The original Geist was a first person adventure developed by N-Space and published by Nintendo in 2005 for their GameCube. In the game you play as the spirit of the dead protagonist, who can interact with the physical world through possession of things, animals and human beings. The game had an interesting gameplay mechanic in which you had to scare NPCs before being able to possess them and many clever puzzles revolving around your possession ability.
A Nintendo DS port / sequel was in development at N-Space in mid – late ‘00s, but in the end the project was canned, possibly because of low sales and mixed reviews for the GameCube version. As we can read on Wikipedia:
“Nearing the end of development, a Nintendo DS port was rumored by an IGN tour to be in development. Although this port was never announced, and no information of it has ever been officially released, n-Space did have development kits for the DS at the time, and traces of the ports existence have been found within the ROM of the DS version of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, which was developed by n-Space, as two text documents for the credits of Geist DS are present”
You can read the Geist DS credits hidden in CoD4 DS at TCRF.
While the game was never officially announced and it was quietly cancelled with no media ever shown to the public, fans of the original game found some early footage of Geist DS, preserved below to remember its existence.
N-Space did a great job with their portable FPS (Call of Duty, GoldenEye), so it’s safe to say we missed another good one with the cancellation of Geist DS. We hope one day someone could share online a playable prototype, maybe along with their DS version of Halo.
What do you think about this unseen game? Give your vote!
Would you like to add more info, screens or videos to this page? Add a comment below!
- Dead Unity [PC / PSX – Cancelled] - 04-01-2025
- Dragonkind [XBOX/PS2 – Cancelled] - 02-12-2023
- Damnation: Hell Breaks Loose [PC – Prototype] - 07-10-2023
Someone has gone hacking into a DS copy of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Mobilized, which is when they found the credits.bin and Credits.txt files. When those files are examined, the following information comes up.
geist ds™
for nintendo ds
credits
lead software engineer
shawn leaf
software engineers
leon brown
john m. meyers
lead artist
jason miller
artists
aaron c. gaines
james j. inziello
scott kiraly
jeanne m. kiraly
w. randy king
joshua davis
audio
mike reed
producers
bob hichborn
erick s. dyke
special thanks
thanks to the following people
for their valuable help
and support:
dan o’leary
sean purcell
gary meyers
and
especially to the originating
geist™ team at
n-space, inc.
The credits clearly state Geist DS at the top, and it leaves me wondering where the project is. Something tells me that n-Space may have been working on the project, got the call from Activision for a Modern Warfare adaptation, and they just swapped new assets into the Geist DS engine. That’s my two cents…what do you think? Thanks to Tanks for the heads up!
http://www.gonintendo.com/viewstory.php?id=124021
Very interesting too. I like the sentence: After coming up with the concept, we spent some time quickly developing a demo that ran on a PC using our existing engine.
And:
We shopped that demo around to a variety of publishers and actually started production with Namco under the name “Fear” (this was before anyone had ever heard of that other game called “Fear”). We worked with Namco for about 4-5 months on pre-production but, partway through development, there were some changes in producers and some resulting differences of opinion when it came to what the game should be about. We parted ways amicably and took the game back on the road to shop it around again.
http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/interview/20890/interview-with-n-space-ted-newman-studio-creative-director-n-space
Oh and something more. 3DS… would be interesting.
https://nintendoeverything.com/geist-winter-technically-possible-on-3ds-according-to-n-space/
In the ninendo gigaleak giga leak i found this in “受信 200507_55”:
Subject: 3rd Production DS Wifi Software Schedule From:
[…] Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2005
10:42:32 +0900 To: Return-Path:
[…]
• Metroid Prime Hunters Developer: NST
Content-Transfer-Encoding: :
We would like to inform you about the current status of the DS Wifi compatible software schedule of the
3rd Production G that you have inquired about.
ROM up schedule: February 2006
[…]
; Fri, 29 Jul 2005 14:36:10 +0900 (JST)
ROM up schedule: March 2006
• DS Geist (tentative name)
[…]
• Mario & Donkey Kong 2