An archive with screens, info and videos for cancelled, beta and unseen videogames for the GBA. Check our archive to understand what it means to preserve lost games.
While the Middle East is gradually witnessing a resurgence in the gaming industry, with investors across the globe channelling their time and capital in hopes of nurturing their stakes into something more prosperous, there remains a conspicuous scarcity of knowledge surrounding the history of Middle Eastern-made games from the 1980s through the early 2010s. You might be surprised to learn that the region has been attempting, for many years, to infiltrate and establish itself within the industry, albeit with limited success. For today’s occasion, we will be looking into Phantom, the first Game Boy Advance title purportedly developed in the Middle East.
It began in 2003, when a cohort of developers from Jordan, fresh out of university, coalesced to form Element Team. Their early attempt would see them stepping into the then-fresh-to-the-market Game Boy Advance market with a project known as Phantom — a 2D action title that played similarly to the likes of Castlevania: Dracula X.
Operating within the severely constrained toolset available at the time, the team managed to assemble only a short Pre-alpha demo. Unfortunately, Phantom never progressed beyond this stage, as no publisher was willing to finance or shepherd the project into full production. The idea of a Middle Eastern studio attempting to carve out space in an already ravenous, hyper-competitive market felt, to many at the time, like a science fiction film.
Ultimately, Element Team was unable to sustain itself, and the project was quietly shelved before it could properly materialise. The game was cancelled, leaving only a demo build behind.
Everything began in June 1999, when IGN revealed that Titus had acquired the licence in order to make a game:
Titus is on one hell of a license acquisition. Superman, Top Gun… and now put RoboCop on that list. That’s right, Titus now has the rights to bring the robotic cop of New Detroit to consoles. Currently, Titus will not announce officially which consoles its RoboCop game will be brought to, but the license includes all systems (…)
The Game Boy Advance version was first mentionned in July 2001 as we can read on French website Jeuxvideo.com:
While we recently announced the return of Alex Murphy for an adaptation of the famous film RoboCop on PS2, Virgin Interactive and Titus do not seem decided to make a one-shot but on the contrary, it is a real licence exploitation that we should attend. The title not only planned on PS2, it should also land on GBC and GBA. The games in question could be released by the end of the year (…)
Further details were again shared by Jeuxvideo.com in May 2002:
Titus has just announced the adaptation of the arcade game RoboCop on GBA in a title named RoboCop: The Future of Law Enforcement scheduled for October 2002. As you can imagine, it will be based on the famous science fiction film and on this occasion the players will get into the armor of police officer Murphy. On the gameplay side, we are told it will be a side-scrolling shoot’em up which should have no less than 7 levels and 14 sub-levels with 25 different types of enemies to face.
However, the game totally vanished after this announcement, was never mentionned again and, of course, wasn’t released in October 2002. No details to this day were shared about why it was canceled, but speculation can be made. Alongside this GBA version, it is worth mentionning that the other games planned for various systems had a lot of trouble. The GBC version was released somewhere in the end of 2001, only in Western Europe, and was met with negative reception.
The First-Person Shooter version went into a much more troubled development, it was first announcedin 1999 when the licence was bought by Titus with apparently the implication of Xatrix Entertainment for the design:
Currently, Titus will not announce officially which consoles its RoboCop game will be brought to, but the license includes all systems, including PlayStation, PlayStation 2, Dreamcast, and Nintendo 64.
We have heard, however, that Xatrix, the developers of the upcoming PC first-person shooter Kingpin, will be handling the game’s design. What type of game will it be? A first person shooter, of course.
Don’t expect the game to be released until late 2000.
But the development dragged on and on, it was re-announced in April 2001, this time developed internally at Titus, and, first, only planned for the PS2 before also being developed for the Xbox and the GameCube. Then, Titus decided to cancel PS2 and GameCube versions and only focused on the Xbox. It is possible that the GBA version was dropped as well during this time of the development. After missing several scheduled dates, the game was released on Xbox somewhere in the second half of the 2003 year and was negatively panned by the critics. Oddly enough, the PS2 version was eventually released around 2003-2004 only in Europe, and the GameCube one released exclusively in Japan in 2004.
