Witchwood is a cancelled action adventure game that was in development from 1994 to 1996 by Team 17, the studio best known for the Worms series. The game would have been published by Ocean for Amiga and PC, but in 1995 moved to PC, Playstation, Saturn, and Jaguar. As noted by Hallfiry of the Betaarchive Forum, while working on Witchwood, Team 17 was also developing Speris Legacy; another action adventure similar to the Legend of Zelda games that was released on Amiga in 1996.
The reason for the project’s termination is as of yet unknown. One possibility is that Team 17’s publishing partner, Ocean, elected to drop the game’s funding in light of Speris’ apparently lacklustre sales; rather than risk making another loss.
Despite the game’s cancellation, its soundtrack was released by Team17 composer, Bjørn Lynne, in 1996, and a playable demo of Witchwood was leaked online some years ago: you can download it from Kult Game.
The original Medal of Honor was developed by DreamWorks Interactive and published by Electronic Arts for PlayStation in 1999. However, the project started life in late 1997, when Steven Spielberg pitched an idea for a new WW2 era first person shooter to DWI. When you complete all the missions in the game, you can unlock a bonus gallery that show an early prototype / beta version of the game, with different levels and 3D models. An official trailer for the game released in 1998 as an extra in Small Soldiers also show the removed Panzer Attack mission and a different HUD, in a version of the game with much more blood and gore than the final version. If you recently played Medal of Honor and you can notice more differences, leave a comment below!
Thanks to MicroChirp, LeHah and K Ill A Pinke for the contributions!
Bonk: Brink of Extinction is an adventure platformer developed by Pi Studios that was planned to be released in 2010 for XBLA / PSN / WiiWare. It was set to be priced at 1000 points on the Nintendo Wii Shop Channel’s WiiWare platform, 800 points on XBLA, and $10 on PSN. In September 2009, before the title was officially announced, a Neogaf user inadvertently stumbled upon an official fact-sheet for the game on Hudson’s website:
A doomsday comet, surrounded by smaller chunks of debris, is on a collision course with Earth. A strange magnetic field around the comet seems to be driving most of the planet’s weak-willed creatures crazy, and smaller bits of debris are smashing into the jungle near Bonk’s home. Bonk must undertake a perilous journey that will take him to the very center of the planet to save the world.
The Return Of The Most Widely Requested Classic Platformer
Story Mode with Co-Op play. Play alone or have a friend join you at any time!
An entire new adventure with Bonk as he swims, bites, climbs, jumps, runs, and head-butts his way through jungles, deserts and volcanic caverns
Search for help along the way: power ups, check points, and extra health are the staple for every adventuring caveman.
Transformations are back and weirder than ever! Now Bonk can transform himself into eight different forms by eating meat or encountering Primordial Jelly. No enemy is safe from the boy with the super noggin!
New Features
Online play for the first time in the series!
Classic 2D platforming in a 3D world.
Tons of collectibles will have you searching the entire prehistoric world.
In two 2009 interviews with Nintendo life, and Diehard GameFAN, Andrew Plempel (Hudson Entertainment Producer) & Jeremy Statz (Pi Studios Lead Designer), disclosed a few more details about the game:
The original Skies of Arcadia was released in late 2000 / early 2001 on Dreamcast, and soon became a cult hit among JRPG fans. The game was developed by Overworks, a SEGA team composed of numerous legendary developers and designers, including Rieko Kodama, Shuntarō Tanaka, and Noriyoshi Ohba; who worked on past RPGs, such as the Phantasy Star series, Magic Knight Rayearth, Wonder Boy in Monster Land and the Sakura Taisen series. Hype was high and the final game was really one of the best japanese RPGs released in the ‘00, but unfortunately, it seems that Skies of Arcadia did not sell enough on Dreamcast (does anyone have official sales numbers?), maybe because of the low user base and the console early departure in early 2001.
Sega was still confident about their sky-pirates project: they developed an enchanted PS2 and GameCube ports with added featured, to try to sell more copies and earn back some of the money spent to create the game. The GameCube version was released in December 2002 under the title “Skies of Arcadia Legends” but PS2 port was canned for some reasons, throwing away one of the biggest user base for RPG fanatics. As most Nintendo console, GameCube was not an easy console to sell third parties titles and with a lower percentage of people interested in turn based role playing games, Skies of Arcadia Legend bombed even harder than the Dreamcast version.
Before losing all faith in the game, Sega and Overworks were planning a sequel to Skies of Arcadia, as confirmed by interviews with developers from the original team. In June 2001IGN asked to Noriyoshi Ohba about Skies of Arcadia 2 and he replied:
We’re considering a sequel to “Eternal Arcadia.” Regarding which platform, we’re still evaluating it.
In September 2002, before Skies of Arcadia Legends was published, Rieko Kodama told to Gamespy that work on the sequel was not yet started, but they really wanted to do it in the future:
I would love to make a sequel, but were really not working on it yet. […] We don’t know what platform we would make a sequel for, but GameCube has priority since Legend is coming out for it.
In march 2004Ohba announced that they started some planning on the second episode:
The Skies of Arcadia sequel is in the planning stages at the moment.
In late 2004, Rieko talked again about Skies of Arcadia 2 in an interview with german Man!ac magazine (issue 1 / 2005) in which she said:
MAN!AC: There were rumors about a sequel (to Skies of Arcadia) or a “Gaiden” episode. Can you tell us something about that
Rieko : We had plans, but the other team members are currently working on other projects such as “Sakura Taisen” – this means SoA2 is currently on hold. Anyway I would be very glad about a new episode with the sky pirates.
