Toys for Bob is an american video game studio owned by Activision, mostly known for their work on such games as Pandemonium! and the Skylanders series. In 2008 Toys for Bob with support from Underground Development tried to pitch a new Crash Bandicoot game, but without any luck.
In this cancelled Crash Bandicoot projectTawna would came back to Crash after dumping Pinstripe Potoroo, while Nina Cortex was re-imagined as an emo/goth teenager.
In the end Activision was not interested: they closed down Underground Development and gave the Spyro IP to Toys for Bob to develop Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure (released in 2011). Only a couple artworks for this cancelled Crash Bandicoot game were found by fan of the series and preserved online.
Airtight Games was a development studio founded in 2004, formed by former members of FASA Studio, Will Vinton Studios and Microsoft. Between 2010 and 2011 the team was working on a new, unannounced AAA action adventure project titled “Fate”, possibly to be published by Square Enix or another unknown japanese publisher.
“Rather, this Square Enix game seems to be Airtight’s primary project – an “unannounced AAA title” it has been developing since the completion of work on Dark Void. The company’s website describes this project as “another ambitious AAA title in a genre that is both unique and refreshingly unexplored”.
Given the development timeline, Airtight’s current AAA effort is likely a continuation of a project called Fate, a post-Dark Void project for an unnamed Japanese publisher, which was temporarily placed on hold in April 2011 so that work on the game “could be reassessed”. That decision resulted in much of the team working on Fate being let go. Assets from the time of the developmental pause suggested an aesthetic influence from BioShock, but the game has likely changed considerably since then.”
Only a single logo for this cancelled project was shared by the team. As we can read on Engaged:
“Aside from a job listing popping up late in the year for “several AAA titles,” and the high-profile hire ofPortal lead Kim Swift just before Dark Void‘s launch, the studio kept mum all the way until this past summer. […]
“There are currently two projects at Airtight: ours, and another unannounced project,” Swift told me during a pre-New York Comic Con preview for Square’s titles. “I can’t speak to what the game is,” she added (unsurprisingly).”
Unfortunately there aren’t any more details about what kind of game Fate was. Some years later the project or at least the collaboration with Square Enix was restarted, with heavy changes on its original concept. Somehow the “Fate project” morphed into “Murdered: Soul Suspect”. As we can read on Kotaku:
“They used to call this game Fate (Studer even did by accident a couple of times during the demo). It’s the adventure of a detective named Ronan O’Connor. He’s been killed at the start of the game after poking his way through a house in the spooky American town of Salem. A mysterious figure throws him out of a three-story window onto the pavement below and then shoots him for good measure.”
We tried to get in contact with former Airtight Games developers to preserve more info on their lost game, but without luck. If you know someone who worked on Fate, please let us know!
Raiders is a cancelled project in the Tomb Raider series, that would have been developed for Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and PC as a coop multiplayer spin-off, before Crystal Dynamics decided to instead working on Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light. Raiders’ concept was heavily different from The Guardian of Light, as it would have been much more similar to the original Tomb Raider games, with third person exploration, platforming and shooting combat.
The story focused on the clones of Lara Croft, known as the Doppelgangers. It’s currently unclear if players would use these Doppelgangers as their playable characters, or if they were the main enemies. In the end the game was canned in pre-production, when they just had some concept made with placeholder graphic and some gameplay ideas to pitch to the studio managers.
While the game was never announced by Eidos nor Crystal Dynamics, fans of the series found documents of the project online, preserving its existence from being forgotten.
The original “Dancing Eyes” was a quirky puzzle game developed by Namco for Arcades in 1996. You move a small monkey on a grid around 3D girls to cut out their clothes piece by piece while avoiding enemies, somehow similar to the concept behind cult classic QiX.
An “HD Remake” of Dancing Eyes was announced in 2011, to be part of the Namco Generations digital releases, along with Pac-Man Championship and Galaga Legions. As wrote by Siliconera:
“Namco announced three “models” for Dancing Eyes on the official site – Crisitia Saietta, Francoise Mystere, and Musaki Kikka who appears to be tied to Japanese voice actress who played Alicia in Valkyria Chronicles.”
It seems this Dancing Eyes HD would have been a PS3 exclusive (with PS Move support) but in the end the project was canned for unknown reasons.
Cryptid Hunter: The Legend of Kipling Mckay is a cancelled action adventure monster hunting game that was in development for Playstation 3 by Saffire Corporation in the mid ‘00s. Saffire was a small games studio founded in the early 90s, that developed such games as Bio F.R.E.A.K.S. and Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six for Nintendo 64, Barbarian and Van Helsing for Playstation 2. Around 2006 they quietly announced their new game titled “Cryptid Hunter”, planned to be their first project for the 7th generation of consoles.
The game’s protagonist was Kipling Mckay, an “Indiana Jones meets Rocketeer and 1930’s Explorers” type of character. Cryptid Hunter was set in a Victorian Age of Steampunk, a fantasy and funny sci-fi story similar to classic “Saturday matinee” serial heroes from the 1930s through the 1950s and old-school American comics. The project was conceived by Mick Todd, at the time working as a 3D Artist for Saffire. As we can read on his website:
“Legends have told us there are creatures in our world that defy imagination, that unsteady the sturdiest of soldiers, that frighten the greatest of adventurers, shake the beliefs of religious leaders and cause scientists to question their very knowledge. To find these creatures has been the goal of a lucky few, the extremely wealthy, the privileged and those that run the world and want to keep it that way. To capture these monsters, they employ swashbucklers, guns for hire, heroic adventurers who conquer anything or anyone, especially for money. To exploit these legendary beasts they con the greatest of scientists, for trophies, for weapons, and to profit from war.
Hearkening back to the Victorian Age of Steampunk Adventure comes KIPLING MCKAY (“Kip”), a mysterious safari hunter who is recruited by a secret society of Cryptozoologists to hunt and capture these mythical creatures also known as CRYPTIDS.”
While Saffire never shown any gameplay from the project by looking at the available concept art we can speculate it could have been played somehow like a mission-based action adventure, with some huge monsters to hunt down. This new IP was meant to be used by Saffire for multiple markets including feature films, television, comic books and toys. The project featured artwork by such talented artists as Frank Frazetta, Mike Mignola, Simon Bisley, Alex Horley and Weta Workshop.
Unfortunately Cryptic Hunter could have been too ambitious for the small team at Saffire. We don’t know how much of the game was done before its cancellation, but by looking at their latest released games (Peter Pan: The Motion Picture Event, Van Helsing. Around the World in 80 Days, Thunderbirds) before the closure of the studio we can assume they had some difficulties in finding a publisher interested in their new project.
There are some rumors about Saffire trying to pitch a slightly modified version of Cryptic Hunter to Konami as a new Castlevania game (maybe when Konami was searching for a western studio for the new 3D Castlevania), but without any luck. In the end Saffire went out of business in 2007.
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