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Three Games That Didn't Make It

Posted by Zonk on from the go-on-without-me-save-yourself dept.

1up.com has a feature about three games with potential that never made it onto store shelves. From the article: "We look back at three games that died so young they never even made it out: They were cancelled before they could land on store shelves. Did gamers lose out on a great experience, or was it a lucky break for their unsuspecting wallets?" I played Thrill Kill for about five minutes at the 1998 GenCon, because I was working a booth two booths down. It was umm... bad. Games that don't make it to market, probably shouldn't.

3 of 68 comments (clear)

  1. I can remember playing a game like Thrill Kill by SmallFurryCreature · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Thought at first it might have been a PC game but finally managed to terrify the remaining braincells into remembering I played it on a console at work.

    If you google for it you can defintely see hints that it has been released. Nothing definite but then it is an old title and google is infested with crap sites like 1up that push every game title they can find without having any content on their pages. (Wish there was a way to get google to filter its search results but that is another post)

    Ah but of course wikipedia comes to the rescue. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thrill_Kill seems I played a bootleg version. So anyone else who could have sworn they played a game that was never launched. You ain't hallucinating.

    --

    MMO Quests are like orgasms:

    You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.

  2. For better or for worse by MMaestro · · Score: 2, Interesting
    For the most part games that 'don't make it' are, arguably, ALWAYS case by case basis. Heres 3 games/series, that 'didn't make it' for reasons unknown.

    1. Final Fantasy 2(NES JP), 3(NES JP) and 5 (SNES JP). Yes, 2 and 5 were remade for the PS1 and 3 is being remade for the DS, but sans (VERY late) remakes, these games never saw U.S. soil. (Take your pick of reasons for each game ranging from 'too experimental' or 'it was too risky economically'.)

    2. The entire Sakura Wars series. Given the sheer number of games and its popularity in Japan, its more or less considered to be a conspiracy as to why the games (or the anime, or the manga or the movies) haven't made it over here.

    3. Any musical related game than DDR. (Either guitar, drums, or DJ-styled arcade game systems. Reasons/excuses not to bring it over here galore)

  3. The Red Star by BruceTheBruce · · Score: 5, Interesting

    While it wasn't cancelled, Acclaim's The Red Star fell *just* short of making it to market when Acclaim finally closed the doors. It had already been approved by Sony for NTSC and was almost through Microsoft. Acclaim management didn't think the game would come to any notoriety thus nobody in power had any desire to muck about with it in an attempt to attach their name to it, which thankfully left the development team unfettered ability to do as they saw fit. I even have to commend the guys at Archangel for not trying to steer the gameplay design. Though they did throw the occasional fit when a color or shape didn't fit their vision of the license. I'm a rabid shooter fan who worked on it and trust me, rabid shooter fans everywhere were denied a pretty good game.

    I heard the comic guys who held the Red Star license were shopping it around, but I never heard of any publisher taking interest in it. I noticed it was conspicuously absent from the list of Acclaim properties up for sale, I guess because of the licensing issues.

    There are supposedly some fairly close-to-final ROMS of the XBox build out there, I highly recommend it if you're into shooters or brawlers.