Sphinx & the Cursed Mummy is a great 3D platformer launched on the PS2, Xbox, and Gamecube with a Java iteration released shortly after. The game, despite receiving critical acclaim, failed to reach mainstream appeal and sold poorly. A sequel was in the cards for Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy, but it never came to fruition.
After years of waiting for a potential comeback of Sphinx, Ex-Eurocom employees formed the Eight Pixels Square to work on a mobile instalment. This instalment, however, differed from its 3D counterpart. From the prototype demo found online, we can see the game was going to be an infinite runner-type of game. The player would be tasked with guiding the mummy through endless corridors by swiping on the mobile screen. Unfortunately, this attempt by Eight Pixels Square to reach a broader audience, and potentially revive the franchise was met with cancellation. All that remains is a short demo gameplay uploaded on Vimeo by Jose Luis Garcia Camara.
Very few information exist about this game as, to this day, no video games magazines featured it on Archive.org, and no reason were given about why it was cancelled. We can speculate that it was the purchase of Malibu Comics by Marvel, of which Malibu Interactive was a subsidiary, that happened in 1994 that caused to shutdown the game company, and thus, cancelling the title in the process.
A first prototype of the game leaked in 2009 containing 5 playable levels and we can read more details about its gameplay here:
As far as gameplay goes, Prime is a pretty standard side-scrolling Beat-‘Em-Up in the mold of Final Fight, which shouldn’t come as a surprise if you were playing video games in 1994.
Malibu Interactive did a pretty good job on that front. Maximum Carnage seems to be the bar they set out to beat, and while you don’t get to whip people around with Spider-Man’s webs, they do give Prime a few neat attacks to keep things interesting — or as interesting as one of video games’ most repetitive genres gets, anyway.
One button makes Prime punch, often with a combo that’s a dead ringer for Cody’s in Final Fight, but powered by ridiculously huge arms instead of ultra-tight acid wash jeans. And while you don’t get to actually fly during any of the fighting levels, you do get a double jump that’s useful in exactly one area. Another button gives you an alternate kick attack that begins with the most awkward wind-up ever and ending with a stiff-leg kick square in the junk, complete with an impact burst exploding out of the bad guy’s crotch.
In addition to the standard chuck-an-enemy-across-the-screen, Prime also gives you the ability to throw them towards the background or foreground. It’s a trick lifted from the later-era TMNT games, but they pull it off pretty well here by adding something that the comics of the era specialized in: explosions.
Explosions are a recurring theme in the game, and you get to most of them by throwing enemies at everything possible just to see what happens. The car in the foreground, the fire hydrant in the background and the windows on the building can all be broken when you toss an enemy at them, usually resulting in an explosion even when it’s a fire hydrant. It’s also pretty nice that the backgrounds have areas (like the windows and the occasional boarded-up door) that are destructible, although owing to the game’s unfinished status, the destruction will occasionally result in a glowing purple square of nothingness.
So at this point, we’ve got guys in tank tops, crotch-kicks and exploding cars, and for the Streets of Rage aficionado, that’s all pretty standard stuff. Prime is also equipped with two special abilities that allow him to deal with these horrors. For one, as seen above, he walks just like WWE chairman Vince McMahon. And for the second, his super attack, which allows him to blow up like a balloon until he explodes.
An almost finished version leaked later on the internet.
The game was eventually released on the Sega CD under the name Ultraverse Prime in 1995.
The game used pre-rendered sprites for characters and background created with Silicon Graphics, similar to games such as Killer Instinct and Donkey Kong Country, and was mentionned in numerous previews from video game magazines, most of them were less than enthusiastic regarding the quality of the title. For instance, in issue #083 of Gamepro from June 1996, journalist Scary Larry wrote for the Genesis/MegaDrive version this:
As if we needed a reason to bury the Genesis, along comes Lobo, one of the most god-awful fighting games since Time Killers. Unless you’re a fan who has to own every single piece of Lobo merchandise available, steer clear of this game. You choose from six poorly illustrated warriors that fight with jerky, unpredictable special moves. Since Lobo is based on some of the best comic-book art of all time, this is a major disappointment. The sound isn’t bad, but it gets lost in the dismal gameplay. The battles resounds with smacks and groans aplenty but no trademark Lobo wisecracks. This badly executed game doesn’t deserve a place on the shelf with other comic-book games. Rent it, play it, return it. This one’s a LoBlow.
