Project Dagger was an internal prototype for a new cooperative action game developed at Digital Illusions (DICE) during 2004/2005. When EA bought the studio, they did not greenlight the title for full production. From the look of the few videos preserved (that are probably target renders), the game was going to be about robbing bank and other criminal affairs, using 4 characters with different abilities. It seems that they wanted to have an online coop mode too.
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Fallout Tactics 2 is a cancelled action RPG developed by Micro Forté in 2001, that was meant to be the sequel to Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel. Pre-production started shortly before the release of the first game, but FT2 was soon canned by Interplay when Fallout Tactics started selling rather poorly.
As we can read in an interview with Gareth Davies (that worked as junior artist and additional design for the project) on No Mutants Allowed:
I’m also pretty disappointed that Tactics 2 never saw the light of day, since it’s a title that would have benefited from the experience and criticisms of the first game. Plus we were very conscious of heeding Fallout canon as best we could, and providing more interesting tactical missions rather than the run and gun focus of the first game.
You can read more info on Fallout Wikia! Sadly only few concept arts remain from this project.
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Dominion is a cancelled Action RPG that was in development from 2001 to 2003 by Pharaoh Productions for the PC, with a planned Xbox port. The game was meant to be based on the multiplayer mode, with up to 8 players (LAN or Internet) on the Xbox and probably more for the PC version. The game was never released probably because of quality issues and for the lack of a publisher interested in the project.
From the only screens preserved in the gallery below we can speculate that Pharaoh Productions worked on the graphic engine and the game’s world for a long time, but they did never finish to implement a real gameplay system into Dominion. It’s possible that they never started to work on the Xbox version, as the images look to be from the PC build (those little icons would never work on a console port).
In 2004 Pharaoh Productions closed down when their founder, David Allen, resigned from the gaming business.
Thanks to Userdante for the contribution!
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Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2: March of the Minis is a Puzzle Game developed by NST as a sequel to the GBA MvsDK, a follow up to the Game Boy Donkey Kong game. A playable beta demo of MvsDk2 was available at various gaming conventions, from where it was saved on the DS and then shared online.
Upaluppa noticed many differences in this beta demo, as wrote in his videos on Youtube:
– The music sounds quite different
– There are hearts instead of big coins
– The small coins are rotating
– Mushroom Mayhem is called Mushroom Kingdom
– The status screen is completely different
– There’s a level map available by pressing Select
– The map looks VERY incomplete…
– The first level is completely different
– Later levels have some minor differences
– Some sound effects are different
– There is no time limit
Thanks to Hiccup for the contribution!
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Rod_Wod from the Assembler Forum has posted various scans from the cancelled Akira games (based on the manga / anime with the same name) that were meant to be released by THQ for the Genesis / Mega Drive, Super Nintendo, Mega CD and Game Gear. Probably the screens published in the magazines were all from the same version, as the graphic looks almost the same for all the various consoles. Some more screens were found by Celine in Player One #44, Console Plus #44 and #35. Thanks to Sketcz from the Hardcore Gaming 101 blog for the other scans!
From an interview at Hardcore Gaming 101 we can read a lot of interesting info about the development of these unreleased Akira games:
“It was not so much cancelled or scrapped as it fell into neglect. Larry transferred rights to THQ and we couldn’t get clear agreement on the game elements with the project manager. They didn’t understand the limitations of the SNES. The project was then victim to a number of disasters including the lead programmer leaving, and other work being more pressing.”
A short video from the game was recorded at CES in summer 1994, you can see it below (it looks like the game crashes / freeze at some point). Thanks to Brian for the link to the video!
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