“Xtreme Machine” was supposed to be a hovercraft racing game “Carmaggeddon” style for the PC. It was been developed by NMS and SCi in 1998. In this game you would drive in different scenarios such as water, fire and lava. It was been promoted as a video game with great graphic details, a suitable choice to test the new 3D video cards that were released in 1998. There is no info about why this game was cancelled.
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Hot Wheels Driver is a cancelled Micro Machines – style racing game that was in development by Midway Games around 1994, planned to be released on the original Playstation. Players would have been able to race their little Hot Wheels toy-cars in different rooms of the house, using power-ups to win against the AI and friends. As far as we know this game was never officially announced by Midway, but some images were published online many years ago by a former developer on his old website (now closed).
In 2001 THQ released a Hot Wheels game for PS1, but it was a different project than this one.
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Wind Racer is a cancelled sand yachting racing game that was in development for PC by Nadeo around 2001, before they became a favorite team among fans of arcade racers, thanks to their release of TrackMania in 2003. At the time Nadeo was still trying to find their niche, working on many different prototypes such as Cyberdrive and Lanfeust of Troy to pitch them to different publishers. Wind Racer looked like a fun, sunny beach racer (with items to collect?) and we assume gameplay could have been like a simpler version of TrackMania.
Some fans randomly found out about the prototype projects in 2011, saving a few images before they could have been lost forever. In the end Nadeo was lucky enough to get hired to work on Virtual Skipper 2 and 3, something that helped to keep them alive while waiting to find real success with Trackmania.
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Cyberdrive is a cancelled racing game set in a sci-fi Paris that was in development for PC by Nadeo around 2001, before they became a favorite team among fans of arcade racers, thanks to their release of TrackMania in 2003. At the time Nadeo was still trying to find their niche, working on many different prototypes such as Windracer and Lanfeust of Troy to pitch them to different publishers. Cyberdrive looked inspired by TRON and we can assume gameplay could have been similar to TrackMania.
Some fans randomly found out about the prototype projects in 2011, saving a few images before they could have been lost forever. In the end Nadeo was lucky enough to get hired to work on Virtual Skipper 2 and 3, something that helped to keep them alive while waiting to find real success with Trackmania.
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OutSider is a cancelled “open city” motorbike racing game that was planned in 1996 for the Nintendo 64. Players would be able to freely ride around the city, escaping from chases and resolving different missions. As far as we know the project was never officially announced, but in June 2021 a former developer shared some images on Twitter. The name of the company is blurred out in the document, but it seems the developer worked for Hudson Soft in the ‘90s, so this could have been one of their strange but fascinating N64 projects.
When it was conceived OutSider was quite an original racing game, but it seems after Climax Entertainment released Felony 11-79 / Runabout in 1997 the team decided to cancel the project, possibly because it was too similar to it or not as fun to play.
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