Beta + Cancelled Others Video Games - Page 80 of 172

Deep Cover was a first-person shooter being developed by Looking Glass Technologies and Irrational Games in the 1999 to 2000 period. During the development of System Shock 2, the Looking Glass team began work on a new game which would take the concepts of Thief: The Dark Project into a modern setting. Using the Dark Engine originally developed for Thief, the spy-espionage game took on the title of Deep Cover.

“Deep Cover was slated to be one of the coolest games to leave the studio. It was a gritty 1960’s cold war spy action-adventure that had the elegance of thief and the depth of system shock 2.”

The game was set to incorporate more interactive elements into the Thief and System Shock pallet with a faction system which would react based on how the player decided to complete a mission, though the missions themselves had a set order of progression.

Extraction: Berlin, East Germany Sector, 1958. A top German scientist has developed a deadly biological weapon that could threaten the Soviet-American nuclear détente. Jon must find out who this scientist is, and extract the scientist out of Eastern-block Germany (willing or not).
Infiltration: Alabama, 1961. Word has it that a Soviet mole has worked his way into a chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. Infiltrate the Klan enclave, find out who the mole is and get out alive.
Surveillance: Cuba, October 1962. Jon infiltrates an installation near Havana to photograph alleged Soviet nuclear SS-4 missiles.
Interdiction: Dallas, 1963. Your information is vague but you must act fast. A group of Cuban nationalists are going to try to kill President Kennedy. Find your way into the book repository and stop them.
Assassination: Bulgaria, 1964. The Turkish Undersecretary of Defense has been selling documents to Moscow. He must be eliminated before he can make a critical drop. An elite squad of Turkish terror troops heavily guards him.

Irrational and Looking Glass shared equal parts of this project, with the former hiring on staff and the latter seeking investment for the project. Ken Levine put together a story and a design doc for the project to follow, reviving the Cold War theme seen in one of his pre-Thief concepts and inspired by John Le Carre’s story “The Spy Who Came From the Cold”.

Among the level designers were Nate Blaisdell, Edward J. Moore III, Michael Swiderek, Steve Kimura (all of whom had no prior design experience) as well as Paul Hellquist, Rick Ernst, Nathan Wells, and Michael Ryan who posted screenshots of the unannounced game online in 2002 as well as implemented a search-light system into the Dark Engine. Other developers connected to the project included Ian Vogel and Alexx Kay. The lead programmer on the project had worked at Looking Glass previously and was called back by Ken Levine to work on Deep Cover.

“When I was at Irrational, I worked on Deep Cover, which was System Shock meets JFK. Hacking closets, feeding attack dogs sleep drugged meat.”

Concurrently with this development though, both companies were attempting to manage their own affairs separately. Looking Glass was having trouble paying Irrational due to the former’s financial difficulties, causing the latter to seek out contract work in November of 1999, beginning work on a project which would eventually become the Playstation 2 game The Lost. Looking Glass were also working on Thief 2, which ended up featuring some of the code originally intended for Deep Cover.

There were going to be multiple factions… depending on how you played each mission, you could make different groups pleased or disappointed. Later missions would be affected by this. while there wasn’t going to be an overall branching mission structure, each mission in the game could be changed in minor ways that would affect the flow and difficulty. – Michael ‘solus’ Ryan

After 9 months of work on Deep Cover, Looking Glass managed to procure a major publisher: Microsoft, who expected the studio to collaborate with Irrational Games on the title. However, Irrational were moving out of the Looking Glass offices and devoting their time to The Lost, leaving Looking Glass to work on the contract alone. Disappointed, their publisher pulled out of the one million dollar deal in February of 2000, leaving the project on the verge of cancellation.

“When Irrational Games pulled out of the Deep Cover project, the publisher pulled out as well, together with a lot of calculated advances. This put Looking Glass into a very bad position concerning liquidity.” – Tim Stellmach

Work did continue on Deep Cover after Irrational’s departure. The studio attempted to negotiate a deal with Sony to keep the studio and the project afloat, but a restructuring within Sony caused their executive contact to be fired. The lead programmer described at least one level in a playable prototype state prior to a switch from the Dark Engine to a successor technology called the “Siege Engine”, which none of the available screenshots showcase. After his departure, the former lead programmer of British Open Championship Golf was brought on, who also was an expert on the JFK Assassination.

