New Cancelled Games & Their Lost Media Added to the Archive

Shadow of Atlantis [Sega CD / 32X – Cancelled]

Shadow of Atlantis (also known as Nautilus) is a point and click adventure game that was originally in development for the Sega CD and after many delays, it was ported to the 32X, but in the end it was never released. The project was based on characters and situations from Jules Verne’s classic novels, 20000 Leagues under the Sea and Mysterious Island. Shadow of Atlantis was designed and produced by Eric Quakenbush, a game designer that worked with Sega on many other games, as the cancelled Virtua Hamster. There were even some plans to port Shadow of the Atlantis to the Saturn, but as we can read at Sega16, “Sega eventually scrapped the concept altoghter sometime in 1997”.

Also, in ActionPackedVideo‘s Youtube Channel we can see some more videos from the project. As we can read in one of the descriptions:

This was the result of a skunk-works project that I put together with the Sega Multimedia Lab staff that were idle after we shipped Jurassic Park Sega-CD game. The demo got the game a green light and I was promoted to the producer group but it never shipped. Eventually the salary for all those idle workers was billed to my project so you are looking at about $70,000 worth of demo!

Eric Quakenbush designed and produced this CD adventure game which featured live action sequences as well as many intriguing puzzles.

Unfortunately Sega discontinued the Sega CD platform before production could be completed.

Thanks to Celine for the contribution and to Mekanaizer for the video!

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I-Ninja [PS2/XBOX/GC – Beta & Concept]

I-Ninja is a fun and underrated action game that was developed by Argonaut Games and published in 2003 by Namco (in USA) and Sony (in Europe) for the GameCube, Xbox and Playstation 2. A Game Boy Advance version of the game was announced too, but later cancelled.

ininja-article

As it happened with Orchid (another Argonaut game that was later cancelled), originally I-Ninja had a much more colorful and stylized graphic, but the publisher was worried that it looked too childish, and wanted an edgier, grittier look. As we can see from the early mockup / target renders, the original style of I-Ninja looked a bit like Zelda: The Wind Waker (especially for the islands, the pigs and the scene in which Ninja is sailing a ship) but the 2 games were in development almost at the same time so it was just a coincidence.
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Midland [PSX/Saturn – Cancelled?]

Saga Darvulia has found an old magazine with an article about a misterious action RPG called “Midland”, that was in development by “Future Soft” (??) sometime in 1996. From the look of the only screen available, the game should have probably been for the Playstation or Saturn. There are basically no other info on this project, so we can assume that it was cancelled, but it could also be possible that it was relased under a different name in Japan. If someone recognize this game, please let us know!

Thanks to Saga Darvulia for the contribution!

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