console wars back then, and now but maybe not as much as before.

 

[nkarafo]

Interplay never gave the series genuine funding until Clayfighter N64 and that was still low.

They spent a lot of the first games money on the audio song, and rushed the 2nd game out with minor tweaks because of the late growing popularity of the first game and to make a pun on Terminator 2 which was still a popular movie.

I'd be down to see a claymation game in any genre with enough funding to make something out of it. I liked the concept but the ambition wasn't there.

The Neverhood games seem to make better use of the style. Though they are different genre games.

 

[Alex Anderson]

Thrill Kill on PSone (killed by EA)
Propeller Arena on Dreamcast (killed by Osama bin Laden)

I was Pissed when Propeller Arena got canceled. Capital P.

 

[Dr. Wilkinson]

Still waiting for that 40 Winks port on n64. Review copies were literally sent out to magazines. And the game was *finished*. Then it was canceled. Fun times!

And I didn’t have a PlayStation so I never got to play the game.

Also, Earthbound 64. Would have been amazing, especially given how late of n64 gen game it would’ve been, I could see it moving to GameCube, and imagine those graphics for the time. Holy shit what an idea.

 

[Bumblebeetuna]

I was Pissed when Propeller Arena got canceled. Capital P.

Me too. Could have been another classic arcade style SEGA hit.

 

[Walter Matthau]

Aeon Flux is pretty notable for having two cancelled game adaptions that were silently cancelled.

 

[sCHOCOLATE]

In the case of ClayFighter it was maybe more the game than anything else. I played it on SNES and once you were past the novelty of the claymation you were left with a pretty meh fighting game. I think the thing I enjoyed the most was that digitized rock song intro they had. I have a really hard time seeing ClayFighter as a killer app that would have actually boosted 3DO or any other console from that generation.

But yeah, the magazines showcased a lot of games that never really materialized or if they did they were not what the magazines hyped them up to be. I always figured it was more the magazines over-hyping projects too soon more than games vanishing.

The Clay Fighter's theme song was tight. And Bad Mister Frosty...

 

[ShirAhava]

I play this more often than maybe should after hearing about it in a gaming mag as a kid I wanted it so bad

Really wish they finished it its pretty interesting/impressive considering the limitations of the 32X

 

[Hudo]

I remember seeing final fantasy 7 n64 screeshots. No idea what happened there.

Big lobbying efforts by Sony + Nintendo's decision to bet on modules again (specs for the N64 back then weren't solidified which is part of the reason why Square believed that Nintendo could go with CDs) = FF7 on Playstation.