Playstation 3 (PS3)

Ghetto Golf (IllFonic Ltd) [PC, PS3, Xbox 360 – Cancelled]

Ghetto Golf is a cancelled action/sport hybrid game in development at Illfonic Ltd from 2008 to 2010 for the download platforms of PC, Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. In this game, the player took the role of Vonte, a young guy trying to make a name for himself in an underground golf sport while fighting cops and rival gangs in the mean streets of Oakland.

The game was showed at the Game Developers Conference 2009 and MTV Multiplayer was able to see some gameplay:

Chuck Brungardt described the first game he’s ever developed — the one he was showing publishers and MTV Multiplayer behind closed doors last month in San Francisco — as “Happy Gilmore” meets “Friday.”

That’s a novel pitch. But may we propose a different description?

Try “Grand Theft Auto” meets “Tiger Woods PGA.”

“Ghetto Golf” has its roots in Oakland California where Raphael Saadiq, former star of 1990s R&B group Tony! Toni! Toné! used to play golf on the streets, improvising golf holes with whatever he could find.

Decades later, Saadiq has his own Denver-based video game company, Illfonic, co-founded by his studio engineer, Brungardt. Their first project is “Ghetto Golf,” a planned downloadable game featuring a scrappy young guy named Vonte in the Bay Area who has to find and complete tricky holes of golf that are set in the wilds of the city — and in the line of fire of gangsters, cops and enemy golfers.

“We thought this idea would be cool,” Brungardt said as he and Illfonic’s lead designer, Kedhrin Gonzalez, ran through a build of the game made from a mod of “Unreal Tournament 3” in a meeting room in San Francisco last month.

One of the playable scenes they showed involved the hero Vonte needing to use his exploding golf ball to blow up a car that someone was ghost-riding. The player could sheath Vonte’s machine gun, flick past his spiked golf ball and his rubber golf ball to try his explosive golf ball and aim it with a swing at the car.

(…) Brungardt estimated that players would spend about half an hour looking for each golf hole before getting the course layout, the par, tackling the challenge and sinking their shots. He described the flow as “Zelda“-like: explore the terrain and talk to other characters in order to find the dungeon/golf-hole.

At last, a game that asks its hero to knock trick shots through dumpsters, off of exploding gas stations — and woe to the disapproving hoodlums in the neighborhood who would interfere with this display of sport. They get machine-gunned.

Vonte’s success in this sport of underground golf brings him from the mean streets of not-Oakland to nicer neighborhoods where cops and hippies are obstructions. The climactic level, of course, will take place in a nice country club by which time our ghetto golfer will have arrived.

“Ghetto Golf” has myriad influences. The golf controls involve a thumbstick back-and-forth swing, the aiming or arced trajectories and other trappings of golf games. The shooting is third-person “Gears of War“-style combat. A fat caddy gives you some missions. Your golf cart can be tricked out. Throw a spoiler on it. Your guns can be upgraded, “like in ‘Resident Evil 4,'” Brungardt pointed out. Drugs — they’ll have to change this — can be taken to slow down time for precision aiming and invincibility.

“Ghetto Golf” exists now as an “Unreal Tournament 3″ mod. Illfonic wants a publisher to support its development into a standalone downloadable game for Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network, and Steam.”

After this presentation, the game nevertheless fell into obscurity and was briefly mentioned at the beginning of 2010 before being cancelled around 2011-2012 according to XBLAFans while interviewing Kedhrin Gonzalez:

“Little information has been released thus far regarding Illfonic’s marriage between a 9 iron and a TEC-9, though the developer’s website had previously listed Ghetto Golf targeting Xbox Live Arcade in 2012. When XBLAFans spoke with Illfonic Creative Director and Co-Founder Kedhrin Gonzalez last year we learned that the developer had placed the title on hold in order to focus on another XBLA project, arena-shooter Nexuiz.”

“We actually first started with another project, Ghetto Golf, but had to put it on the backburner,” Gonzalez stated. “Instead, we decided to take a trip down nostalgia lane with an Arena FPS game.”

Despite a potential attempt to relaunch the project on next-gen platforms, Ghetto Golf was definitively canceled due to a lack of publishers interested in the game.

Today, Illfonic specializes in the development of asymmetrical multiplayer games using a few well-known film licenses such as Friday the 13th, Predator and Ghostbusters.

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Ramayan 3392 A.D. [PS3,PC – Cancelled]

Ramayan 3392 A.D. [PS3,PC – Cancelled]

In 2007 Sony announced that they will add a new MMO to its collection on MMOs released to that time (Everquest).
On 10th August 2007 Sony announced that they will be developing new MMO in partnership with Virgin Comics. Game will be based on Ramayan 3392 A.D. comics released under Virgin Comics. It is a futuristic reinterpretation of indian mythology.
Sony signed a multiyear cooperation with the team behind the comics.

