Action RPG

Monster Knight [PS2 Concept – Cancelled]

Monster  Knight is a cancelled third person action-rpg developed by Insomniac that was supposed to be released for PS2. The game was never officially announced, but its design document, created in 1999 and which contained the concept arts that we can see below, was shown to IGN in august 2012.

From the few info available about it, Monster knight was probably a mix between Zelda and Pokemon: in fact, the player main’s objective was to explore a large world and capture the various creatures that he encountered.

However, in this game monsters could  be acquired also by negotiation or after pursuing and catching them, and they were used by the player not as fighters but as equipment or transport. Every creature had a particular class, growth pattern and personality.

For more information check  IGN article .

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Maximum Gauge [Cancelled – PSX / PC]

Maximum Gauge was an 2D/3D adventure game with a sci-fi theme in development by Big Grub for Playstation 1 and PC and to be published by MGM Interactive. Gregg Tavares , Big Grub developer at the time, described the game as “take Diablo but make it play like Zelda from the Super Nintendo”. Apparently there were direction problems and the game never seen the light of the day.

Scan from PlayMag issue 15.

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Dungeon Hourouki [NES – Cancelled]

Dungeon Hourouki (aka Dungeon Wandering Chronicle) is a cancelled RPG that was in development by ASCII for the Famicom / NES. It seems that in the game players were lost in a dungeon of some sort (a prison?) and they had to find a way to escape. An interesting feature of Dungeon Hourouki was its random generated dungeon system, that would have let to explore more than a million different combinations of levels. It’s currently unknown why the game was canned and only few screens were found in a japanese magazine.

Thanks to Celine for the contribution!

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Bastion [Beta – PC / Xbox 360 / iOS]

Bastion is an action rpg developed by Supergiant Games and published by Warner Bros. for Xbox 360 XBLA and PC in 2011. An iOS version was later released in 2012. A four-week prototype of this title, made in 2009, was playable at PAX est 2012. It’s so early that the bad guys are just placeholders from Dungeons and Dragons, but the basic concepts of the game, minus of course the dynamic narration, are already there.

In the beta the player can use an hammer or a sword and pick up and throw various objects at enemies, a feature that didn’t make it in the final build.

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Ultima Reborn [DS – Cancelled]

Ultima Reborn was a title planned to be released in 2008 for the DS by Electronic Arts, and was in development at their Montreal branch for some time. As its name implies, it is an Ultima title, slated to be a remake of Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar.

Unlike previous Ultima games, which used a top-down view, this remake would have featured a side-on perspective, similar to games such as Street Fighter and Final Fight. The concept art available has had mixed reactions, with some fans feeling that the game appeared to stray too far from its Ultima roots, and others praising the new visual and artistic style, as well as the scantily-clad women.

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