News on Cancelled Video Games & Lost Media

The Tales of Walenir is cancelled first person action RPG (ala Elder Scrolls) that was in development by Temporal Games (Moscow, Russia) between 2006 and 2009. The game was quite ambitious for such a small and inexperienced team and after some years of development it quietly vanished without any explanation. Here we can read the original press-release with a few more details:

The Tales of Walenir is the fantasy-style first-person 3D action/RPG. The game takes place in the original universe Al’Venion, on the northern island Walenir.
Walenir is full of myths and legends. The hero will unravel the mysteries of the past, travel through the world inhabited with unique, playable races, and choose one of the many plot variations in order to achieve one of the numerous endings. The main priorities for this project are: the dynamic playing process with the freedom of movement, compact highly detailed world, interesting plot, and high quality performance.
That doesn’t mean, however, that the gaming experience will be strictly connected to the plot; a player will face a never-ending freedom of choices.
The game is being developed on our own cutting-edge graphic engine, which has been dubbed the “Temper Engine”. It gives us an opportunity to make a great number of beautiful visual effects while retaining a high performance.
According to ancient legends, the Gods came to Al’Venion from the north, from the island of Walenir – the origin of magic and nature forces. However, long standing dissensions within the pantheon caused the damage of the main relic, and slowly gods lost their ability to embody. And so, the interference of gods in the life of the continent’s residents became less frequent, which eventually led to the end of worldly appearances and miracles. Epochs after epochs, numerous wars and victories – the residents of the continent soon forgot the ancient gods altogether. Instead, they found replacements – Idols and Heroes of the past.
And so, the ancient gods were forced to return to their home – the island of Walenir. According to the legends, the last temple of the Six Gods is located there. Walenir is the last refuge for those who still remember the greatness of Sigelwar and the anger of Sevol, the deception of Walla and cheerfulness of Rivael, cruelty of Telias and tranquility of Ardar. The residents of the four states of Walenir are the last chance for the ancient pantheon to once again retain its former greatness and power.
Detailed in-game world “lives,” changing as the player progresses through the game”
Several races with their own original architectural styles, gear, equipment, and mentality
3 different classes of characters
Non-linear gameplay
Intricate network of secret locations & quests not connected with the main storyline
Original role-playing system based on constant interaction with the in-game gods
Freedom of actions, movement, and exploration

After the cancellation of their first game project, Temporal Games don’t seem to have released any other game on PC or console. Today there’s another gaming collective with the same name, but we are not sure if it’s the same team which was working on The Tales of Walenir.

Thanks to Mihapsx for the contribution!

Images:

Mega Drive / Genesis, Sega

RPG Densetsu Hepoi [Mega Drive (Genesis) – Cancelled]

Fels

23-05-2018

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The 16-bit era brought many new possibilities into design and artistic fields on gaming. Colorful sprites, rich and fluid animation, stereo sound and many new features graced a period that for a long time was considered the most important for the video game industry.

One of the biggest hook for consumers in the 80’s and 90’s was the extensive licensed material. These decades would change video games forever as companies were beginning to understand it as a communication channel, more than just an electronic toy. Soon, adaptations from cartoons, anime, movies, comic books, novels and pretty much everything began to pop through. It was the “make a game of that” philosophy.

This means that game designers worked day and night to figure out how to work with whichever hardware came around, in every way possible to make something popular, playable. Sometimes this meant that something great was coming, sometimes it was just excuse to make more profit with a famous brand.

A video game based on japanese anime RPG Densetsu Hepoi was in the makings for the Sega Mega Drive / Genesis System.

The only source available about this unseen game is a scan from a japanese magazine called Beep Mega Drive, dated 1991, which show us two screenshots, revealing the use of top-down perspective. Also, a map drawn for the game and anime was shared on Twitter by a former artist. We can also deduce by the menu displacement that it had classic j-rpg gameplay, including text-based actions, dialogues and multiple characters to use.

The game was also being co-produced by Sega.

Unfortunately we don’t know much more about this cancelled Mega Drive RPG: it quietly vanished forever with no official explanation. It remains one of the many lost 16bit games which will forever be forgotten by the majority of gamers all around the world.

Images:

Nintendo, Nintendo DS, Wii

LEGO Racers: The Video Game [DS, Wii – Cancelled]

U64 Staff & Contributors

23-05-2018

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In late 2008, the next year’s LEGO sets were released “early” (this isn’t unusual for LEGO sets). What was unusual was the ad on LEGO Racers set boxes advertising an unannounced game; “LEGO Racers: The Video Game“.

