Puyo Korogashi is a cancelled racing game that was in development by Compile around 1995, initially planned for the Sega 32-xMega Drive add-on but later moved to the Saturn. By looking at concept art published in a Japanese gaming magazine it seems that while racing players had to roll a giant puyo slime / ball (just like in Tamakorogashi, a game in which kids roll balls during sports days at school). Each character had their own way to push the puyo: for example a witch would use her broom, an anthropomorphic elephant would blow it with its trunk and a fish with legs would slap it with its fins. For sure Puyo Korogashi could have been a fun game to watch!
In concept art we also see “question marks doors” with traps behind them: we speculate these would work like those fake doors in “Takeshi’s Castle” and players would have to choose the correct one to pass through. If this was the case, races in Puyo Korogashi could have been even crazier and more unpredictable than other Mario Kart clones.
In the end the game was never released and we don’t know how much was completed before its cancellation.
Star Net Frontier is a cancelled Massive Multiplayer Online Sci-Fi RPG / Shooter that was in development by Dart Studio around 2002 – 2004, planned to be released on PC. Players would have been able to take different roles (trade captain, soldier, rogue, politic, etc.) while exploring a series of alien planets (with up to 100 square miles of open terrains), travel and trade around the galaxy, battle on planets and in space. As we have already seen many times in other cancelled games with similar premises (huge galaxy full of explorable planets, freedom to choose how to play the game, online multiplayer with thousands of players) Star Net Frontier’s ambitions were too high for a small team.
The game was planned to feature:
Highly flexible and modular design of the online world supported by dynamic game-play
Large-scale episodic storyline to extend and update game environments and locales as well as launch a major episode on a regular basis. Each episode will be based on such events as civil wars and invasions, large-scale battles, discovery of new planets, natural disasters, etc.
Simulation of sophisticated economy and politics; players will be able to engage in cutthroat trade, support or oppose political parties, establish governments, and even declare wars.
Player-to-player and player-to-NPC interaction of the thousands online players in the single persistent Universe.
Experience of multiple environments using First and Third Person View:
Large open terrain environment – roam on foot or vehicle from 10th up to 100th square miles of continuous open terrains including deserts, forests and jungle, hills and mountains, etc.
Open terrain environment will support real-time weather and environmental factors (rain and snow, alteration of day and night, etc.)
Open outer space environment – huge network of star systems, connected together. Using a spacecraft players will roam from one star system to another, orbit planets, explore asteroid belts, dock to space stations, land on the planets.
Large indoor environment – play inside of such structures as factories, mines, board huge space stations and battleships.
“Water and underwater” as well as “in the air” environments.
Unique profession of reporter will allow players to record/replay events in the game. It will allow players to report and share in-game events and experience with other players in the game as well as with a bigger community out of the game, on the web.
“Game takes place in the far future, millennia after the human race first steps on the moon of the home planet and in space. Humanity spread widely among the stars and settled hundreds of thousands of star systems. Vast computer networks spread across all those stars. And in this network AI woke up and gained consciousness. Controlling millions of mechanisms and bio-machines (cyborgs), it tried to free itself from the slavery as well as conquer and dominate humanity. Hundreds of years of wars followed that moment.
During the wars separated human worlds were united in the vast and mighty Empire and finally AI was forced beyond the borders of the Empire. But it wasn’t terminated, the threat still remains and war continues. AI mechanized legions are still attacking unprotected worlds at the borders and it sends spies deep into the Empire, looking for weaknesses. On the fringes of the human Empire, among the stars and on the surface of alien planets, the future of the sentient being will be decided.”
SNF world will be populated by humans, AI machines, and cyborgs – hybrid combinations of humans and machines.
As a citizen of one of the planet-states or as a member of a free mercenary outfit, players will have a chance to try and learn many professions in the army, merchant fleets, trade guilds, and many more.
SNF game takes place on several planets, moons and space around these planets. Each SNF planet is a 3D emulation of one or several regions of the planet’s surface. Each region may cover up to hundred square miles of different kinds of terrain. Players may navigate on foot or using different vehicles to small towns, trade-posts, watchtowers, military bases and forts, ruins of underground labyrinths and mazes of abandoned scientific laboratories or industrial installations. In space the game takes place between planets, space stations, moon bases littered with fields of debris of destroyed spaceships, blown-up space stations, and ruined battle platforms and satellites left from previous wars. Planets and moons have asteroid fields and other space junk in their orbits as well. Players may travel in space using starships.
In the end Star Net Frontiers quietly vanished and today no one remembers about this lost game. We speculate the team did not find a publisher of funds to continue working on their ambitious MMO, so the project had to be canned.
Cold Energy is a cancelled third person shooter / action game that was in development by Keystone Games Studio around 2008 – 2011, planned to be released on Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. Players would have to shoot down hundreds of enemies and huge bosses on a post-apocalypse earth, looking somehow similar to SEGA’s Gunvalkyrie.
Cold Energy’s main feature was the ability to manipulate the magnetic force, using for example metallic objects to walk on walls. As in games with psychic abilities such as Second Sight and Psi-Ops you could also lift barrels and throw them at enemies, using them like bombs.
The game was playable at various chinese gaming events and it looked quite fun to play, but unfortunately it seems Keystone Games were not able to find a publisher for their project: Cold Energy was canned and sometime later the team closed down
Clown Combat is a cancelled parody FPS planned for Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 that was conceived by Eagle Claw Studios around 2002 – 2003, after William Bill Anderson finished working on Maximo Ghost to Glory and opened his new team. The project was quietly announced as being in development and The Playstation 3 Bible even published the title on their “confirmed games for PS3” list, but in the end not much was ever revealed and it was soon forgotten by everyone.
In 2016 during an interview we published in our book “Video Games You Will Never Play” Bill shared some more details on his unseen game:
“Clown Combat is still on my wish list for the future, fingers crossed and I’m still working on the design. The idea behind Clown Combat was to make a mainstream FPS game that was family friendly, where the clown characters were made of morphing plastic and therefore could do things way beyond realistic shooter games of today. It’s a parody game that pokes fun at a lot of science fictionmovies along the way, from Logan’s Run to Star Wars and more. Currently I’m still working on game play designs and level designs for the game and with any luck we’ll get it made still.”
Concept art and models created for the game can be found on Bill’s Clown Combat website, also preserved in the gallery below to remember the existence of this interesting project never released on Xbox 360 and PS3. Maybe one day we’ll be able to play it on PC or next-gen consoles.
Cyberdrive is a cancelled racing game set in a sci-fi Paris that was in development for PC by Nadeo around 2001, before they became a favorite team among fans of arcade racers, thanks to their release of TrackMania in 2003. At the time Nadeo was still trying to find their niche, working on many different prototypes such as Windracer and Lanfeust of Troy to pitch them to different publishers. Cyberdrive looked inspired by TRON and we can assume gameplay could have been similar to TrackMania.
Some fans randomly found out about the prototype projects in 2011, saving a few images before they could have been lost forever. In the end Nadeo was lucky enough to get hired to work on Virtual Skipper 2 and 3, something that helped to keep them alive while waiting to find real success with Trackmania.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience, by continuing to browse the site you are agreeing to the use of cookies. Find out more about cookies.Hide
Privacy & Cookies Policy
Privacy Overview
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
