Curlys Adventure is a cancelled point and click adventure that was in development by Sylum, under the supervision of Epic MegaGames (now called Epic Games) in 1995. Sadly in 1997, Sylum parted with Epic and the project was canned. Only a couple of screenshots remain in the gallery below, to remember the project.
Thanks to Megalol for the contribution!
Check out Epic Mega Games’ website of Curly’s Adventure for more info and screen shots Here
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Leisure Suit Larry: Pocket Party is a cancelled point and click adventure that was in development in 2004 by TKO Software and it would have been published by Vivendi Universal for the ill-fated N-gage. The game was going to be the first original mobile title in the Leisure Suit Larry series, but it was never finished, probably because of the failure of the Nokia console / phone.
As we can read in Wikipedia, in Leisure Suit Larry: Pocket Party, players would have been able to explore a college campus, while solving puzzles and engaging in risque activities. As they search for the ultimate good time (having sex), gamers bump into Rosie Palmer, the head cheerleader at Larry’s college and he is determined to do anything to be with her.
In addition to single-player gameplay, there were four different turn-based multiplayer mini-games. The game was supposed to be a big title for the N-Gage due to its raunchy language and humor, and also for the cell-shaded graphic, a brand new feature for the N-Gage.
It seems that Leisure Suit Larry N-Gage was developed twice: there are two completely full versions of the game. One that was deemed too raunchy and another that was redesigned by TKO-Dallas from the ground up. So to recap….there are TWO full, complete working versions of Pocket Party in Alpha form.
Thanks to ForWhomTheBellTolls for the contribution!
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The 4th Unit is a series of “point and click” graphic adventures published by Data West in Japan for CD-Rom PCs and Fujitsu FM-TOWNS. It seems that athe sixth chapter called “Merry Go Raund” was also planned for the Sega Mega CD, but it was never released for some reasons. Thanks to Myfishbone we were able to save a promo page about the cancelled Mega CD version, a translation of the main plot and a list of the developers!
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Full Throttle: Payback (aka Full Throttle 2) is a cancelled action adventure game that was in development in 2000 by LucasArts, planned to be released for PC and with a rumored Playstation 2 port. As we can read in Wikipedia, the game would have been an official sequel to continue the storyline of the original Full Throttle. Since Tim Schafer had already left the company at the time, Larry Ahern, who was involved in the original game’s development, was appointed the project lead and Bill Tiller, the art director.
At the early stages, the project received positive feedback from other LucasArts employees but according to Tiller, it eventually fell apart because of disagreements on the game style between the productive team and “a particularly influential person” within the management, which lead to a series of “mistakes”. The production ceased in November 2000, when 25% of the levels and about 40% of the preproduction art were complete. Both Ahern and Tiller left LucasArts in 2001, after Payback was canceled.
From Retro Gamer #62 we can read some more info of Payback from Larry Ahern, who designed ‘a version of it that never got off the drawing board before [he] quit, and the bloody remains of it were handed over to another team’. Some of it we already knew from the Classic Adventure Gaming article.
The villain was a Senator with an anti-biker agenda, pushing to replace the worn-out highways with new, biker-unfriendly hover lanes. The game also featured Ben’s estranged weasel-of-a-brother, who was mixed up in one of the Senator’s shady operations, and a more central lead for Father Torque. Maureen had a cameo, but the female lead was a reporter who covers Ben after his subsequent fame for the alleged murder of Malcolm Corley. We had some fun new biker gangs also, like the Dragons, who sported flamethrowers on the handlebars of their bikes, and the Leeches, a gang in rocket-powered side-cars that cruise the highways jumping from vehicle to vehicle and attaching to them to syphon fuel.
Some time later LucasArts decided to start the development on the even more action-heavy Full Throttle: Hell on Wheels, that was also cancelled in the end.
Thanks to Robert Seddon and lorenzo55 for the contributions!
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Gumshoe is an adventure game that was in development by Hiding Buffalo in 2002 / 2003 for the PC and the original XBOX. As we can read in the original press release:
The concept for the game along with a working prototype were created as Hiding Buffalo’s entry in the 2002 Dare to be Digital competition, which challenges groups of students to create a new and original piece of digital content. Entries are judged by a panel of industry experts on their originality and commercial potential. Gumshoe was chosen by a majority of the judges thanks to it’s unusual concept, naturalistic dialogue system and innovative gameplay and episodic approach.
In the end, they never found a publisher interested in the project and so Gumshoe was cancelled. It’s interesting to notice that Hiding Buffalo did released a flash version of the game in 2006, even if it looked much different from the PC and Xbox version.
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