In 2003 Overworks was absorbed into SEGA WOW and only a year later the team was split again because of another Sega company restructure: people that worked on Skies of Arcadia were scattered around on different games. As far as we were able to gather, not much was ever did for Skies of Arcadia 2 but at least a few ideas and concepts seem to have been brainstormed by the team, still hoping to release a sequel on GameCube or Playstation 2. In 2006 Nintendo and Sony released their new consoles (Wii, PS3) and whichever plans Sega had for a new Skies RPG on GameCube or PS2 will never see the light of day.
Even without a sequel, love for Skies of Arcadia is still strong at Sega. Vyse, Aika and Fina, three of the main SoA protagonists, were added as bonus characters in Valkyria Chronicles, released in 2008 on PS3. Vyse is also a playable character in Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed, released in 2012 for different consoles / PC and one of the game’s tracks, Rogues’ Landing, is based on Skies of Arcadia’s world.
Legacy of Kain: Dead Sun is a cancelled a PS3 / Xbox 360 / PS4 and PC single-player action adventure game developed by Climax Studio, that was intended to mark the return of the Legacy of Kain series. The title was first leaked in 2013 by NeoGAF user, Mama Robotnik, in an extensive research thread about the many canceled games of the series throughout the years. According to his research, the production of Dead Sun began sometime between 2009 and 2010 with some supervision from Crystal Dynamics and was subject to strict NDA terms that prevented the developers from discussing any details of their work in the project.
Development and Cancellation
It seems that Square Enix laid down several requirements, which the title had to adhere to, such as being single-player with a multi-player component. The new main characters and a story set apart from the original series would have been an idea by game director Sam Barlow and Climax, because of the difficulty to follow LoK’s intricate storyline. Climax Studio worked on the production of the single-player game, while the multi-player was being developed independently by Psyonix Games.
The single-player game went through several name changes: the known codename was ‘Blackcloth‘, as it is referred in the teaser, to later settle with title Dead Sun. The multi-player, on the other hand, was the basis for what later would evolve into Nosgoth, the online mutiplayer game that Square Enix finally released.
The development went through several stages, initially intended as a small project to be released on Xbox 360 and PS3, even if a former developer wrote on NeoGaf:
That’s the only info that I think is wrong. It was never a downloadable game, not as long as I worked on it. Always intended as AAA. Same with the PS4 launch thing – it was intended for cross gen, all systems.
By the time it was cancelled for “old gen consoles” it was being considered as a potential launch title for PS4. This is namely one of the reasons for its cancellation in the first place, as was stated by the source that contacted Mama Robotnik to reveal further details of the project:
– This game was pushing the 360 and PS3 to the limit. A combination of sheer level scale, the twin realm mechanic and the ageing Unreal 3 engine meant it was a struggle to get this running to an acceptable level. A commitment to next gen would have possibly seen the game avoid the chop as we would have been freed from some hefty technical restraints that were holding the game back in a number of areas, including the visuals. Conversely, I can see why switching to next gen would have made the numbers even less attractive to SE top brass, given the far smaller install base.
– Having just finished Shadow of Mordor, which I found hugely enjoyable, I have to say it was eerily similar to the open world (hub as we termed them) areas of Dead Sun. From the art style, to the switching worlds, the environment traversal, character ability progression, combat and numerous other aspects, SOM was incredibly close to half the game we were making.
– The Dungeons were the other half. Given how much work obviously went into SOM, one of the most polished games I’ve played, I think Dead Sun was too ambitious, which probably also contributed to it getting the axe. It would have been a monster of a game – the wetlands hub area you’ve already seen was just one of 3 or 4 entirely different open hub areas, never mind the various dungeons that were planned. They all had distinctively different looks, puzzles and boss fights. The team wasn’t big enough to pull that lot off in a reasonable time frame, to the quality level required of a AAA release.
– Which is all a great shame, as the design of the game was excellent and meticulously thought through. Whilst not a straight sequel to previous LOK games, and not featuring previous favourite characters, it had more than enough depth and references to previous games to both satisfy (most) fans and really bring the LOK series back to life in a modern format. It was certainly a lot more than a re-skinned Assassin’s Creed or Batman, even if it did share some aspects with those games. But there we go, the vagaries of the games industry. Those design docs will still be around somewhere at Climax (or possibly elsewhere) – all it would take is someone with a spare $100 million or so and that’d see it up and running.”
In 2012, Square Enix decided to stop production since the title was no longer forecast to meet sales expectations, with some doubts about the game’s quality and its overambitious features. Due to the amount of work that went into this project, there was a lot of frustration among members of the team when it was canceled. Allegedly, certain members of the team weren’t informed of the decision and kept working on it after the cancellation.
Story
The story was set in the distant future of Nosgoth; not being a direct sequel of the previous games, but taking place in a similar universe as the Soul Reaver games, to became a reboot of the series. The game would have introduced a new clan of vampires called ‘the Saradin’, who were much closer in appearance to the ancient vampires than their ancestors from Soul Reaver. The Saradin also had very similar powers to that of Raziel, being able to move freely between the material and spectral realms.
Dead Sun’s narrtive revolved around two main characters, Gein and Asher, who were Saradin vampire and human respectively. It would have began when Gein attacks Asher’s village, slaughering many, including Asher and his pregnant wife.
One of the main themes explored in the story would have been fertility. The human race in Dead Sun was inexplicably suffering from infertility and the fact that Asher and his wife were able to conceive a child is recognised being of great significance, as later revealed by Gein, the very reason of their deaths.
Unexpectedly, after Gein feeds off Asher’s soul, Asher becomes trapped in Gein’s body. The game would have featured both characters in the body of one; a unique creature with the body of a vampire and the soul of a human. Their quest to discover the reasons behind Asher’s assassination and who was behind it would eventually have led to a it more close tying in with the original Legacy of Kain lore. Another significant topic was religion and how this influenced human rituals and their interaction with vampires.
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