Dead or Alive: Code Chronos is a cancelled rogue-like game set in the DoA world, that was in development at Team Ninja during early 2002 for the original Xbox. It was intended to take the fighting game series into a new dimension, transitioning it into a full action adventure similar to Ninja Gaiden. Code Chronos was meant serve as a prequel to the main series and Tomonobu Itagaki spoke in various interviews of how the game would have told the story of Ayane and Kasumi before the first Dead or Alive tournament.

In March 2014, Itagaki replied to a question from one of his fans from his Facebook page about the game:

I miss games made by you! I still wish that dead or alive code chronos got made. Is it true that the game would have been more of a double dragon type game than a regular dead or alive game? but with ayane and kasumi?

Me too, I love DOA:Code Cronus as it is the father of the DOA universe.　So I find it strange that some people said DOA:Code Chronus was never in production. If that’s “true”, I guess that means I’m free to say whatever I want about it? ;D Let me fill you in on the “truth”
DOACC was a Rogue-like in production. If someone wants to try to reverse that reality, they’ll first have to own up to their lies.　But it’s not something you should worry about too much. ‘Cause creating a game isn’t easy, you know?　Only people with an ability to play inside their own head, even before sitting down to write code, are able to be a game designer. Whoever thinks that development is only concerned about things “visible” and “playable” should pack up their bags and go back to the countryside.
This is also an important truth – I’ll put that down here as a tip for anyone interested in developing brand new original games.

As we can read on Wikipedia, the game was supposed bear some relation to the part of the opening cinematic of Dead or Alive Ultimate that showed the child versions of Kasumi and Ayane.

As Dead or Alive Ultimate was released for Xbox in 2004, it’s possible that this video could have been originally made for Code Chronos and was later reused as the intro for Ultimate. With the release of Xbox 360 in 2005, it seems that the game was moved to the “next generation” console, as a placeholder box for Code Chronos can be seen in a Dead Or Alive 4 promo ad published in various Japanese magazines:

In 2008, Itagaki left Team Ninja and Code Chronos was lost, its legacy limited to being nothing more than a dream project of his that never was. In 2010, the new CEO of Team Ninja told Famitsu magazine that Code Chronos was officially cancelled. Unfortunately, Team Ninja never released any screenshots or videos from this project to the public and only its logo can be found online. We hope to be able to preserve more from this lost game in the future.

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Heist was a stealth action/adventure game being developed by TrapDoor, the independent studio responsible for 2012’s Warp. It was planned as a digital title for Xbox Live Arcade, Playstation Network and PC platforms.

An ssarly logo for Heist.

The Impressive Indie Stealth Game That Never Was

Work began on the project codenamed Heist in early 2012, “almost immediately after” development on Warp had commenced, according to one former Trapdoor employee. The game was a high concept, ambitious experiment in creating a 2D stealth experience with slick visuals, seamless combat and intelligent, dynamic AI.

The greater narrative planned for Heist still mostly eludes us, but the central premise revolved around the player assuming the role of a nameless thief to infiltrate a number of top security complexes, stealing valuable items of interest and escaping undetected. Enemy forces carried taser weapons capable of downing the enemy in one hit, meaning stealth was key.

Guards concept art:

The protagonist was equipped with a set of advanced spy gadgetry, including shoes that could defy gravity; allowing the player to stick to walls and hang from ceilings. They were also provided with the handy ability to instantly change their outfit on the fly via cloaking technology.

Proof of Concept

Following several months of development, the team at TrapDoor had put together a short prototype for the game. This early demo lasted little over a minute, but was a fully playable build running live in Unreal Engine 3 on PC hardware. According to one of our sources, the build recycled a lot of assets created for Warp in order to cut costs.

 The Evolution of Heist

The original vision for the game’s hero, as seen above, was a fashionably dressed white male with long hair, whose standard choice of clothing included sunglasses and a scarf draped over his shoulder. This design for the character was used only briefly, but was able to make it into the playable test build. However, his appearance seen in the video was only ever intended to be a temporary placeholder, as one artist explained:

“The hero was very stereotyped at first, classic James Bond style but a bit more laid back character still white-cool-bad ass-no brainer attitude. We did the prototype and demo very fast so the main character was created in a very short period of time.”

As they continued to experiment, the character evolved into a slightly younger hispanic man with a somewhat more casual dress sense. There were concepts drafted for his father, who was also a thief, which we understand would have become an important component of the story.

“After the demo I had more time to think and research and I went for a mixed POC, South-American type and a very different silhouette as well as more original/unique proportions overall. When you are a small studio you need to create original material and interesting visuals to get away from the more common AAA realistic titles. Not only the gameplay should be more creative but the graphics as well.”

Another member of the main cast in Heist was the hero’s unnamed love interest. TrapDoor had intended to mould a subversive, strong and capable female with this second playable character, as a former artist of the company, Thierry Doizon explained on his blog:

“I wanted to do something different for the Hero’s love interest, to move on from the traditional sexist and stereotyped representation and the female tropes in the game industry. She was supposed to be a thief too, probably even better/fun than him, however I didn’t have enough time to spend on researches, such a shame, she was my favorite character.”

TrapDoor’s closure

After 6 months of experimentation, honing in on the direction they wanted Heist to take, the project’s fate was prematurely sealed. It was strictly a business decision that unfortunately killed the game, or due to “a weakening online console market”, as Doizon put it.

“It was a devastating but justified decision”

TrapDoor instead chose to focus one of their two other titles in the works, and one of the only ones ever released, which was Warp. However, the lack of success the title received left the indie developer unable to continue. On December 16, 2012, without any formal announcement or acknowledgement by the press, the company quietly closed its doors for good. The team, comprised of industry veterans from Ubisoft and Gameloft, disbanded; but not before sharing some tantalising details of the game Heist could have been.

When you are a small studio you need to create original material and interesting visuals to get away from the more common AAA realistic titles. Not only the gameplay should be more creative but the graphics as well.

I wanted to experiment a lot with some cool shaders and textures for those characters but we decided to can the project before it would cost too much. Unfortunate but that’s the reality of production and budget – Thierry Doizon

 

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Legacy of Kain: Dead Sun is a cancelled a PS3 / Xbox 360 / PS4 single-player action adventure game developed by Climax Studio, that was meant to mark the return of the Legacy of Kain series. The title was first leaked in 2013 by NeoGAF user, Mama Robotnik, in an extensive research about the many canceled games of the series over the years. According to his research, the production of Dead Sun began sometime between 2009 and 2010 with some supervision of Crystal Dynamics and was subject to strict NDA terms that prevented the developers from discussing any details of their work in the project.

Development and Cancellation

Square Enix laid down several requirements the title had to met; such as being single-player with a multi-player component, featuring entirely new main characters and a story set apart from the original series. Climax Studio worked on the production of the single-player game while the multi-player component was being developed independently by Psyonix Games.

The single-player game went through several name changes: the known codename was ‘Blackcloth‘ as it is referred in the teaser, to later settle with title Dead Sun. The multi-player, on the other hand, was what later would derivate into Nosgoth, the online mutiplayer game that Square Enix finally released.

The development went through several stages, initially intended as a small project to be released on Xbox 360 and PS3, by the time of the cancellation it was being considered as a launch title for PS4. This is namely one of the reasons of its cancellation in the first place, as was stated by the source that contacted Mama Robotnik to reveal further details of the project:

– This game was pushing the 360 and PS3 to the limit. A combination of sheer level scale, the twin realm mechanic and the ageing Unreal 3 engine meant it was a struggle to get this running to an acceptable level. A commitment to next gen would have possibly seen the game avoid the chop as we would have been freed from some hefty technical restraints that were holding the game back in a number of areas, including the visuals. Conversely, I can see why switching to next gen would have made the numbers even less attractive to SE top brass, given the far smaller install base.

– Having just finished Shadow of Mordor, which I found hugely enjoyable, I have to say it was eerily similar to the open world (hub as we termed them) areas of Dead Sun. From the art style, to the switching worlds, the environment traversal, character ability progression, combat and numerous other aspects, SOM was incredibly close to half the game we were making.

– The Dungeons were the other half. Given how much work obviously went into SOM, one of the most polished games I’ve played, I think Dead Sun was too ambitious, which probably also contributed to it getting the axe. It would have been a monster of a game – the wetlands hub area you’ve already seen was just one of 3 or 4 entirely different open hub areas, never mind the various dungeons that were planned. They all had distinctively different looks, puzzles and boss fights. The team wasn’t big enough to pull that lot off in a reasonable time frame, to the quality level required of a AAA release.

– Which is all a great shame, as the design of the game was excellent and meticulously thought through. Whilst not a straight sequel to previous LOK games, and not featuring previous favourite characters, it had more than enough depth and references to previous games to both satisfy (most) fans and really bring the LOK series back to life in a modern format. It was certainly a lot more than a re-skinned Assassin’s Creed or Batman, even if it did share some aspects with those games. But there we go, the vagaries of the games industry. Those design docs will still be around somewhere at Climax (or possibly elsewhere) – all it would take is someone with a spare $100 million or so and that’d see it up and running.”

In 2012, Square Enix decided to cancel the production since the title was no expected to meet sales expectations. Due to the amount of work that went into this project, there was a lot of frustration when it was canceled. Apparently some members of the team weren’t informed of the decision and kept working on it after the cancellation.

Story

The story was set in the distant future of Nosgoth; not being a direct sequel of the previous games but taking place on the same universe as the Soul Reaver games. The game would have introduced a new clan of vampires called ‘the Saradin’, who were much closer in appearance to the ancient vampires than their ancestors from Soul Reaver. The Saradin also had very similar powers to that of Raziel, being able to move freely between the material and spectral realms.

The story revolved around two main characters, Gein and Asher, who were Saradin vampire and human respectively. It begins when Gein attacks Asher’s village and kills everyone, including Asher and his pregnant wife. One of the main topics of the story was fertility, apparently the human race was suffering from infertility and the fact that Asher and his wife were able to conceive a child was a significant event and, later revealed by Gein, the very reason of their deaths. In particular of Asher, who was the main target. Something happens when Gein was feeding of Asher’s soul that results in Asher being trapped in Gein’s body. The game would have featured both characters in the body of one, an unique creature with the body of a vampire and the soul of a human, and their quest to discover the reasons of Asher’s assassination and who was behind it, this would eventually have led the story to a more close bond with the original Legacy of Kain lore. Another significant topic was religion and how this influenced human rituals and their interaction with vampires.

Recently, Mama Robotnik uploaded several videos of Dead Sun to his youtube channel, among the material there’s a teaser and a 32 minute long gameplay video.

Article by Erameris

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Videos:

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Thanks to your support we were able to rise 600$ to pay the Unseen64 server for 2016! We are super happy :) Before to start to rise donations for the 2017 server (we probably could start the next year), future donations will be set aside in a “preservation fund“, for emergency site expenses, support for the Unseen64 Book Project and other equipment that could help the archive: all costs will be approved by our patrons, before to be used! Your support is super important for us and we’ll always ask for your vote before to use donations from the Preservation Fund :)

Thanks again for your help! 

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Mega Star is a cancelled music game that was being developed by EA Montreal in late 2009 with a release being targeted for the following year exclusively on Nintendo Wii. It was in the works for approximately two months, never advancing past the pre-production phase of development.

The logo and mock-up for MegaStar’s title screen.

According to an artist who worked on the game, it was being prepared as EA’s response to Just Dance, which launched in November, 2009. The Montreal team had previously worked on other music titles, such the Boogie games, but Mega Star was being pitched as a much more direct competitor. It was planned to have had similar Wii motion dancing mechanics to Ubisoft’s game, but would have added its own twist in the form of a singing component via a USB microphone, similar to that of Boogie.

Up to 4 people would have been able to play together locally with any combination of the two gameplay types (karaoke and dancing) simultaneously. Its setlist would have been mostly comprised of rock/pop music. Some of the examples given in EA’s user interface mock-ups include artists, Fergie and Avril Lavigne. Although these were merely for conceptual purposes, these were selected purposefully to convey the theme of the game to EA’s management. There was also plans to feature customisable avatars for players, similar to Miis.

User interface concept art/mock-ups:

MegaStar had a brief life span in development and was ultimately cancelled in mid November, 2009. After the success of EA’s Wii titles began to dwindle, EA Montreal was subject to a complete studio refocus. Games that the developers at Montreal had worked on included Spore Hero and Skate It; both of which received a lukewarm to negative critical reception and failed to meet sales projections. The company’s general manager, Alain Tuscan blamed the “unpredictable” climate of the Wii’s market and shifted the company into focusing solely on HD platforms. 

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Zblu Cops was a cancelled adventure game based around the French comic book of the same name. It was being developed by Biodroid exclusively for Wii with a release being targeted for mid-late 2010.

Bringing Back The Classic 90’s Adventure Game – Zblu Style

The original Zblu Cops comic series, a comedy about a group of incompetent yet reluctantly heroic group of law enforcers, grew a modest cult following in its country of origin throughout its run. However, with no official English translations of it ever released, its fanbase was never able to expand beyond there in any great numbers. Biodroid’s video game would have been its first foray into English-speaking markets with the team hoping for an international release.

The title entered development midway through 2008 with ambitions high, one former developer recounted, calling it “an attempt to revive the classic 90’s adventure game”. Biodroid’s initial pitch to comics publisher Glénat placed a high emphasis on accurately conveying the humour and goofiness of the comic, but was very much set on blazing its own trail. It would have seen players controlling 10 different members of the Zblu Cops, each with their own unique abilities used to solve puzzles and take down enemies. Two officers were rendered on screen at a time, but you could cycle through a wheel of other playable characters to alternate between them in real time; similar to the LEGO video games. It was to be fully playable in 2 player local co-op, as well.

Excerpt from the initial press release:

On a criminal trail which takes them underwater, through the jungle, down the sewers, up the tower-blocks, inside a volcano – and even into deep space – the Zblucops display all of their notorious dysfunctionality, bad taste and even worse humour… before emerging triumphant with a fist-full of medals.

This action/adventure game brings to Wii the kind of strong storytelling, humor and dialogue found in traditional adventure games.

Cutscene art:

Zblu Cops was presented in a cel-shaded art style; a play to authentically represent the hand-drawn look of the comics. Even more crucially, we were informed that Bill and Gobi, the writing duo responsible for the series, were actively involved with development on the project from its inception. Their contributions mostly included overseeing the art direction, in addition to having final say on any other aspects. We were told that the two were very laidback when it came to writing duties, allowing the developers plenty of creative freedom.

A cutscene from Zblu Cops.

The environments, we were informed, had an openness to them. Story progression was entirely linear, but the player was always free to explore the apparently vast worlds in some depth. They were crammed full of mini-games and in-jokes referencing more obscure elements of the comics.

It was first on exhibition to the public at Fibda2008, a media convention in Amadora, Portugal held on November 10, 2008. An early prototype version was on display there, shown off by several members of Biodroid, including the project’s art director. It was a build containing the first level developed – the sewers stage.

Following this, the first official teaser trailer made its way online several months later on February 20, 2009. It offered a first look at the Zblu Cops HQ and how the Wii remote’s IR pointer was being used to control guns.

E3 2009 saw the debut of the title’s first fully featured trailer with nearly 3 minutes of footage. It showcased some of the unique attacks in the arsenal of the main characters, as well as elements of 3D platforming and puzzles.

The final gameplay clip ever released of Zblu Cops Wii was uploaded to the now defunct official website. Clocking in at 6 minutes long, it contained video of some of the later areas planned, such as chapters set in a space station and a jungle.

By February 2010, the team at Biodroid had made considerable progress. We spoke to Bruno Patatas, the lead designer on the project, who told us that work on the project had reached approximately 70% completion when the final call was made to cancel it. Despite having a number of interested parties – several different publishers from around the world, the developers were never able to close a deal to distribute it. Unable to self-publish, they were left with no choice but to shut down development. Bruno attributes the reason for them being unable to find the right publishing partner down simply to the obscurity of the brand; nobody was willing to take a risk on a comic the West had largely no exposure to.

Among the various former members of the Zblu Cops team we were able to contact, a good amount of them were enthusiastic about how well it was shaping up. With several more months, perhaps they would have been able to deliver on the 90’s throwback adventure game they were aspiring to create.

Character concept art:

Character models:

 

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Vectorman Ultra is the cancelled third game in the Vectorman series, started with the first one developed by BlueSky Software and published by Sega for Sega Mega Drive / Genesis in 1995. Vectorman 2 was released in November 1996 and after it went gold it seems that BlueSky started to pitch a new sequel to Sega (Next Generation magazine published a rumor about it in their website that year), planning to develop it for Sega Saturn, the “new” Sega console that was released in May 1995 in USA.

Ellis Goodson, the artist that worked on the original Vectorman and other cult games as Skullmonkeys and Shadowrun, drawn many concepts to be used in the design doc for Vectorman Ultra created by Jason Weesner. It’s interesting to notice that these concept arts were sold sometime ago on eBay and in some of those auctions they described the game as planned for the Nintendo 64, but it’s possible that they got confused because of “Ultra” in the title (N64 was known as Ultra 64 before its final name).

It’s currently unknown if Sega Saturn’s Vectorman would have been in 2D or 3D, but looking at those awesome concept arts it seems that at least this lost game would have had some side-scrolling levels. We hope to be able to see more from this project sometime in the future, it would be interesting to know if any actual prototype was started at all. Some years later Sega tried to revive the Vectorman IP with a new PS2 game developed by Pseudo Interactive, but that was also cancelled.

Thanks to eSPy, Youloute and Ellis for the contributions!

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The original Skies of Arcadia was released in late 2000 / early 2001 on Dreamcast and it soon became a cult hit among JRPG fans. The game was developed by Overworks, a Sega team composed of many legendary developers and designers as Rieko Kodama, Shuntarō Tanaka and Noriyoshi Ohba, who worked on past RPGs as the Phantasy Star series, Magic Knight Rayearth, Wonder Boy in Monster Land and the Sakura Taisen series. Hype was high and the final game was really one of the best japanese RPGs released in the ‘00 but unfortunately it seems that Skies of Arcadia did not sell enough on Dreamcast (does anyone have official sales numbers?), maybe because of the low user base and the console early departure in early 2001.

Sega was still confident about their sky-pirates project: they developed an enchanted PS2 and GameCube ports with added featured, to try to sell more copies and earn back some of the money spent to create the game. The GameCube version was released in December 2002 under the title “Skies of Arcadia Legends” but PS2 port was canned for some reasons, throwing away one of the biggest user base for RPG fanatics. As most Nintendo console, GameCube was not an easy console to sell third parties titles and with a lower percentage of people interested in turn based role playing games, Skies of Arcadia Legend bombed even harder than the Dreamcast version.

Before losing all faith in the game, Sega and Overworks were planning a sequel to Skies of Arcadia, as confirmed by interviews with developers from the original team. In June 2001 IGN asked to Noriyoshi Ohba about Skies of Arcadia 2 and he replied:

We’re considering a sequel to “Eternal Arcadia.” Regarding which platform, we’re still evaluating it.

In September 2002, before Skies of Arcadia Legends was published, Rieko Kodama told to Gamespy that work on the sequel was not yet started, but they really wanted to do it in the future:

I would love to make a sequel, but were really not working on it yet. […] We don’t know what platform we would make a sequel for, but GameCube has priority since Legend is coming out for it.

In march 2004 Ohba announced that they started some planning on the second episode:

The Skies of Arcadia sequel is in the planning stages at the moment.

In late 2004, Rieko talked again about Skies of Arcadia 2 in an interview with german Man!ac magazine (issue 1 / 2005) in which she said:

MAN!AC: There were rumors about a sequel (to Skies of Arcadia) or a “Gaiden” episode. Can you tell us something about that

Rieko : We had plans, but the other team members are currently working on other projects such as “Sakura Taisen” – this means SoA2 is currently on hold. Anyway I would be very glad about a new episode with the sky pirates.

In 2003 Overworks was absorbed into SEGA WOW and only a year later the team was split again because of another Sega company restructure: people that worked on Skies of Arcadia were scattered around on different games. As far as we were able to gather, not much was ever did for Skies of Arcadia 2 but at least a few ideas and concepts seem to have been brainstormed by the team, still hoping to release a sequel on GameCube or Playstation 2. In 2006 Nintendo and Sony released their new consoles (Wii, PS3) and whichever plans Sega had for a new Skies RPG on GameCube or PS2 will never see the light of day.

Even without a sequel, love for Skies of Arcadia is still strong at Sega. Vyse, Aika and Fina, three of the main SoA protagonists, were added as bonus characters in Valkyria Chronicles, released in 2008 on PS3. Vyse is also a playable character in Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed, released in 2012 for different consoles / PC and one of the game’s tracks, Rogues’ Landing, is based on Skies of Arcadia’s world.

Thanks to Mario for the contribution! 

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We’d like to thanks all our patrons on Patreon for the awesome support, we are happy to see that people understand the importance of having an archive to remember games that we’ll never play and with your help we can continue to keep the site online and to do more to preserve lost videogames! We have recently reached the goal of 250$ a month, so now we can finally fully work on the Unseen64 book :) We are still trying to keep the cost as low as possible, but keeping the quality as high as possible. Other gaming book had to rise thousands of $ to be created, we hope to be able to publish it with much less, in about 10 months from now.

How is this possible? Well, the main Unseen64 staff is writing new and updated articles for the book in their free time and we asked to friends and readers to help us in writing more articles. As most of this is volunteer work, instead than to pay people to write articles, we’ll send them a copy of the book, which printing and shipping cost will be covered by donations. In this way, we should be able to complete all the articles for the book without spending too much and at the same time having great articles written by experts and lovers of unseen games.

We’ll also have some help from friends that already work with publishing and designing software for their main job, to organize the best format and layout for the book. For the book cover we’ll probably organize a contest in the following months, so if you are interested in creating an artwork for it, let us know! We’ll then publish the book worldwide trough Amazon, so everyone will be able to easily order a copy. Remember that people that donated 25$ a month for at least 2 months will get a copy of the book :)

The book will be focused on cancelled videogames and we’ll also try to get interviews with developers that worked on some of our favorite projects. What’s more to say? If there’s something that you’d love to see in a book dedicated to lost videogames, let us know in the comments below! 

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Bonk: Brink of Extinction is an adventure platformer developed by Pi Studios that was planned to be released in 2010 for XBLA / PSN / WiiWare. It was set to be priced at 1000 points on the Nintendo Wii Shop Channel’s WiiWare platform, 800 points on XBLA, and $10 on PSN. In September 2009, before the title was officially announced, a Neogaf user inadvertently stumbled upon an official fact-sheet for the game on Hudson’s website:

A doomsday comet, surrounded by smaller chunks of debris, is on a collision course with Earth. A strange magnetic field around the comet seems to be driving most of the planet’s weak-willed creatures crazy, and smaller bits of debris are smashing into the jungle near Bonk’s home. Bonk must undertake a perilous journey that will take him to the very center of the planet to save the world.

The Return Of The Most Widely Requested Classic Platformer

• Story Mode with Co-Op play. Play alone or have a friend join you at any time!
• An entire new adventure with Bonk as he swims, bites, climbs, jumps, runs, and head-butts his way through jungles, deserts and volcanic caverns
• Search for help along the way: power ups, check points, and extra health are the staple for every adventuring caveman.
• Transformations are back and weirder than ever! Now Bonk can transform himself into eight different forms by eating meat or encountering Primordial Jelly. No enemy is safe from the boy with the super noggin!

New Features

• Online play for the first time in the series!
• Classic 2D platforming in a 3D world.
• Tons of collectibles will have you searching the entire prehistoric world.

In two 2009 interviews with Nintendo life, and Diehard GameFAN, Andrew Plempel (Hudson Entertainment Producer) & Jeremy Statz (Pi Studios Lead Designer),  disclosed a few more details about the game:

NL: The original Bonk titles were famous for their mini-games. Can we expect to see more of these in this new release?
Plempel: You know it! We’ve hidden entrances to mini-games in just about every level.

NL: Will Brink of Extinction feature the same gameplay system as in the original games or can we expect some new ideas in the mix?
[…] Bonk can switch between the different forms as needed, they’re no longer a 30-second one-off pickup item. Bonk has a limited amount of power and making use of his transformations reduces that, while certain items increase it.

DHGF: The game promises eight transformations for Bonk. What are some of these?

Andrew Plempel: Some of the transformation will allow Bonk to control fire and ice attacks. There is also a transformation that will allow bonk to shrink himself down to a smaller size so he can fit into tiny passageways.

DHGF: What other modes are available besides story mode?

Andrew Plempel: Well in the initial download we are only including the story mode and online co-op. We do have some PDLC planned that will bring competitive multiplayer modes to the table.

In 2010, two more interviews were conducted by Siliconera, and Otakuxgamer with Peter Dassenko (Hudson Entertainment Producer) that discussed its planned co-op mode and revealed that Bonk was initially conceived as a retail release:

SN: How did development of Bonk: Brink of Extinction start?

Peter Dassenko, Producer: Internally it had been documented as a Wii Game, a DS Game and finally a Digital Download game.

SN: Since cooperative play is a key feature, did you design levels with areas that you can only reach with two players?

Yes. Some levels are designed so that accessing certain areas is easier with a friend. They’re also designed in a way that requires the use of power-ups that you might not have on the first play through.

GamesAbyss played the game in October 2011:

Powers such as the Ice Hat however don’t just come in handy for combat situations; they’ll also be for some light puzzle-solving. For example, freezing enemies into solid blocks will allow Bonk to use them as stepping-stones to reach ledges he couldn’t reach before. So in essence you have the classic Metroid formula at work whereby you will be able to collect these power-ups and access areas you couldn’t get to earlier.

Bonk: Brink of Extinction featured three worlds, each of which included ten stages. Aside from the main story, three DLC packs were also planned: Horde Mode, Dactyl Story (where Bonk had to retrieve his dinner from a pterodactyl that stole it) and Monkeyshines (where Bonk had to fight the monkeys that invaded his village).

Bonk was finished, but not released,because, after buying Hudson in January 2011, Konami decided to shelve some projects in order to save money. Hudson Entertainment, the USA branch of the Japanese company, closed down in Febraury 2011. In March of the same year, Famitsu Weekly announced that Bonk was cancelled. Almost at the the same time, Pi Studios ceased operations. Moreover, as a game which depicted a natural disasaster, it ran the risk of causing offence, in the aftermath of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami.

In April 2011, Bonk’s composer released for free some songs from the game. In March 2014, Youtube user Bonk Brink shared previously unseen footage of Bonk (Ps3 version) over on his youtube channel .

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The original Medal of Honor was developed by DreamWorks Interactive and published by Electronic Arts for PlayStation in 1999. However, the project started life in late 1997, when Steven Spielberg pitched an idea for a new WW2 era first person shooter to DI. When you complete all the missions in the game, you can unlock a bonus gallery that show an early prototype / beta version of the game, with different levels and 3D models. An official trailer for the game released in 1998 as an extra in Small Soldiers also show the removed Panzer Attack mission and a different HUD, in a version of the game with much more blood and gore than the final version. If you recently played Medal of Honor and you can notice more differences, leave a comment below!

Thanks to MicroChirp, LeHah and K Ill A Pinke for the contributions!

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Terranigma AKA Tenchi Sōzō in Japan, is an action RPG developed by Quintet and published by Enix / Nintendo for the Super Nintendo in 1995 / 1996. Unfortunately, the game was never released in the US, but managed to attain cult status in Japan and Europe, regarded by RPG fans as one of the best role playing games on the system. Before the game was released, gaming magazines published some beta screenshots, in which we can see some interesting differences:

• It was possible to climb towers using claws / bare hands, instead than chains (it’s possible to climb some walls with claws in the final game, but only much later in the game)
• There was some sort of green plant around the HUD
• Different rooms layouts
• In the first tower, the second floor looked like the third floor from the final game

A video from the same beta version was also published in “brute press” (?) VHS Vol.24 July 1995 (【非売品】ブルートプレス Vol.24 1995年7月号). If you notice more differences, let us know in the comments below!

Thanks to Youloute, Pantalytron, Crediar and Celine for the contributions!

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Witchwood is a cancelled action adventure game that was in development from 1994 to 1996 by Team 17, the team most known for the Worms series. The game would have been published by Ocean for Amiga and PC, but in 1995 it was moved to PC, Playstation, Saturn and Jaguar.  As noted by Hallfiry in the Betaarchive Forum, while working on Witchwood Team 17 was also working on Speris Legacy another action adventure similar to Legend of Zelda, that was released for Amiga in 1996. It’s possible that Speris did not sell much and Team 17 / Ocean decided to stop working on a similar project that could have been another economic failure. Even if the game was cancelled, the soundtrack was released by Team17 composer Bjørn Lynne in 1996 and a playable demo of Witchwood was leaked online some years ago: you can download it from Kult Game.

Thanks to Tom Barker for the contribution!

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A long time ago Unseen64 was just a shell of itself. It was hosted on the notoriously bad Xoom.it hosting service, and it looked pretty much like a 90s website horribly made with Microsoft Frontpage. However, as old as Unseen64 looked back then (it was 2004!), it wasn’t the first site dedicated to unreleased games maintained by Italians. This award goes to The Strange (and Rare) Videogame Pics Page, created by Fabrizio Pedrazzini, an Italian videogames journalist for awesome magazines like the glorious Super Console. TS(&R)VPP, as the name says, wasn’t only about beta games. There were pictures of pirates, relatively unknown and limited edition consoles, demos and special edition games. Among those pages there was an unique one: the Taito/JSB/ASCII WOWOW console.

Page 10, Console+ Issue 10 (June 1992) (click to enlarge)

For years, these were the only information available of the Taito WOWOW. The source is a report on the 1992 Tokyo Toys Show, from  the French videogame magazine Console+:

Another alliance between publishers and manufacturers has been established in Japan. It’s about JSB (that controls the satellite channel Wowow), ASCII and Taito.

A prototype has been developed. It’s small and equipped with a CD-Rom player. The basic idea is innovative: it’s about distributing games via satellite, like the streaming of TV programs, and to charge only the time really spent to play.

The other interesting thing about the console is that the games that will be released to the public will be the same of the arcade versions, with the video and audio quality of the originals.

The first games available will be Darius, Bubble Bobble and Parasol Stars…

A released date has not been disclosed yet.

Taito’s booth at Tokyo Toy Show 1992 (picture courtesy of Hardcore Gaming 101 blog)

The interview with Yukiharu Sambe

We have been able to get in touch with the Research & Development manager of TAITO Corporation Mr. Yukiharu Sambe, Professional engineer at the time the Wowow was created, and he was kind enough to share some new information, previously unknown, about this unreleased console. Enjoy!

Note: original interview in english, without edits or corrections

Question: How did you start to work in the videogame industry? What did you do at Taito back then?
Yukiharu Sambe: I was electrical engineer and interested in the microcomputers in late 70’s. One day, I happen to see ‘Space Invaders’ video game at the arcade and it attract me much.  After I joined Taito, I designed/managed many arcade hardware and game programs. I’m happy that you know Darius which I directed and managed hardware, game concept, software developments and so on.

Q: How the WOWOW project started? What was the idea behind it?
YS: Japanese administrator had a plan of data broadcasting. Meanwhile, I wanted to deliver games to home television set. And I happen to know, JSB is trying to combine CPU and memories on its satellite receiver. I talked to JSB and project started.

The only other known scan of the Wowow, thanks to Andro from the Assembler Forum, translated by @painapple9

Satellite transmissions, VR, Network Games,… With the arrival of new gaming systems, games begin to change. Other than the CD-ROM, what’s becoming the key to a revolution in gaming are new technologies, that enhanced quickly during the last year. This actual thing is VR and game download services via satellite transmission. Nintendo, Sega and others continue researching on VR.

As far as download services for games that use satellite transmission go, with the licenses of these systems possibly coming in as early as this year, implementation is making progress. Indeed one might think it’s difficult to make this new technology standard for games in the course of this year. Still, it is a fact that these developments are continuing and 1992 is becoming a crucial bridge building year for the next new generation of games.

For VR applying CG in 3D an AIFON (?) as seen on the right is used. Even though it looks like it could be applied to games instantly, reducing the costs is an issue. Regarding VR, so far Namco is part of a step to actual utilization with arcade systems and one can’t think of it’s appearance on home consoles as something far off. VR developer Steve Glenn is even claiming Nintendo was going to release an amazing game system taking advantage of VR 2-3 years later.

A system receiving game software sent via satellite, that let’s you obtain new games from home. It has been announced this was one of the capabilities of the new system proposed by JSB. The image shows a screen in experimental phase and of the reception-hardware.

Q: Why there was a partnership with the broadcaster JSB and ASCII corporation?
YS: JSB has their own satellite and its channel, ASCII has developing satellite data communication systems.

Q: Could you describe me in details your role in the WOWOW project?
YS: I was a manager of new technology R&D in TAITO at this time. I directed some of Taito young engineers and develop/designed this wowow game console, include hardware, sample game programs and menu selection programs.

Q: The console was based on some specific arcade hardware?
YS: I selected and modified arcade video game hardware because I used to it.

Q: How the satellite connection worked? How did you use the satellite: to download games, to stream games? How did you pay for the service?
YS: JSB satellite had not only video broadcasting channel but data stream channel also. Taito send date stream to JSB satellite base(which was located near Tokyo) through RJ45 connector and JSB transfer these stream to satellite. Home receiver detect these data flow and store it into receiver memory. If subscriber select game play, on memory game program will run. We responsible to the game delivery, JSB responsible to satellite communication and ASCII responsible data interfaces. We intended to collect the game subscriber fee through JSB.

Q: What games were planned for the console? Were there mostly arcade ports?
YS: We have to think about the game memory size. Small size was best and I planned to use some early 80’s arcade games (they are small size).  As a demonstration and presentation game, we modified and minimized the game ‘Darius’.

Q: Were there any exclusive games designed for the console?
YS: We modified the ‘Darius’ only as a game. We developed menu selection software which had original graphics and sound also.

Q: Why the project was cancelled? Too much competition? Technical problems? The satellite technology was not good enough?
YS: We had two reasons to suspend this project. One: Data transferring speed was not enough and many error correction packets eat up these precious data speed. User should wait more than several minutes to download one small game. And if we try to broadcast several games at the same time, the download time needs more time. Second: At the beginning, JSB intended to combine game hardware in the home satellite receiver. However, memory was expensive and all combined receiver made the cost estimation very high. 5 years later, Nintendo absorbed satellite music company ‘St.GIGA’ and started their satellite download business in 1995. The data stream was almost same structure that we designed. Nintendo use their game console with special satellite game equipment, however, Nintendo did not make good success on this business. They had similar difficulties that we encountered before.

Q: When the console was canned, it was on early stage of development of it was almost completed?
YS: Project was suspended at the early stage. We made presentation and demonstration for newspapers, administrate people and so on. The demo was good, however it was difficult to plan good future satellite game business and I decided to suspend it. However/fortunately, these experiences made me to found new entertainment business ‘telecommunication Karaoke’ (in Japanese tuushin-karaoke X2000 in 1992) and it was successful. I found home karaoke business X-55/mediabox in 1995 through analog telephone line and distributed games to home, also. Every experience are precious.

Q: Are there any others existing images/videos about the console (maybe a press release kit, planned advertisement, magazine’s articles)? Is a working console still existing somewhere in Taito’s headquarter?
YS: Unfortunately, I have no pictures and sample console, also.

Thanks a lot to Yukiharu Sambe for his time 

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Battle Arena Toshinden is a fighting game developed by Tamsoft and originally published by Takara in 1995 for the original Playstation. In this article we’ll take a look at an alpha / beta version of this title previewed in the january 1995 issue of NEXT generation magazine and at a video of a pre-release build of the game found by Assemblergames.

Alpha HUD. Sofia and Kayin (spelled Kain in these early builds) attires were completely different.

The same can be said about Run-go’s look (spelled “Rangu” in these early builds) .

Pre-release version. The background of this arena lacked the animations present in the final build. Kain still had his alpha dress.

The same can be said about this stage. No moving lights and the background is much simpler.

Fo was spelled Hou in the pre-release build and he had different attire.

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Tom Clancy’s Rainbow 6: Patriots is the cancelled sequel to Tom Clancy Rainbow Six Vegas 2. It was being developed by Ubisoft Montreal with additional development support by Ubisoft Toronto and Ubisoft Red Storm. It was going to be released for the PC, PS3, Xbox 360 originally, then was planned to be released for the PS4 and Xbox One. 

The game was a first person tactical shooter with squad mechanics and third person cover based mechanics.  It was first planned to be released in 2013, before being delayed to 2014, and then finally being cancelled to be replaced by Rainbow Six: Siege. On the game’s themes of modern “eco-terrorism”, creative director David Sears said:

Terrorism has evolved, and so has Rainbow 6. In Rainbow 6 Patriots, all the team play, tactics, and realism that fans of the series love have been coupled with an exciting new narrative direction. This adds an unprecedented level of humanity that will make Rainbow 6 Patriots an extremely tense and immersive experience.

Rainbow 6: Patriots would have tackled a domestic terrorist group called “The True Patriots”, a populist militia group who have taken it upon themselves to act as judge, jury, and executioner on behalf of the ‘victims of Wall Street corruption’. Some of them were intended to be former military servicemen and women, who returned home from fighting abroad to discover that their country had abandoned them. The leader of The True Patriots was a man named Jonah Treadway, an influential figurehead planning to cause havoc across America; targeting New York in particular.

As we can read on Kotaku:

The most interesting-looking thing about the story is how it will be presented from a variety of perspectives. 80% of the campaign will be played from the perspective of the counterterrorism team Rainbow 6 (Who have changed their name from “Rainbow Six,” as it was in past games). The remaining 20% will be played from the perspective of other characters, from innocent civilians to first responders like ambulance drivers and firefighters, to even the terrorists themselves.

New mechanics that were be added to Patriots included faster rappelling maneuvers that allowed the player to sprint down the line whilst firing their primary weapon.  Another enhancement to gameplay was the removal of the “snake cam”, which was replaced with a system dubbed “Observe, Plan, Act”. OPA, combined with improved A.I. allowed the player to plan detailed breach orders and enact them as a trained counterterrorism unit would.

Enemy AI in Patriots had been subject to a complete overhaul. The enemies for example were tougher to kill; according to Ubisoft the average lifespan of enemies in previous games had a lifespan of about four seconds, in Patriots that was closer to 40 seconds. Also, enemies would act as realistic as possible. Some enemies would trip and fall when under heavy fire, or drop a magazine while reloading their weapon.

Multiplayer would have had a mechanic where both teams used a virtually generated map called the sandtable to study the map to plan out tactics and enact them. The sandtable made it possible to assign various routes, positions, and tactics to button shortcuts that can then be called up on the fly during an actual match. After planning tactics in the sandtable, players enter a matchmaking lobby, which continues the focus on immersion by looking like the belly of a jump-jet (VTOL). As each player enters the “lobby,” they’ll have a seat across from the other players and wait to be deployed within a map via fast roping in from the said VTOL.

As we can read on Wikipedia:

After finding “reason to believe that someone may leak [their] preliminary target gameplay footage“, Ubisoft chose to prematurely announce the game through a trailer on November 4, 2011. It was stressed that the trailer showed a pre-rendered concept created in 2010 of what a level in the final game might appear like, rather than footage of any current game build.

Development was troubled when Ubisoft Montreal has removed Creative Director David Sears, Narrative Director Richard Rouse III, Lead Designer Philippe Therien, and Animation Director Brent George as part of a team restructuring. As we can read on GameInformer Ubisoft Montreal CEO Yannis Mallat said that in spite of the restructuring, the vision that creative director David Sears created was intact.

David Sears said he wasn’t fired from Ubisoft, as he explains:

“To paraphrase Mark Twain, I’m not dead, and Rainbow is still very much alive,” Sears said. “I’ve watched the forum comments, and one of the things that’s really important for everyone to understand is senior management and the editorial group challenged me to create something plausible, relevant, and that touches on the current fears of the U.S. citizens to the point that I was almost surprised myself we were taking these creative risks. They are still behind it. I spent time working on it because I love it, but there comes a point where you give the vision to everybody and they embrace it and start telling me what the vision is now.”

Another problem with development of Patriots was the release of the eighth generation consoles (PS4, Xbox One),  E3 2013, Ubisoft confirmed that the game remained in development, but would now be produced for eighth generation consoles.

As Ubisoft’s North American bossman Laurent Detoc explained:

“We had a core team. They had a good vision. They got started, and then the game wasn’t working. So [they had] to start again. There’s an editorial group in Ubisoft, a big group, very influential. If the game is not good enough, they say it’s not good enough. Most of the time, the team will say, ‘yeah, I know.’ But sometimes they want to continue in a direction where you say, ‘no, it’s not going to work. Rainbow had to be remade. Now they’re going to have the benefit of the new consoles, if and when it comes out. It’s one of those examples where you try, it doesn’t work, you try again. If it doesn’t work, we’re not going to bring it to you.”

In june 2014 it was announced that Rainbow Six: Patriots was officially cancelled and Ubisoft decided to restart development with Siege.

Article by Matt Redmond

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Prior to their acquisition by Sony and going on to create the Killzone series, Guerrilla Games was a small development team based in Amsterdam, then known as Lost Boys Games; a subsidiary of Dutch multimedia conglomerate, Lost Boys. One of Lost Boys Games’ internal teams was dubbed ‘Formula‘. This group was dedicated to handheld games, responsible for producing titles such as Rhino Rumble, and Tiny Toon Adventures: Dizzy’s Candy Quest for GameBoy Color. One of their most interesting GBC projects, in development in around 1999-2000, was called Knights.

Knights was an action brawler with a style of gameplay comparable to a blend of Bomberman and Gauntlet, in which players would have had to fight against 3 other knights in 50 different arenas riddled with traps, enemies, and various NPC’s. This excerpt from an old IGN preview offers us further insight:

Each knight is colored differently, and the great challenge of the game is to strike down the knights in a predetermined order while protecting your own flank. Strike a defender before he becomes an official target, and the imperial judges will punish you with a penalty point.

It’s interesting to note that Knights GBC was based around the gameplay of another cancelled Knights project that was planned by Digital Infinity for PC and Dreamcast, before they merged with Lost Boys in 1999. Later, the original Knights for PC and Dreamcast was changed from a multiplayer brawler to a single player action platformer and ported to Playstation 2, but that version was also canned. In 2003, Lost Boys Games was sold to Media Republic and renamed to Guerrilla Games. Their Knight projects were thus never finished, as they began to work on the first Killzone for PS2, and Shellshock: Nam ’67 for PS2, Xbox, and PC.

Only a few screenshots remain from Knights for GameBoy Color, as the title was soon cancelled for unknown reasons. We tried to get in contact with former Formula Games / Lost Boys developers, in an attempt to unearth more on  this unreleased game, but unfortunately, they were not available for comment. If you know someone that worked at Formula Games, let us know!

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Prior to their acquisition by Sony and going on to create the Killzone series, Guerrilla Games was a small development team based in Amsterdam, then known as Lost Boys Games; a subsidiary of Dutch multimedia conglomerate, Lost Boys. One of Lost Boys Games’ internal teams was dubbed ‘Formula‘. This group was dedicated to handheld games, responsible for producing titles such as Rhino Rumble, and Tiny Toon Adventures: Dizzy’s Candy Quest for GameBoy Color. One of their most interesting GBC projects, in development in around 1999-2000, was called Knights.

Knights was an action brawler with a style of gameplay comparable to a blend of Bomberman and Gauntlet, in which players would have had to fight against 3 other knights in 50 different arenas riddled with traps, enemies, and various NPC’s. This excerpt from an old IGN preview offers us further insight:

Each knight is colored differently, and the great challenge of the game is to strike down the knights in a predetermined order while protecting your own flank. Strike a defender before he becomes an official target, and the imperial judges will punish you with a penalty point.

It’s interesting to note that Knights GBC was based around the gameplay of another cancelled Knights project that was planned by Digital Infinity for PC and Dreamcast, before they merged with Lost Boys in 1999. Later, the original Knights for PC and Dreamcast was changed from a multiplayer brawler to a single player action platformer and ported to Playstation 2, but that version was also canned. In 2003, Lost Boys Games was sold to Media Republic and renamed to Guerrilla Games. Their Knight projects were thus never finished, as they began to work on the first Killzone for PS2, and Shellshock: Nam ’67 for PS2, Xbox, and PC.

Only a few screenshots remain from Knights for GameBoy Color, as the title was soon cancelled for unknown reasons. We tried to get in contact with former Formula Games / Lost Boys developers, in an attempt to unearth more on  this unreleased game, but unfortunately, they were not available for comment. If you know someone that worked at Formula Games, let us know!

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Aquanox is a series of action / shooter / simulation games set in a distant future in which humans mostly live underwater and use futuristic submarines to explore the ocean. It all started in 1996 when Massive Development released Archimedean Dynasty / Schleichfahrt (considered as the first chapter in the saga) then in 2001 the same team published AquaNox and a couple of years later they delivered AquaNox 2: Revelation. All the games were published for PC only and even if there are some basic differences between the 3 titles, they always had a mix of “flight” simulation, shooting and RPG gameplay: players were able to fight their way in 360° underwater combats, shoot down other submarines, conquer enemy bases, talking with NPC characters, explore the sea to find hidden treasures, complete different mission objectives to gain more money and upgrade their vehicles.

A new chapter in the Aquanox series was planned for Playstation 2 but unfortunately it was cancelled when it was almost completed. As always the project was in development by Massive soon after the release of AquaNox 2, when JoWooD (their parent company at the time) wanted to enter the console market and deemed Aquanox as the perfect game to start. Initially Aquanox 2 was ported to PS2 but it did not fit the new hardware and controller, being not that much fun to play. To secure a great console debut, Massive Development took the next 2 years to create a completely new game, as a third chapter in the series, that would have been titled Aquanox: The Angels’ Tears, with new missions, features and storyline.

As we can read in the official press-release for the game:

AquaNox: The Angel’s Tears is the story of an action packed treasure hunt, presented as a playable under-water road-movie. The game is a fast-paced 3rd person shooter, where the player steers his vessel through the depth of the oceans 3000 meters under the sea, 650 years into the future, 300 bars of pressure. The sun is a fading legend of former centuries. Nobody has ever seen it. Man now calls this world: ‘Aqua’. Eight humans crammed into a freighter. Eight mercenaries, shrouded in mystery, hunting for a legendary treasure. Eight hunters dreaming of the Angel’s Tears. This dream will change them – and history. The greatest love story of their time!

Angel’s Tears would have featured fast paced underwater shooting along with a mature storyline divided in 32 main missions set in the deep seas of Aqua, an advanced score and experience system, 4 submarine ships with different stats and tactical uses, fully upgradable weapons and other equipment to improve player’s chance to survive to the hardest missions that were planned.

Massive Development wanted to make Angel’s Tears the best Aquanox game ever, but unfortunately in 2005 JoWooD was on the edge of going bankrupt: they had to cut a lot of their cost and decided to close down Massive Development as the new AquaNox was already 99,9% done. At this time the Aquanox: The Angel’s Tears was submission-ready to be accepted by Sony and to be officially published on PS2, but the devs wanted to polish it up more before to release it as their last game, so they introduced a few easy bugs to make it fail the first submission. When AquaNox PS2 failed the Sony submission the situation at Massive Development got even more sour as JoWooD refused to pay all their outstanding wages. Because of this the project wasnt handed over properly at closure of the studio and nobody was able to finish it although it was really 99,9% done. AquaNox: The Angel’s Tears was forgotten for many years, hidden away in some directory, until Nordic Games ended up with the rights to Aquanox and all its assets after the insolvency of JoWooD in 2011.

Nordic Games got in contact with Unseen64 to share some of the documents they found about Angel’s Tears and we are now able to preserve more screens and videos from this lost game. People that were interested in Angel’s Tears will be happy to know that this is not the end of Aquanox as Nordic Games though the series deserved another chance and conceived a new project: Aquanox Deep Descent, a complete reboot of the Aqua saga taking into account the scientific advances made since the first game.

As a love letter to fans of games that will never be, Deep Descent will not only revive the AquaNox experience after the lost Angel’s Tears, adding 4 players coop mode and an even bigger ocean to explore, it will also integrate assets and research from another cancelled THQ underwater action game known as Deep Six, originally planned for PS3.

We are happy to see a team like Nordic Games to understand the importance of preserving lost videogames and huge props to them for the help in saving more documents from the cancelled AquaNox: The Angel’s Tears! We can’t wait to see what they will be able to do with Aquanox Deep Descent, a project that could take the series to a new level and will became a memento to remember two interesting cancelled games. Aquanox Deep Descent was fully funded a few days ago thanks to a successful Kickstarter campaign but you still have a week to support the project with your pledges and be able to play this game as soon as it will be released!

Super thanks to Nordic Games for the contribution! Also thanks to Manuel Hansen for additional support

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Announced in 2011 at Ubisoft’s E3 press conference Brothers in Arms: Furious 4 was to be the next instalment in the Brothers in Arms franchise after Brothers in Arms: Hells Highway. The game was originally set to be released sometime in the first half of 2012 for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC, but that never happened. However, in 2012 Ubisoft let go of the Brothers in Arms IP and The Furious 4 trademark granting the games developers, Gearbox Software, full ownership of both. The president of Gearbox, Randy Pitchford, then announced that the Brothers in Arms name was being dropped from the title due to negative fan feedback and from now on the game would just be called Furious 4. Pitchford also said that internal discussions held within Gearbox led to the same conclusion that Brother in Arms and Furious 4 should be separate IPs. He said that there would be another Brothers in Arms game sometime in the future when the time is right but for now Gearbox was concentrating on Furious 4 which would be undergoing some drastic changes.

While previous Brothers in Arms games followed Sargent Matt Baker and the soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division in a serious historical setting, Furious 4 would have taken a quite different approach to the World War 2 setting. Furious 4 looked like a cross between Borderlands and Quentin Tarantino’s 2009 film Inglorious Bastards. The plot followed a group of four characters as they massacred their way through Germany in 1944 all the way to Hitler, and that’s all we really know about the plot itself.

There is a small bit of information on each of the four playable characters. Firstly there was Chok who was a Native American soldier with a fondness for hatchets. Next up was Stitch who was an Irishman with a few lose screws who seemed to enjoy taking out his enemies with a custom made taser a little too much. Crockett was from Texas and could use a cattle prod to brand enemies. Lastly there was Montana who was a Nazi killing lumberjack with a large machine gun, a chainsaw and bear traps. There was also a narrator who spoke over the gameplay and was just as much of a character as the other four. He would clue you into the moment to moment plan and often hinted that he felt the members of the Furious Four were quite stupid. The only gameplay shown for the game was behind closed doors at E3 2011 and judging from what the people who saw it said historical accuracy was not a concern in Furious 4, apparently they even had a helicopter in a WWII shooter. The only other thing discussed about the gameplay was it’s over the top trigger happy violence that attempted humour.

On the 16th of July 2015 Randy Pitchford was speaking at the Develop: Brighton conference and said:

“Furious 4 is not a thing anymore, right? Creative development is a trip. The idea that something started as a Brothers in Arms game, through some absurd convulsion, ended up as Battleborn is evidence of what’s possible.”

With that Furious 4 was officially cancelled although as Pitchford said it transformed into Battleborn so it’s likely that a lot of Furious 4’s assets will end up in that game. In fact Furious 4’s Montana character will feature in Battleborn.

The good news for Brothers in Arms fans is that Gearbox is going to start development on the next “authentic” game in the series soon which will more than likely follow on from Hell’s Highway. Gearbox has been under fire in recent years for Duke Nukem: Forever and Aliens: Colonial Marines although their Borderlands series has been positively received and proves that they are talented developers. Gearbox is currently working on Battleborn and their website says they’re hiring for the next Borderlands game so we can expect news on that soon.

Article by Conor Hutton

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