New Cancelled Games & Their Lost Media Added to the Archive

Playstation 2 (PS2), Sony

ICO [PS2 – Beta / Concept]

monokoma
28-11-2010
1 Comment

ICO is an action adventure game that was developed by Sony / Team ICO for the Playstation 2. ICO was originally planned for the PlayStation 1, but after two years of development, the team ran into limitations on the PSX hardware and faced a critical choice: either terminate the project altogether or to restart it on the PS2.

An interim design of the game shows Ico and Yorda facing horned warriors similar to those that take Ico to the castle. The game originally focused on Ico’s attempt to return Yorda to her room in the castle after she was kidnapped by these warriors. Ueda believed this version had too much detail for the graphics engine they had developed on the PSX, and replaced the warriors with the shadow creatures. [Info from Wikipedia]

From early beta screens and videos, we can notice that Yorda had a different design and there were some huge shadows enemies, removed from the final version. If you can notice more differences in the screens and concept arts below, please let us know!

Yorda beta:


Yorda final:

Images:

Video from the PSX Version:

Nintendo, Wii

Son of the Dragon [Wii – Cancelled]

monokoma
27-11-2010
No Comments

Son of the Dragon is a cancelled action adventure that was in development by Renegade Kid and that would have been published by Gamecock for the Nintendo Wii. Sadly when Gamecock had to close down for economic issues, Renegade Kid was not able to find another publisher and the project had to be canned. Only few concept arts were released and it seems that Son of the Dragon was still in early development when it was cancelled. As we can read from an interview with Renegade Kid co-founder Jools Watsham on 1UP:

JW: Son of the Dragon was a third-person action adventure title set in a heavily stylized 15th century. You were Dracula. Something happened to you, which striped you of your ability to use your awesome powers. A quick description of it is a “good” 3D Castlevania where you are Dracula, with a focus on responsive combat, solid gameplay camera, light RPG elements, and a rich world of wickedly diverse landscapes, enemies, player weapons, and abilities. […]

JW: We spent many months developing the idea with a team of very experienced and dedicated individuals. The art team created loads of superb concept images for the player character, enemies, bosses, and environment locations. The design group created a game design document that quickly grew to over 100 pages, and detailed player abilities, damage types, enemy AI, items, accessories, level designs, currency, and many other details. It was truly inspired and exciting. We were considering licensing an engine for development, and the same day we had assets loaded into the engine, the hammer came down and the project was canceled. It was a bittersweet day.

Thanks to Celine for the contribution!

Images:

Videos:

Others, PC / MAC

Lucifer [PC – Cancelled]

monokoma
26-11-2010
No Comments

Lucifer (aka Farralin) is a cancelled a Action RPG with a gameplay similar to Diablo, that was in development in 1998 by Eclipse Entertainment as a collaboration with Electronic Arts Canada. The game was being prototyped in the Genesis 3D engine and the design called for randomly-generated dungeons featuring mini-bosses, permutation driven monsters, a deep item reward system and networked multiplay. Lucifer featured an ambitious design and state of the art (for the time) graphics, that could have made it to rival to games like Diablo II and Dungeon Siege.

Eclipse Entertainment created a small demo in a couple of weeks and EA was really impressed by their work, but ultimately the studio and the publisher were unable to come to deal terms that were mutually agreeable, so the game never moved beyond an early protoype and pre-production phase. After releasing a couple of golf games (Jack Nicklaus 5 and 6)  Eclipse Entertainment was closed down and Lucifer vanished forever with them.

Thanks a lot to Tim Fields and Bob Cooksey for the help in preserving more info and concept arts from their lost project!

Thanks to derboo for the scans (Power Play magazine 6/1998).

Images:

32X / Mega CD, Sega

The Strangers [Sega CD – Cancelled]

Celine
25-11-2010
No Comments

The Strangers was going to be a one to one fighting game based on characters from Malibu comic books ( plus three new characters made specifically for this game). On EGM issue 59 there is a small preview of the game in a very early state. The Strangers probably was never released because the developer, Malibu Interactive, closed down around 1994 ( the preview is from mid 1994 ).

Images:

Others, PC / MAC, Playstation, Sony

Assault Korps [PSX PC – Cancelled?]

monokoma
24-11-2010
2 Comments

Assault Korps is a RTS that was in development in 1997 / 1998 by Corrosive for the Playstation and PC, but it seems that the game was cancelled as we cannot find any info about its existence, apart from an early preview that was published in Edge magazine issue #53. Assault Korps was going to play as a tradional real time strategy game, but it was inspired by TV-series like the A-Team and ’50 war films.

Players were able to control a squad of commandos drafted in to counter the activities of a coalition of evil dictators, known as “the Kern”. At least 18 single player missions and a multiplayer mode were planned. As in GTA, it was possible to get into any vehicle found in the levels, as cop cars, tanks and many more.

If you have some more info on this project or its development team, please let us know!

Thanks to Celine for the contribution

Images: