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Infogrames

Drakkhen is an early-3D western RPG originally developed by Infogrames in 1989, published for Amiga, Atari ST, MS-DOS and Super Nintendo. In 1994 Kotobuki System / Kemco developed a spiritual successor for the SNES, published as Super Drakkhen in Japan and released in North America as Dragon View.

However in 1991 Infogrames was already working on an official sequel by the same team, planned for PC, Amiga, SNES and FM Towns. While this lost version of Drakkhen 2 is now forgotten by everyone and not many details are available, Youloute was able to find an article with some screenshots, published by french magazine Generation 4 (Issue 38 and 41, November 1991 / February 1992).

Thanks to Olivier, who translated the main details in these pages, we know more about the project:

“Game would be released for PC 256 colors, Amiga, FM Towns and Super Famicom. Cartridge would of course feature a battery to allow in-game saving. There’s only one warrior and animations are more detailed. More beat em up phases where each gamepad button would be used in the Super Famicom version. Moving across the world will be in 3D, except Super Famicom where game will use its specific hardware. Release still being planned for Q1 1992.”
“To learn a bit more about Drakkhen II, we asked project manager Philippe Agrpnidis: video games production is slowly getting close to movie production, visual quality with VGA and MCGA, sound with Roland and Sound Blaster, and new CD platforms such as CDI, CD-ROM, changed the landscape within six months. Hence, like a movie production, the game requires multiple people: Philippe Agipnidis as project manager, François Marcela-Froideval for scenario, Etienne Guerry for story-board, Guy Selva for production and, of course, another one for graphics, plus one for sounds.”
Rest of the text mentions there would have a been a small book included with the game box to help gamers.

Also, as mentione by Julien, Drakkhen II would have been more like an action adventure than a RPG.

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Nintendo, Others, PC / MAC, Playstation 2 (PS2), Sony, Wii

Hogs of War 2 [Cancelled – Wii, PS2, PC]

monokoma

14-09-2019

No Comments

The first Hogs of War is a turn-based strategy game developed by Infogrames Sheffield House (Gremlin Interactive), released for the PlayStation in 2000. While the game received average reviews at the time, it soon became a cult-hit and many years later (2008) Infogrames officially announced a sequel for Wii, PlayStation 2 and PC, titled Hogs of War 2. A Nintendo DS version was also announced, but we can assume it would have been much different from the others.

Hogs of War 2 artwork was preserved by the Gremlin Archive in their awesome book, with some more details about the project:

“Hogs of War II was started as a concept by the Infogrames Sheffield House team, but never materialized. Was cancelled at Gremlin by Infogrames, passed by Sumo Digital and then cancelled again by Atari (Infogrames) after Blitz Games (Oliver Twins) had started a DS version I think.”

Some images from this cancelled sequel are preserved below, to remember its existence. At the moment we don’t have any screenshot from the lost Nintendo DS version.

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Microsoft, Playstation 2 (PS2), Sony, Xbox

Alone in the Dark 5 [PS2, Xbox – Cancelled]

monokoma

05-06-2018

10 Comments

Alone in the Dark 5 is the cancelled, fifth chapter in the cult-classic Alone in the Dark series that was in development by Atari / Infogrames Lyon House Studio in 2002, planned to be released on Playstation 2 and Xbox. One year after Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare (developed by Darkworks) and six years before the Alone in the Dark 2008 reboot (developed by Eden Games), AitD 5 was in development directly by Infogrames Lyon as one of their major internal projects.

In early ‘00s Infogrames had already a few economic problems: in 2002 they had a loss of $67 million and things would only get worse during the following years. While Alone in the Dark 5 was never officially announced by Infogrames it could have been a successful game for them, bringing in some good sales. Unfortunately this never happened.

Alone in the Dark 5 was soon cancelled, possible because of quality issues or because the series and the classic survival horror genre were not as popular as before among gamers. The project could have been seen as a risk to complete in such an unstable market.

In 2003 Infogrames renamed all of its brands into Atari (after they bought out the name from Hasbro) and heavily re-organized the company and their projects. During the early ‘00s Infogrames canned many more interesting games, such as La Femme Nikita, Urban X-Tribe, Ghostbusters Academy, Riders and NetLife.

Only a few images from Alone in the Dark 5 are saved in the gallery below, to preserve its existence.

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Playstation 2 (PS2), Sony

Tintin [PS2 – Cancelled Prototype]

yota

20-10-2014

1 Comment

Before going bankrupt, Appeal, the same software house behind the unreleased Outcast II, developed a prototype for a new action game based on the Tintin comic books:

After the Outcast II debacle (see the related article here), we were offered a share buy-back option by our publisher (Infogrames) in exchange of a new pre-production contract around a Tintin game. As we had to keep our studio alive, we bought back the shares at a nominal price and got the contract started.
The budget was tight and the timing was short, so we tried to reuse a number of ressources from the Outcast II prototype and build on top of that. The game was to be fully 3D exploration with some action scenes and mini-games.

Unfortunately the publisher, Infogrames, couldn’t reach a deal with Moulinsart, the french foundation that manages the TinTin franchise, thus destroying Appeal’s last chance to recover.

For more informations check Franck Sauer’s Website.

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Videos:

Nintendo, Nintendo 64 & 64DD

Vampire Circus [N64 – Prototype]

Celine

14-04-2012

2 Comments

Vampire Circus was a Gauntlet-like type of game full of vampires and zombies planned for Nintendo 64 by Zed Two who started working on it in 1996. The game was designed so that you controlled just a single character out of the five in the party, and the others would be under AI control, although you could switch which of the five you were controlling. Each had different skills and abilities, so there was good reason to swap your control between different characters, and it was also possible to lose members of your party to the vampire hoard, so you could only control members of the party that remained alive.

Zed Two got quite far with a playable prototype but when Infogrames took over Ocean, who originally struck a two games deal with the developer (the other one was Wetrix), they forced the team to work with Warner Bros properties they just bought at a great expense. The promising project was thus morphed into the less ambitious Taz Express.

All information and artworks are courtesy of Pickford Bros official website.

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