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Unfinished Adventures
Obiwan Kenobi writes "Just Adventure has an interesting article on unfinished games that were nixed in mid-development. Amongst the casualties are incomplete trilogies, an off beat 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea game, Blizzard's ill-fated Warcraft Adventures and the Star Trek title "Secret of Vulcan Fury.""
... I don't think the Vulcans would have much of a feeling about Vulcan Fury. It wouldn't be logical. The title doesn't make much sense either.
-Rusty
You never know...
I always have great plans to make some sweet ass game. As a programming student i get myself way in over my head and end up scratching it long before it becomes playable. Typical problem or not organizing and shooting too high.
It makes me think that i dont wanna do coding as a living becuase if i actually did make progress and someone cancled my work it would not be very fun at all.
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Amongst the casualties are incomplete trilogies, an off beat 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea game, Blizzard's ill-fated Warcraft Adventures and the Star Trek title "Secret of Vulcan Fury.""
They forgot Duke Nukem Forever
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
... hunger in the world has become a major problem so research teams are studying sites on the sea floor for potential undersea farming.
:-(
Oh man, that sounds like it could have been greaat fun, I'm SO SORRY that project was nixed, I could really go for some UNDERWATER FARMING right now! What a shame.
I thought that Vulcan's Fury got shelved because De Kelly got ill and then died before it was finished.
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Actually, while everything they said about Warcraft Adventures was true, they did leave out one bit of information: the storyline was too important to the Warcraft mythos to drop entirely. Warcraft Adventures was later reworked and became the book Lord of the Clans by Christie Golden. The events of the book are also referenced in the orcs' backstory in Warcraft III.
Just my $.02...
Some would say that Ultima IX was never finished...
- DDT
So long, michael. Don't let the door hit you...
Team Fortress II to be the headliner ;-)
Since these projects were nix'd, perhaps someone should email the companies and ask them to open up the source so others can benefit from them. Note it would make good PR. Ok maybe not SOMEONE, but perhaps EVERYONE!;P!
It seems like such a waste having all those resources put into games just to have the it scraped in the end. Why doesn't the game developing community just make the unfinished code open-source and set up a sourceforge project around it :-) i could imagine some pretty cool games coming about this way.
--david
There's no mention of PC based Halo (bought by the great Satan to promote a substandard console...'nother story tho'), Mac OS9 ports of Half-Life, OSX ports of everything, Linux ports of Starcraft/DiabloII/DeusEx, etc... At the risk of sounding a troll, compared to these titles, I could care less about those listed in the article. Interesting read nonetheless.
Don't park drunk, accidents cause people.
These games are among a plethora of unfinished adventures, to name a few: [...] Leisure Suit Larry 8...
Leisure Suit Larry! Who can guess why this game was canceled? Give this a try.
I still remember the B5 space combat sim being deep-sixed by Sierra. Too bad, as it looked like a good game in the making with something close to realistic physics.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
Sex - Find It
We might be able to add this one to the list. It looks like this will (unfortunately) be vaporware and only live on through fan-created fiction...
A shame 'cause it is truly a great franchise.
Games getting cancelled happens all the time in the console games world too, it seems. Luckily, on consoles, it is common for a prototype or two to survive.
:-(
Take Earthbound 0, for example. Some of you may remember the SNES game Earthbound, but it comes from a NES game known as Mother in Japan. Nintendo of America finished translating the game but never released it. Fortunatley, it has been dumped.
Countless prototype games have been dumped that may never have been able to see their light of day. Recently, Star Fox 2 for the SNES was dumped too.
Unfortunatley, playing these dumps is illegal as is distributing them.
Also, I wish some prototypes would surface for my favorite console, the Virtual Boy!
Overall, my eyes are dry. With the exception of Secret Of Vulcan Fury, all the other games were cancelled or died for good reason. I'd much rather have a cemetery full of unreleased poopy games than a shelf full of them.
what about descent 4?
the earlier descent games were fabulous
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
was when the text-parser was axed. Adventure games lost the most of their expressiveness and became a game of "Click all the current screens with all your current items to advance" whenever you got stuck, because in the end, that was your only way of interacting with the environment. Maniac Mansion style games were a bit better, but were still a long way off of text-parser style action. Parsers gave the game authors so much more flexibility as to what could be done, and gave the player so much more to do and explore, that there isn't really any comparison between the games of yore and all the rodent infested ones that came after ^_^;
Or maybe it's just me...
