Action

Rock [PC – Cancelled]

Rock is a space combat sim / mech sim / FPS hybrid that was in development in 1999 / 2000 by Singletrack for PC, but later cancelled because the studio was closed. The team planned to combine 3 genres into a single game, to let the player a lot of freedom in how to resolve the missions. It was an ambitious project, as we can read from a preview published in Computer Gaming World magazine (thanks to Roushimsx on the HG101 Forum):

Imagine a game where you can jump into a tarfighter, dogfight our way to a martian plain, hop out, toss a grenade in a Mech to kill the pilot so you can claim the assault robot for yourself, rampage across a warzone in your new weapons platform and finally jump out and enter a building, killing some fuards before you plat explosives to level it – all of this without any load screens to stall the action.

Cooperative online multiplayer was also planned. After Singletrack closed down, the Rock team ended up moving on to Incognito Entertainment (later purchased by Sony) and started to work on Warhawk for the PS3. You can feel that some of the concepts from Rock were implemented into Warhack.

Thanks to Robert Seddon for the contribution!

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Road Rash (2006) [X360/PS3 – Cancelled]

A new game in the Road Rash series was in development by EA Warrington in 2006, but the project was soon cancelled and the studio was closed. The game was probably in early development when it was canned and only an animation pre-viz was found to preserve its existance. As Tiffany Steckler of EA explained to GamesIndustry.biz:

The UK  Studio has decided to reinforce its development base by bringing the creative teams from disparate locations into one place. […] The idea is to have those people who are working in the North West Studio in Warrington closer geographically to Guildford and Chertsey, to help build a more cohesive entity, to have better synergy across teams, better career opportunities and better sharing of tools and libraries

It’s still possible that the Road Rash concept created at EA Warrington could be resurrected sometime in the future in the “bigger” EA UK studio.

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Kameo 2 [Xbox 360 – Cancelled]

Kameo 2 [Xbox 360 – Cancelled]

Kameo 2“, successor of Kameo: Elements of Power, is a cancelled Xbox 360 title which was in development at British studio Rare Ltd. Although it was never officially announced, some Kameo 2 animations appeared in a reel of a former Rare employee, as noticed by some Kameo-fans at the neoGaf Forum. It’s interesting to see that the style of the project looked different from the original game, with a more “realistic” version of the character.  We can speculate that they tried to make Kameo more “mature” to appeal more to the typical Xbox userbase. It is unknown to what extent development was finished when the title was cancelled in late 2007 – around two years after the original was released.

In 2008, concepts for a more direct sequel were created. Kameo mainly retained her design from the same game, just with a more realistic style. Images can be found beneath.

Thanks to Hey Hey for the contribution!

Kameo2

Character design of Kameo in 2008:

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Robocop Vs Terminator [NES – Cancelled]

Robocop VS Terminator is a action game based on the mini-series of comic book with the same name that was released for all the main consoles between 1993 and 1994. A version for the Nintendo 8-bit was developed by Interplay but later canceled, because the system was considered commercially dead and probably also due to the low quality of the gameplay: RvT NES had nothing in common with the other editions, being just a lame and generic action game. The beta was later leaked on the Internet and you can easily find it with Google.

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Spec Ops [PS2 – Cancelled]

Spec Ops is a cancelled third person shooter / action game that was in development at Rockstar Vancouver in 2003 / 2004 for the Playstation 2. The title was going to be published by Take 2 as the previous games in the Spec Ops series, but in the end the project was never released for unknown reasons. As we can read from Take-Two’s Fiscal 2002 Financial Results (also on IGN Ps2):

Rockstar Games will continue to create groundbreaking original content for console video game systems, as well as expand its proprietary intellectual properties, including extensions of its Grand Theft Auto, Max Payne, Midnight Club, State of Emergency, Spec Ops and Smuggler’s Run brands. Rockstar currently has eleven original projects in production at its five internal development studios.

The Queens of the Stone Age’s singer Josh Homme even confirmed to be writing the soundtrack for the game in an interview with MTV:

“Alain and I are writing the music for a Rockstar game called ‘Spec Ops,’ ” Homme said. “There’s a bunch of versions of new songs. Some of them are mellow, some of them are rock and some of them are, like, hick-hop because we’re a bunch of white guys.”

For Homme, working with Rockstar on the game was a dream come true — kind of. While he doesn’t actually play any video games, he did enjoy the process of writing tunes for the small screen.

After Spec Ops was canned, Rockstar Vancouver started developing Bully.

Thanks to Hey Hey for the contribution!

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