Kameo was originally slated for the Nintendo Gamecube and was set to be one of Rare’s flagship titles for the system, along with Star Fox Adventures and Donkey Kong Racing. However, when Microsoft announced its purchase of Rare in late 2002, Kameo’s future was put in question. It was decided that work would continue on the Xbox, and a planned release date of 2003 was given. After several revamps, causing repeated delays, Kameo was put on indefinite hold in late 2004. Following this, rumours began that the game was once again undergoing a platform change, this time from the Xbox to the Xbox 360, where it was finally released as a launch title. – [info from Wikipedia]
BC was going to be an action-adventure video game in development for Microsoft’s Xbox video game system by Intrepid Computer Entertainment, a satellite of Lionhead Studios. It was cancelled in 2004, having been in development for some time; why is not known though it has been alleged that it was “overly ambitious“. Set in a Harryhausen-esque prehistoric time period, BC featured the player having to advance their tribe in a world inhabited by dinosaurs and other anachronistic creatures. From what is known, the player would assume the role of a tribal chief who is responsible for the welfare of his people. It is up to the player/chief to spur his people’s technological development and lead his tribe of cavemen to a Valley free of predatory dinosaurs and savage ape-man where they can evolve in peace. Part of that means that the player/chief would assign various duties to his tribesmen. However, it would also have been possible to play as any member of the tribe.
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Early images at E3 showed extreme clarity and self shading but early reviews called the artificial intelligence the most impressive thing. According Gamespot.com’s information on the game, the game would have had a foodchain, like Peter Jackson’s King Kong (video game), in which each thing would have been subject to being eaten by something higher on the foodchain. In addition the dinosaurs and other creatures would have been intelligent, interacting with each other acting independently of player. It would have been possible to affect the videogame world as a whole, leading some people to comment on the driving certain species to extinction.
Other things would have included capturing and training certain animals to use against tribal enemies. Animals known to exist in the world would have been Tyrannosaurs, Velociraptors, Pachycephelosaurs, Sabre-Tooth Tigers, Apatosaurs (or Brontosaurs as the game would have focused on anachronisms) dodos, ape-men, and others. As part of the exaggeration, the game, in addition to anachronims in dinosaur ages, would have featured dinosaurs as larger than they really were. In one preview, Molyneux was quoted as saying that the Rex seen in screenshots was a child, a third the size of its parent. the game was also planned to be very bloody. Gamespot quoted Molyneux as saying that the dinosaurs will spill “swimming pools full of blood” when killed.
At the moment, the game has been cancelled, fans believing that it was too ambitious to be made; indeed, even while the game was still in production, Molyneux said that he was unsure when he could release it due to “the ambitious nature of the gameplay and the high standards the people developing it are pushing for.” According to one article, as of May, 2002, “[the demo build] was roughly 50 percent complete“. Its cancellation was announced in late 2004 with Molyneux saying “The decision to suspend work on any games project is always a very difficult one, particularly when it is a title with the potential of BC.” However, fans hope that Molyneux will live up to his suggestion that the game might be revived at a later date. [info from Wikipedia]
Gaia Blade is a cancelled Real Time Strategy Game with RPG elements for the original Xbox console. It was in development around 2001 by FromSoftware, during a time when they worked on many interesting projects for Microsoft, such as Murakumo, Thousand Land, Otogi, Metal Wolf Chaos. Gaia Blade was designed specifically for online multiplayer on Xbox Live and it was planned to be released around 2002.
You could have been able to build traps and other defenses for your base, to protect it from AI enemies (in single player mode) or other humans (in online multiplayer mode). Gaia Blade was set in a fictional fantasy world inspired by Norse and Western literature: each single-player campaign would have put you as the leader of one of 12 different available families.
Characters development would follow classic RPG mechanics, while combat was in real-time: players just had to plan their strategy deciding which character to use for each task and area of the world. You would have been able to see all of your characters at the same time in different parts of the map using a split screen, choosing which one to impersonate when in need. The game was focused on teamwork, with 12 different protagonists, each one with their own skills and troops. Units would learn through their experience during the adventure and react differently to the player’s commands.
It’s not known why the game was cancelled: we can speculate the rather negative ratings of their games released in the early ‘00s made the team rethink their strategy of working on many different games at the same time (such as Code Inferno, ¼ RPG and Goldstar Mountain), to just focus on the few, most promising ones.
Perfect Dark Zero started out as a prequel to Rare’s highly successful Nintendo 64 FPS title “Perfect Dark”. Originally planned for a release on GameCube, Perfect Dark Zero became a Xbox game as Microsoft acquired both Rare and the Perfect Dark franchise. Perfect Dark Zero first appeared on an E3 2001 list for the Nintendo GameCube lineup. However, it was not until Microsoft’s X02, where they announced the acquisition of Rare Ltd, that Perfect Dark Zero appeared again. While it was said to be released until late 2004 at latest, nothing but a few artworks of a cel-shaded Joanna Dark were shown, which saw heavy criticism from fans of the N64 classic. This criticism as well as internal issues led to the game being started again. While the game got a more realistic art style, several key people who had also worked on Perfect Dark left the studio including PDZ’s original lead programmer Brian Marshall, Jamie Williams and B Jones. Thus the title saw several delays. In late 2004, it was decided to release Perfect Dark Zero to Xbox 360, on which it was released as a launch title in 2005.
Mai-hem, a Chinese super villain with a comedy name. With her long pig tails weighted down at the end the idea was that she would use them as a fighting weapon even though she looked unarmed. In the final version Mai-Hem was still a villain, but looks vastly different and she no longer uses her hair as a weapon.
House of the Dead III in cell Shading?!? It seems impossible, but let’s take a step back in time … It was 2003 and House of the Dead III, the famous Sega shooter, raged in the arcades, like previous episodes of the series.
Sega decided to port it to a home console, and since it was based on the Sega Chihiro hardware, they decided on the Xbox. So, SEGA announced the development of a port for Xbox was under way and showed some screens to the public. The early screens had a special feature, using the technique of Cell Shading which made the game look like a color cartoon, with characters drawn with a black marker.
However, the idea was soon abandoned. The causes of abandonment are still unknown, but it is thought that the idea of a graphic “cartoon” in a game as violent as HOTD III would not satisfy the fans, who would definitely prefer “normal” graphics.
Thanks to UK Boogie for the english translation!
[spoiler /Clicca qui per la versione in Italiano/ /Nascondi la versione in Italiano/]House of the Dead III in cell Shading?!? Sembra impossibile, ma facciamo un salto indietro nel tempo… Era il 2003 e il gioco House of The Dead III, il famoso titolo sparatutto SEGA, imperversava nelle sale giochi; come per i precedenti episodi della serie, si era deciso di realizzare un porting per una console casalinga, e dato che il Sega Chihiro, la scheda su cui girava HOTD III, era basata sull’ Xbox, si decise per quest’ultima. Così, SEGA annunciò al pubblico che lo sviluppo di un porting per Xbox di HOTD III era stato iniziato e mostrò al pubblico alcuni screen. Quest’ultimi, avevano una particolarità, utilizzavano la tecnica del Cell Shading, un particolare sistema che faceva assomigliare il gioco a un cartone animato, grazie a colori un po’ più carichi e al contorno dei personaggi, che era tracciato con un pennarello nero, proprio come un disegno di un cartone.
Tuttavia, l’idea fu presto abbandonata. Le cause dell’abbandono sono ancora sconosciute, ma si pensa che l’idea di una grafica “cartoonesca” in un gioco violento come HOTD III non abbia soddisfatto i fan, che preferivano senz’altro una grafica “normale”.[/spoiler]
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