I remember playing Wasteland on the ol' C64. It was one of the few games that I got hooked on and actually finished. It was very similar to the Bard's Tale genre of games, being a text adventure with a few graphics thrown in. I'm feeling nostalgic about it right now and wish I still had a copy.
This is the first time I've ever heard about Meantime. I did a quick Google search on it and found this tidbit of info about the game:
Meantime: The Unfinished Official Sequel to Wasteland
It's too bad that the sequel fell through, it would've been interesting for sure. Fallout is a great (if unofficial) sequel. One of the first things I remember thinking about after hearing about it was 'Cool, it's just like Wasteland!' Little did I realize then how much of a connection the two games actually have.
(1) Sierra was creating Middle Earth MMORPG for several years before scrapping it. It couldn't straddle the Old and New Sierra eras (the latter being an era where Sierra Doesn't Exist, from the point of view of an old timer).
(2) Worldplay Games spent millions making Cyberpark, an online MMORPG and virtual environment. The project was bought by AOL which eventually cancelled it. The technology was functional and could house thousands of people, but which floundered over business model concerns at AOL and a related lack of direction. I still don't think that the current MMORPG have as good of a hosting architecture... but I'm biased.
Indeed, this is the frustrating thing about the game industy, there is a ton of work thrown away or spoiled.
-pyrrho
I have boycotted Sierra ever since. Not only did they kill the game, they chose to throw away the work done instead of selling it to someone who would finish the game. A group of the original developers formed a company and tried to finish it independently, but Sierra would not cooperate. Since Sierra held the B5 license, they not only killed this game, they killed any hope of someone else doing a B5 flight sim.
Neither of those games are.
I'm not sure why the parent currently has a score of 3, Duke Nukem Forever HAS NOT been cancelled. A simple check of 3D Realm's site [www.3drealms.com] shows that it has not been cancelled, although they do joke about the "when it's done" thing extensively.
I know a lot of RPG geeks are awaiting a new game in the Lunar series and are still wanting to know if all plans for Lunar 3 are cancelled, or if there will one day be a new Lunar game.
There has been rumor after rumor regarding Lunar 3. After Lunar 2: Eternal Blue Complete came out for Playstation in the US, there were statements coming from both Game Arts (the Japanese makers of Lunar) and Working Designs (who localized the Lunar games for the Sega CD and PS) that we would soon see work beginning on Lunar 3, probably for the Playstation 2.
It has been 2 years since Lunar 2: Eternal Blue Complete has come out, and no new information can be obtained about Lunar 3. Working Designs has been silent about the issue, and there doesn't seem to be anything from Game Arts on it.
Lunar Legends for GBA is translated by UbiSoft (probably because WD doesn't have the lisence to do GBA games), but that is a remake of Lunar 1, not a sequel.
It seems like Lunar 3 would be an instant hit, but both Working Designs and Game Arts have been silent about it.
About two weeks ago I saw a message regarding Lunar Legends on the Working Designs message board. It was explained that Working Designs had sold the rights to some of their original Lunar content back to Game Arts (Working designs apparently owned the rights to some of the things they did in their localization, including the name of the White Dragon, Quark) so that this stuff could be included in the US GBA version of Lunar Legend.
Someone on the board asked if this transfer of the rights meant there would be no Lunar 3, to which I did not see an answer.
What was not clear to me was if Working Designs had really SOLD the rights to these things back to Game Arts, or if they had LISENCED these things.
I'm really starting to believe that Game Arts has perhaps abandonded the idea of making Lunar 3. If Game Arts really has abandoned the idea of Lunar 3, then it explains why Working Designs would easily want to sell back otherwise useless IP for some quick cash.
I hope that this is not the case, but it seems like it may be.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
Looks like version 1.0 of the Microsoft Troll AutoPoster. Needs a little work, but they'll get there...
KROYKAH!
To read the story of the missing LSL4 game straight from the developer's (Al Lowe) mouth, check out Lesiure Suit Larry 4 and Why Larry 5?.
Fairly interesting story -- What was supposed to be LSL4, ended up morphing into The Sierra Network, and then getting sold to AT&T for $100 million (and then getting resold to AOL for $10 million).
The Sierra chick came in and was showing me some stuff they were working on - a little rendered (Actual Game Screens!) movie about a game called Outpost. It was supposed to be the end-all of simulation/strategy/resource management games. It looked really cool, and the Sierra chick told me about all the things you were going to be able to do in it.
