New Cancelled Games & Their Lost Media Added to the Archive

Cyberjack [Playstation – Cancelled]

Cyberjack is a cancelled “six degrees of freedom” first-person shooter similar to Descent, that was in development for Playstation by SCE Studios Team Soho (the same team behind Porsche Challenge, The Getaway and the unreleased Mean Arenas) around 1995 / 1996. Unfortunately the project was never officially announced and it was soon forgotten when the team decided to focus on other games.

It was conceived as a sci-fi shooter set in cyberspace. Players would have been able to fly through the game’s levels in all directions, shooting down enemies and finding the exit to the next mission. Not much more is known about Cyberjack and as far as we know only 2 images remain today, preserved below to remember this lost Playstation project.

If you know someone who worked on Cyberjack and could help saving more details and media, please let us know!

Project Revolution (Cauldron) [PC – Cancelled]

Project Revolution is a cancelled third person action RPG in development around 2008 by Cauldron, a small slovak team mostly known for Soldier of Fortune: Payback, Gene Troopers and the Cabela’s Big Game Hunter series. Gameplay could have been somehow similar to Fallout + Gears of War + FarCry: a post apocalypse shooting adventure, exploring its big sci-fi world filled with scary robot-monsters called Cerberus.

The game was canned in early development and never went past pre-production phase, but we can still find some interesting details with Cauldron’s hopes and ideas for Revolution in a 2013 article published on a slovak website:

“Marián Ferko, one of the co-founders of the oldest game development studio in Slovakia, once told me that archiving is extremely important. He told me in their server they still have the source code of their first game Quadrax (1996). I trust him. […] Every single piece of code, illustration, idea, everything that has not been used in their final games is stored and cataloged on the Cauldron server. […] Long ago, Cauldron became an expert in hunting games while working on their Revolution project.

Revolution was a 3rd person action RPG set in 2272. The earth is destroyed after a series of cyber-wars and machines took control over the world. The whole Earth is infected with a nano-virus that turns everything into cyborgs. There are only a few clans that resist machines, but have no future themselves because the nano-virus is gradually making them slaves. The rest of the human race resides at the orbital station in space. Food supplies are diminishing and the only chance of survival is to find a way to effectively combat the nano-virus.

The struggle of the human race lay on Ellie Whisboorn‘s shoulders. Her task was to find data cubes holding information needed to make a vaccine to stop the spread of the nano-virus. However, as a human Ellie was not powerful enough to survive post-apocalypse earth: she is forced to accept cyber-technology. By changing her appearance and cyber-implants when starting the game you would have been able to directly impact the gameplay. Ellie could thus be an open-combat fighter with heavy armor,  a stealthy assassin with invisibility or using nano-magic and relying on hacking.

Unfortunately for Cauldron, by the end of 2008 popular post-apocalyptic RPG Fallout 3 was released: publishers rejected their Revolution pitch, saying that it would have been too ambitious to try something similar to Fallout 3. Work on Revolution stopped before full production. Two Czech authors Kantúrek & Žamboch were involved, working on background for the story and the world.”

In 2014 Bohemia Interactive acquired Cauldron, changing their name into Bohemia Interactive Slovakia.

Thanks to Chris for the contribution!

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BOOM: Unleashed (UTV Ignition) [Cancelled – PS3, Xbox 360]

BOOM: Unleashed (AKA Project Amazons) is a cancelled online multiplayer focused first / third person shooter / brawler for Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, in development by UTV Ignition Games Austin (formerly True Games, which made the MMO Faxion Online) around 2010 – 2011 before their closure. While the project was never officially announced, its title was trademarked in January 2011 and rumors about its existence started appearing online.

Players could use many transforming weapons and vehicles / mechs hybrids. You could customize your character with different heads / torso / legs, choosing your weapons then join in post-apocalypse cities to hunt down other players. When using weapons there was a classic first-person view, then when riding vehicles / mechs it would change into a third person view. Vehicles could transform depending on the terrain and combat strategies, for example a bike transforming into an over-bike in water or a car becoming an anthropomorphic mech.

BOOM: Unleashed was canned just some months into development: as far as we know UTV Ignition also planned a single-player campaign, set in levels being destroyed by natural disasters. As it happened with many other cancelled games during the economic crisis of the early ‘10s, we’ll probably never see much more from this lost project.

Thanks to Daniel Nicaise and The_Phantom_Mask for the contribution!

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The Lord of the Rings (EA) [Genesis / Mega Drive – Cancelled]

Around 1992-1994 Electronic Arts was working on a Sega Mega Drive / Genesis video game based on The Lord of the Rings series, but in the end the project was cancelled for unknown reasons. The title was listed in a few EA promotional leaflets, but as far as we know screenshots were never shown in magazines at the time.

In 2015 users from the Sega-16 forum noticed some sprites / animations from this cancelled Lord of the Rings Genesis game in an article posted by former EA developer Ray Tobey, who created the Animax 2D editor used by the company.

The same team also worked on Budokan: The Martial Spirit and the cancelled Cybernauts, both fighting games for the Mega Drive / Genesis. Because of this, we can assume The Lord of the Rings would also have been a fighting game. It’s interesting to notice that an unlicensed The Lord of the Rings fighting game for Mega Drive was published by Glorysun many years later, but it’s not related to the cancelled EA project.

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Oregon Files: The Video Game [Cancelled – PS3, Xbox 360)

The Oregon Files is a cancelled action game / third person shooter based on the book series written by Clive Cussler and Craig Dirgo. It was in development around 2008 – 2009 by Sensory Sweep Studios, planned to be published for Xbox 360 and Playstation 3.

As we can read on Wikipedia:

“The books follow the mysterious “Corporation” and its leader Juan Cabrillo. The “Oregon Files” come from the name of the ship on which the Corporation is based, The Oregon is a high tech ship owned by a private secret service organization called ‘the Corporation’. It is disguised as a rusty old tramp steamer.  In reality it is an extraordinarily sophisticated intelligence-gathering vessel with luxury facilities and top of the line technical capabilities.”

The game was cancelled when Sensory Sweep finally close for bankruptcy, with employees working without being paid for months. As we can read on Mobygames:

“The company filed for bankruptcy in September 2005, but kept all projects going with two name changes (including Fooptube). In early 2008 the employees stopped receiving contributions, even though their paychecks were still deducted for the next few pay periods. Soon after that the paychecks bounced and Sensory Sweep lost Brash Entertainment as a big client when it folded at the end of 2008.”

What remains of the game today is just some concept art, preserved in the gallery below to remember the existence of this lost game.

Among Sensory Sweep other cancelled games there are such titles as Crash Tag Team Racing DS, Time Traveler, Raphael and Sentient.

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