The closing of Looking Glass Technologies in May of 2000 put an end to Deep Cover, and subsequently migrated much of the talent over the industry. In a basic thematic sense, the spy theme with the Looking Glass style of freedom would re-emerge in Deus Ex which was released shortly before the studio dissolved.

The following screenshots were taken from very early versions of the levels… before any gameplay was implemented, and well before Looking Glass decided to switch from the Dark Engine to the Siege Engine. – Michael ‘solus’ Ryan

Article by AguyinaRPG

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Others, PC / MAC

NEXUS 2 / WARP [PC – Cancelled]

monokoma

21-03-2016

1 Comment

Nexus: The Jupiter Incident was a sci-fi RTS game developed by Hungarian-based Mithis Entertainment, published by HD Interactive on PC in 2004 (you can still buy it with the latest updates on Steam). While the game did not sell well at the time, it still gathered a cult following of fans, thanks to its different approach to strategy space battles. Soon after releasing Nexus, Mithis started the development of a sequel, but due to the descending market of strategy titles, it was conceived as an action oriented space combat game, with the ability of traveling in a vast galaxy from planet to planet. Seeing the differences from the original Nexus, HD Interactive decided that it would have been better to use a different name and the team reused the title of one of the test prototypes from their first game: WARP. The old W.A.R.P. prototype was a failed proposal for a fighter-pilot based version of the original Nexus, designed when the project was in development limbo and they tought to change its gameplay. In 2005 Mithis developed an early demo for Nexus 2 / WARP, but unfortunately the original Nexus was not selling enough and the market seemed to be too small not only for space-strategy games but for space games in general. So eventually HD decided not to risk it further and they cancelled the Nexus 2 / WARP reboot project. This was the end of the original Nexus saga by Mithis.

On August 2011 Most Wanted Entertainment (a team founded by former Mithis developers) tried to pitch another, different sequel to Nexus on the crowdfunding website GamesPlant, but without luck. In september 2012 they tried again with a campaign on Kickstarter, under the title of “Nexus 2: The Gods Awaken”, failing again to reach their goal. Everything seemed lost, but in September 2015 Nordic Games acquired the intellectual property of Nexus so we can speculate that they could resurrect this series in the future, as it already happened with the lost chapter in the Aquanox series.

Super thanks to Nordic Games for the contribution!

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Others, PC / MAC

Frontier (Origin Systems) [PC – Cancelled Pitch]

LazyFace

14-03-2016

1 Comment

Frontier is a lost PC game pitched by Warren Spector to Origin Systems with a planned to ship date of Q2 ’94, and was described as a system simulation of the taming of the old west. The high concept of this game was that the player would be a pioneer and they would have to explore and settle a new nation. The player would have to choose what route they would take, the Oregon Trail, the Santa Fe Trail, what time of the year they would travel, how many settlers would travel with them and where they would eventually stop.

Once the player had decided where to settle they would then choose what they would like their settlers to specialize in like farming, mining or becoming a rancher. The player would then have numerous natural disasters they would have to deal with like earthquakes and floods, natural predators, “Indians” (Native Americans), and what is described as “bad men”. There would also be NPC players that would be direct competition to the player.

The players initial goal was to attract new settlers to their settlement so that they can start a community and make a prosperous new town, this would lead to trains stopping at the town, mail routes, and banks. Ultimately the goal was to attract the county seat and then the state capital so that your settlement could request to become a state, but the player could decide how they would get there, striving to keep their settlers happy or becoming a rich tycoon.

Interestingly this game was pitched as more of an educational game that was akin Civilization, Sim City and Railroad Tycoon, they were looking to attract the audience of these games but were also looking at it being utilized in schools. This would have been Origin’s first simulation, and as far as I can see this game went no further than this pitch document.

Many thanks to Joe Martin for the document.

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Others, PC / MAC, Playstation, Sony

P.I.G. (Team 17) [Playstation, PC – Cancelled]

monokoma

29-02-2016

2 Comments

P.I.G. is an interesting 3D platform adventure game that was in development by Team 17 for Playstation and PC, with a planned release in spring 1999. The project was started around 1996, following Mario 64 and the 3D platform craze of the late ‘90, but even with some great premises PIG was cancelled after more than 2 years of development. The only proof of existence of this game seems to be its announcement in an old Team 17 special in Total Control magazine issue 1 (November 1998), where the studio shown many of the projects they were working on, along with Phoenix, Stunt Gran Prix, Project WM and Worms Armageddon.

