[email protected]
Unseen64 is made with love, sleep deprivation and your help :)

Open World

Paladin is a cancelled open world Action medieval game developed around 2007-2008 by Midway Studios Austin (formerly Inevitable Entertainment) and published by Midway Games for the PC, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 platforms. The game was using the Unreal Engine 3.

For years, few information were available regarding Paladin as it was cancelled before being announced. On his personal website, Richie Romero, who was Art Director at Midway until the closure of the company, shared screenshots and videos to what appears to be an action game set in the medieval times with open world elements. During that period, Midway Studios Austin was split in two teams, both working on different projects: Paladin, and Career Criminal, which was cancelled in August 2008, following publisher’s huge financial loss.

While no official announcement were made during its development, we can speculate that Paladin was cancelled back in December 2008, when the studio was closed by Midway which still faced financial difficulties:

Facing possible bankruptcy, Midway games will close its Austin studio entirely, suspend development on several unspecified titles, and reduce its workforce by 25 percent. (…) Midway did not list which projects it plans to cancel or suspend, but calls them “non-core” projects slated for 2010 and 2011 that had not yet been announced. (…)

Alongside Paladin and Career Criminal, Midway’s bankruptcy also led to the cancellations of various projects such as Stranglehold 2: Gun Runner, This is Vegas, Hero or even a new take on Mortal Kombat.

Videos:

Images:

Microsoft, Others, PC / MAC, Xbox 360

Wild Summer (Novarama) [Cancelled – Xbox 360, PC]

monokoma

24-10-2021

No Comments

Wild Summer is a cancelled action adventure that was in development by Novarama around 2005 / 2006, planned to be released on Xbox 360 and PC. Gameplay would have been similar to Rockstar’s Bully, with a young protagonist exploring an open world city using parkour moves, resolving missions and… stealing panties?

Players could go out for drinks, flirt with girls and do other “youth leisure activities”, as covered in a 4Gamer preview (translated from Japanese):

“The range of activities is not limited to the city, but you can also travel to Sun City University and the neighboring town of El Serito. What you do in this space is entirely up to you. That’s why you go to parties and do bad things with local gangsters. […] one of the main objectives is to win Jessica over, the girl of your dreams.”
“[…] while jumping between buildings from roof to roof, I found a gang of young shaved heads in dragon shirts. […] At this point, the player was pressed against the binoculars and instructed to steal three panties that hang outside a window on the rooftop. This seems to be the initiation (rite of passage) for joining the gang.”

Today Novarama are mostly known for working on Reality Fighters and the Invizimals franchise. As we can read on their site:

“Novarama began working on PC titles, releasing Fallen Lords: Condemnation in 2005 all over Europe. We then moved on to Wild Summer, a PC / Xbox360 adventure title, which was cancelled and never saw the light of day.”

Thanks to David for the contribution!

Images:

Videos:

Microsoft, Xbox

The Saboteur [Prototype – Xbox]

monokoma

18-03-2021

No Comments

The Saboteur is an open world action game developed by Pandemic Studios and released on Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC in 2009. Initially the project was pitched with a prototype built using the same 3D engine Pandemic used for Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction, running on the original Xbox. In this early version the protagonist was William Grover-Williams, a real life race car driver turned SOE agent during the Second World War: he was the inspiration for what later became Sean Devlin, the protagonist of the final game.

This Xbox prototype was graphically impressive for its time, with some destructible environments and explosion psychics. In the footage below you can see a mission in which players had to capture a Nazi truck, following it with a racing car. You would then enter into a Nazi base, destroying a huge building with a sniper rifle.

Unfortunately Pandemic Studios was shut down in 2009, leaving behind many canned projects: Legends, Mercenaries 3: No Limits, Mercs Inc, The Next Big Thing and Batman: The Dark Knight.

Images:

PSP, Sony

ZTA (SDP Games) [PSP – Cancelled]

monokoma

01-04-2020

No Comments

ZTA is a cancelled open world action game that was in development by french studio SDP Games (Smack Down Productions) for Sony PSP. As you can imagine from its name, the game was meant to be a clone of GTA, but focused on the zombie apocalypse. This lost game was revealed some years ago by a French website, with a few details directly from the developers. It seems SDP Games tried to pitch their project to Rockstar Games, but without any luck.

As we can read from the original article (“translated” with Google Translate):

“This is our very first game prototype! It was indeed a GTA with Zombies on PSP, very zany with the music of Weird Al. We were in contact with Rockstar for the edition, but we never could agree on a budget. Unable to find another publisher, we had to abandon it to move to Nintendo DS ”

Only a bunch of screenshots from the ZTA prototype survive today after the closure of the studio, preserved below to remember the existence of this lost game.

Images:

Microsoft, Playstation 3 (PS3), Sony, Xbox 360

Prototype 3 (Radical Entertainment) [Cancelled – Xbox 360, PS3]

monokoma

21-02-2020

No Comments

After releasing Prototype 2 in mid 2012, Radical Entertainment started working on the third chapter of their series, hopeful to quickly releasing it as one of their last games for the 7th generation of consoles or even better as a launch title for Playstation 4 and Xbox One.

Unfortunately Prototype 2 did not sell as expected: the team was already in financial difficulties and their parent company decided to layoff part of their staff, cancelling plans for Prototype 3. As we can read on Kotaku:

“Although we made a substantial investment in the Prototype IP, it did not find a broad commercial audience. Radical is a very talented team of developers, however, we have explored various options for the studio, including a potential sale of the business, and have made a difficult conclusion through the consultation process that the only remaining option is a significant reduction in staff. As such, some employees will remain working for Radical Entertainment supporting other existing Activision Publishing projects, but the studio will cease development of its own games going forward.”

While Prototype 3 was never officially announced by Activision nor Radical Entertainment, fans of the IP are still asking for it. In June 2019 a few screenshots from an early development version of Prototype 3 were found online. We saved these images in the gallery below, to preserve what remains of this cancelled project.

Images: