New Cancelled Games & Their Lost Media Added to the Archive

Others, PC / MAC

Shattered Nations [PC – Cancelled]

monokoma
28-04-2010
3 Comments

Shattered Nations is a cancelled sci-fi action / RTS game that was in development by Blizzard Entertainment. There is not much info on this lost project besides a teaser trailer in which we see a futuristic city and a flying helicopter. From the video description we can read that:

The game was set in a world which was at peace but one day fire rained down from the sky, in which people were forced to scavenge for food and technology. There was a 20 year nuclear winter which made the world into a vast wasteland. The player would have to search for technology and move your people around so that the civilization will thrive.

Rumors say that Shattered Nations evolved into Starcraft. In some issues of PC Champ (a Korean magazine from late 1995 to early 1996) derboo found a render image that shows one mech from Shattered Nations, but in a following issue, that same mech was described as the Goliath from Starcraft (The Goliath in the final game looks way different, though).

The original Starcraft was released in 1998, so it’s possible that in 3 years Blizzard decided to completely change Shattered Nations’ settings and story to create their popular RTS. It’s also possible that some of the Shattered Nations’ assets could have been reused in Starcraft. Sadly we don’t have any confirmation of this theory and even Blizzard refers to Shattered Nations as one of their cancelled games.

Thanks to derboo for the contribution!

Thanks to Jason for the english corrections!

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Playstation, Sony

Big Guns (Exodus) [Playstation – Cancelled]

monokoma
27-04-2010
4 Comments

Big Guns (Exodus) is a cancelled shooter / action game that was in development by Neversoft Entertainment in 1996 / 1997. They were able to create a good-looking playable tech demo for this project that was shown to Shiny Entertainment on June 1996 to demonstrate their 3D engine in hopes that Shiny would hire them to develop the MDK Playstation port.

As we can read at the Playstation Museum, a coop mode was also available:

Exodus features a fast and furious two player cooperative play. Two player mode does not suffer from any slowdown as a result of the superior 3D engine. What makes Exodus stand out is that both players can combine their mechs into one larger mech. In transformation mode, player one would control the bottom half of the mech including walking and firing at enemies while player two would control the upper half which allows for 360 degree swivel as well as firing upon enemies.

Shiny was impressed with their technology and Neversoft started to work on the MDK conversion (that used the Big Guns engine), while the Big Guns concept was sold to Sony Computer Entertainment America.

Big Gus was meant to be published by SCEA in 1998, but 1997 was a tumultuous year for Neversoft. The MDK conversion took far longer than expected, and Big Guns, renamed Exodus, went through numerous design changes at the behest of Sony. Somehow Exodus was changed from a mech shooter to an action adventure featuring a cat-girl (sadly, we don’t have any image from this version of the game). The project was doomed and it was eventually cancelled in November 1997.

Neversoft shrunk to just twelve employees. The company then spent the next few months shopping around their technology, meeting with numerous companies and looking for work.

In January 1998, just as Neversoft was about to run out of money, they had a fortunate meeting with Activision who were looking for someone to re-develop Apocalypse, a failed internal project featuring the voice of Bruce Willis. The technology developed for Big Guns turned out to be ideal for the project, Activision wase impressed and Neversoft began work on Apocalypse.

In the end Big Guns / Exodus was never released, but at least its 3D engine was used for 2 other games: MDK and Apocalypse.

Thanks to Userdante and Father PSX for the contributions! Some info are from Wikipedia and The Playstation Museum.

Thanks to Jason for the english corrections!

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Nintendo, SNES + Super Famicom

Star Fox (Starwing) [SNES – Beta]

monokoma
26-04-2010
1 Comment

Star Fox (Starwing in Europe) is a on-rail shooter developed by Argonaut Software and Nintendo EAD, published in 1993 for the Super Nintendo. Argonaut worked closely with Nintendo during the early years of the NES and SNES. They developed a Star Fox prototype on the NES, initially codenamed “NesGlider”, which was inspired by their earlier 8-bit game Starglider, and then ported this prototype to the SNES.

Programmer Jez San told Nintendo that this was as good as it could get unless they were allowed to design custom hardware to make the SNES better at 3D. Nintendo assented to this, and San hired chip designers to make the Super FX chip, the first 3D graphics accelerator in a consumer product. [Info from Wikipedia]

Megalol found some Star Fox beta screens in Nintendo Power magazine from Jan 1993, in which we can notice a completely different (and awesome) beta title screen!

Beta Title:


Final Title:

Originally a sequel titled Star Fox 2 was in the works for the Super Nintendo, but it was never released, though a handful of ROM dumps at various stages of its development were leaked onto the internet.

Thanks to Jason for the english corrections!

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Others, PC / MAC

Warhammer: Dark Crusaders [PC – Cancelled]

monokoma
25-04-2010
8 Comments

Warhammer: Dark Crusaders is a cancelled FPS that was in development for PC by Mindscape in 1995 / 1996. This project is not related to the RTS “Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War: Dark Crusade” expansion pack that was released in 2006. The 1996 Dark Crusaders was going to be one of the few first person shooters based on the Warhammer world, but the gameplay was not that much fun and in the end Mindscape decided to never publish the game, even though it was almost complete.

PC Gamer Online even reviewed a review-copy, with a 65% score:

Initially, the gameplay bears a strong resemblance to another squad-based shooter — Terra Nova — but unlike the sleek, efficient commands and diverse missions in TN, Dark Crusaders doesn’t let you make the most of your squad, and the missions don’t really require you to either.

During each of the 15 missions, which range from kill-’em-all scenarios to more specific reconnaissance missions, there are commands to order your troops to explore, follow, and teleport to and fro. But regardless of which command you choose, the results seem to be the same as if you left your brethren at home.

When ordered to explore, troops merely bump around walls shooting any enemies they encounter, then bump around some more often getting stuck in tight passages or wandering about aimlessly, leaving any and all mission-related work for you.

The weak command interface is so disappointing that during most missions it hardly seems worth the effort to even add units to the roster, since you’ll end up doing all the work yourself.

It seems that the FMV sequences used in Warhammer: Dark Crusaders were later recycled for Warhammer: Final Liberation, a turn-based tactics game published for PCs in 1997.

Derboo found a screenshot of the game in an old Korean magazine, if someone has saved more images or videos from old magazines or websites, please let us know!

Thanks to Jason for the english corrections! Thanks to Michal Fridrich and Tragos2d for the scans!

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