Fighting

Lobo [SNES/Genesis, MegaDrive – Cancelled]

Lobo is a cancelled fighting game published by Ocean Software and developed by Ocean of America, Inc. for the Genesis/MegaDrive version, and High Performance Games for the Super NES. It was settled up in the DC Comics’ LOBO universe and planned to be released in 1996.

The game used pre-rendered sprites for characters and background created with Silicon Graphics, similar to games such as Killer Instinct and Donkey Kong Country, and was mentionned in numerous previews from video game magazines, most of them were less than enthusiastic regarding the quality of the title. For instance, in issue #083 of Gamepro from June 1996, journalist Scary Larry wrote for the Genesis/MegaDrive version this:

As if we needed a reason to bury the Genesis, along comes Lobo, one of the most god-awful fighting games since Time Killers. Unless you’re a fan who has to own every single piece of Lobo merchandise available, steer clear of this game. You choose from six poorly illustrated warriors that fight with jerky, unpredictable special moves. Since Lobo is based on some of the best comic-book art of all time, this is a major disappointment. The sound isn’t bad, but it gets lost in the dismal gameplay. The battles resounds with smacks and groans aplenty but no trademark Lobo wisecracks. This badly executed game doesn’t deserve a place on the shelf with other comic-book games. Rent it, play it, return it. This one’s a LoBlow.

To this day, it was never made clear why Lobo was cancelled. Some could speculate that for a very late release for the now-dying 16-bits era, and with poor review like this one, Ocean deemed it wasn’t worth to release it, and decided to pull the plug. But it also seems that the project went through development hell: as we can read on SNESCentral, John Lomax, former artist at Ocean Software, indicated that the game initially began development in the main office of Ocean, based in Manchester, and not in the american office that was established in San José, California:

I worked on it for about a month before moving projects. It was originally going to be a Street Fighter-style beat ’em up, and I did work on background art for it, but the powers that be decided it would be better to give it to Ocean America to work on, so I don’t know if it ever came out, (…)

Another story, this time from Alexander Ehrath, who was High Performance Games’ sole programmer for the SNES version, explained in January 2022 that the game was initially coded by Park Place Productions before Ocean America took over the project internally as all the money given to Park Place was spent without finishing the game. This anecdote can be found here.

In 2009,  a prototype of the Genesis/MegaDrive version was found by the SegaSaturno community and they released it with the help of Hidden Palace. The SNES one was found in 2014 with the source code available since 2016.

Games based on DC Comics‘ franchises seems to have a lot of trouble back in the 90’s. Alongside this title, another SNES game based on Green Lantern was in development at Ocean Software and was cancelled after numerous setbacks by DC higher-ups. We can also mentionned that around 2003, another Lobo game, this time made by Kemco USA for the Playstation 2, Xbox and GameCube systems was planned before being canceled with, to this day, still no information about how far the game went in development.

Article updated by Daniel Nicaise

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Cybernauts: The Next Breed/DNAction: The New Breed [Genesis/MegaDrive – Cancelled]

Cybernauts: The Next Breed, formerly know as DNAction: The New Breed, Matrix Prime and Juggernauts: The New Breed, is a cancelled futuristic fighting game that was in development exclusively for the Genesis / Mega Drive that would have been published and developed by Accolade, Inc. around 1993-1994. Accolade made its name in the late 80’s and early 90s with franchise’s such as Test Drive, HardBall!, and Bubsy but started losing steam around the mid 90’s which caused the company to want to shift focus and reinvent itself. It is possible that this change of direction in the mid 90’s was the cause for some games to be cancelled in development such as Cybernauts. Accolade was also purchased by Infogrames in 1999 so any hope of the game being revisited seems to have ended there.

Although the game was never released, some info about the project and various character renders were found in old gaming magazines as Games World #1 and GamePro #56,  plus some  in-game screens from an early prototype found in Player One #43. Cybernauts/DNAction used pre-rendered sprites for characters and backgrounds, created with Silicon Graphics in the same way as Killer Instinct.

