Ninety-Nine Nights is a crowd combat game that is played similarly to the likes of Dynasty Warriors/Warriors Orochi and other Musou titles. Microsoft had big plans for this game at the time, but it didn’t hit its ambitious goal largely because of how Ninety-Nine Nights veered too far from its original vision. Information about this game is scarce, but we can a couple of screenshots from an early build shown at the Tokyo Game Show 2005.
Scivelation is an obscure third-person shooter that spent years in development hell under TopWare Interactive and Black Wing Foundation. The project was first unveiled in October 2009, when TopWare announced the title alongside an interesting overview of its premise. As originally reported by IGN:
“Set in the distant future, Scivelation’s universe is a world born out of the ashes of conflict and misery. An oppressive global dictatorship, known as the Regime, has risen to power after the aftermath of the Apocalypse; aggressively seeking out and eliminating any opposition to their tyrannical government. With this capricious, dystopian reality as a backdrop, the player will take his or her place amongst the ranks of the resistance, waging war throughout the furthest reaches of the globe in this action-packed battle for freedom and survival.”
Beyond these early press releases and promotional trailers—which largely recycled the same high-level plot summary—TopWare Interactive released very little public information. Actual gameplay footage remained virtually non-existent.
Surprisingly, the game’s official product page remains live on TopWare Interactive’s website today. The listing on the website outlines the core mechanics and introduces its two primary protagonists:
Mikhael Ivanov :
Captain of GRN, Mikhael is a decorated veteran of the Tribulation War. Due to injuries sustained in combat, much of his body is made up of Zionetric implants, improving his combat skills and allowing him to evolve above the level of a simple soldier.… and Elisha Amano :
A former geneticist for the Regime, she joined the Resistance to justify her guilt for having worked on the Omega sequence of the Ascension program, a project aimed at creating a genetic panacea with the aim of curing human mortality. This program, however, was used by the Regime for much darker purposes. Elisha not only brings a brilliant scientific mind to the Resistance, but also his research…”
Now onto the gameplay features:
While these concepts looked promising on paper, TopWare never released concrete gameplay footage beyond a handful of screenshots. To add salt to the wound, the project suffered numerous delays: initially scheduled for a 2010 release, it was pushed to 2011, and eventually delayed to Q1 2014, with TopWare aiming to target PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360.
That target passed without a word. Following the release of Renoir in 2016, Black Wing Foundation suddenly vanished too, which ultimately meant that Scivelation was done for. Today, the project exists only as a mere publisher listing, a pre-rendered trailer, and a small collection of promotional assets you can check below.
Paladin is a cancelled open world Action medieval game developed around 2007-2008 by Midway Studios Austin (formerly Inevitable Entertainment) and published by Midway Games for the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 platforms. The game was using the Unreal Engine 3.
For years, few information were available regarding Paladin as it was cancelled before being announced. On his personal website, Richie Romero, who was Art Director at Midway until the closure of the company, shared screenshots and videos to what appears to be an action game set in the medieval times with open world elements. During that period, Midway Studios Austin was split in two teams, both working on different projects: Paladin, and Career Criminal, which was cancelled in August 2008, following publisher’s huge financial loss.
While no official announcement has been made during its development, we can speculate that Paladin was cancelled back in December 2008, when the studio was closed by Midway which still faced financial difficulties:
Facing possible bankruptcy, Midway games will close its Austin studio entirely, suspend development on several unspecified titles, and reduce its workforce by 25 percent. (…) Midway did not list which projects it plans to cancel or suspend, but calls them “non-core” projects slated for 2010 and 2011 that had not yet been announced. (…)
Alongside Paladin and Career Criminal, Midway’s bankruptcy also led to the cancellations of various projects such as Stranglehold 2: Gun Runner, This is Vegas, Hero or even a new take on Mortal Kombat.
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While there’s constant effort to document the cancelled games from major production regions of Japan, America and parts of Europe, you rarely hear about the games released on the other side of the globe. The other side of the globe? What do you mean, you’ll say. Well, to be specific, the Middle East, MENA regions.
You’d be surprised to find out that for every 10 games released there, hundreds were cancelled. Many that are now lost to time. You’d also be surprised to find out that those games were on par in quality with games from Russia/Ukraine. At times, maybe better.