Another speculation about the cancellation of the GBA version was that its developer, Planet Interactive Development, disappeared somewhere in 2002-2003.
The whole source code of the game was finally leaked in January 2022.
After years of silence, the license returned briefly in 2014 with an adaptation of the reboot on iOS, and finally in November 2023 with RoboCop: Rogue City, developed by Teyon.
Fuzz and Rocket is a cancelled side scrolling platformer inspired by Yoshi’s Island, which was in development around 2003 by Halfbrick Studios (Ty the Tasmanian Tiger 2, Fruit Ninja) for Game Boy Advance. It featured an aim mechanic similar to Yoshi’s 16-Bit adventure, where you threw the protagonist’s sidekick (Rocket) to resolve puzzles or to kill enemies. At the time a few gaming websites posted news about the game and it even had a nomination at the 2003 Australian Game Developers Awards. As we can read from the old Halfbrick website:
“Fuzz and Rocket is an immersive 2D action platformer which incorporates both substance and style. It is centred around the main character, Fuzz and his sidekick, Rocket as they try to restore order to the land of Fulu. Mysterious masks have possessed the rulers of the 8 kingdoms of Fulu causing them to make life difficult for their subjects. It is up to Fuzz and Rocket to figure out what’s going on and trace the masks back to their source! Many challenges and obstacles stand in their way.
Fuzz and Rocket features over 8 unique worlds encompassing over 32 levels, numerous bonus games, in-game cutscenes and varied gameplay to keep players entertained for hours.
Fuzz and Rocket is Halfbrick Studios’ first Game Boy Advance title based on an original concept, which is currently in development. Fuzz and Rocket has been developed in-house using Halfbrick Studios’ proprietary engine and tools. We are currently looking for expressions of interest regarding its publication.”
The game was last seen at E3 2005 and as far as we know it was pretty close to being done, but in the end the team was not able to find a publisher before the GBA was replaced by Nintendo DS: Fuzz and Rocket was canned and forgotten by everyone.
The Haunted Mansion is a cancelled adventure game that was in development around 2002 – 2003 by Pocket Studios, planned to be published for GBA by TDK Mediactive, the same company which published The Haunted Mansion for PlayStation 2, Xbox and GameCube. The games were based on the homonym Disneyland ride and the home-console versions were released in the same year of the Haunted Mansion movie (also based on the Disney ride).
This canned Game Boy Advance version was quite impressive for its 3D graphic, something that was not common on the console. Players would explore the mansion Resident-Evil- Style, finding keys and avoiding enemies, plus some on-rails sections on a classic mine cart.
It seems the GBA version of Haunted Mansion was canned when TDK Mediactive was bought by Take-Two Interactive. As wrote by a former Pocket Studios developer on Youtube:
“I was a coder on this game. The main reason for its non release was the TDK the original publishers being bought out mid development by Take2. I’m certainly not in the know as to what went on between Take2 and Pocket but after the takeover it was clear the game wouldn’t get a release. Lets just say Pocket wanted to hit its milestones to get paid and fill the contract and Take2 tried to make that hard.
As for the game. Publishers were at the time were eager to have games that were more 3D-ish, especially lower end publishers with less than amazing franchises as it made the game stand out from the flat 2d, iso games that almost every release was. The simple fact is the GBA doesn’t do 3D well, but I think looking back nearly 20 years and saying the 3d is broken isnt really fair. Personally I think some of the art in this game is lovely. I still think this game is technically impressive… Did anyone notice the transparent ghosts???? If any other game does transparency on the GBA I’ve not heard of it.
