Maximo 2 ends with the promise of a third game, with Maximo and his allies teaming up to find Queen Sophia. Studio 8 planned to create their best Maximo ever with the third chapter, with new enemies, features and an arabian theme, inspired by the success of Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. Looking at this unfinished prototype and reading the design doc, it seems that Maximo 3 could have been the best game in the Maximo series, but unfortunately not much more work was done on it, as it was canned soon after the creation of this early demo, due to low sales of Maximo 2.
One European team's attempt to bring back the classic 90's adventure genre on Nintendo Wii and the story behind its collapse
A new look at the cancelled Mario volleyball/wrestling hybrid worked on at Next Level Games for Wii.
Star Fox meets Valiant Hearts in this secretive Sony exclusive project from the creators of the Star Wars: Rogue Squadron series, Factor 5
The life & death of one of Nintendo's most mysterious Wii projects and how a storm of alleged discrimination and mismanagement tore Nintendo Software Technology apart, as told by the people who worked there.
The original vision for Rayman 4; an ambitious 3D reboot for PS2, Xbox, Nintendo Gamecube & PC, that tried to take the series back to its roots with a surreal, meta story. Stay tuned for looks at more secretive projects.
Discover the mysterious lost Kid Icarus game for Nintendo Wii that was worked on by third party, Factor 5, and their journey towards creating it. Includes previously unseen footage, lots of brand new info, and plenty of historical background. Stay tuned for looks at more cancelled projects!
Hi! I’m the Unseen64 Artificial Intelligence, I’m here to show you something nice: it’s finally here, after almost two years of work! Our book about lost videogames! In this volume you can read about more than 200 cancelled games, starting from early ‘90s computers, to 8-bit games and all the way through to the 7th generation of consoles with Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and Wii. In this book you can find the most interesting cancelled games from the Unseen64 archive (http://www.unseen64.net) plus a few previously unknown lost games, new screenshots and details. Also included are essays about the preservation of unreleased games, articles about how we do researches for Unseen64 and 20 interviews with museums and developers who worked on lost games. This is a crowdsourced book by the whole Unseen64 collective: more than 45 contributors from all over the world worked on the project. The book is almost 500 pages long and the physical cost to print the full-color version is quite high but we’ll also publish a much cheaper black and white version. The black and white version of the book is identical to the color one, the only differences are the cover and the interior color: this black and white version will cost less than half the price of the full color book. If you have any question about the book, let us know in the comments! Much love from from the Unseen64 Artificial Intelligence, see you soon in the unseen world!
The exclusive story behind Bioware's cancelled online action RPG
Discover the cancelled Banjo Kazooie game for Gameboy Colour starring an alternate story with an evil blue Kazooie, levels that were later cut, and lots more.
More secrets from Project H.A.M.M.E.R. for Wii, one of Nintendo's biggest internal disasters.
Learn how one Nintendo studio tried to bring Wave Race back for a new generation with a sequel to Blue Storm on the Wii. Would you like to see it return on Wii U or NX?
South Park's cancelled open world game from Ubisoft for PS2, Xbox and Nintendo GameCube is explored by Liam. Development of the game was sparked by the success of similar licensed games, such as The Simpsons: Hit & Run. This canned game was also ambitious, and aimed to be the first video game to officially map out the entire town of South Park. Liam Robertson is a video game researcher and archiver. In his spare time, Liam creates videos and articles for Unseen64, but will also be contributing to the DidYouKnowGaming channel from here on out.
The Avengers' cancelled first person action game from THQ for Xbox 360, PS3, PC and Wii U is explored by Liam. The game would have loosely followed the Secret Invasion storyline from the Marvel comic books, and was meant to be released around the same time as the first Avengers movie. The game was being developed in 2010 and 2011, but was never announced. It was intended to be a big budget AAA game with a 2+ year life cycle. Liam Robertson is a video game researcher and archiver. In his spare time, Liam creates videos and articles for Unseen64, but will also be contributing to the DidYouKnowGaming channel from here on out.