A couple of years passed, and Outpost finally came out. PC Gamer reamed it a new one, and so did this guy. All the features I heard and looked forward to were gone. In their place, a sterile, unfun, buggy pile.
Outpost 2 came out to much better reviews, and there was talk of Outpost 3, but as all the links to it are dead, I believe that this may go in the 'Unfinished Adventures' catagory.
The whole point of the article was adventure/RPGs that were never released.
:-)
Unlike an action game, when an adventure game gets canceled, any storylines that would've been resolved are left unfinished.
And to Donut: the X-Box is just a warmed over PC circa 1999. So nyah
Also another unfinished trilogy, the wonderful Freespace series.
Volition made two of the greatest space sim fighter games with good storylines. They put in a nice cliffhanger at the end of Freespace 2, then that was it.
They said not enough copies were sold of Freespace 2 (Which I would blame on bad marketing) for Interplay to warrant a third. So everyone who was a fan of the game was left with an unfinished story.
Go to fansforultima.com and download the fan created patches for Ultima 9. If you're an Ultima fan, you owe it to yourself to see a proper ending to the great series.
The dialogue patch completely fills in the gaping plot holes of U9, and doesn't treat the player like a complete Ultima newbie. The monster and economy patches help out with game balance.
Best of all, an anonymous fan created a patch that addresses just about every technical problem in the game.
Take a few minutes and download those patches, and you'll see how good Ultima 9 should have been.
SimsVille was a cross between The Sims and Sim City. It offered both a macroscopic view of a town where you could manage Sim life on a neighborhood level and a microscopic one where you could manage Sims and families (although not as granular as you can in The Sims). It died a horrible death sometime in 2001 after Maxis decided it conflicted with what they were already doing with The Sims, Sim City and the upcoming Sims Online. Apparently it was pretty much in a pre-release stage but who knows if anyone will ever see it.
liB
Don't forget Battlecruiser 3000!!!
There can be only one
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
It's an ADVENTURE website. The article is listing cancelled ADVENTURE games.
This ADVENTURE site's article on cancelled ADVENTURE games also lists ROLE PLAYING games, and the Babylon 5 games was to have ADVENTURE elements as well.
If the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences can call Diablo 2 a role-playing game (let alone the role-playing game of the year), I can call Babylon 5 an adventure game.
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
Taoism
The demise of the legendary AR series was much more of a loss to me (and many other fanatic players, I presume). Only 2 out of 7(?) parts were released and judging from Philip Price's obvious talents, all 7 would have been worthwhile. There was an attempt around 1995 to develop "Alternate Reality Online" (www.aro.com, now defunct) by Philip Price and Gary Gilbertson (the 2 people responsible for the first AR game, AFAIK), but apparently it never went far.
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
Ten years and the memory is getting bad; I'll have to get a new compact flash card for my head. ;)
Infocom put out a semi-relational database called "Cornerstone" which was based on their text adventure engine. It ran on DOS. It was actually a fairly workable proggie that didn't require the user to be a 'leet DBaseII programmer. I used it to keep track of invitees to my wedding and send thank-you cards for the gifts said invitees gave. This was back in 1987...I don't think Cornerstone lasted long after that.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
The crazy reason why the Aeon Flux video game was cancelled was the demise of Viacom Interactive. However, the game was a piece of crap. Bad controls! Bad, bad! ;-)
Also, around that time, a game called "Tomb Raider" came out. TR basically was what the AF video game should have been, without the kink factor.
Simon And Schuster/MTV Networks should have bought the Tomb Raider engine and redid the AF game as a TR mod. However, since the AF series was cancelled after only one season (just like MTV did to Downtown, alas...) I'm sure it was commercially moot by then.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
I have an idea for the ultimate video game! Picture a dotted line down the middle of a rectangular field, where two line segments hit a small square back and forth in a virtual game of table tennis. Here is a link to what I have so far.
How ya like dat?
With Presto's demise last week, who knows what will happen to the rights to Journeyman Project 4. The script exists, but not much beyond that. The developers were waiting on permission to make it after Myst III, but instead worked on Whacked for the XBox.
You dont wanna put in each room one by one. You should put some code in to read coordinates off a list and make a map out of em. You simply tweak the measurements to change the world. Even though i do that it still get tedious to put a story line in each area.
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep