New Cancelled Games & Their Lost Media Added to the Archive

Microsoft, Playstation 3 (PS3), Sony, Xbox 360

Zone of the Enders 3 (Enders Project) [Cancelled – PS3, Xbox 360]

Damiano Bacci
28-03-2018
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Enders Project (also know as Zone of the Enders 3) is a cancelled game which seems to have been planned for Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 (and possibly also for PS4 & Xbox One) by Hideo Kojima and Konami. The game would have been the third chapter in the popular Zone of the Enders game series, but it was scrapped at a very early stage in development.

Zone of Enders, the series

The first Zone of the Enders is a third-person shooter / hack and slash type of video game set in 2172 where the player assumes controls of a mecha (known as Orbital Frame) called Jehuty. His mission is to free Jupiter’s colony Antilia from the military force BAHRAM. Its sequel, Zone of the Enders: The Second Runner (know in Japan as Anubis: Zone of the Ender), followed the same style but improved on many aspects, introducing more enemies, abilities and a more immersive environment. ZOE 3: Enders Project was conceived as a direct sequel to Second Runner, without taking place on futuristic colonies but rather in an “ancient civilization”.

“Unofficial announcement” of ZOE 3

The game was ‘announced’ on 25 May 2012 during a Zone of the Enders HD Collection preview event held at the Shinjuku Wald 9 theatre in Tokyo, with many Kojima Productions’s employees and ZOE developers, including Hideo Kojima himself, Yoji Shinkawa (mecha designer and illustrator for the series), Noriaki Okamura, Shuyou Murata, and Nobuyoshi Nishimura. As 4gamer reported, it was not an official announcement, rather a presentation of details about a future project for ZOE, experimenting with different concepts and models.

Quote from andriasang.com:

As detailed at Famitsu.com, Kojima indicated that the game is currently in an early prototyping phase. Producer Ryosuke Toriyama and other key staff are currently conducting tests on what can be done using the internally developed Fox Engine, explained Kojima. Toriyama took the stage and revealed that he and his staff are at the state where they’re making models (real models) and converting them into Fox Engine assets.

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Microsoft, Playstation 3 (PS3), Sony, Xbox 360

Full Impact (thq) [Xbox 360, PS3 – Cancelled]

monokoma
22-03-2018
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Full Impact is a cancelled car combat game that was being developed in 2010 by Juice Games (AKA THQ Digital Studios Warrington / UK) for the Playstation 3 (PSN) and Xbox 360 (XBLA). The game would have been somehow similar to the Destruction Derby series, with players using cars to destroy their opponent by driving around in arenas at high-speed.

There would have been different gangs to choose from, each one with their own style and car-type, somehow like in Twisted Metal. Players could also been able to fully customize their vehicles with new parts, colors and decals, before destroying them during missions.

Only a few images remain to remember the existence of this interesting project. As you can see it looked really promising. Many different arenas would have been available to play in, set in such locations as a demonic amusement park, a shuttle launchpad and many more.

Unfortunately Full Impact was never completed. THQ decided to move the team to other projects using more popular IPs: Red Faction Battlegrounds and Warhammer 40,000 Kill Team, both released in 2011 for PSN and Xbox Live Arcade. Juice Games also worked on many other cancelled games and prototypes, such as Split Shift Racing, Project FUUB, After Burner and Stormbirds.

This string of failed projects can attributed largely by the shifting focus of the company, and THQ’s own goals during the time after purchasing Juice Games in 2006. With the studio itself undergoing a transition away from boxed retail products and moving solely into digital goods, Juice Games was also undergoing its transformation into THQ Digital Studios Warrington.

Shortly after releasing their two digital games, THQ Digital Studios were then closed down by THQ in June 2011 due to “lackluster sales of Red Faction: Battlegrounds”. Talking to Eurogamer, an inside source who worked at the studio claimed that THQ had cancelled several projects over the years, and that they “struggled to find an idea THQ were happy with”.

Thanks to Andy for the contribution!

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Others, PC / MAC

Lisa: The Painful RPG [Beta – PC]

Damiano Bacci
16-03-2018
3 Comments

Lisa: The Painful is an indie role-playing game developed by Dingaling Productions (now known as LoveBrad Games). The game was designed and programmed by Austin Jorgensen using RPG Maker VX Ace and released for PC, Mac and Linux in December 2014.

The games is a successor to Lisa: The First, a  freeware game made by Jorgensen in 2012. Lisa: The Painful was funded thanks to a Kickstarter campaign that started in November 2013: in the Kickstarter’s public feed of the game we can take a look on different phases of game development, Lisa beta versions and how the game changed over time.

Lisa Kickstarter Trailer

This trailer is our first glimpse of the game, and we can already notice some interesting “beta” elements. The trailer is basically cycling through two different animations, one showing Brad (the protagonist of LISA: The Painful) and his party, and the other one showing him ambushed by Buzzo and Columbo (two of the main antagonists), with text cards hinting at tough choices players will face through the game.


In this image we can clearly recognize some of the characters: Brad is the bald guy, Olan Hoyt is the one with a hat and the wrestler’s one is Rage Ironhead. The last one playing the guitar is a deleted character called Hawk, an early version of Rando.

Beta version of Rando, courtesy of Lisa RPG Wiki

Lisa Pre-Alpha Gameplay Footage

This video was uploaded on Austin Jorgensen’s Youtube account  and it represents a pre-alpha stage of the final game. Still, many of the locations that made into the final game are clearly recognizable, albeit with some differences (Devil’s Bathhouse, Snow Mountain, Bob’s Dojo). The bike and motorbike are already present and tested a this point in development.

