New Cancelled Games & Their Lost Media Added to the Archive

Others, PC / MAC

Utopia Industrial (Parallax Arts) [PC – Cancelled]

monokoma
13-01-2022
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Utopia Industrial is a cancelled mission-based First Person RPG / Shooter planned to be a sequel to Utopia City, which was in development by Parallax Arts Studio around 2004 when the first game was still unreleased. Gameplay could have been somehow similar to Deus Ex, with missions you could resolve by using stealth or by shooting down every enemy on sight.

In this lost sequel players would have been able to explore new areas in the industrial part of the Utopian world and the virtual universe, trying to avoid harming the civilians and find the best way to take down a new terrorist group. As we can read on the old Parallax Arts website:

“After the destruction of the central city of Utopia, it became known that it was not the end. The information that there was a secret experiment in the industrial part of the Utopian world appeared. A terrorist group was at the head of the process. The group’s intentions failed in the real world, thus they try to fulfill their plans in the virtual universe.

The heart of the experiment was the following. Many of the people who made their way to Utopia were deprived of their wills and plunged into a deep dream. Their consciousness was greatly influenced in order to make them suffer and be horrified.

Images being created by the test people’s subconsciousness materialized and put on an air of a virtual body in a secret laboratory. The visualized monsters were kept in a special polygon where they were self-perfecting in order to make their “souls” tone with their appearance. Further, the monsters are planned to be directed to the real people’s dreams in order to deprive them of sleep and to drive them mad. “

At the time Parallax Arts were also working on 4 other projects: Utopia City, 1171, Caravan and Liquidator 2: Welcome to Hell. Only Utopia City and Liquidator 2 were published and after releasing Exodus from the Earth in 2007, Parallax vanished.

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Mega Drive / Genesis, Nintendo, Sega, SNES + Super Famicom

Mortimer in the Big City (Imagitec) [Cancelled – SNES, Mega Drive]

monokoma
06-01-2022
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Mortimer in the Big City is a cancelled action adventure that was in early development by Imagitec Design for Super Nintendo and Sega Mega Drive / Genesis. The project is mostly forgotten today, but a short article about it was published in 1992 on Hobby Consolas magazine (issue 10), with a few details on it’s gameplay (translated with Google):

“Mortimer, who is the “protagonist”, must do everything possible to rescue his girlfriend Maria Mouse from the clutches of Rufus the Rat. There are six levels to explore in which you can find everything: from animals of all kinds to an infinite number of objects, platforms, some humans, puzzles, traps and, above all, bomb-proof action and exasperating gameplay.”

At the time Imagitec developed some fun games such as The Humans and Viking Child, so we can just wonder if Mortimer in the Big City could have been another interesting project. The only Mortimer image published in Hobby Consolas is a concept art, and we don’t know if they ever created a playable prototype before its cancellation.

Others, PC / MAC

Eurasia: Apocalypse [PC – Cancelled]

monokoma
04-01-2022
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Eurasia: Apocalypse (Евразия: Апокалипсис) is a cancelled real-time strategy game that was in development by ElectroTECH Multimedia in 1997, seen by many gamers as the “Russian Command & Conquer“.  The game was set in a world that survived a natural catastrophe: because of global warming most of the continents are now submerged in water. Only South Siberia and a few scattered islands remain above the ocean, so all the major world powers fight to control these remaining territories.

A playable demo can still be found online, with its ‘90s aesthetics and original soundtrack. Unfortunately this early version of Eurasia: Apocalypse is full of bugs that make it practically unplayable.

It seems in 1998 the game won the “Most promising development among computer games” prize in Russia, but the issues found in the demo killed the fans’ enthusiast. ElectroTECH decided that further development costs were not worth it and cancelled the project. Another 3D strategy game titled “Bestiary” developed by MiST Land South was also canned at the same time.

Thanks to Josef for the contribution!

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PS Vita, Sony

Survive (bigBIG Studios) [PSVita – Cancelled]

monokoma
30-12-2021
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Survive is a cancelled zombie game that was in development by bigBIG Studios around 2009, planned to be released on the Sony PSVita. The team was mostly known for such titles as Pursuit Force and Little Deviants, but they worked on more games for Sony that were never released. Unfortunately as far as we know Survive was never officially announced by Sony, so we don’t have details about its gameplay.

By looking at the only available screenshots, we speculate it was going to be some kind of tower defense / survival adventure set in a zombie-apocalypse world. In 2012 Sony closed bigBIG Studios: some images from Survive are preserved in the gallery below to remember the existence of this lost project.

Thanks to Tonz for the contribution!

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

Severity (Escalation Studios) [Cancelled – PS3, Xbox 360, PC]

monokoma
29-12-2021
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Severity is a cancelled eSport-focused FPS that was in development around 2007 by Escalation Studios (later renamed to Bethesda Game Studios Dallas) in cooperation with John Romero and funded by the Cyberathlete Professional League. It was planned to be released on Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and PC.

As we can read in an old article published on FiringSquad:

“Mustaine told us that he already has a group of about 10 team members working on Severity and plans to expand that team to about 20 members in total.

Mustaine isn’t revealing much about the game itself at this stage but he did tell us that the game will be a mix of modern day and futuristic themes in terms of weapons and level settings. While the game will not have a lengthy single player experience except maybe for tutorial levels, he did say they did plan for AI bot play for people to practice offline.

Of course, creating a game for pro gaming tournaments means adding more features that will make the game better not just for the players but also for the spectators. In addition to support for tournament ladders and detailed stats for players, Mustaine told us that Severity has plans to expand its options for spectators, including in-game cameras that can be controlled by commentators and finding ways to display important stats to the spectators in order to get them more fully involved in the matches. Mustaine compared what they wanted to do to how professional poker matches became a huge draw among the general public thanks in part to how TV had commentators and stats for the poker matches. As far as Severity’s game modes, Mustaine told us that they are planning to have modes with different player speeds, different game physics and different weapon loadouts.”

Some more details can be found in an interview published by PSU:

“PSU: There have been beliefs floating around that the game will play exactly the same as Quake III Arena. If there’s a game with a similar gameplay style to Severity what game would it be?

Angel: It will not play identical to Quake 3 or any other game, but Quake 3 is definitely one of the major inspirations for the development team. Severity will have very unique characteristics and a rich visual environment, but it will also be a faced-paced game.

PSU: Will there be the ability to have cross-platform gaming? i.e. PlayStation 3 vs. Xbox 360 vs. PC gamers?

Angel: That is absolutely the plan!”

It seems Severity’s development was already canned or slowed down in 2008, as told by John Romero to That Gaming Site. Later Escalation Studios denied the game’s cancellation, but in the end it was never released anyway. After working on small projects such as Samba de Amigo on Wii and Doom Resurrection for iOS, in 2012 the team was acquired by 6waves Lolapps and then sold to ZeniMax Media in 2017 after they helped with the development of Rage and Doom reboot.

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