New Cancelled Games & Their Lost Media Added to the Archive

Game Boy (+ Color), Nintendo

Knights [GameBoy Color – Cancelled]

monokoma
31-08-2015
1 Comment

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.

Knights GameBoy Color Formula Lost Boys Games (1)

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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Microsoft, Others, PC / MAC, Playstation 3 (PS3), Sony, Xbox 360

Rainbow 6: Patriots [Cancelled – PS3, Xbox360, PC]

U64 Staff & Contributors
24-08-2015
2 Comments

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. Read more

Unseen Features, Unseen Interviews

Interview with Yukiharu Sambe, R&D manager of the unreleased Taito WOWOW

Damiano Bacci
10-08-2015
9 Comments

A long time ago, Unseen64 was just a shell of itself. It was hosted on the notoriously bad Xoom.it hosting service, and looked pretty much like a 90’s 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. That particular accolade belongs to The Strange (and Rare) Videogame Pics Page, created by Fabrizio Pedrazzini, an Italian games journalist, known for his work at magazines such as the glorious ‘Super Console’. TS(&R)VPP, as the name says, wasn’t solely about beta games. There were pictures of pirated software, obscure and limited edition consoles, demos, and more. Hidden among those pages was the Taito/JSB/ASCII WOWOW console.

Consoles Plus 010 - Juin 1992 - Page 010

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

For years, the only available information on the Taito WOWOW was limited to this report from the 1992 Tokyo Toys Show, via 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 the Tokyo Toy Show 1992

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! Read more

Jaguar, Leaked, Others, PC / MAC, Playstation, Saturn, Sega, Sony

Witchwood [Cancelled – Playstation, Saturn, PC, Jaguar, Amiga]

monokoma
03-08-2015
14 Comments

Witchwood is a cancelled action adventure game that was in development from 1994 to 1996 by Team 17, the studio best known for the Worms series. The game would have been published by Ocean for Amiga and PC, but in 1995 moved to PC, Playstation, Saturn, and Jaguar. As noted by Hallfiry of the Betaarchive Forum, while working on Witchwood, Team 17 was also developing Speris Legacy; another action adventure similar to the Legend of Zelda games that was released on Amiga in 1996.

Witchwood-Team-17-joystick-64

The reason for the project’s termination is as of yet unknown. One possibility is that Team 17’s publishing partner, Ocean, elected to drop the game’s funding in light of Speris’ apparently lacklustre sales; rather than risk making another loss.

Despite the game’s cancellation, its 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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