Orb is a cancelled puzzle game that was in development by Blitz Games Studios for Playstation 2. Gameplay would have been similar to Kororinpa, Marble Madness, and the Super Monkey Ball series: you had to move a ball around strange mazes, while pressing switches to open doors and resolving other environmental hazards to reach the goal.
The team created a playable prototype but in the end Orb was never completed. We can speculate they did not find a publisher interested in funding the project so it had to be canned to switch resources to other PS2 titles such as Taz: Wanted, The Fairly OddParents!: Breakin’ da Rules and Bad Boys: Miami Takedown.
Mars Adventure (AKA “Saturn3054: The Titan Rescue”) is a cancelled action game that was in development around 1994 – 1995 by Sony Imagesoft, planned to be one of their first in-house projects for the original PlayStation. In 1994 Playstation hardware was still a prototype: all of the documentation was in Japanese and 3D console games were something new and hard to develop. Mars Adventure was an eleven-person team project and their first 3D game: unfortunately they were not able to complete it.
Gameplay was inspired by classic Choplifter and it would have been a first / third person, 360° flying game: you can imagine it somehow similar to Descent or G-Police, but its main mission was saving people from aliens. As we can read on Kyle Rode’s website:
“Since I was the only actual game player on the team, I quickly took control of the game design task, and I started to write up the game design document. At this point, the original Doom was the only game on the market that had any similarity to a 3D game, and it was actually a 2-1/2 D game, at that. Later, during development, Descent came out, and it was similar to what we were trying to accomplish.
The basic premise of “Mars…” was “Choplifter/(Fort Apocalypse)” on Mars or Titan or whatever. The player flew a spaceship around a space colony on Mars, and would rescue the people from the alien invaders. The spaceship would have a close proximity teleporter, which would suck them up into the ship’s cargo hold. The close proximity was the reason why the space marines couldn’t just do it from the mothership ala Star Trek.
I liked the idea of rescuing people as the main focus of the game play, instead of shooting up baddies. The act of rescuing would require that the ship stay motionless for a short period of time, while the transport occurred. This would open the player up to danger from the aliens. Also, when shooting up an environment, if you weren’t careful, there was always the chance that you might kill some good guys in addition to the aliens.
Unfortunately, the Playstation development kits that we received from Sony corporate in Japan, were a couple of months late, and the documentation was in Japanese. We even received the dev kits after third-party developers outside of Sony. Also, the Japanese documentation made them pretty worthless.”
By looking at prototype footage from the game it would have been quite amazing for its time, with huge levels where you could fly in every direction and fluid 3D graphics.
The Insider: Back in Black is a cancelled adventure game that was in development for PC between 1998 and 2001 by french company Dramaera (AKA In-Visio or Dæsign). The game’s protagonist was Simon Blurr, an international thief in search of new pieces for his private art collection. Set in 1920s Paris, The Insider was conceived as an ambitious exploration – simulation game, where each character had its own live and emotions, artificial intelligence and daily routine, probably following an internal clock.
Players could move around different buildings of Paris to plan their next robbery, by observing streets, houses, museums and people who live in them. French publisher Canal+Multimédia was initially supporting the team, but in March 2000 they closed their relationship with Dramaera because their project was not proceeding as expected. As we can read on Mobygames:
“The company then signed a contract with index+ in June 2000 with an investment for the game and an additional financial promise to cover the costs to port the game to the PlayStation 2. The companies knew each other well, as Réunion des Musées Nationaux had tasked Dramæra to create the game Paris 1313: The Mystery of Notre-Dame Cathedral, published by index+.
A few weeks after the contract however, index+ was sold to Wanadoo Edition. The relationship quickly deteriorated when Wanadoo decided to focus on more mainstream products. The Insider, the project Dramæra had been working since 1998 with an investment of € 900,000, was to be turned into a classic adventure game with a new team. Jean-Noël Portugal refused and because of this the studio ran into financial troubles at the end of 2001.”
We don’t know how much of the game was dove before its cancellation, but it would be interesting to see a prototype leaked one day, to understand what the team was able to achieve.
Aero-Cross is a cancelled sequel to Namco’s classic Metro-Cross, a racing-platform game that was released in arcades in 1985. This new chapter planned PlayStation 3 Network and Xbox 360 Live Arcade was announced in 2011 and it would have been released for the “Namco Generations” series, conceived to modernize some of their classic titles, such as Pac-Man Championship Edition DX and Galaga Legions DX.
Aero-Cross would have followed the same gameplay as the original, with players running in linear levels trying to avoid obstacles and collecting items (but this time in a sci-fi setting). In the end the project was officially cancelled in 2012 along with the other missing Namco Generations title: Dancing Eye HD. Luckily in this case a playable demo for Aero-Cross was found by Ganonthegreat on an old PS3 demo-disc, and shared online on Archive.org
They is a cancelled survival mystery-horror FPS that was in development for PC, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 by polish videogame developer Metropolis Software, founded in 1992 by Adrian Chmielarz and Grzegorz Miechowski. In 1997 the studio acquired the license of “The Witcher” from Andrzej Sapkowski, however, they ceded it around 2000 to CD Project as they were already worked on 3 games at the same time (one of them being the cult-following turn-based rpg game “Gorky 17“).
