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Action Adventure

Around 2006 – 2007 a video game based on the popular Oliver Twist novel by Charles Dickens was pitched by Electronic Arts for Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, but cancelled in the end. The project was never officially announced by EA, but some concept art was found online in 2010. As wrote by Kotaku, by reading the few notes available, EA’s Oliver Twist video game could have been somehow similar to Assassin’s Creed:

“Looks a bit like a kid’s version of Assassin’s Creed, but with one potentially interesting concept mentioned in the notes, Oliver’s hunger levels affecting his pose and animation and, I assume, his vitality. Dearsley’s concepts show off Fagin, multiple versions of Oliver and the Bowstreet Runners.”

As far as we know this Oliver Twister project was conceived by an internal team at EA, as one of many pitches for new projects to be considered by the studio. Other unreleased ideas were Gun Head, a Road Rash reboot and Hurikan.

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Playstation, Saturn, Sega, Sony

Spanish Blood (Scavenger) [Playstation, Sega Saturn – Cancelled]

monokoma

04-11-2019

1 Comment

Spanish Blood is a cancelled pirate-themed adventure game that was in development by Scavenger, planned to be released for Playstation and Sega Saturn. As noticed by Celine, the game was officially announced or at least talked about at E3 1996, when a few gaming magazines published a list of in-development games by Scavenger.

Some screenshots were published online by The King of Grabs, found in an old E3 Press Kit. By looking at these we can see Spanish Blood was going to be another impressive (for its time) 3D game by the team, which was composed of talented developers from the Amiga demoscene. While there are no details about Spanish Blood’s gameplay, we can speculate it would have been a seafaring adventure, with players exploring the sea on their boat, fighting against pirates and finding hidden treasures.

Unfortunately Scavenger probably had too many projects in development at the same time and with missing payments from their major publisher (GT Interactive), in the end the company had to close down. Most of their games were cancelled, such as Mudkicker, Angel, Spearhead, Aqua, Terminus, Heavy Machinery, X-Men, Into the Shadow and Tarantula.

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Nintendo, SNES + Super Famicom

Joe VS. The Wall [SNES – Cancelled]

monokoma

26-10-2019

No Comments

Joe VS. The Wall is a cancelled side scrolling action adventure in development / to be published by Ocean Software for the Super Nintendo, around 1992. It was listed by Nintendo Power (issue 34, March 1992) as one of the games shown by Ocean at the ‘92 Winter CES, with just a few details:

“Ocean was busy with several development projects: Radio Flyer, based on the upcoming movie, and Joe Vs. The Wall and Push Over— two unique puzzlers.”

Not much more was known about the game before its disappearance, but a single screenshot and its title screen were found by Video Game History Foundation on the Electronic Gaming Monthly 1992 Preview Guide:

“This side-scrolling action adventure title includes Mode 7 scaling and rotation. Amazing graphic and animation will thrill you, as you character with his hammer must make his way through a number of platforms and difficult situations.”

The game graphic has some kind of “Amiga feel“, maybe this lost SNES game was a port of another Amiga title?

Microsoft, Playstation 3 (PS3), Sony, Xbox 360

Nomos (Haven) [Xbox 360, PS3 – Cancelled]

monokoma

12-10-2019

2 Comments

Nomos (previously known as Haven) is a cancelled sci-fi action adventure that was in development by Coded Illusions for Xbox 360 and PS3. Not much is know about it’s settings and gameplay, but from what we gathered it looks it would have been set in some kind of alien planet threatened by a new world order regime.

The project was started by the team in 2005, but in 2008 they had to close down because of lack of money to keep the studio alive “following the effects of the financial crisis that made it difficult to find a publisher”. Some of its former employees founded a new studio called Vertigo Games, reworking part of the ideas and 3D assets conceived for Nomos into a different game titled “Adam’s Venture”, released in 2009.

Some footage and concept art from Nomos was shared online by former developers, preserving what the team had originally in mind for their project.

“The level shown in the video is part of a bigger level known as the ‘Sanctuary’, which is an underground cave-system inhabited by a peaceful group of people who found refuge from the terror of a new world order regime.”

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Others, PC / MAC, Playstation, Sony

Angel quest (Virtual Studio) [PS1, PC – Cancelled]

monokoma

04-10-2019

No Comments

Angel Quest is a cancelled action adventure that was in development by french company Virtual Studio (Ar’Kritz the Intruder, S.T.O.R.M.) around 1996 / 1997, to be published by GT Interactive (Driver, Oddworld: Abe’s Exoddus, Critical Depth) for Playstation and PC. You could freely explore a huge (for its time) 3D world by flying around with its winged protagonist, somehow similar to a 3D Kid Icarus. You would fight against enemies in real time, helping NPCs and resolving quests as in a classic Action RPG.

As far as we know GT Interactive never officially announced this project, but thanks to Stéphane de Luca who shared some images and details on his website, we can preserve the memory of this lost game:

“This project was the first to use optical motion capture for real time animation: we pioneered this advanced technology. The heroes was an Angel living in a very large world: he could make use of his ability to fly to speed up its move towards the next location to visit. Numerous characters were also there to help him find his way, giving him potential clues through interactive dialogs.
Angel Quest was running on PlayStation on which I programmed the engine and the game in C and assembler. All the characters were in 3D and animated through motion capture: I developed a compression tool that reduced the data stream (curve) that was moving each node of the skeleton. The word was really huge: I had to stream all blocks silently from the CD-ROM drive as the heroes was moving: it was a big challenge due to bandwidth limitation.”

In the end Angel Quest was canned for unknown reasons. Virtual Studio later worked on other cancelled action games for PS1, such as Commando and Valerian.

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