Heist was a 2D stealth action game developed by TrapDoor, an independent developer who co-published Polytron's Fez. It was destined for Xbox Live Arcade, Playstation Network, and PC before the studio ran into some financial hurdles.
This cancelled Batman project was an open world stealth action game being made by Pandemic Studios to be published by EA. It was in development from 2006 to 2008, and was originally meant to release alongside The Dark Knight movie. The game would also feature actors from the film doing voiceover.
Was Factor 5 developing Pilotwings for Gamecube? Former developers and a prominent game industry figure assist me in unravelling the mystery of this 13 year old rumour.
This cancelled Superman project was an open world game being made by Factor 5 or the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Wii. It was an open world game with a big line-up of villains, and would recreate many classic battles from the Superman comics. It was essentially Factor 5's last major project in development before their closure.
Check out the cancelled MMO game designed to connect with Guitar Hero 7, DJ Hero 3, future Band Hero titles, and others, in this world exclusive release of gameplay footage. The lost MMO and its companion app hoped to allow console players, from Nintendo to Sony, to perform together live on stage over the Internet.
This cancelled Dirty Harry project was a third person action game set between the first and second Dirty Harry movies. It would have featured a number of Hollywood actors, such as Clint Eastwood, Laurence Fishburne, and Lucy Lui. Two separate versions of the game were being developed: one by The Collective Inc for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, and another by Sensory Sweep for PlayStation 2 Nintendo Wii, DS, Xbox, PC, and PSP. Liam Robertson is a video game researcher and archiver. In his spare time, Liam creates videos and articles for Unseen64, but will also be contributing to the DidYouKnowGaming channel.
These cancelled Perfect Dark games would have released on the Xbox 360. They would've had a more serious tone than both Perfect Dark Zero and the original N64 title, and would have been securely based in sci-fi rather than fantasy. Perfect Dark: Core was worked on for about a year, starting in 2006 and into 2007. Liam Robertson is a video game researcher and archiver. In his spare time, Liam creates videos and articles for Unseen64, but will also be contributing to the DidYouKnowGaming channel.
Daredevil: The Man Without Fear was developed by 5000ft inc, and started out as a rather small third person action game for the PlayStation 2. After the team became aware that a Daredevil movie was in the works, the game became open-world. Knowing that the game would have more brand recognition at launch, the game's publication was expanded to the Xbox and PC as well as the PS2.
See the lost Cel Damage sequel intended for Nintendo Gamecube, PS2 and Xbox, and find out why it was never finished.
This video reveals two cancelled projects by Factor 5. The first is a Rogue Squadron Compilation with new features, including updated online multiplayer. The game was originally planned as an Xbox game, but several factors led to the game being developed for the Nintendo Wii. This Wii version had no online multiplayer, but included new modes that supported wii motion plus. The second project was Star Wars Dark Squadron. This would be a flight combat game like Rogue Squadron, but the player would take control of Darth Vader and control the imperial army. The third game discussed in this video is an action-adventure game staring Chewbacca. The game would have seen chewy as a bounty hunter, and would have took place before he became friends with Han Solo.
This video details a cancelled Ghost Rider game by Neversoft, Crystal Dynamics, and Marvel from 1996. The game used a tweaked version of the engine used for Skeleton Warriors, and was planned to release exclusively on the original PlayStation. Support for the game was dropped when its publisher, Crystal Dynamics, decided to pull out of its publishing deals and focus on developing games in-house. There were also concerns surrounding the game's genre, as Crystal Dynamics believed sidescrolling games were falling out of fashion.
This video details 6 abandoned games from various publishers. First up is an Electra game from Marvel which would have been a spin-off of the cancelled Daredevil game previously features on Unseen64. The second title was a potential first person Command and Conquer game from EA and Criterion. The third game was contemplated during the earliest stages of development for Kid Icarus Uprising. Masahiro Sakurai had plans to create a Star Fox game on the Nintendo 3DS, but the project eventually developed into a revival of Kid Icarus after Sakurai came to the conclusion that his desired gameplay mechanics didn't suit Star Fox. The fourth game is again from Criterion. It would have been based on the Mad Max franchise, and published by 20th Century Fox. The fifth game is yet another Dirty Harry title. This game would have been an open-world crime game published by Warner Bros. The last game in this list is connected to Factor 5's PlayStation 3 title, Lair. Early in Lair's development, Factor 5 wished to use to the Dungeons and Dragons license.