People speculated on who was developing the game, and for what platforms it might be released (it was often confused with an unrelated web game, LEGO Racers Challenge, developed by NetDevil). On Brickset.com they wrote:

This is the first non-licensed LEGO video game to be released since 2006’s BIONICLE Heroes. It is also the forth racing-centric LEGO video game to be released, after 1999’s LEGO Racers, 2001’s LEGO Racers 2, and 2002’s Drome Racers.

It also wasn’t the only mysterious game advertised on set boxes – other sets advertised “LEGO Space: The Video Game” and “LEGO Castle: The Video Game“, both for Nintendo DS. Eventually it was found that those two games – along with “LEGO Pirates: The Video Game” (which hadn’t been advertised on set boxes) – were all merged into one game, LEGO Battles, after the set packaging had already been finalized.

But that didn’t explain LEGO Racers: The Video Game. Years passed without word of it, until in 2013 a developer from Firebrand Games posted samples of work he’d done on the game, and stated it was unreleased. Included were four rendered videos (showing three car models and an animated minifigure), and two in-game screenshots.

The developer said the game was for Nintendo DS, but the screenshots show higher graphical quality than the DS is capable of, and are 640×456 – a standard resolution for Wii games. Going by other games by developed by Firebrand, it seems likely the game was planned for both systems.

Thanks to jamesster for the contribution!

Videos:

Playstation, Sony

Firo and Klawd 2: Holiday Highjinks [Playstation – Cancelled]

monokoma

14-05-2018

No Comments

Firo and Klawd 2: Holiday Highjinks is the cancelled sequel to the original 1996 game developed by Interactive Studios Limited (later known as Blitz Games) and published by BMG Interactive for Playstation and PC. The game was a top-down shooter with pre-rendered graphic, in which an ape police detective and an odd job cat) had to explore a series of branching levels while killing all the enemies.

The first Firo and Klawd was considered quite a bad game by reviews at the time, and while we did not find any actual sales data we can assume it sold poorly. As far as we know Firo and Klawd 2 was just in early conceptual phase before the company decided that it was not worth creating a sequel to a low-selling game. The project was then cancelled and vanished into obscurity: the image preserved in this page remains the only proof of it existence.

If you know someone who worked on this game, please let us know!

Video from the first Firo and Klawd:

Microsoft, Playstation 2 (PS2), Sony, Xbox 360

We Are the Mods (The Warriors 2) [PS2, Xbox 360 – Cancelled]

monokoma

05-05-2018

5 Comments

We Are The Mods is the cancelled spiritual sequel to The Warriors, the cult classic beat ’em up based on the 1979 movie of the same name. We Are The Mods was in development in 2006 by Rockstar Toronto, initially as a Playstation 2 project, but soon Rockstar decided to move it to the Xbox 360 as one of their first games for the 7th generation of consoles.

We Are The Mods would have not been a direct sequel, as it abandoned the movie setting to create its own one, set in 1960s England during the mods and rockers brawls. As we can read on Wikipedia:

“Mods and rockers were two conflicting British youth subcultures of the early/mid 1960s to early 1970s. Media coverage of mods and rockers fighting in 1964 sparked a moral panic about British youth, and the two groups became widely perceived as violent, unruly troublemakers.”

The game was never officially announced by Rockstar and it was unveiled only because of leaked assets in 2011. Some details were also found on the same developer’s website:

“The project had begun as a PlayStation 2 spiritual follow-up to the earlier hit ‘The Warriors‘, but part way through the development cycle Rockstar New York asked us to switch Mods from a Sixth Generation to a Seventh Generation development, changing from the PlayStation 2 to the Xbox 360 as the primary development platform. Much of the content here reflects that change, with Mods being the first Seventh Generation project the team had worked on. It was a learning experience for everyone involved. The game was similar in design and style to “The Warriors” but set in 1960’s England at the height of the “Mods” vs. “Rockers” era.”

After a while the project was canned, possible because Rockstar Toronto had to help with development on Manhunt 2, that was seen as a more profitable game for the company.

After We Are The Mods leaked on major gaming websites such as Kotaku and CVG, the original game page on the developer’s website was removed. We found a few more developers who worked on this cancelled sequel, but unfortunately it seems Rockstar don’t want them to unveil anything more on their lost project.

Only a few 3D models and early assets are preserved in the gallery below, to remember its existence.