News on Cancelled Video Games & Lost Media

Dead or Alive: Code Chronus was a cancelled rogue-like game set in the DoA world, that was in development at Team Ninja during early 2002 for the original Xbox. It was intended to take the fighting game series in a new direction, transitioning it into a full action adventure similar to Ninja Gaiden. Code Chronus was meant to serve as a prequel to the main series and Tomonobu Itagaki spoke in various interviews of how the game would have told the story of Ayane and Kasumi before the first Dead or Alive tournament.

In March 2014, Itagaki replied to a question from one of his fans from his Facebook page about the game:

I miss games made by you! I still wish that dead or alive code chronus got made. Is it true that the game would have been more of a double dragon type game than a regular dead or alive game? but with ayane and kasumi?
Me too, I love DOA:Code Cronus as it is the father of the DOA universe.　So I find it strange that some people said DOA:Code Chronus was never in production. If that’s “true”, I guess that means I’m free to say whatever I want about it? ;D Let me fill you in on the “truth”
DOACC was a Rogue-like in production. If someone wants to try to reverse that reality, they’ll first have to own up to their lies.　But it’s not something you should worry about too much. ‘Cause creating a game isn’t easy, you know?　Only people with an ability to play inside their own head, even before sitting down to write code, are able to be a game designer. Whoever thinks that development is only concerned about things “visible” and “playable” should pack up their bags and go back to the countryside.
This is also an important truth – I’ll put that down here as a tip for anyone interested in developing brand new original games.

As we can read on Wikipedia, the game was supposed bear some relation to the part of the opening cinematic of Dead or Alive Ultimate that showed the child versions of Kasumi and Ayane.

As Dead or Alive Ultimate was released for Xbox in 2004, it’s possible that this video could have been originally made for Code Chronus and was later reused as the intro for Ultimate. With the release of Xbox 360 in 2005, it seems that the game was moved to the “next generation” console, as a placeholder box for Code Chronus can be seen in a Dead Or Alive 4 promo ad published in various Japanese magazines:

In 2008, Itagaki left Team Ninja and Code Chronus was lost; its legacy limited to being nothing more than a dream project of his that never was. In 2010, the new CEO of Team Ninja told Famitsu magazine that Code Chronus was officially cancelled. Unfortunately, Team Ninja never released any screenshots or videos from this project to the public and only its logo can be found online. We hope to be able to preserve more from this lost game in the future.

Nintendo, Nintendo DS

Initial D EX [DS – Cancelled]

LazyFace

18-05-2015

1 Comment

Initial D EX was a street racing game being developed by SEGA Rosso in 2007/08. This would have been the seventh game for consoles in the Initial D series, and there was also a series of arcade games. Initial D is a popular manga and anime series about illegal street racing in Japan. It was only rumours that this game would be coming to the DS and many people thought that this was a bogus announcement. This was because only a few images appeared on the SEGA Rosso website before quickly being taken down.

This is actually the only evidence that this game ever existed or was in development. There were various stills of the game with “DS” in the corner. It was never officially confirmed whether or not a DS game was actually ever in development.

This was not the death of Initial D on a Nintendo handheld though, as a free-2-play instalment dubbed Perfect Shift Online was released in 2014 for the 3DS. In December 2014, it was confirmed that this will also have a sequel as it was downloaded over 500,000 times and has proved very popular.

If you know anything else about the DS version of Initial D, let us know in the comments!

Thanks to Marco for the contribution!

