Cut Down In Their Prime

Gamecloud has a piece looking at some worthy games that never made it to market for one reason or another. The one that hurts the most for me is Microsoft's canceled, but intriguing, Norse MMOG Mythica. From the article: "Date of Cancellation: February 2004. Microsoft Games Studios decided to get into the MMORG genre with this fantasy themed game that was announced with much fanfare in April 2003. This game, with a Norse mythology theme, was going to have more of a single player experience than most MMO games. However, less than a year later Microsoft decided to shut down development of Mythica with the team all laid off as well."

Comments

I hope part 2 covers the games from "A.I."

[Artifex]

Very little is widely known about the two games that were going to be made from the movie A.I., except that they were both supposed to be launch titles for the original X-BOX. My guess is that they were cancelled because the movie was not doing well. That's unfortunate, because apparently the games were going to expand upon the universe glimpsed in the movie, with completely different storylines.

Golden Sun 3

[fishybell]

The first Golden sun ended with the story only partially finished, the second finished with a huge cliffhanger, and the third...

Well, the third Golden Sun doesn't, and probably never will, exist. It definitely tops my list of games never released.

Of course, since this is talking about games that got started, announced, and then cancelled, the much anticipated Golden Sun 3 doesn't quite fit.

Re:Apparently their "prime" was after conception?

[jandrese]

The official (or even semi-official) reasons aren't always the real reasons. "Financial Concerns" is often a codeword for "the developers aren't getting it done and we're not wasting any more money on this project".

One reason I would have liked to have seen for about half of those games: "It was turning into yet another also-ran FPS, we wanted to work on something unique". The Bab5 game is a real loss though, although it looks like it would have been Wing Commander with different actors, I think it could have done really well.

My biggest disappointment

[Aeron65432]

was the lack of Freespace3. I thought Freespace1/2 were phenomenally done. Freespace 2 was one of the few game sequels I thought thoroughly improved the previous game in every aspect. Graphics, gameplay, interaction were all great. It was an excellent start to what promised to be an excellent series. Cut down in its prime indeed.

Sadly, Freespace3 was one of the many casualties of Interplay's death.

Re:Golgotha

[AKAImBatman]

Here's the source code to it. It's still possible to finish if you can generate enough interest in the idea.

Unfortunately, Crack dot Com was a victim of poor project planning, and Golgatha showed it. It was always one of those "cool ideas" that was never quite fleshed out into something playable. While larger companies can manage to survive such poor planning through deep pockets, it's the kiss of death for smaller ventures like Crack dot Com.

It's too bad that companies always feel such pressure to follow up one success with others even when they're not ready. Had CdC taken more time to develop the technology and concepts they wanted before plunging into a 30K/mo burn rate, they might have become a big player in the industry. :-(

Re:Fallout 3?

[TaoTehChing]

I seen something a while ago about Bethesda picking it up: http://www.nma-fallout.com/fallout3/ It's apparently in pre-production according to the FAQ, I am really looking forward to it as well. I think they are the perfect company to develop it.

Check out "Independence War"

[brouski]

For space combat with realistic physics that's not taken to such ridiculous extremes.

Halo

[Trogre]

If we're talking about potentially great games that never made it to market, how about the original Halo?

You know, the one that was developed entirely by Bungee and was nearly ready for release before they were bought out by Microsoft. Let's call it Halo(PC) for simplicity.

After the acquisition, pressure was put on Bungee to put out an XBox flagship since MS had nothing at that point. To fit in the enormous memory limitations of the original XBox compared to a standard PC, great wads of the game (geometry, textures, levels etc) were cut out and the original game was shelved never to be seen again. And Halo(XBox) was born. People flocked to it in droves since it was supposed to be this great revolutionary game, and left wondering, quite rightly, what the fuss was all about.

When Microsoft was kind enough to announce Halo for the PC, Bungee wasn't allowed near the original PC game they'd written. No, instead they ported the XBox version (rather poorly) to the PC. So Halo(XBox[pc]) was created. And the PC gamer says "This plays better on my friends XBox" and goes out and buys an XBox himself, forgetting his clunky old PC.

So yes, I would like to see Halo(PC) one day. I know it's not going to happen, but maybe after MS is split up by [insert future reigning superpower here] in 2015 we might see something.