To this day, it was never made clear why Lobo was cancelled. Some could speculate that for a very late release for the now-dying 16-bits era, and with poor review like this one, Ocean deemed it wasn’t worth to release it, and decided to pull the plug. But it also seems that the project went through development hell: as we can read on SNESCentral, John Lomax, former artist at Ocean Software, indicated that the game initially began development in the main office of Ocean, based in Manchester, and not in the american office that was established in San José, California:
I worked on it for about a month before moving projects. It was originally going to be a Street Fighter-style beat ’em up, and I did work on background art for it, but the powers that be decided it would be better to give it to Ocean America to work on, so I don’t know if it ever came out, (…)
Another story, this time from Alexander Ehrath, who was High Performance Games’ sole programmer for the SNES version, explained in January 2022 that the game was initially coded by Park Place Productions before Ocean America took over the project internally as all the money given to Park Place was spent without finishing the game. This anecdote can be found here.
In 2009, a prototype of the Genesis/MegaDrive version was found by the SegaSaturno community and they released it with the help of Hidden Palace. The SNES one was found in 2014 with the source code available since 2016.
Games based on DC Comics‘ franchises seems to have a lot of trouble back in the 90’s. Alongside this title, another SNES game based on Green Lantern was in development at Ocean Software and was cancelled after numerous setbacks by DC higher-ups. We can also mentionned that around 2003, another Lobo game, this time made by Kemco USA for the Playstation 2, Xbox and GameCube systems was planned before being canceled with, to this day, still no information about how far the game went into development.
Fireteam Rogue is a canceled sci-fi action-adventure game published and developed by Accolade Inc.from 1993 to 1995 for the Super NES and the Genesis/Megadrive. The project was very ambitious for its time, as Accolade planned to launch alongside the game a comic book serie, with also discussion for action figure toys and a TV show.
Next information that will follow are from SNESCentral which was one of the first website to share many details as possible about this title. With a budget of 2,000,000 US $, this project was plagued by mismanagement that ultimately led to its cancellation:
Fireteam Rogue’s cancellation is probably due to having too much ambition. The people marketing the game claimed it would have 100 hours of gameplay, and that the characters would be larger than in most other action games. Personality conflicts and poor management due to this goal seem to have taken their toll, as stated by Russell Borogove (Bornschlegel):
“The project had a lot of problems in development. We spent a lot more time developing ridiculous data compression schemes to fit all the levels into the game, when we should have cut a couple of enemies and a handful of levels in order to get it done. There were also some personality conflicts that culminated with the producer of the project quitting when we were at beta. Shortly after that, the head of product development at Accolade asked us if we thought we should continue the project or not. It was unclear to me how much more work it was going to take to finish it and if the game was going to be good enough to compete in the market by the time we actually got it out, and I advised that we should shut it down. I don’t remember what the others said.”
The late Betty Cunningham on her website claims the game was complete. And it may well have been close to being finished. By the sounds of things, as development dragged on, it was increasingly clear it would not have been released. As artist Scott Ruggels recalls:
“Both of the game projects (Fireteam Rogue and the unreleased Genesis game, Cybernauts: The Next Breed) were helmed by John Skeel. I don’t know what happened to him after Accolade, but after the 2 million dollar budget for the game was spent, with about 750,000 spent on promotional materials, including a 6 foot tall roll of plastic with a life sized image of the main character computer generated within, and the prototype, that was, in all honesty, not very much fun to play, the game was cancelled, along with a lot of others soon after the new management took over, (…)”
The media give differing times for the ultimate cancellation. Gamepro, in its April 1995 issue states it was cancelled, coinciding with Warner Music Group buying a share in the company. Nintendo Power kept it in its upcoming releases section until the August 1995issue. Ultimately, a long development cycle can never be good for a game.
Two different prototypes exist and their source codes are both available on the web. The first prototype is apparently in early alpha and might be dated from 1994. It was leaked somewhere around 2006-2007 and is pretty incomplete and glitchy. A much later prototype was acquired in 2010 by Evan G., founder and owner of SNESCentral and is dated from 1995, although it is not clear from which month:
This later prototype of Fireteam Rogue was acquired by me in June 2010. The seller worked at a company called IMN Control. They were looking into publishing games to package with their controllers, and I guess by April 1995 (the letter that came with the prototype was dated April 6, 1995), Accolade was hoping to get another company to publish the game. The seller said that he did not feel the game would be complete in a reasonable amount of time to bother investing.
In addition to the prototype, there were some marketing materials and a three page FAQ. The FAQ explains the different levels, characters and goal of the game. There is a date of December 12, 1994 on the header of the FAQ. The package included a poster/information sheet that probably was used at the 1995 Winter CES. The poster has an expected March 1995 release date. The prototype itself came on four chips, with a date of “1/16” on it, which I assume means January 16, 1995. I guess that despite the fact that the prototype was sent in April 1995, either development had ceased, or they did not feel like burning a newer copy.
This prototype appeared to be more complete and less glitchy with the addition of Mode 7 levels and a password feature.
On his own article, Evan G. concluded:
Fireteam Rogue is definitely a game that had promise. It had an intriguing plot, excellent character artwork and a promising gameplay system. The Shadowblade level in particular shows the scope of what the levels may have entailed. The shooter levels play quite well and compare favourably with many similarly styled shooters for the SNES.
That being said, the two alpha ROM images available show a game that is not close to completion. Though I was told development may have extended all the way to 1996, the evidence seems to indicate that it was leading towards demise in early 1995. In particular, the statement in Gamepro in April 1995 and the fact that they were trying to find another company to publish the game show that its fate was decided by then. If the later alpha that I have is what was shown at the 1995 Winter CES (which I assume, considering the date on the prototype, and the included CES-style advertisement sheet), it would have had an underwhelming response. For instance, despite the impressive size and animation frames of the character sprites, the animation was not smooth, and led to unresponsive controls. The level designs are poor, and lack the key items to proceed through the stages. The graphics themselves don’t look bad, though they have a limited palette. The promised linking of the levels into a single story was not finished in the game.
The lesson of Fireteam Rogue is that focusing on hype and story before the creation of solid level design and gameplay can sink a game. The back-story of Fireteam Rogue rivals most contemporary RPGs, and the initial gameplay ideas could have rivalled Super Metroid. Instead, a development cycle mired by poor management and delays made this just another footnote in the history of the 16-bit era.
In October 1996, Accolade Inc. released a DOS game called Eradicator in which three different characters are playable. Those characters shares many similarities with the 4 main characters of Fireteam Rogue.
Animal Wars was a tactical RPG for the Playstation 3 in development at Factor 5, Inc. between 2004 and 2006 with Sony Computer Entertainment on board as its publisher. It was planned to be released some time after Lair, which launched in August, 2007.
Factor 5’s Quirky War Game Made By 4 People
According to one former employee, work commenced on the title in 2004, “roughly around the time” pre-production on Lair began. It came about as a result of the multi-game contract Factor 5 signed with Sony to produce a number of games exclusive to their platforms. Until the deal expired, the company was set to have every project of theirs fully funded by the publisher, pending their approval. Every title worked on during this partnership was slated for release on PS3 only and Animal Wars was one of them.
Whereas Lair exhausted a great deal of the developer’s resources from beginning to end, Animal Wars was a considerably smaller project, ongoing in the background for a number of years. Its team was comprised of no more than 4 workers total: 2 designers, 1 dedicated artist and a single programmer. The game was so low down Factor 5’s list of priorities, that every developer assigned to it was at some point repositioned to work on Lair and/or other proposed titles.
“I was more excited about Animal Wars than Lair because it was a smaller team and upper management left it alone (upper management interference greatly contributed to Lair’s failure).”
Animal Wars was set in “an alternate WWI universe with anthropomorphic animal characters”, one developer recalled. The assassination of “the Archduke Birdinand” (a bird parody of historical figure, Archduke Ferdinand) in the game’s opening served as the catalyst for the great war its campaign would have centered on. The event would have ignited a global conflict between various nations of animals: felines, bears, foxes, etc.