Images:

Playstation 2 (PS2), Sony

Primal 2 [PS2 – Cancelled]

monokoma

11-05-2015

5 Comments

Primal was a PS2 game developed by SCEE Cambridge. Despite a prominent advertising campaign, it went largely unnoticed upon release, failing commercially. However, development on a sequel had already began shortly after the first game launched. As early preliminary work was underway, Sony acquired the license to develop an offical tie-in game for the TV show, 24. The development of Primal 2 was thus cancelled in favour of doing that game, as stated by Paul Donovan:

Any hints that there might be a Primal sequel in the pipeline? Pleeeease! :)
Sorry, afraid not. We were playing around with ideas for a Primal 2 and did some prototypes of some new features but then we got the 24 license so we did that instead :-) – Paul Donovan, Senior Programmer, SCEE Cambridge

In 2012, the game was re-released as a PS2 classic for PS3. This is when Chris Sorrell, creative director of Primal, wrote an article on the official PS blog where he and the concept artist of the game, Mark Gibbons, revealed some bits and pieces of the possible plots that were considered for the sequel:

Mark Gibbons – Lead Artist, Primal:
Once the game was completed, preliminary work on a sequel was begun that featured Jen’s lover Lewis as the central character. Primal II would’ve told the story of his journey through Oblivion’s Hell, back to Mortalis, the real world.
Chris Sorrell on February 28th, 2012 at 10:39 am said:
[and finally] – If there were to be a Primal 2 it should feature Jen. …Well I do agree with that one. Further to the comments by Mark, yes we did explore a Primal 2 with Lewis as a lead character. We also explored another take that had Jen as lead and centred on the notion that the demons of Oblivion had found a way through into our world. That one had some cool imagery that I recall – Jen in a flowing leather coat riding a spike-wheeled moto-X bike, Prince Jared driving to Jen’s rescue in an ice-cream truck (garbled music blaring) and sub-way tunnels teeming with spider-like Wraith mutants. Ah, if only..

In addition, Mark Gibbons once published some of the concept art he made for this sequel via his old portfolio. His website is no longer online, but part of the concept artwork was retrieved and posted by fans after the original site went offline.

Thanks to Erameris for the contribution!

Images:

PS Vita, Sony

Terrorforge [Cancelled/Concept – PS Vita]

Liam Robertson

04-05-2015

No Comments

Terrorforge was a cancelled RTS game that was briefly being worked on at Cohort Studios in Dundee, Scotland during 2010. It was a concept developed in under a month for publisher, Sony Computer Entertainment. Had full development on the game been green-lit, it would have been a Playstation Vita exclusive title with a release targeted around the system’s launch in late 2011/early 2012.

The game was one of many concepts worked on by Cohort during their partnership with SCEE, which was originally struck when they collaborated to produce the Buzz! Junior series. According to our sources, it was a small secondary project pitched during production on The Shoot for PS3.

It was imagined as a strategy-action experience with similarities to a god game, in which the player assumes the role of mother nature to assist humanity in defending Earth from a highly advanced race of alien invaders. At your disposal would have been the ability to manipulate terrain, as well as the power to summon earthquakes, spontaneous volcanism, and other forces of nature like tornadoes.

Concept art for Terrorforge.

It was planned to be controlled primarily using the Vita’s touch screen and pad. Although the Vita, which was then codenamed “NGP” (Next Generation Portable), had not been formally announced by Sony, Cohort’s staff were already privy to its existence and some of its features as a trusted partner. They joined a number of developers around the world introduced to the new system early to begin proposing games for it. Terrorforge never entered production, or even the prototyping phase, before being turned down by Sony’s management for publishing.

Nintendo, SNES + Super Famicom

NesGlider (StarFox) [SNES – Prototype]

LazyFace

27-04-2015

13 Comments

Most in the gaming enthusiast community know of Star Fox; a fan favourite among the Nintendo faithful and other gamers alike. What many do not know is what lead to the circumstances of its creation, and how it all started with an independent British games developer called Argonaut Games. Argonaut was founded in 1982 by a sixteen year old Jez San. This young developer had gained a keen interest in computing at an early age and had taught himself the Assembly language by the age of thirteen. He started developing his first game, Skyline Attack for the Commodore 64 in 1984 and he also became a Wizard (Admin) for Essex MUD, which is reported to be the world’s first MMO.