P.I.G.’s gameplay would have followed similar style of popular games in the same genre as Banjo Kazooie, with the main character being a pig named George, working as a private investigator (this explain the title’s acronym: Private Investigator George) hired to solve the mysterious disappearance of a bunch of piglets, kidnapped by the evil Dr. Gotem in the strange and puzzle filled Fun Dazzle Magic Land theme park.

8 main themed areas (as Mars, the Arctic, Fairy Tales, a Volcano, etc.) were planned and each theme was subdivided into 3 or 4 sub-levels, filled with areas to explore, traps and puzzles, giving a total of around 40 different environments to play in. Lots of different minigames were also available to players, as arcade machines featuring PIG-style versions of some classic games and surreal sections where George was swallowed by a giant pumpkin lantern or shrunk to minute size. George would have used different outfits for each area climate, for example by wearing a sweater and wool hat in the snow level, and more than 60 NPCs (between enemies to fight and friends to help) would have moved around the world.

While this kind of gameplay could not be the most interesting one by today’s standard, back in the day when 3D platform-adventures were some of the most loved games, PIG could really have been a hit. After its reveal in Total Control Magazine, the project seems to have been vanished forever and there are no more info available on its features or why it was cancelled. In an interview by MCV with Team 17 Co-Founder & CEO Debbie Bestwick, she remember how in late ‘90 the huge success of Worms made them to lose sight of how to develop other great games, and they lost a lot of money on a series of unreleased projects:

“For around ten of the past 25 years, all of them ironically post-Worms launching, we came so close to losing the business numerous times due to game slippage, less than smart business decisions and publisher traumas. Worms changed everything about the company in 1995. Prior to that we were doing some very cool stuff – similar to what we are doing right now actually – with amazing games talent from around the world and I often wonder what else we would have done had Worms not landed. We should have stayed true to what we had been doing, but overnight nothing mattered but Worms. We really thought we were superstars and everything we touched would turn to gold, but the reality was that a lot of money was wasted on games that were never released. These included Rollcage, Allegiance, Witchwood, P.I.G, and so many more I won’t mention. I’d say, looking back now, that the Worms IP was as much a Godsend as a poison chalice.”

Thanks to Ross Sillifant for the contribution! If you know someone that worked on this game and could help to preserve more screens or videos, please let us know!

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Others, PC / MAC

10th Planet (Bethesda) [PC – Cancelled]

monokoma

12-01-2016

6 Comments

10th Planet was an ambitious space combat simulator in development as a co-venture between Bethesda Softworks (you know, the studio that published The Elder Scrolls series) and Centropolis Production, two names that in the mid / late ’90 meant an high value game and lots of hype. Centropolis is a film production company founded in 1985 by Roland Emmerich, behind such popular movies as Stargate and Independence Day.

Another small company named “XL Translab” was hired to create high quality cinematics for the game’s intro and the story that was handled by the same Hollywood team that produced ID4. Here’s a short teaser from the game’s auto demo:

Somewhere beyond the orbit of Pluto, a planet full of aliens is waiting. In a centuries long orbit, this 10th planet is heading toward earth. Only your brilliant strategies and expert piloting can destroy the alien invaders. Based upon the Xngine, which provides a true 3D environment for real time space combat.

10th Planet was in development at least since 1995 and Bethesda acquired XL Translab in December 1997, possibly because they were impressed by the FMV they created for the game. The project was briefly shown in Next Generation magazine on February 1997, were they called it “the coolest space combat sim since TIE Fighter“. Bethesda planned to recreate space battles against large sci-fi armies and huge alien ships, similar to the ones seen in Independence Day, but unfortunately something went wrong and 10th Planet had to be cancelled.

A former Bethesda developer remember that the cinematics created by XL Translab were beautiful for their time, but costed a lot of money and made the real time game on the Xngine to look ugly in comparison :

yeah I remember sitting in the Bethesda theatre and seeing what you produced. It looked great if we were going to produce a new TV show but unfortunately it probably killed the product. How on earth were we ‘the game artists’ supposed to recreate the world you were selling. Too much time and money was wasted on this trailer.

At the moment we don’t know how much of the game was completed before the cancellation, if you worked on this lost project, please let us know!

Thanks to Sam Jones for the contribution!

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