The game was to be placed in a future setting with scientists being able to genetically enhance humans to create their own superheroes. Some, however decide to use their powers for evil thus pitting a rivalry between those who received super powers. There were at least four planned playable characters: Pitbull and Hotshot who were members of Matrix Alpha, the superheroes trying to help society. Then the two members of the evil organization Overlord: Ground Zero and Tracer. Four additional characters were shown, Shockwave and Banzai, from Overlord, then Recoil and IronClad, from Matrix Alpha.

In May 2019, Eli Galindo, founder and CEO of Piko Interactive managed to retrieve an alpha prototype of the title. As it wasn’t complete enough to make a full game, the idea was first to launch a comic book centered around the background and characters from the game with a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter headed by a company named Virtual Comics in the summer of 2021. There was also the opportunity for the backers to play the unfinished prototype if the campaign was successful. As it turns out, it didn’t manage to reach its goal with 951$ gained on a total of 3,500$ required. Following this, Virtual Comics wrote:

Thank you to all of our backers!

We really appreciate you put time to review and pledge to our campaign!

We will go in another direction than kickstarter and release the comic book on our upcoming website and outlets like comixology.

We are in talks with publishers for physical version. In regards of the OST and the roms. We may re-use an OST in the future if we decide to fund a new game ourselves, and the roms we will try to partner with someone to make a video and a release!

Thanks again!

The Virtual Comics Team.

Since then, it seems that no further attempts regarding Cybernauts have been made, with the Virtual Comics website appearing to be down, by the way.

Thanks to Celine and Rod_Wod for the contributions!

Article by Ja’Ron Riley and updated by Daniel Nicaise

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Everybody’s Kung-Fu Fighting (Digital Graffiti) [PS1 – Cancelled]

Everybody’s Kung-Fu Fighting is a cancelled 3D arena fighting game that was in development by Digital Graffiti (AKA Infinite Lives, a team mostly composed by the Rowlands brothers: John and Steve) in 1999, planned to be released on the original Playstation.

The Rowlands brothers previously worked on a few games for C64 and Amiga, such as Creatures, Cyberdyne Warrior and Mayhem in Monsterland, but also on the cancelled Bloodlust (aka International Karate 3) for Atari. From the few animations shared online by Steve we speculate Everybody’s Kung-Fu Fighting would have been a comical take on the fighting game genre, possibly focused on fun multiplayer combat (similarly to Kung-Fu Chaos).

Years later Infinite Lives and HotGen Studios worked on another canned prototype, titled “Burnt Out Cop”.

Thanks to Daniel Nicaise for the contribution!

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Battle Smash (Kaneko) [Mega Drive – Cancelled]

Battle Smash is a cancelled sport / boss rush game similar to Tennis / Breakout / Pong /  Lethal League, that was in development by Kaneko in the early ‘90s for Sega Mega Drive. Players could choose between different playable characters to fight a series of boss battles against huge monsters, trying to hit them with a ball (and maybe special attacks?). Unfortunately there are not many details online about this lost game, but a few scans from old gaming magazines. If you find more information about Battle Smash, please let us know!

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World Heroes 64 [Cancelled – Hyper Neo Geo 64]

World Heroes is a cult-classic series of fighting games developed by Alpha Denshi (ADK) and released in the early / mid ‘90s  for the Neo Geo MVS arcade cabinet. In 1997 SNK released the Hyper Neo Geo 64 arcade system as the successor of the MVS, a new 3D arcade board to play such games as Road’s Edge, Samurai Shodown 64 and Buriki One. It seems Alpha Denshi was planning a 3D “World Heroes 64” for the Hyper Neo Geo 64, but after some time it became clear the HNG64 would have not been able to compete with the more powerful Capcom, Namco and Sega 3D arcade boards so the project was canned.

As far as we know this “World Heroes 64” was never officially announced by the company, but it seems Japanese Neo Geo fans were able to get in contact with a former Alpha Denshi developer (?) who shared an early 3D model of Hanzo that he made for the game. If you know something else about this cancelled game, please let us know!

“I dared to make it so that the (Alpha Denshi) president would give up (this project).”