TBH the gameplay sucks. The card game was absolutely pointless, and the free roaming made the game weirdly empty and slow. I think a number of the team wanted to do a more side on 3d platformer affair, but that was ruled out fairly early as death/weapons was something you couldn’t do with this Disney property.”
Some years ago a ROM of the game was leaked online, so at least we can marvel at its technical achievement.
Western Lords is a cancelled Old-West RPG in development around 2004 by Blossomsoft for GBA, Nintendo DS and PC. In its initial version it looked like a classic 16-bit 2D RPG, but it seems it was later rebooted in 3D for Nintendo DS before being finally canned.
As we can read in some old messages in their (now closed) forum, the game was related to another unreleased game titled “Sagrada Guardians”:
“We’re currently working on a new game project titled Western Lords. Note, however: even though Sagrada Guardians was once titled Western Lords in the past (and then changed due to the theme issue), these games are not the same.
While Sagrada Guardians focus on ‘the cities made of gold’ theme, Western Lords will focus more on outlaws and cowboys in a merciless environment similar to Mexico. However, some story elements of Sagrada Guardians will be introduced via Western Lords.
Even if Sagrada Guardians and Western Lords shouldn’t be considered as the same series, they will be running in parallel to one another. Western Lords will have an entire new cast of characters, and should take place approximately one century before Sagrada Guardians on the same world. Take note that the environment will be darker unlike the fantastic ambiance of Sagrada Guardians. This will remind everyone how harsh the western era looked like (well, at least in literature!).
We hope to complete the game during this coming winter, exactly as we did with Oracle Adventure with the creative side. The game will possibly be sold for around $25 on PC. We’re also planning multi-languages, English and French as initial languages.
Also key members of Sagrada Guardians will be working on Western Lords. For instance, Xavier Dang will be the main composer and William Knight will be in charge of the dialogues. Min ‘keiii’ Kwon will possibly stay on as the artwork designer, though this is unconfirmed as of yet. “
The game was cancelled when the team was disbanded, as confirmed by the team leader on their old website:
“It was the very first project I created back around 2004. The Game Boy Advance and later the Nintendo DS were the main targeted platforms. Sadly, the team disbanded because of my inexperience and since then I’ve been honing my skills to become a one-man team. Fact is, the release of Eternal Eden in 2008 was some sort of Plan B to get Western Lords back on track. But then things escalated to Plan C, etc. I still intend to revive this project with a different style after 2016, if things go well.”
Blossomsoft also worked on other interesting cancelled games such as Mimic Book and GUNNARr (both for Nintendo DS). In 2016 an early prototype version of Western Lord GBA was found and preserved: you can download it from here.
In 2008 Blossomsoft released a different RPG titled “Eternal Eden” on PC as their first commercial project. As of 2020 it seems Western Lords was resurrected and it’s now planned to be released on Nintendo Switch in the future.
This canned project was in development using the same GBA engine they created for the Devil Children titles, as much as it reused many assets from Devil Children: Fire Book. However it seems Project Alpha was planned as a different, original game. In early 2019 YT channel Hard4Games made a video about this prototype and sometime later Kuriatsu acquired the same proto, doing more research on its content. As wrote on Reddit:
“For those that are unaware, Project Alpha, is a game prototype that first appeared on Hard4Games about a month ago. In these videos, they covered a few things that are and are not relevant to the game series Devil Children on GBA. Project Alpha uses the exact same game engine to a T that Devil Children: book of fire uses, to the point that it even uses book of Fires internal designation. (so basically Atlus rom hacked Book of Fire) A lot of the assets, such as music, some visuals, a LOT of Debug, and so on, are from Book of Fire, but Project Alpha is its own game, and at one time, was supposed to be something, but noone knows what. In my experiments with this game, there’s not even a single trace of its original name that I’m seeing thus far.”
The japanese prototype was translated thanks to RetroTranslator and Kuriatsu made a video showing off more of what can be found in this early demo:
As wrote in the video description:
This game is not even 1/50th complete, but it is an interesting game.
