New Cancelled Games & Their Lost Media Added to the Archive

Others, WonderSwan

Magic Formation WARS [WonderSwan Color – Cancelled]

Celine
19-10-2012
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When Bandai unveiled a GPS add-on for WonderSwan at Spring Tokyo Game Show 2001, Namco shown three games compatible with the new device. Magic Formation WARS (known in japanese as 魔放陣WARS) was an RPG that used the peripheral to determinate where battles were held and monsters formation. You could draw a spell on the map to cast a magic. The only other detail known was that the story was divided in scenarios. When the GPS for WonderSwan failed to be marketed it’s likely that Namco cancelled the project.

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Microsoft, Playstation 2 (PS2), Sony, Xbox

Orpheus [PS2 XBOX – Prototype]

U64 Staff & Contributors
17-10-2012
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Orpheus was one of many cancelled prototypes /concepts for games that french studio Darkworks worked on during 2003/2004. It appears as if Darkworks could not find a publisher and the title was abandoned. Instead, they started to work on I Am Alive for Ubisoft, before the publisher decided to move the development to Ubisoft Shanghai. Sadly we don’t know what kind of gameplay could have been planned for Orpheus and only few concept arts remain, to preserve the existence of this project.

Thanks to Dorwaks for the contribution!

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Others, WonderSwan

Let’s Play Golf [WonderSwan Color – Cancelled]

Celine
15-10-2012
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At Spring TGS 2001 Namco announced three brand-new games for Bandai’s WonderSwan, all of which used the new add-on shown for the first time at that event (like Magic Formation WARS and Super GPS Pac-Man). One of these games was tentatively named Let’s Play Golf (やったつもりでゴルフ).

As the name suggest it is a golf simulation with the peculiarity to use the GPS add-on to create new courses based on your surrounding. Another interesting feature was the presence of an accelerometer inside the cartridge that enable the player to swing using motion controls. The game was never released for unknown reason though we can speculate that the cancellation of the GPS add-on hurt the project’s chance to be distributed.

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Others, WonderSwan

Final Fantasy 3 Remake [WonderSwan Color – Cancelled]

Celine
11-10-2012
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Bandai‘s Wonderswan was an handheld system released exclusively in Japan in 1999. This console was especially sought after because around December 1999 Bandai struck a deal with Squaresoft to bring their games to the console. The first projects announced were the remake of the first three Final Fantasy, a chocobo game, Romancing SaGa and a port of Seiken Densetsu 2 (known as Secret of Mana in the west).

However not all of these games would seen a release at retail as Seiken Densetsu 2 was never seen again. Final Fantasy III shared the same destiny although it was shown on the official Squaresoft site: Final Fantasy III Wonderswan archieved site

This cancellation was especially notable because the Final Fantasy remakes , which were bundled with the system, were the biggest sellers on Wonderswan Color. Later, after a brief rumor on a possible remake on PlayStation 2, Final Fantasy 3 was unveiled as new 3D remake for Nintendo DS that eventually sold around 2 million units worldwide. This 3D remake, very different from the 2D remake proposed for Wonderswan, would be made available on PSP, iOS and Android years after the original DS release.

In 2007 Hiromichi Tanaka explained why the Wonderswan remake was canned:

When we developed FF3, the volume of content in the game was so huge that the cartridge was completely full, and when new platforms emerged, there simply wasn’t enough storage space available for an update of FF3, because that would have required new graphics, music and other content. There was also a difficulty with how much manpower it would take to remake all of that content.

The strange thing is that Final Fantasy I and II remakes and Final Fantasy IV were all deployed on a 4MB cartridge and Wonderswan theoretical biggest cartridge size was 16MB in fact a few games (even Squaresoft own Front Mission) were stored on 8MB cartridge, with Konami’s Beatmania being the only game weighting 16MB so storage space limitation is unlikely to be the main culprit.

It’s very likely that the shaking Wonderswan market in 2001/2002 (the system was discontinued by Bandai in 2003) along with the costs in developing a 2D remake sealed the fate of this project.

Scan from Playmag issue 52.

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Neo-Geo Pocket, Others

Magician Lord 2 [Neo Geo Pocket – Cancelled]

Celine
11-10-2012
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Magician Lord 2 is a cancelled sequel for ADK‘s sidescrolling action game, that was in development for the Neo Geo Pocket. When SNK released his handheld system Neo Geo Pocket in 1998, its historic ally ADK started to work on the new platform. ADK thought to resume one of its past franchise: Magician Lord.

A sequel was already in development in the mid nineties exclusively for Neo Geo CD (alongside Crystalis 2) but it was eventually canned. The NGP game was a direct sequel of the cult Neo Geo title, with Elta (the original protagonist) that could morph in even more creatures than previously, although game mechanics looked more oriented toward a Metroid/Castlevania type of gameplay.

Unfortunately even this time Magician Lord 2 and another NGP game, World of Heroes, was never released because ADK went bankrupt in early 2000. Recently an alpha version of Magician Lord 2 which was available to the japanese press got unearthed thanks to Puyo/Gamekult.

For more details (in french) read the article on Gamekult.

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