Vapor Trails - On Famously Unreleased Videogames

Thanks to GamePro for its article discussing formerly in-development videogames which never actually got released. Some of the more unconventional include Data East's Tattoo Assassins ("2D video-captured fighters, whose tattoos come to life and whack on other players. Characters included a Nancy Kerrigan clone and a giant running hot dog"), Sega's Virtua Hamster ("...[involving] polygonal rodents with rocket packs and skateboards swooshing through a huge hamster habitrail, collecting popcorn kernels to spit at enemies"), and Runandgun!'s partially resurrected Duelin' Firemen! ("...[an FMV] game about singing, dancing firemen [starring Rudy Ray Moore].")

Comments

I would think Malice for tXBox deserves a mention.

[freidog]

Malice was one of the titles used to show of the power of the XBox before it was released . If you paid attention to the XBox hype, chances are you saw some Malic screenshots.
It was widely expected to be a release title in fact. But here 3+ years latter, no release date ia availibe, the Official webpage no longer exists, and we've heard nothing from Argonaut Games in the last year or so.

Fallout 3 & Xcom

[samsmithnz]

Don't forget about the ill-fated Fallout 3...
http://www.petitiononline.com/fallout3/petition.ht ml
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/fallout3/news_60856 20.html

and XCom, I don't know how many times this project has been canned and then resurected again 2 years later...
http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~xcom/x6x1.shtml
http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~xcom/x8x1.shtml

These are the two biggies for me...

Penn & Teller's Smoke and Mirrors

[Pluvius]

If I had to pick one piece of vaporware I'd want to be able to play, this would be it. It was a bunch of screwed-up mini-games, including this one where you have to drive from somewhere to Las Vegas in a tour bus. I remember reading a preview for it in Video Games (aka the best gaming mag ever); a couple of the staff members actually took turns playing the tour bus game for like eight hours before they accidentally wrecked and ruined all their "progress."

Rob

Ben, we hardly knew ye

[spyrochaete]

Too bad the world will never see Full Throttle 2. Lucasarts axed it because it did not meet their high quality standards. Also, the actor who voiced the protagonist Ben passed away a year or two ago. Shame. The original was a cool, cool game.