A look on the pre-alpha battle screen: two of Brad’s initial friends, Cheeks Gaywood and Richard Weeks (along with Sticky Angoneli), were once playable (there is also another shot of the cut character Hawk). Other cut features are a team attack (shown in the picture) and a sneaking mechanic, possibly used to ambush enemies.

Lisa Kickstarter Demo

On November 20th 2013, Jorgensen uploaded a demo of LISA on Gamefront, the original file has since been deleted, but a backup version is available in here. This demo features various locations, characters and enemies (like the Men’s Hair Club, then called the Magnificent Manes Men’s Club), alongside different graphics for in-game dialogues and text.

During Lisa development many different characters were either dropped or their role in the story changed: our friends at The Cutting Room Floor have a nice page about them.

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Nintendo, SNES + Super Famicom

Pilotwings 2 (Super FX Prototype) [SNES – Cancelled]

monokoma
15-03-2018
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The original Pilotwings is an arcade flying simulator developed by Nintendo and published in December 1990 as one of their first games for the Super Nintendo, soon becoming a cult 16 bit classic. Players can use different flying vehicles to complete various missions within a time limit, trying to get high-scores for such tasks as flying through rings and landing on specific parts of the levels.

Pilotwings sold about 1.4 million copies worldwide and Pilotwings 2 for SNES was already in early development before Nintendo decided to cancel it and instead working on a fully 3D sequel on their Nintendo 64.

A few magazines in mid ‘90s mentioned Pilotwings 2 in their news / rumors sections, but Nintendo never officially announced Pilotwings 2 SNES, so it could have been one of those fake speculations with no real evidences. Luckily a few years ago John Szczepaniak (author of The Untold History of Japanese Game Developers books) asked to Dylan Cuthbert (who worked with Argonaut Software and Nintendo on such games as Star Fox and Star Fox 2) about Pilotwings 2 and Dylan confirmed that it was really in development for the Super Nintendo, using the Super FX chip 2. Dylan also mentioned Pilotwings 2 / Super FX 2 prototype in a Reddit AMA:

“I think it was just light experimentation, such as the FX chip based Pilot’s Wings experiment too, just to see what could be done and was quickly re-worked on the prototype N64 hardware. They were already experimenting with motion capture for better animation in 1995 or thereabouts.”

It seems that only an early prototype was created, but we really hope to see something more from it in the future.

Thanks to Celine for the contribution!

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Nintendo, Nintendo 64 & 64DD

Project Cairo (Craveyard) [Nintendo 64DD – Cancelled]

Fels
08-03-2018
3 Comments

If you had a Nintendo 64 back in the 90’s, you probably remember all the hype around its 64DD, the disk-based peripheral that promised some cool features for it’s time, including network capabilities, internal clock, additional storage and content expansion for N64 games. Unfortunately due to numerous delays and its commercial failure in Japan this add-on was never released outside of Japan, being discontinued after just 10 software published.

We could say the failure of the 64DD had direct consequences over the N64 game library. We all know about Nintendo’s complicated past with third party support, media storage and licensing issues. These were always key points for Nintendo and with the N64 it wasn’t any different. Their 64DD could have offered a cheaper support for third parties with more space for their games.

Even before its launch in Japan many European and North American developers were already working on 64DD games: after all this add-on was announced in 1995, prior to the N64’s launch. As you can imagine most of these 64DD games were either scrapped or ported to N64 carts.

One of these interesting but lost 64DD games is Project Cairo, a cancelled RPG planned by team Craveyard (Crave Entertainment). According to an IGN article dated 1997, Craveyard were “in negotiations to use a major comic book license for both characters and background story”, promising a new “fresh look for the genre with interesting, Americanized characters”.

We don’t know which comic book they planned to use (above are some examples of random fantasy comics from the mid ’90s, to have an idea of their style), but as told by Mark Burke (former Vice President, Product Acquisitions at Crave):

“If it was another anime RPG I don’t think we’d be making it. […] We think the art in the game is as good as if not better than that in Final Fantasy VII.”

It’s important to note that Craveyard shared their origins with Square USA. Legendary Ted Woolsey (responsible for many popular RPG localizations during the 16-bit era) moved out from Square with a group of employees when the company was moving offices back in 1996, founding a small team named Big Rain.

The name Big Rain wouldn’t last long as Crave Entertainment soon bought the company, changing its name to Craveyard and made them working on such games as Shadow Madness, a Japanese-inspired Role-playing game eventually released on Sony Playstation in 1999.

Shadow Madness

In the meantime Craveyard were also conceiving new ideas for Project Cairo, their ambitious RPG intended to take advantage of 64DD’s original features, scheduled to also be released in 1999. For Project Cairo’s scenario Craveyard were talking with a well known British fantasy writer (which remains anonymous) for a high-profile collaboration.

As told us by Ted Woosley Project Cairo never got past this early planning and “scenario” phase. It was soon clear that Playstation was the better console to develop for: it was cheaper and with a larger user-base already interested in RPGs. N64 was not selling enough to pursue full development of an exclusive RPG, especially for its postponed 64DD add-on. The team focused all of their resources and efforts into Shadow Madness: it’s currently unknown if their Playstation RPG took some ideas or mechanics initially conceived for Project Cairo.

Unfortunately Shadow Madness did not perform as expected: it was received with average reviews and poor sales. In the end Crave opted to pull Craveyard out of business and closed the studio. After Craveyard’s closure, Ted Woolsey joined RealNetworks (a provider of Internet streaming media) where he managed their online gaming client. In 2007 Woolsey moved to Microsoft Studios to work as Senior Director for the Xbox Live Arcade and in 20015 he became General Manager of Undead Labs helping releasing fan-favorite State of Decay.

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