In 1986, the company finally started to become profitable and gained the ability to hire other staff in 1986, following the release of Starglider; a title recognised as one of the earliest break-out 3D games.

Argonaut Games managed to successfully design 3D models for the NES and the Gameboy, becoming the first developers to do so. This feat attracted the attention of Nintendo, who then signed a deal with Argonaut Games to acquire their services. What they had done to pique the interest of Nintendo, Jez said “They had the Nintendo logo drop down from the top of the screen, and when it hit the middle the boot loader would check to see if it was in the right place.” Nintendo had engineered their games in such a way that they would only boot if “Nintendo” dropped down to the correct place on the screen. Argonaut had modified this so that they could drop down any word, but with a resistor and a capacitor installed. This meant that Argonaut could make the game think that it had read the text and successfully boot, essentially circumventing Nintendo’s copyright protection.

It is at this point that NesGlider comes in. Jez and Argonaut games had a working prototype of the game running on the NES console. NesGlider was merely a placeholder name and it came about due to the fact the game was similar to their StarGlider game and was being developed for the NES console. Argonaut Games also developed a prototype of the game for the new Nintendo hardware the SNES.

The game did really look quite rough as can be seen in the gameplay demo that can be seen online (and leaked thanks to Hidden Palace, here’s a backup copy), it seemed very slow and the graphics were shaky. This was because the SNES console was not primarily built with 3D games in mind. NesGlider on the SNES looked like it was not as good as the previous StarGlider game which used quick movements and looked a lot smoother. This is why Jez told Nintendo “This is as good as it’s going to get unless they let us design some hardware to make the SNES better at 3D.”

Nintendo whole-heartedly agreed with Jez and invested one million pounds for the new hardware to be developed. It was called the Super FX chip which was comically codenamed “MARIO” (Mathematical, Argonaut, Rotation & Input/Output) the chip would render 3D polygons that would assist the SNES in rendering 2D effects. The chip would actually be placed on the games cartridge and this allowed the SNES to finally utilize 3D graphics that may look archaic by today’s standards but were groundbreaking for a console at this time.

Argonaut then gave the prototype NesGlider to Nintendo to allow them to work on it, this was a completely collaborative effort as developers from both companies worked on the game. Shigeru Miyamoto from Nintendo was made the producer for the game and he picked his own developers, artists and other people from Nintendo so that NesGlider could become a more “Nintendo” type game.

This is where the prototype did a complete “Barrel Roll”, Miyamoto wanted to give NesGlider a more arcadey feel and wanted there to be more action. This is where the collaboration came in and Argonaut games gave Nintendo the idea that the player would be in a spaceship and fly to other planets instead of the way that the prototype played, which in gameplay seemed to be on Earth fighting tanks and walkers. Miyamoto also did not want the game to be considered boring and so decided that all the main characters would be animals and the reason that he chose a fox was that it was a prominent feature at a nearby shrine.

NesGlider is not a cancelled game but is purely a super early prototype for the highly regarded StarFox. If it was not for Argonaut Games and Jez San this hugely popular franchise would have not come into existence. This kind of collaboration between Nintendo and Argonaut was the main reason for the success this title deserved and with a bit of give and take between developers and publishers amazing games can be created.

Argonaut did also go on to start development on StarFox 2 for the SNES, this was ultimately cancelled though due to the imminent release of the N64. Unfortunately in October 2004 Argonaut had to lay off 100 employees and was put up for sale, this was reported to be because of a lack of deals with publishers which had led to cash flow problems. Then in 2005 the company was put into liquidation and finally dissolved in 2006.

Thanks to Celine for the contribution!

New Cancelled Games & Their Lost Media Added to the Archive

Dead or Alive: Code Chronus [Xbox / 360 – Cancelled]

Initial D EX [DS – Cancelled]

Primal 2 [PS2 – Cancelled]

Terrorforge [Cancelled/Concept – PS Vita]

NesGlider (StarFox) [SNES – Prototype]