Others

Alien Front [N-Gage – Cancelled]

The original Alien Front is an arcade game developed by Sega, which was then ported to the Dreamcast in 2001, adding online multiplayer. In 2004 Sega announced another port of the game for the ill-fated Nokia N-Gage, as we can read on IGN:

“In Alien Front, you can take on the role of an army tank commander to defend the Earth against invading aliens, or switch sides and take command of a futuristic 2-leg walker, a 4-leg spider walker, or an anti-gravity hovercraft vehicle. Alien Front also has a two-player deathmatch mode via Bluetooth wireless technology and the possibility to share game statistics with the world via the N-Gage Arena.”

As many other games planned for this phone-console hybrid, Alien Front was later cancelled. In 2019 a playable prototype was found and released online.

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Blunders (Branders) [PC Engine – Cancelled]

Blunders (AKA Branders, ブランダーズ) is a cancelled cyberpunk RPG that was in development around 1992 by IGS (AKA International Games System, アイ・ジー・エス) for PC Engine. From the available screenshots it looks like players would have been able to explore sci-fi cities in a top-down view, with turn based combat similar to Phantasy Star. At the time PC Engine Fan magazine published a 2-pages preview of Blunders, so there are some details available: if you can translate the most important parts in English, please let us know!

Thanks to Celine for the contribution

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Adventure of the Mummy Head [PC Engine – Cancelled]

Adventure of the Mummy Head is a cancelled game that was in development by Taito for PC Engine around 1991. The title was advertised in a few gaming magazines at the time, but as far as we know they never showed any screenshot, just artwork of the main protagonist. In one of these ads there’s a short description in Japanese: if you can translate it, please let us know in the comments below!

Thanks to Celine for the contribution

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Peacebreakers (L’Art) [PC – Cancelled]

Peacebreakers is a cancelled war-themed parody FPS that was in development around 2006 by L’Art and would have been published on PC by JoWooD Productions. The team planned to offer a crazy, funny take on the genre: for example in the trailer you can see soldiers riding cows and driving a tractor. Peacebreakers would have been published in “Episodic Chapters”, with each one continuing the story as in a TV series featuring “TV-style intro videos and cut-scenes”. It seems the game was announced at the 2006 Leipzig Games Convention, but it soon vanished and today no one remembers about it.

On Gamepressure we can read the original press release (?):

“Unlike many contemporary FP shooters, where all matters are treated with deadly seriousness, this title contains a whole range of humorous elements. This can be seen, for example, in the missions we play, or prepared by the authors of crazy team members. During the game we take control over one of the several available tenants.

The actual gameplay was mainly directed at unrestricted violence. It is also worth noting that the action of the game was set in the near future. So we can use various (often futuristic) gadgets. Various vehicles play a very important role here, which we can of course use. These can be military jeeps, hummer vehicles, tanks or even tractors and flying machines (such as helicopters and biplanes). Each of the unlocked vehicles can be subjected to additional modifications. These are primarily better weapons, however, there were also quite crazy objects, such as spoilers that were pleasing to the eye.

Peacebreakers has of course a fully fledged multiplayer. You can choose between several standard play modes such as Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, or Assault.”

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Bladeball (Cat Mother) [Xbox, PC – Cancelled]

Bladeball is a cancelled extreme sport game that was in development by Cat Mother around 2002, for PC and the original Xbox. It was inspired by the Rollerball movie and you could imagine it as a more “violent” version of soccer / football: two teams in an arena, trying to score their point by any means. The team was able to develop an early prototype, but it was not as fun to play as they imagined it to be and decided to cancel it, to work on another game (Dead Justice, which was also canned). Unfortunately only a few, tiny screenshots remain from this lost project: we tried upscaling them to have a better idea of how Bladeball could have looked like in 2002. You can find them in the gallery below.

Thanks to Piotr for the contribution!

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