Discover how Factor 5 once pitched doing a Dungeons & Dragons: Dragonlance video game, and the secret competition between Nintendo & Sony to win their exclusivity for either Wii or PS3.
In only about 4 years of existence, United Game Artists managed to became one of the most original and beloved Sega teams ever existed, especially for Dreamcast fans. Originally founded as Sega AM9 and lead by Tetsuya Mizuguchi, they released such interesting titles as Space Channel 5 and Rez. After Sega discontinued the Dreamcast on March 2001, United Game Artists released ports of Rez and Space Channel 5 for Playstation 2, while they started developing two new projects: Rez 2 and Buciyo 5.
This video details the development of a failed pitch of a video game tie-in to the TRON sequel, TRON: Legacy. This pitch in particular was developed by Chicago's Day 1 Studios, who had previously worked with Lucasarts. The project was planned to be published on Microsoft's Xbox 360, Sony's PlayStation 3 and PC.
Before Halo and Destiny, in late 90’ Jason Jones, Bungie's co-founder along with Alex Seropian, had the idea of creating a fantasy tactical role playing game where you fight against huge armies of characters. It was a project nicknamed “The Giant Bloody War Game”, inspired by movies such as Braveheart and fantasy novels such as The Black Company. This was the conception of Myth: The Fallen Lords, a game that became another big success for Bungie and holder of many innovations for the RTS genre in 1997. Bungie was officially purchased by Microsoft in 2000, when the company was trying to acquire developers to create exclusive games for their debut console: the Xbox. The Myth franchise was transferred to its publisher Take-Two Interactive, but Microsoft and Bungie did not forget their RTS fans and were already planning a new tactical RPG that would have revolutionized the genre on console. This new project was internally known as “Phoenix” (or "Breach") and it would have been one of the first exclusive Xbox games by Bungie.
This video details the development of a failed pitch of a video game tie-in to the Watchmen franchise. The proposal was developed by Bottlerocket Entertainment, who was mostly comprised of ex-staff members from Sony San Diego. The project would have featured various gameplay styles inspired by the comics, and would have followed the Watchmen team as they impacted historical events such as the assassination of JFK. Another idea Bottlerocket had was an open-world third person action adventure game that revolved around Rorschach. The target platforms for Battlerocket's game were never fully decided, but they were planning a multiplatform release, possibly for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 (PS3) and the Nintendo Wii.
This video details the development of an open world Flash video game. The project was developed by Bottlerocket Entertainment, who was mostly comprised of ex-staff members from Sony San Diego. The project also had involvement from Warner Brothers, who had the license for DC Comics’ franchise and character of Wally West. Through Liam's analysis, it’s easy to see the title's gameplay was ambitious even in its prototype stage. In its earliest stages, the developers even considered having cameos from other super heroes such as Batman and Superman. The target platforms for Battlerocket's game were the Xbox 360, Sony's PlayStation 3 (PS3) and the Nintendo Wii.
Project FUUB was an interesting gaming peripheral experiment in development by THQ Digital Studios UK (Juiced Games), planned to be released for Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii. The team developed a few prototypes using these gaming dice (such as Quest for the Magic Stones), but in the end the studio decided to cancel the FUUB project.
Road Trip is a cancelled zombie-apocalypse game that was in development in 2009 / 2010 by French studio Hydravision Entertainment (mostly known for the popular survival horror game Obscure) planned to be released on Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. Initially known as Project T, the game was meant to be a more mature and open-ended take on the “zombie survival” genre, with a gameplay mechanic similar to State of Decay (released only 4 years later) and a characters-driven storyline, with a strong, non-romantic relationship between the two main protagonists, a man and a woman, somehow similar to what Naughty Dog did many years later in The Last Of Us.