Virgin Comics cofounder and CEO Sharad Devarajan explained that the game’s cultural roots will help bring a fresh perspective to the genre.”

Ramayan 3392 A.D. is based on the ancient Sanskrit epic Ramayana. The story follows a
battle between humans and demons in a post-apocalyptic world. The comic was written by
Shamik Dasgupta with illustrations by Abhishek Singh, and was based on a story by author
Deepak Chopra and Elizabeth (1998) director Shekhar Kapur.

Ramayan 3392 A.D. was aimed for 2010 release. Until today, the game hasn’t been released and on most sites can be found its status on release date only as TBD.  

Ferrari Project (10Tacle Studios) [PC,Xbox 360,PS3 – Cancelled]

Ferrari Project (10Tacle Studios) [PC,Xbox 360,PS3 – Cancelled]

In 2007 Blimey! Games planned racing game with license from Ferrari on all of their cars for 10Tacle Studios. Development team was composed from skilled veterans that worked on games like GTR from SimBin and Richard Burns Rally. Few screenshots are still preserved but not much info could be found about this planned game. Screens looks very good for that time and show a promise of a true next gen racing.  

This Means War! (bigBIG Studios) [PS3, PSVita – Cancelled]

This Means War! Is a cancelled third person team-based shooter that was in early development by bigBIG Studios around 2009, planned to be released on Playstation 3 or PSVita. The team was mostly known for Pursuit Force and Little Deviants, but they worked with Sony on many more canned projects, such as Survive, Autorobotica and this one.

By looking at the only remaining images we speculate This Means War!’s gameplay could have been similar to Battalion Wars, possibly with a huge emphasis on team VS team online multiplayer. Players would have been able to use military weapons and vehicles to fight other teams on small spherical levels (somehow similar to Mario Galaxy planets). Many different character classes would have been available as DLC to be purchased on PSN, each one with different skills, appearance and nationality.

Unfortunately as far as we know This Means War! was never officially announced by Sony nor bigBig Studios, so we don’t have more details about the project and why it was never released. In 2012 Sony closed bigBIG Studios: some images from This Means War! are preserved in the gallery below to remember the existence of this lost project.

Thanks to Tonz for the contribution!

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Severity (Escalation Studios) [Cancelled – PS3, Xbox 360, PC]

Severity is a cancelled eSport-focused FPS that was in development around 2007 by Escalation Studios (later renamed to Bethesda Game Studios Dallas) in cooperation with John Romero and funded by the Cyberathlete Professional League. It was planned to be released on Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and PC.

As we can read in an old article published on FiringSquad:

“Mustaine told us that he already has a group of about 10 team members working on Severity and plans to expand that team to about 20 members in total.

Mustaine isn’t revealing much about the game itself at this stage but he did tell us that the game will be a mix of modern day and futuristic themes in terms of weapons and level settings. While the game will not have a lengthy single player experience except maybe for tutorial levels, he did say they did plan for AI bot play for people to practice offline.

Of course, creating a game for pro gaming tournaments means adding more features that will make the game better not just for the players but also for the spectators. In addition to support for tournament ladders and detailed stats for players, Mustaine told us that Severity has plans to expand its options for spectators, including in-game cameras that can be controlled by commentators and finding ways to display important stats to the spectators in order to get them more fully involved in the matches. Mustaine compared what they wanted to do to how professional poker matches became a huge draw among the general public thanks in part to how TV had commentators and stats for the poker matches. As far as Severity’s game modes, Mustaine told us that they are planning to have modes with different player speeds, different game physics and different weapon loadouts.”

Some more details can be found in an interview published by PSU:

“PSU: There have been beliefs floating around that the game will play exactly the same as Quake III Arena. If there’s a game with a similar gameplay style to Severity what game would it be?

Angel: It will not play identical to Quake 3 or any other game, but Quake 3 is definitely one of the major inspirations for the development team. Severity will have very unique characteristics and a rich visual environment, but it will also be a faced-paced game.

PSU: Will there be the ability to have cross-platform gaming? i.e. PlayStation 3 vs. Xbox 360 vs. PC gamers?

Angel: That is absolutely the plan!”

It seems Severity’s development was already canned or slowed down in 2008, as told by John Romero to That Gaming Site. Later Escalation Studios denied the game’s cancellation, but in the end it was never released anyway. After working on small projects such as Samba de Amigo on Wii and Doom Resurrection for iOS, in 2012 the team was acquired by 6waves Lolapps and then sold to ZeniMax Media in 2017 after they helped with the development of Rage and Doom reboot.

Thanks to Dan for the contribution!

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