Players would be able to freely explore a sandbox universe, flying from planet to planet selling items, shooting down enemy ships and resolving similar space-missions. Computer Games Strategy Plus magazine even published a long Privateer 3 preview in their May 1998 issue, with more details about the game’s story, characters and gameplay. If you have a copy of this magazine and could take some photos from the preview, please let us know!
Following the success of Ultima Online EA decided to focus Origin Systems on online games, and Privateer 3 was quietly canned. You can download the Privateer 3 game script on WCNews.
Slage is a cancelled hack & slash with online multiplayer that was in development for PC by Ankama Games around 2009 – 2012. The game was set in their popular Dofus and Wakfu settings: players would have been able to explore dungeons with their friends, kill hundreds of enemies, find new weapons and powerful equipment. As in other hack & slash you could have chosen between different character classes, customizing your hero appearance.
Many videos and screenshots were published online at the time, mostly by European websites, but in the end Slage was never completed (as with other cancelled Ankama projects: Eliane l’Eliatrope and Joris le Sans-Pouvoir), maybe because of the high-quality standards set by the competition of other similar games such as Diablo 3 and Torchlight 2. Fans of the game preserved many details about this lost project on its Wikipedia France page.
In 2005 Studio Gigante created a Kill Bill hack & slash prototype, pitched to be fully developed on the original Xbox. Players would have been able to follow the story of Tarantino’s movie, using the Bride to fight enemies with her katana. The team was mostly known for Tao Feng: Fist of the Lotus, another Xbox-exclusive fighting game published by Microsoft in 2003. While they had a great 3D engine and talent for fighting mechanics, unfortunately they had to close down before being able to find a publisher interested in their Kill Bill proto.
“Gigante was ready to roll onto a proper Tao Feng sequel, and Microsoft wanted it – but the proposed deal gave the team pause, as it didn’t quite offer the resources desired to pull off the more elaborate design, which featured wildly destructible stages. Simultaneously, THQ swooped in with an offer to develop WWE Wrestlemania 21 – a richer contract that could not only help build up the studio further, but possibly also secure a lucrative annual franchise. After much agonizing, the studio principals opted for THQ’s deal, leaving Tao Feng 2 dead in the water.
Not only did the team lose its passion project, but the WWE deal backfired. An incomplete build of the game was accidentally pressed and released, leading to backlash and an eventual recall and revised release. Relations between Gigante and THQ had already soured prior to release, and the poor reaction was the final nail in the coffin.
The Xbox series was dead, and the studio was running out of money. Using a proprietary engine, Gigante prototyped potential Kill Bill and Star Wars fighting games and sought new projects, but decisions weren’t being made quickly enough. By July 2005, just three months after Wrestlemania 21 shipped, the studio closed its doors.”
Magic Shop Tycoon 2 is a cancelled RPG / simulation that was in development by Gameneo around 2005, planned to be released on Nintendo DS. By looking at the available screenshot we assume gameplay would have been similar to “Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale”, with players taking the role of a shopkeeper selling magic and other items to adventurers. It seems you could create new magic spells and test them against monsters before selling them to the heroes.
We are not sure about what happened to this lost project and by searching online we cannot find any info about the first “Magic Shop Tycoon” nor Gameneo. As the language in these screenshots looks Korean, could they have been an obscure Korean game studio? If you could find something more about Magic Shop Tycoon 2 or its creators, please let us know in the comments below!
Daybreakers is a cancelled episodic time-traveling first-person RPG that was in development since 2006 by Trilogy Studios, planned to be released for Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC. The company was founded by game industry veterans who worked in such companies as Electronic Arts, Take-Two Interactive, RockStar Games and Vivendi Universal.
In Daybreakers players would have been able to explore different time-periods to find a solution to save our doomed world. The game was talked about by major websites such as IGN and Playstation Universe:
“The world is falling apart with war, disease, insurgency, and starvation rampant among humanity. The only hope lies with the Nexus Corporation, a U.S. funded group using volunteer convicts as experimental guinea pigs in an operation called “Project Daybreak.” Utilizing Project Daybreak, the Nexus Corporation studies time travel to find the means to cure the world of its problems.”
“Developed by Trilogy Studios, Daybreakers puts players in the role of undercover US secret operative Nolan Reeves who is asked to enter the world of the criminal underground, joining the Nexus Project and time traveling in order to find three escaped convicts. Upon returning from his task, Reeves finds that the only people aware of his mission, of his existence – have been killed. From this point forward he must rely on the ability to manipulate the relationships with those in the world around him: inmates, factions, and the corrupt officers and officials who permeate Nexus Island.”
“We would like to be the first team to truly monetize the online gameplay of first-person shooters,” Pole proclaimed. “It hasn’t been done. First-person shooters traditionally have not done a very good job of rewarding players. The way they reward players is that you run through a level, shoot everything on the level, finish the level, and you go to the other level and get a bigger gun. Our goal and our objective is to get a player a sophisticated and very detailed level of gameplay that hasn’t been delivered in first-person shooters by offering gamers a moment-by-moment reward system versus a level-based reward system. All these RPG elements that we mentioned will allow players to build upon their characters so they can see how well they are doing.”
“Instead of describing the game as an open world title, he told us that Daybreakers was a “dynamic world simulator“. He added that the game would feature more interactivity and more of a sense that the player’s actions have consequences in the game world. “I think that’s where games need to go, especially first person shooters,”
The first Daybreakers’ episode was planned for 2008, but the project quickly vanished and was never completed. As far as we know Trilogy Studios worked on a few social games before closing down around 2010.
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