Metropolis started working on They between 2005 and 2006 and officially announced it at the Game Convention 2007, but CD Projekt acquired the studio in 2008. The majority of the team was then taken over to work on “The Witcher” series and in the end Metropolis were subsequently closed in 2009.
One of the most interesting mechanics conceived for They was its weapons customization system: you only had a single weapon, which could have been modified, upgraded and designed with hundreds of different items. The PC Action magazine mentioned “a large amount of over 250 upgrades and design parts“, including stickers and logos. As we can read on Destructoid:
“Throughout the game, weapon body-parts and plug-ins will frequently crop up for the collecting. Maybe they’ll be part of a boss’ arsenal, dropped when you kill it, or you might just find them lying around in the aftermath of a battle. However you get hold of them, they can be put together, Lego-style, and tweaked and tuned to make a gun to do whatever the player can think up.”
“Every variety of gunfire, from single-shot, to machine gun, to explosive, to laser, to pretty much anything else you can think of can be blended and combined with however many others you want, along with all kinds of special properties such as fire, ice, lighting, and God knows what else. On top of that, there are loads of little adaptations to be had in the way of reload speed, shot frequency, blast damage etc. You want a rapid-fire electro-shotgun with exploding shells? You’ve got it. Grenade launcher with freezing ammo and your choice of blast radius and trajectory? Why not?”
We also know from IGN’s preview, levels in They would have been partially destructible, to let players create new ways of moving around:
“Of course, this being the next generation and all, it’s possible to destroy some buildings with a well placed grenade or two which, interestingly, is more than a simple aesthetic gimmick – laying waste to buildings uncovers shortcuts through levels and even secret power-ups. However, it’s worth remembering that being hit by falling debris is seriously bad for your health so take precautions. “
Metropolis Software’s philosophy with the weapon customization system was detailed in an interview on GGMania:
“Q: You announced a unique weapon feature, where you are able to upgrade a flexible weapon to your individual needs. Can you tell us a bit more about that?
A: Without naming so many things of the weapon yet, you might think of a soldier in every war. He only wears some few weapons – mostly knife, gun and maybe pistol. Common FPS games are really unrealistic in that point of view, that a soldier is really able to wear 10 more or less heavy guns at the same time (or he must be HULK to carry them all). In THEY you will have this one weapon, where you identify yourself with, which you can customize and enhance it based on YOUR needs and preferences! You will be able to store setups, so you have the expected control system with keys 1-0 to have access to different types of weapon setups – but it still will be YOUR buddy, YOUR best friend, YOUR WEAPON. The appearance will change dramatically, but you are still able to identify yourself with the weapon. So what we will bring to the genre is some more realistic and believable approach in sort of weapon handling. The fear of players, to have only one gun can be easily refuted, as you have hundreds of combinations which you can store and customize at your own discretion – to create YOUR perfect weapon setup, store it to the expected keys 1-0 and have access to them at all time! So each player will have the weapons of HIS choice, a large variation to be used based on needed functions (gameplay relevant decision!) and need not to get along with standard weapons – this is something unique and new to the genre and will grant more freedom for each player! On the other hand, if someone WANTS’ his standard “pumpgun/rifle/Ak47” feeling, he is able to create that…but when he will figure out the fun and possibilities from our new weapon system he will get used to it soon.”
Weapon customization was essential, because you would fight against some weird and stealthy alien / robot creatures in a “not so distant future”. The setting was a destroyed English city and the main plot was told by a little, mysterious boy.
“Set in near-future London in a world crippled by increasingly severe terrorist attacks, THEY follows the story of a British soldier during the emergence of a new global threat. An army of robots has appeared and begun laying waste to everything around it, and while everyone has assumed that a new terrorist faction is behind it all, it will eventually turn out that things are a lot more complicated than that. The robots are far more intelligent in their combat tactics than anyone can believe possible, and seem to be able to work together without any visible signs of communication. Needless to say, humanity is taking a serious kicking to the face, and it’s during one of these kickings that the player’s story starts.”
“The game will take in around twelve levels, and IMC/Metropolis were keen to point out that they’re taking an episodic structure to the game’s story. Taking their model from shows like Heroes and The X-Files, they’ll be making each level work as an individual episode, but will be building a bigger overall story arc as the game progresses.”
We can only hope one day someone could find a playable version of They, so it could be preserved online.
Thanks to Sam and Daniel Nicaise and for the contributions!
This website uses cookies to improve your experience, by continuing to browse the site you are agreeing to the use of cookies. Find out more about cookies.Hide
Privacy & Cookies Policy
Privacy Overview
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
