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The Girl Who Leapt Through Time [Playstation – Cancelled]

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (時をかける少女, Toki o Kakeru Shojo) is a cancelled adventure game that was planned around 1998 by Bandai for the original Playstation. The game was based on the 1967 novel of the same name by Yasutaka Tsutsui and possibly the related 1997 movie (and not the 2006 anime, unless Bandai leapt through time), which were quite popular at the time.

By looking at gameplay from the available footage (found in the VHS edition of the 1997 movie and on a CD-ROM from “Pre-Pre” PlayStation CLUB magazine) the game looked similar to Revelations: Persona on PS1, with top-down 2D exploration and animated cutscenes. As far as we know there was no combat in The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, but there could have been some kind of dating-sim mechanics.

Character design for this lost PS1 video game was by Minene Sakurano (who at the time was working on Mamotte Shugogetten) and the scenario was written by Hiroshi Yamaguchi (mostly known for his participation in Gainax and Gonzo). A preview was published in Dengeki PlayStation magazine (Vol.76, June 1998): if you are able to translate the most important parts from this preview, please let us know in the comments below!

Thanks go GIoN for the contribution

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Mobilesuit Gundam MSPlatoon.com [WonderSwan Color – Cancelled]

In 2001 Bandai announced Mobilesuit Gundam MSPlatoon.com for WonderSwan Color. However the game concept, known during production as “the Net Gundam“, first concept was in 1997 when developers at Bandai started to think to create a Gundam game designed to work over the Internet. MSPlatoon.com was a strategy game that allowed gamers to play as a soldier for the Republic of Zion or the Earth Federation and engage fights in operation plans announced every week by server-side so to battle with other humans online. Over the time you could even become a leader of your chosen side.

The online component was guaranteed through the WonderGate, an add on that allowed the WonderSwan to access to NTT Docomo network, or through a special cartridge to connect with a PC (see image below). This interesting title, the first multiplayer online game for a dedicated handheld system, was planned to be released in autumn of the same year but seems the concept was far too ambitious so Bandai quietly cancelled the project.

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Insect Breeder [WonderSwan Color – Cancelled]

Around 2000 the breeding genre was very popular fueled by Pokemon, along with japanese kids always in love with insects, as in the Mushiking phenomenon. Probably Bandai decided to greenlit an insect breeder game (インセクトブリーダー) for its handheld Wonderswan Color to ride the boom. Too bad this game was never released and no information was ever shared, with the exception of a single image.

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Princess Maker: Yumemiru Yousei [WonderSwan Color – Cancelled]

A new game in the Princess Maker (プリンセスメーカー) series was in development for Wonderswan, but cancelled in the end. The title was revealed back when Wonderswan Color was announced, it was to be published by Bandai Visual but after it was postponed, it never saw a release on Bandai’s system.

As noted by xdaniel the game disappeared from Bandai release lists around March-August 2001 so it’s likely it was cancelled in that period.

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Unknown Shooter [WonderSwan – Cancelled?]

A few months before the release of the original Wonderswan (March 4, 1999) french magazine PlayerOne issue 92 had a small article about the new platform in which it was shown an image about a mysterious vertical shooter. Overall Wonderswan (and future revision) only had an handful of shmups (Space Invader, SD Gundam Operation U.C., Project E-Force, Judgement Silversword,  Cardinal Sins and  Run=Dim) and none of them looks like the game shown before the launch.

If you have more info about this project please let us know!

Additional images from Mega Console issue 54.

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