New Cancelled Games & Their Lost Media Added to the Archive

Lost Legion [PC – Cancelled]

Lost Legion was set to be a squad orientated first person shooter game based in a sci-fi world on a desert planet set in the year 2563, being developed by ZZICT, a studio founded by former Crytek developers that worked on the cancelled ‘Silent Space’ game. It would have marked ZZICT’s first game for PC platforms and was being developed around 2001 onwards.

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Lost Legion was intended to concentrate heavily on providing a realistic combat experience. As such, players would die very easily from enemies and would be quickly overwhelmed in close-quarters.

Players would issue commands to a squad under their command, made up of 5-10 troops. This would be handled in a similar way to Unreal Tournaments GUI, using a hot key the player would bring up a list of commands that they could then issue to all or some of their squad. There was to be several different mission objectives for the player such as reconnaissance (photographing the aliens) rescue missions, search and destroy, capturing and holding a position and capturing aliens for study. As the player could quite quickly become overwhelmed this missions were going to rely heavily on stealth and forward planning.

Lost Legion was said to be based on Starship Troopers, Aliens, Rainbow six and Counter Strike, ZZICT also wanted to tap into the current market trends of the time of outdoor scenarios, teamwork based action and a fear inducing atmosphere.

There is very little information on ZZICT and their company website is no longer available. It can be accessed using the Wayback Machine, but there is no more information about the game. This was the developers’ first and last game, as they never developed anything since.

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Dune: Ornithopter Assault [GBA – Cancelled]

Frank Herbert’s Dune: Ornithopter Assault is a cancelled flying / shooter game made by Soft Brigade that was going to be published on the Gameboy Advance by Cryo Interactive. Development of the game started in 2001, but in summer 2002 the project was shelved, even if it was basically finished (all the missions are completable), before submission to Nintendo due to Cryo’s financial difficulties.

This is the game’s fact-sheet published at the time in the official website, now offline:

Trained by Gurney Alleck, the most efficient and honoured officer of the House of Atreides, you are going to become a specialist in piloting and fighting ornithopters. Involved in all-out war for the spice, you must surpass all of your flying skill to survive the fall of the House of Atreides and help Paul and the Fremen in their fight for Arrakis.

  • Spectacular 3D Universe on Advanced Game Boy, seen from the cockpit of the ornithopter.
  • More than 20 different missions with various objectives simple recounting, escort duties, guarding, destroying troops and buildings, capturing vehicles, collecting spice and water, etc.
  • 5 solo and multiple player modes (using 2 cable linked Advanced Game Boy) with various levels of difficulty solo mission, campaign, joint campaign and deathmatch.
  • The first adaptation of Dune, the most famous of all science fiction universes, on hand held console.

Thankfully, a rom of Ornithopter Assault was leaked online and preserved. The game can be played on GBA emulators.

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Shadow Realms [Cancelled – PC]

Shadow Realms was a cancelled online action RPG in development at BioWare Austin. It was originally scheduled for release in fall 2015 exclusively on PC with no immediate plans for a console port. The title’s cancellation was announced on February 9, 2015. However, thanks to multiple anonymous contributors related to the project, we have been able to preserve a plethora of insider information about it that was never disclosed by BioWare officially.

Shadow Realms - Cancelled BioWare Game Concept Art

It was a game conceived by BioWare Austin in late 2013 as a 4 v 1 online multiplayer experience; with full production commencing by early 2014. According to one former employee of the company, its realization long preceded the announcement of other 4 v 1 titles, such as Evolve. Despite countless comparisons between the two by the press and consumers alike, our source emphasised that two were thought of completely independently of one another.

The World of Shadow Realms

BioWare Austin’s team envisioned a universe wherein Earth existed parallel to another world dubbed ‘Embra’. This alternative realm was populated by all manner of monsters inspired by gothic literature, including werewolves, gargoyles, wraiths and even zombies; as well as rejected creature designs from Dragon Age: Inquisition, repurposed. The story of Shadow Realms was to chronicle the discovery of Embra at the hands of a group of gifted teenagers in the 21st century. Soon realising they possess the ability to wield powerful magics, they are faced with the task of repelling the dark forces of Embra, whose invasion threatens the fate of Earth itself. Read more

Dino Crisis [GameBoy Color – Cancelled]

The original Dino Crisis was a widely popular survival horror (marketed as survival panic) game developed by Capcom and released on the original PlayStation in 1999. It was created by the same team that made the first Resident Evil game and contained many of the same tense elements but focused on more of an action feel.

A portable version of Dino Crisis was being developed for the Gameboy Color by British studio M4 Ltd, who had released Tasmanian Devil: Munching Madness and were due to release Jerry McGrath Supercross 2000.  M4 stated that the game would not be complete until Q4 of 2000 but development had started early in the year, this was reported by IGN who spoke to the developers. M4 said that Dino Crisis for the GBC would be a top down adventure rather than how the original was, it would also be developed exclusively for the GBC by-passing any kind of black and white compatibility. Virgin interactive handled development for Capcom in the UK and so they were handling this game, there was no word on where it would be released. M4 Ltd version of Dino Crisis GBC was never released, but they developed top-down Resident Evil Gaiden, published by Capcom in 2001.

It seems that this unreleased version of Dino Crisis was used as a base to develop the released Resident Evil Gaiden. As we can read at NowGamer:

As I recall, we produced a very impressive demo for a GBC version of Dino Crisis. Resident Evil was already in development as an over-ambitious port from the PlayStation version. This was scrapped and Capcom asked us to do a bespoke game with our Dino Crisis engine.

Capcom had requested Virgin for a Dino Crisis demo, Virgin asked us to create it. It used the exploration mode and [similar] battle system as Gaiden would use.

It was playable. The dino sprites in exploration mode were large. I have entire backups of everything from M4, absolutely everything, but I’m in Brazil and the backups are in the UK.

This is not the only version of a GBC Dino Crisis that can be found on the web though, as on two separate Spanish websites Vandal and Dino Crisis Wiki the game was reported to be being developed by a different studio. This other cancelled game was said to be being developed by the now missing Fluid Studios another British developer who released games such as Top Gun: Firestorm (GB) and Army Men: Air Combat (GB and N64). This was also said to be being developed late 1999 early 2000, for the GBC.

There are a few more details for this version of the game though: it would not be a top down adventure but rather using static backgrounds and images accompanied by text sequences. Some presumed screenshots from Fluid Studios’ Dino Crisis seem to have been leaked online too, but we don’t know their source. These sites also report that the game was to be 7 maps with 100 rooms in total. There were to be four characters in the game Regina, Rick, Gail and Dr Kirk all who appeared in the original game on the PlayStation. Also it was said that there was going to be five types of dinosaur two unspecified with the others being the Tyrannosaurus Rex, Velociraptor and Pteranodon.

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Update: While this article was being uploaded to the site I have been looking through documents that were released (you can find the design doc online) regarding the game that was in development by Fluid Studios. In this document it is revealed that what Fluid actually wanted to produce was a scaled down version of the original Dino Crisis, they wanted to keep all the original maps, plot-lines, dinosaurs and the look and feel of the original. This is quite a bold statement as the original was on the PlayStation 1 which is a more powerful system. Fluid were worried about the restrictive nature of the GBC especially in regards to the sprite size and how they would recreate the dinosaurs.

The story had a very brief background written about it, there was to be an undercover agent (Regina who had infiltrated the compound and was trying to capture Dr. Kirk and take him back to her government agency. Fluid also intended to have different game modes for this and it was said that they would have bonus missions if you had completed the game. This was said to contain three missions in which the player would have to kill a set amount of dinosaurs in a certain period of time. Read more

Unseen Interview: Brian McNeely (Lobotomy Software)

lobotomy software interview

Do you know Lobotomy Software? If you played Exhumed / PowerSlave on Saturn or Playstation, you probably remember that it was a real masterpiece, a Metroid-alike adventure in first person view, before Metroid Prime even existed.  Lobotomy were founded in 1993 and they released some other games like the successful Sega Saturn ports of Duke Nukem 3D and Quake, that shown to the world what the 32Bit Sega Console was able to do with 3D graphic when great developers were able to work on great games.

They were also planning 2 new original games, Aquaria (Nintendo 64 + Playstation) and Exhumed 2 (Playstation), but unfortunately these were cancelled before being completed and gamers will never be able to enjoy them. In 1998 Lobotomy’s talented developers were acquired by Crave Entertainment and the team was renamed to Lobotomy Studios, to work on a Caesar’s Palace game for the Nintendo 64, but after a year of development the game was postponed and eventually cancelled. As we can read on Wikipedia, at that point Lobotomy Studios was closed and employees were let go or given the option to be relocated to another position at Crave Entertainment.

Thanks to our friend Ross Sillifant we are able to publish this interview with Brian McNeeely, one of the main Lobotomy Software developers that worked on all their games, to ask him about his memories on their released projects and their cancelled titles. And if you still don’t know why it’s such a shame that we lost Exhumed 2 and Aquaria, please take your time and watch the video below (created by Tatsu  from Lobotomy Software Blog), to understand why Lobotomy Software was one of the most talented development team in the mid ’90, affected by an unlucky fate.

Interview with Brian McNeely by Ross Sillifant

Before we get started, i’m going to try and ‘avoid’ as many technical-based questions as possible, or least phrase them in a more general manner, as i think these type of questions would be better suited to coders like Ezra Dreisbach, with your goodself i’m looking more for the insights into the company itself, hopefully being able to get a few rumours from the press cleared up etc etc.

Q1) Starting with the standard, cliched opener, Brian, please introduce yourself to our readers, in terms of your background, if you could be so kind.

Brian: Thanks for this opportunity Ross.  My name is Brian McNeely (my name was actually Brian Anderson up to around 1996 when I changed my last name to McNeely, which is my birth name).  I’ve been working in the gaming industry since January 1989, when I was hired at Nintendo of America as a Game Play Counselor.  It’s hard to believe that was over 26 years ago!  I look back at those days as a golden era both in the gaming world and in my career, and I feel very lucky that I was at Nintendo’s epicenter during that period.  The NES, SNES, and Gameboy hardware and software were all the rage, and I had the privilege of playing those games full-time and helping gamers all over the world with game tips and “counseling.”  It really was a ton of fun.  I love what I do now and what I’ve done since then, but that was one of the best times of my life for sure. Read more