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Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver is a third-person adventure game developed by Crystal Dynamics and published by Eidos. It was released for the PlayStation and PC in 1999 and for the Sega Dreamcast in 2000. Soul Reaver entered development alongside Blood Omen 2: Legacy of Kain in 1997 and focused on puzzle solving instead of Blood Omen 2’s action.

Initially, the game was set to be released October 1998. The secondary release date was then made January 1999. Due to the game still remaining unfinished. It was granted a final delay of approximately 7 months which then, the game went gold in July 1999 and subsequently got released August 1999.

Unfortunately, these delays occurred because the game wasn’t progressing quickly enough in terms of asset creation to fulfill their original vision for Soul Reaver. Several interviews suggested the designers noticed they had an overly designed game thus had no option but to remove certain areas of the game.

Some removed areas are known as:

Under City
“Turel’s Territory”(Must confirm the exact name)
Mountain Retreat

Amy Hennig stated that the development team split the original, much larger plans in two after realizing that they had “over-designed the game”. This decision explains Soul Reaver’s cliffhanger ending and the appearance of originally planned material in later games. Despite the split, Hennig explained that the team left unused components in Soul Reaver’s game engine to avoid unforeseen glitches that might have arisen from their removal. [Infos from Wikipedia] This is why certain reavers are accessible even though they are not actually obtainable on the retail version.

As we can read in this interesting article from The Lost Worlds, many items, weapons and areas were removed / not used in the final game, as the Amplified Force Projectile & Possession abilities, The Amplified Reaver and The Ariel Reaver weapons, Five additional Reaver upgrades and the The Mountain Retreat area. You should check the Lost Worlds article for more informations, it’s really well done!

Thanks to John Doom for the contribution!

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Alpha: July 1998

Alpha: January 1999

Beta: 12th May 1999

Beta: 28th June 1999

Others, PC / MAC, Playstation, Sony

Blood Bowl [PSX/PC – Cancelled]

monokoma

14-06-2009

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Blood Bowl is a cancelled sport / action game that was in development by Psygnosis for the original Playstation and PC in 1998. The gameplay could have been something like Speedball or Mutant League Football. The project was stopped when the company went into financial troubles, before being bought out by Sony. It’s interesting to notice that Psygnosis’ Blood Bowl was probably based on the board game of the same name and two other Blood Bowl games were released by other companies in 1995 and 2009.

Thanks to Celine for the contribution!

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GameCube, Microsoft, Nintendo, Playstation 2 (PS2), Sony, Xbox

Wreck’n Krew [XBOX / GC / PS2 – Cancelled]

monokoma

14-06-2009

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Wreck’n Krew was an action game that was in development at DarkBlack for the GameCube, Playstation 2 and XBOX. As we can read from the original press release the game was a highly explosive arcade blast fest, that mixed Blast Corps, Power Stone and Bomber Man. The player would had take the role of a team of demolition experts hired to take on dangerous and dirty jobs, to destroy everything in the level but have to complete certain mission-based tasks within a time limit in order to unlock hidden areas, special characters, and the next location waiting to be ripped apart.

It seems that the developers had to closed down, maybe because they did not find a publisher interested in their projects (this game and Asylum) and so Wreck’n Krew was cancelled. (And no, i dont know why one of the characters looks like Gary Coleman.)

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Microsoft, Playstation 2 (PS2), Sony, Xbox

Space Quest [XBOX PS2 – Cancelled]

monokoma

11-06-2009

2 Comments

Space Quest was an action adventure / platform game that was in development in 2003 at Escape Factory for the Playstation 2 and XBOX. The project was cancelled when fundings were cut, probably because they though that the game was not going to be enough profitable to finish it.

Thanks to Hey Hey and to TnS for the contribution!

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Videos:

Microsoft, Playstation 2 (PS2), Sony, Xbox

Konami’s Moto-X [XBOX / PS2 – Cancelled]

monokoma

10-06-2009

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Konami’s Moto-X was going to be a postapocalyptic motorcycle combat game, that was in development by Konami in 2002, for the original XBOX and the Playstation 2. The game had six different riders with different strengths / bikes, hand-to-hand combat, weapon-based combat and various multiplayer modes. The game was later cancelled as many other car-combat games, probably because the fad about this genre was already over.

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