The enemy faction consisted of a coalition between ‘Boarmandy’ (boars), The Black Paw (a rogue cat organisation responsible for Birdinand’s murder), bear soldiers, and the main villains, an army of wolves. An explosive introductory level was set to portray a savage air raid on a city inspired by London, as perpetrated by boars in attack blimps. Players would have then found themselves following the exploits of a canine in an aviator jacket, the planned protagonist; although, other playable characters were being explored, too.
Among the various mission types mulled over during pre-production was one which would have flipped the scale of battle on its head and saw the player taking up the role of a mouse. From this perspective, regular soldiers would appear as humongous titans by comparison, as the mice performed daring espionage operations. Ultimately, this ambitious stage idea never got as far as being prototyped.
One source likened its standard gameplay, of which very little was completed, to Valkyria Chronicles. It was intended to be a strategy RPG with a turn-based battle system and a unique oil painted art style.
“The graphics were like Valiant Hearts but in 3D”
Its concept of anthropomorphic warfare was deceptively innocent on the surface. Early sketches, for instance, depicted a number of particularly violent scenes, including a dog soldier posed atop a decapitated pig. Its artistic direction leaned dark in this respect, though it had yet to be determined how explicit the final product would be.
In what was said to have been a big contributing factor towards Sony’s willingness to fund it, the title was leveraging the work Factor 5’s people had previously done on Star Wars Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike. It called upon their experiences moulding that game’s blend of ground and air vehicular combat, which the publisher was very keen to capitalise on. Boats and amphibious tanks would have featured, too.
ANIMAL VEHICLES.
As explained by one of our sources, a central part of its concept was that each of the vehicles would have, in some form, integrated attributes associated with different animals into their design and functionality:
“For example, I worked on making a jeep that would always land upright no matter how crazy you drove it (cat landing on all fours).”
Sony Pulls The Plug On F5, Inc.’s Pet Project
Among the few that contributed to Animal Wars throughout its lifespan, the enthusiasm for it was in abundance. One ex member of Factor 5 even took to NeoGAF some years later to exclaim:
“It was fucking amazing looking and was way better than Lair so it made all of us sad it got cancelled.”
One of our sources personally corroborated these sentiments, saying that its apparent independence from Factor 5’s higher ups was much to its benefit:
“I was more excited about Animal Wars than Lair because it was a smaller team and upper management left it alone (upper management interference greatly contributed to Lair’s failure).”
Despite this, none of the excitement held internally for the project could ultimately prevent its demise, as the relationship between Sony and Factor 5 began to sour.
In the beginning, the deal between them was forged primarily so that the San Rafael studio would reinforce the PS3’s launch line-up with an original IP, which would later turn out to be Lair. Any other projects they were behind, Animal Wars included, was largely a show of good faith on Sony’s behalf.
Crucially, Lair was first scheduled to be available for the PS3 within its first few months on the North American market in fall 2006. However, its development encountered many hurdles; chief among which was the higher ups demanding the addition of motion controls and the team simply struggling to get to grips with the console’s then perplexing development environment. Factor 5 was already a company of limited resources, but Lair’s troubled life cycle lead to a number of departures mid-development. The exodus left them unable to fulfill their end of the contract and thus, requested the game be delayed into 2007.
The publisher’s response was less than understanding. They promptly cut off all funding to Animal Wars and redistributed any monetary assets designated for it into Lair. The developers weren’t willing or able to self-finance the remainder of the project, resulting in its subsequent cancellation.
One developer we spoke with detailed how the game had reached the prototyping phase when it was shelved, but never left pre-production:
“At the time, we had a working biplane, tank, jeep and 3rd person character working… We had a vertical slice of a damaged town that the lead character (a greyhound in WWI aviator outfit) and the tank was able to run around. We also had a pretty massive terrain for the biplane to fly around (similar in size to what ended up in Lair).”
The former employee admitted that the prototype build suffered visibility issues, which they had not yet been able to resolve when development came to a close. These were caused by the dark colour palette employed by both its character models and environments, which would blend together unintentionally.
Animal Wars was never officially announced and its prototype materials are believed to have been locked away by the management of Factor 5 during the company’s closure in late 2008.
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