The game we have today is Heroic: A 3D action-adventure that was in development by Timeline Interactive from Egypt. The game ran on the Unreal Engine 3, and it promised a multiplayer cooperative mode (up to four players in-game) where players could run around, defeating enemies, jumping from one platform (or falling to their doom together) and a couple of puzzles to spice things up.
The game featured 4 different classes for you to choose from, and if this didn’t pique your interest, the developers planned to make use of your own avatar in-game. How cool was that?
While the game looked interesting, it was never released due to the lack of an interested publisher. In the end, the game was cancelled in 2009. Some of the developers who worked on this game went on to work on Ark: Survival Evolved.
Credit: Iyad Abbas
Dark Void was a fantastic Double-A hidden gem developed by Airtight Games and published by Capcom in 2010 for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, with a PC version following shortly after. While the game introduced two genuinely interesting mechanics: a fully functional jetpack and an ambitious vertical cover system, it ultimately failed to generate the commercial success Capcom had hoped for. As a result, all plans for a sequel were quietly scrapped.
That outcome is particularly unfortunate given how turbulent and imaginative Dark Void’s development history was. Before it became the jetpack-driven shooter we know today, the game went through several radically different conceptual phases.
According to Jim Deal, the project’s earliest pitch leaned heavily into an Indiana Jones-inspired adventure. Players would traverse exotic environments using motorcycles, jeeps, horses, and even airships, with a grappling hook allowing them to latch onto surfaces and swing their way forward. It was less about aerial combat and more about pulpy exploration and cinematic traversal.
Pre-conceptualisation artist Stephen Daniele later revealed that, before the jetpack ever entered the picture, Dark Void was built around a shadowy enemy faction known as The Invisible Hand. A technologically advanced organisation clearly echoing the iconography of Nazi-era villains. The narrative framed them as an existential threat, one that needed to be dismantled before their influence spread further.
Visually, the game was also very different in its infancy. Daniele noted that the original setting was intended to be the Mediterranean or North Africa, with heavy artistic influence drawn from Egypt in particular. Ancient ruins, desert landscapes, and sun-scorched architecture shaped much of the early concept art. At this point in development, the game was a stylised shooter similar to a Pixar film. However, as the project moved forward, the developer eventually opted for a realistic look.
Only after multiple iterations did the jetpack flight system emerge. A decision that would ultimately define Dark Void. It is worth noting that Dark Void began development in early 2007 as a spiritual successor to Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge because, at the time, Fasa Studios wanted to implement some on-foot third-person interaction, but unfortunately, it didn’t happen. Dark Void seemed like the right opportunity.
Update: 16/5/2026
Don’t be confused if you recognise the image from the prologue. There’s a perfectly good reason for it. According to Stephen Daniele, Capcom wanted Airtight Games to adopt an approach similar to God of War: begin the game by handing the player almost every tool upfront, then gradually teach them how everything works.
Because this opening sequence functioned purely as a tutorial, the developers placed it at the very start of the game. At the time, nobody realised they were actually controlling an early iteration of Will Grey! A small but fascinating detail that only makes sense in hindsight.
A 1-hour chat with Stephen Daniele about the early concepts of Dark Void and some of the cut content, like the Motorcycle!
Credit: Huge thanks to Stephen Daniele for the early sketches and details that have gone unknown for 15 years!
Before Dark Void soared into the sky, and Will Grey kicked ass, the game had a completely different vision, graphics and, of course, character. In this early phase of development, the game had an entirely different name. The graphics were very reminiscent of a Pixar film, as shared by Stephen Daniele in a previous interview. However, Jose Perez III went on to reveal that some of the ideas in the early iteration of Dark Void were already in place way before Just Cause released. This iteration had a parachute, a grappling hook, a motorcycle (with guns!), aeroplanes which you could hijack anytime you wanted, and so many ideas.
In many ways, the alpha footage of Dark Void had glimpses of the real spiritual successor to Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge, because it included everything the developer wanted to show in the cancelled Crimson Skies 3.
The alpha footage of Dark Void was revealed 15 Years later!
Credit: Huge thanks to Jose Perez III for sharing a lot of never-before-heard details that have gone unheard of for 15 years!