In 2000, Pandemic Studios developed a game concept called “OSS”. It was set in World War II and the player was involved in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), a United States intelligence agency, as the game’s title reveals. OSS never entered production at Pandemic Studios for unknown reasons. The platform of the game was probably not decided yet, but we can speculate at least a PC version.
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Spec Ops is a cancelled third person shooter / action game that was in development at Rockstar Vancouver in 2003 / 2004 for the Playstation 2. The title was going to be published by Take 2 as the previous games in the Spec Ops series, but in the end the project was never released for unknown reasons. As we can read from Take-Two’s Fiscal 2002 Financial Results (also on IGN Ps2):
Rockstar Games will continue to create groundbreaking original content for console video game systems, as well as expand its proprietary intellectual properties, including extensions of its Grand Theft Auto, Max Payne, Midnight Club, State of Emergency, Spec Ops and Smuggler’s Run brands. Rockstar currently has eleven original projects in production at its five internal development studios.
The Queens of the Stone Age’s singer Josh Homme even confirmed to be writing the soundtrack for the game in an interview with MTV:
“Alain and I are writing the music for a Rockstar game called ‘Spec Ops,’ ” Homme said. “There’s a bunch of versions of new songs. Some of them are mellow, some of them are rock and some of them are, like, hick-hop because we’re a bunch of white guys.”
For Homme, working with Rockstar on the game was a dream come true — kind of. While he doesn’t actually play any video games, he did enjoy the process of writing tunes for the small screen.
After Spec Ops was canned, Rockstar Vancouver started developing Bully.
Thanks to Hey Hey for the contribution!
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Alien Breed 2004 (sometimes AB2K4 or AB2004) is an unfinished and shelved game in Team17’s Alien Breed franchise, a series of Science Fiction-themed shooters largely inspired by the Alien films. It was announced as in development in 2003, and was shelved in early 2005
This is the second known title in the Alien Breed series to be cancelled, after the aborted PC first-person shooter title Alien Breed: Conflict. The game was reportedly being developed using the Snowblind Engine that Snowblind Studios had been using for the Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance and Champions of Norrath franchises.
In July 2009 Team 17 announced the development of Alien Breed Evolution for PlayStation Network and Xbox Live Arcade downoad services. Given that the videogame will be viewed at the same top-down perspective, it is possible that this game is actually the same as Alien Breed 2004, with updated graphics. [Info from Wikipedia]
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Created by Pandemic Studios, Specwarrior is a cancelled third person shooter set in the Vietnam War that was in development in 2002 / 2003. After some time the game was cancelled by its publisher, Midway. About a year later Pandemic released Full Spectrum Warrior (published by THQ), but it’s not clear if the published game used some assets from the unreleased project. Specwarrior was the reasons that lead Pandemic to file a lawsuit against Midway, because they cancelled the game to avoid payment.
The lawsuit claims Midway’s move was unwarranted, and says Midway owes money for services Pandemic completed during its months of work on the project. Pandemic is seeking damages of more than $4 million and some $750,000 in fees, according to a Reuters report.
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Objective Force: Commander is a cancelled action / car combat game that was in development by Dynamic Animations Systems in 2002, for the original XBOX. The game was shown in playable form at E3 2002, but later it vanished from the release list, maybe because they never found a publisher interested in the project. Objective Force: Commander was set in the near future, following the missions of a group of Texas rebels against an evil mega conglomerate energy company. The player would have been able to command an entire squad of tanks in real time, by issuing orders to friendly team AI to complete the game’s missions and win over the other teams. Single player mode, multiplayer VS and coop modes of play (including Xbox Live) were planned.
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