SCEE

Playstation 2 (PS2), Sony

Primal 2 [PS2 – Cancelled]

monokoma
11-05-2015
5 Comments

Primal was a PS2 game developed by SCEE Cambridge. Despite a prominent advertising campaign, it went largely unnoticed upon release, failing commercially. However, development on a sequel had already began shortly after the first game launched. As early preliminary work was underway, Sony acquired the license to develop an offical tie-in game for the TV show, 24. The development of Primal 2 was thus cancelled in favour of doing that game, as stated by Paul Donovan:

Any hints that there might be a Primal sequel in the pipeline? Pleeeease! :)
Sorry, afraid not. We were playing around with ideas for a Primal 2 and did some prototypes of some new features but then we got the 24 license so we did that instead :-) – Paul Donovan, Senior Programmer, SCEE Cambridge

In 2012, the game was re-released as a PS2 classic for PS3. This is when Chris Sorrell, creative director of Primal, wrote an article on the official PS blog where he and the concept artist of the game, Mark Gibbons, revealed some bits and pieces of the possible plots that were considered for the sequel:

Mark Gibbons – Lead Artist, Primal:
Once the game was completed, preliminary work on a sequel was begun that featured Jen’s lover Lewis as the central character. Primal II would’ve told the story of his journey through Oblivion’s Hell, back to Mortalis, the real world.

Chris Sorrell on February 28th, 2012 at 10:39 am said:

[and finally] – If there were to be a Primal 2 it should feature Jen. …Well I do agree with that one. Further to the comments by Mark, yes we did explore a Primal 2 with Lewis as a lead character. We also explored another take that had Jen as lead and centred on the notion that the demons of Oblivion had found a way through into our world. That one had some cool imagery that I recall – Jen in a flowing leather coat riding a spike-wheeled moto-X bike, Prince Jared driving to Jen’s rescue in an ice-cream truck (garbled music blaring) and sub-way tunnels teeming with spider-like Wraith mutants. Ah, if only..

In addition, Mark Gibbons once published some of the concept art he made for this sequel via his old portfolio. His website is no longer online, but part of the concept artwork was retrieved and posted by fans after the original site went offline.

Thanks to Erameris for the contribution!

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Playstation 3 (PS3), Sony

SciFi Action Game [PS3 – Cancelled]

monokoma
24-07-2014
1 Comment

Between 2006 and 2012, SCEE CAMBRIDGE (now known as Guerrilla Cambridge), the team behind popular Playstation games as MediEvil, Ghosthunter and Killzone: Mercenary, was working on many different concepts and prototypes to create new games for the Playstation 3 and in 2011 they tried to pitch an action game set in Science Fiction world that would have made use of the PS3 Move controller, as another of their released games, “TV Superstars“. This sci-fi game looked much better than TV Superstars, but it was cancelled for some unknown reasons, maybe because of quality issues or the end of the “motion controller” fad.

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Playstation, Sony

Popcorn (Short Fuses) [PSX – Cancelled]

monokoma
21-07-2011
6 Comments

Popcorn is a cancelled action adventure game that was in development by Eighth Wonder in 1997 / 1998 for the original Playstation. In the nineties Rare was one of the most prolific developer on Nintendo platforms. So it was quite a shock when in 1997 a small number of employees (game designer Oliver Davies; software engineers Oliver Norton, Steve Patrick, and Jeff Stafford; and two artists, Christopher Gage and Adrian Smith later replaced by Andrew Wood and Jemie Hemming) left the company to form a new studio called Eighth Wonder funded by no other than Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, Nintendo main competitor at the time.

The deal had SCEE committed to publishing the new development house’s first three titles, with an option to pick up the next three. The first title in the work by this promising studio was an action/adventure game named Popcorn (also known as Short Fuses) that was similar to a 3D Bomberman clone but with puzzles and exploration elements.

Popcorn featured six world themes, each with three levels and after you beat the boss of each world you could progress to the next one and use the boss as a playable character (more than 10 playable characters including the hidden ones were planned such as a knight or a female ninja). The games was said to sport nice lighting effects, high resolution graphics (512×240) and a consistent framerate at 30 FPS.

At E3 1998 the game displayed under the Sunsoft booth so it is likely that Sunsoft would have been the american publisher. However as often happen with very publicized deals that involve many projects, Eighth Wonder are believed to have experienced a number of internal problems and, by 1999, the studio no longer existed relegating Popcorn into obscurity.

Thanks to Celine for the scan! (Console+ magazine issue 78 and Edge issue 60)

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Playstation, Sony

Spyral Saga [Playstation – Cancelled]

U64 Staff & Contributors
21-07-2010
4 Comments

Spyral Saga was a large, ambitious adventure game, created by Software Creations, planned for the PlayStation, and a sequel to the Super Nintendo game Equinox. However, only the isometric perspective and style of gameplay were kept the same; the story did not continue from this game.

Work initially started on the 1st of January, 1995, under the leadership of Ste Pickford (the game’s designer, producer and lead artist). The programming team included Andy Miah, David Gill and Pete Scott, while the graphics and concept designs were created by Justin Eagleton, Lyndon Brooke, Dave Mac and Weston Samuels, among others.

Although published by Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, the game had a planned worldwide release. Progress on the game slowed due to multiple development complications, and the project was eventually cut after Pickford left Software Creations to found a new company, Zed Two.

While not much more information on this game is available, it is likely that its gameplay would have been very similar to that of its prequel, Equinox (which is in turn a sequel to the Nintendo game Solstice). This game combines puzzle-solving and adventure elements, presented from an isometric perspective, and the player must traverse rooms searching for tokens to unlock boss fights and new areas.

The only available screenshot from Spyral Saga  (shared by the Pickford bros in their site) appears to show a significant improvement to the graphics engine (as expected on the PlayStation) and a more open environment than in Equinox.

Thanks to Scatman and Vegard we were able to preserve two more images!

Article by Franklint

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