This game is not a Devil Children game, despite using the DC3 Engine. project alpha is the same for devil children as Guruguru Garakuta-zu is for devil children on the Gameboy colour. Devil children on the GBC actually took a LOT of resources from Guruguru Garakuta-zu. In the same way, project alpha took a LOT of resources from Devil Children Flame Book. In fact, all of the music that we’ll hear from this game is actually from Devil Children Flame Book.
This game is highly unusual in comparison to other prototypes, and is likely the equivalent of a pilot TV show thats testing the waters, as a result, it’s not incredibly detailed, but the back story is clear as crystal.”
Baketsu Daisakusen is a cancelled horse-racing RPG / simulation in development around 2001 by Nintendo for their Game Boy Advance. As other horse-racing game popular in Japan you could play it as a racing game or as a simulation in which you just bet on the results, while the game internal AI would predict which horse would win the race based on their stats and previous 5 runs. It seems Baketsu Daisakusen would also let you play online against other players, using the GBA’s cell-phone adapter.
In the end, Nintendo never released the game for unknown reasons. Only a few, tiny screenshots still exist today to remember its existence.
Radio Rayless（レディオレイリス）is a cancelled futuristic racing game that was in development in 2002 by Now Production, planned to be published for GBA. The game was shown in a few Nintendo leaflets along with many others GameCube and GameBoy Advance titles, but this one seems to have vanished forever.
For now the only (tiny) screenshot available online for Radio Rayless was posted on Twitter by Akamid83:
Demon Hunter is a cancelled action RPG in the vein of Diablo, that was in development for Game Boy Advance by Independent Arts Software in 2002. The team planned 8 huge areas to explore, each one divided into several procedurally generated sub-levels so you had a different layout every time you would play.
“Even though the game is designed with an ending in mind, players can continue to dungeon-hack through the areas after the quests have been complete, fighting increasingly difficult enemies the more advanced the players’ abilities become.
Like in most RPGs, players level-up their character as they battle through the different areas, earning experience points with every death. The game also features a fog-of-war type element used in real-time strategy games, limiting the player’s visibility so that he cannot see hazards that are coming from far ahead or behind certain objects.”
At the time Demon Hunter still did not have a publisher, so we can assume they never found one and the project was quietly cancelled, forgotten by everyone.
Hanasaki Gassen (in Japanese, literally translated as “Flower Blooming Competition”) is a cancelled real-time strategy game for GBA that was in development by Blue Planet Software (AKA Bulletproof Software), the same company that created the original Tetris for Game Boy and today act as the exclusive agent for The Tetris Company.
The project was officially announced as one of the first games in development for the GameBoy Advance and it was being funded and published by Nintendo themselves. It would have been one of their major titles to be shown at E3 2001, but that never happened: Hanasaki Gassen vanished and was forgotten forever by most Nintendo fans.
Unfortunately Nintendo never shown any image nor screenshots from this lost game. We tried to get in contact with former Blue Planet Software developers who worked on the game, but with no luck. The few details remaining to remember the existence of this cancelled project are a few online resumes.
“There were many factors that the AI needed to evaluate, and simulated annealing was used to allow the AI to learn strategies by playing itself overnight, adjusting its internal weights until the best strategy was found. The AI could thus adjust to changing game rules, and even discover new strategies! It was written in C++ with STL for the GBA.”
From this info and its japanese title we can speculate Hanasaki Gassen was going to be a flower-themed strategy game …with different type of flowers and seeds fighting against each other to conquer the garden? Its Artificial Intelligence could have been quite impressive and ambitious for a GBA game, with… enemies learning new strategies overnight while you were asleep? That sounds cool.
We hope one day we could save more details about Hanasaki Gassen and maybe some screenshots too. If you know someone who worked at Blue Planet Software, please let us know!