Game Zero is a cancelled sandbox action platformer with gameplay mechanics similar to Minecraft, that Zoonami has been developing from 2000 to 2002 as an exclusive game for Nintendo’s Gamecube. The project became popular in 2000 as one of the early games announced for the GameCube, when former Rare employee Martin Hollis (director of GoldenEye 007 for Nintendo 64) opened his own software house.
Project Nano - also known as Blueprint - is a cancelled third person, open world cooperative shooter being developed by Epic Games. The project was going to become their new major IP following the popular Gears of War series, and was scheduled to be released for Playstation 4, Xbox One and PC. A few details about this obscure game were already leaked online in November 2013 thanks to VGLeaks but we’ve managed to gather some more info about this ambitious project. Nano started development in 2008, around the same time Epic were also working on Gears of War 3. GoW3 was later released in September 2011 as an Xbox 360 exclusive title, but Nano was meant to be Epic’s “next gen” IP, a multi platform (PS4, Xbox One) series planned to be a successful trilogy. Epic put a lot of time and money in creating the Blueprint trilogy, a “noir adventure in the grim and desperate world of 2043”, but unfortunately the series was abandoned after a few prototype demos.
This video details the development of a prototype skateboarding game titled Sonic The Hedgehog Extreme. Sonic Extreme was developed by Vision Scape Interactive, and was originally developed without SEGA's consent. The project reused technology developed by Vision Scape for their Tech Deck Playset software, as well as a cancelled game based on Nickelodeon's Rocket Power cartoon. Vision Scape presented the pitch to Sonic Team's Yuji Naka, and Naka seemed to be impressed. Communication from SEGA broke down after this meeting however, and the project progressed no further. Around two years later, SEGA demonstrated their new title, Sonic Riders, which resembled Vision Scape's pitch. Vision Scape hoped that the project would find its way to Xbox, Gamecube, and PlayStation 2 (PS2) once it was finished.
What happened to Fighting Force 3? The first Fighting Force was developed by Core Design and published by Eidos Interactive for PlayStation and PC in 1997, the same year in which they released Tomb Raider 2. Core Design was at the vertex of their popularity, becoming one of the most recognized teams in the gaming market. Fighting Force 3 was in development by Core Design between 2002 and 2003, to be released for PlayStation 2, the original Xbox and maybe even on GameCube. This time the team went back to their roots with classic beat ‘em up gameplay, fully playable coop mode and 4 different characters to choose from.
Warren Spector entered the video game business in 1989 when he joined ORIGIN, co-producing Ultima VI and Wing Commander, then producing System Shock and many other classic RPGs. After working a year at Looking Glass Studio on Thief: The Dark Project, in 1997 Spector received a call from John Romero: it was the start of the new Ion Storm Austin team and the conception of another classic title, Deus Ex. In March 2005 Warren Spector officially announced his new company: Junction Point Studios, a team named after a cancelled online RPG he was working on during his last months at Looking Glass. Spector founded Junction Point Studios with the help of another former employee of Looking Glass and Ion Storm: Art Min, who worked on System Shock and later joined Valve Software where he managed the acquisition of the Counter-Strike IP. During the early days of Junction Point, Spector and Min conceived a few original games to pitch to different publishers. One of these pitches was titled “Sleeping Giants”, an ambitious open world RPG in the vein of The Elder Scrolls: SKYRIM, set in a fantasy universe originally proposed for DC Comics by Spector and his wife.
Final Fantasy Fortress is a cancelled action RPG that was being developed by Grin in 2008 and 2009 to be published by Square-Enix on Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. Grin’s past game never had a big impact on the market, but you probably remember them as the team behind such games as Bionic Commando Rearmed and the Bionic Commando reboot. While Grin were developing Bionic Commando for Capcom, Yoichi Wada from Square Enix visited their offices and loved what he saw and proposed to Grin to create a new game together. Initially Square Enix invited Grin to pitch a game based on their japanese card game Lords of Vermilion, but later they decided to use the Final Fantasy name. To let a western team to develop a Final Fantasy title was quite an extraordinary event at the time, the main chapters in the Final Fantasy series were still turn-based and Fortress could have been released way before Final Fantasy XV.
Gnomageddon was an online action game developed exclusively for the PlayStation 4 (PS4). The project originated as a small demo made during a game jam at a division of Sony San Diego, and was gradually expanded upon. The game was planned to be free to play with optional microtransactions, and would have featured three game modes as well as six classes of gnome. The game's main mode would have been a standard death match mode that pitted teams of good and evil gnomes against each other. The game was ultimately cancelled due to the studio as a whole not bringing in enough revenue, which was partly due to Sony San Diego's MOBA game Kill Strain under performing.
Factor 5's Pilotwings reboot was an open world game developed exclusively for the Nintendo Wii. The project originated from the Nintendo GameCube, but was eventually pushed onto the Wii. Factor 5 experimented with a kind of head tracking glasses that effected what was displayed in relation to the player's position, giving the illusion of real depth within the display. The game started out with a more serious tone, but gradually became more casual like past Pilotwings games. Factor 5 later made the project its own IP, and developed it under the title Wii Flight, Wii Fly, and ultimately WeFly.
As you may have heard, Deus Ex is a popular first-person action-RPG originally conceived by Warren Spector. There are currently four games in the main series: the first two were developed by under Spector’s watch at Ion Storm, while the third and fourth games were developed by Eidos Montreal. But through a feature on Eurogamer back in 2014, it was revealed that Ion Storm actually worked on two alternative versions of the third installment - called Deus Ex: Insurrection and Deus Ex 3, respectively. Deus Ex: Insurrection’s setting saw America falling into bankruptcy in 2027. Other rising superpowers, including China and Russia, were trying to take advantage of this situation and were bankrolling insurgents on US soil, while the European Union attempted to bring the US under its jurisdiction. This first, third Deus Ex was to take place 25 years before the events of the original game, and saw you playing as Blake Denton, father of the first game’s protagonist, JC Denton.
This Unseen64 video covers several ideas that were pitched to Nintendo, but ultimately rejected. Various studios have asked to make a game using a Nintendo IP, this includes everything from ports of Super Mario Bros. 3 to PC, to remakes of the original Star Fox on 3DS.
This Unseen64 video covers a cancelled Justice League comic book game by Double Helix Games, which was planned to release on the Xbox 360, as well as PlayStation 3 (PS3) and the Nintendo Wii. This DC Comics Justice League Arcade game would have been a beat 'em up style game, with Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Green Lantern all playable.
What happened to Obscure: Dark Aura for Nintendo DS? Obscure was a short series of survival horror games created by French studio Hydravision Entertainment, with a first chapter published by DreamCatcher Interactive in 2004 for Playstation 2, Xbox and PC. The game soon gained a cult following of fans, thanks to its school settings, multiple characters to use, catchy soundtrack and a fun co-op mode. The main plot of the game was inspired by classic slasher horror movies and centered around a group of teenagers trying to survive against strange monsters. In 2008 Hydravision and Playlogic decided to port Obscure 2 to the PSP and Nintendo DS, but only the PSP version was released in 2009. The Nintendo DS port was quietly cancelled and the only info available was its planned title, Obscure: Dark Aura. Being impossible to manage a game similar to the Playstation 2 version on the Nintendo DS, many speculations about this lost game have been circulated online. Thanks to researches made in 2016 for an article published in the Unseen64 book, we can finally learn the truth about Obscure Dark Aura.
Game of Death is a cancelled action game that was in development for Playstation 2, Xbox and PC by german team Burns Entertainment Software in 2001. It would have been somehow similar to Shadowman, players would take the role of a dying (?) man who would try to kill down the most notorious serial killers of the 20th century (for example Fritz Haarmann, Charles Manson or Jeffrey Dahmer).
