Founded by ex Core Design employees in 2002, Gatehouse Games first and only game was an action RPG for the GameBoy Advance named Spiralstone, heavily influenced by PC titles , like Diablo. Sadly the game was never released for unknown reasons.
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Vanished Powers is a cancelled action adventure / RPG that was in development in 1995 / 1996 by Neon Software (creators of Tunnel B1) and it would have been published by Ocean for the original Playstation and PC. It was going to use an isometric 2D graphic style, with prerendered backgrounds and lots of FMVs, along with more than 70 (weird) characters, modeled with Silicon Graphics. In the end the Vanished Powers was never released, but we dont know the reasons behind this decision.
Thanks to Celine for the contribution! Scans from Cd Consoles #15 and Player One #62
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Blades of Passage, codenamed Project Edge ( also known as Thu Lu Khan ) was a cancelled Action-RPG planned for the Nintendo 64-DD Drive. It was originally intended to be part of the North America launch line-up for the peripheral, and was built to be a sort of 3D homage and expansion to the ideas that Secret of Mana had brought years earlier.
We can read what Richard Knight , developer at Pixelplay Interactive during the latter part of game development, recalls about the project on his site moogle.net :
By the time I arrived at the studio, the project was in a state of flux. Nintendo first postponed and then cancelled the USA launch of the 64-DD, and then not too long after 64MB cartridges became a feasible reality, the marching orders were given for all projects to go to the GameCube instead if possible.
I was hired very late into development as a 3D Modeller, with the eye to move over to Design when it made sense. I started to contribute some models and level environments, but slowdowns in the project forced me to switch to campaign and story design during the final months. (Tools in the days of N64 were tremendously primitive compared to today, so I suppose this wasn’t surprising.)
Project Edge was nowhere near finished, but as the founding and sole project of the studio, there was a lot of hope behind it until the end. Pixelplay had a tremendous sense of start-up pride, and working directly with Nintendo (on an RPG no less!) was a dream for many developers – myself included – and there were people on this project before me for 3 years or more! Losing the project changed the fabric of the company more or less on the spot.
Shortly after Project Edge was shelved, the studio was reformed into Orbital Media, and N64 hardware was changed in for early Game Boy Advance development kits.
Huge props to Richard Knight for sharing some info on such an interesting lost project!
Update: Gilgamesh found some more pics!
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Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon is an action rpg developed for the Wii by Tri-crescendo in collaboration with Namco Bandai and published by the latter in 2008. In the images below we can see many different concept arts of the characters and of some locations from the game.
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Dragon Hoard was a kind of a “dragon simulator” by Blue Fang Games, slated to be released in Q2 2000. The user would start as a young dragon in a fantasy land, which was claimed to be a fully simulated world where he should build his relations with humanoid races (humans, elves and “the Vrak”), terrorizing or helping them in exchange for knowledge, prestige or gold (there’s also a “vanity” stat mentioned). Fighting rival dragons would also be a necessity. Between missions, or “stages”, the dragon would enter a long sleep (not played in real time, of course), during which the creature would grow bigger and stronger, and can be upgraded, learning new spells and attacks. The outside world would change, too.
It’s interesting to know that in 2011 a game called Hoard by Big Sandwich Games was released, impementing many ideas of Dragon Hoard on a smaller scale. There was also an earlier attempt by Primal Software called The I of the Dragon.
More info: archived version of a preview on GA-Source.
Article by Chentzilla
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Probably how the Vrak should have looked:
Some more concept art:
