New Cancelled Games & Their Lost Media Added to the Archive

Nintendo, Wii

F5’s Flight Project [Wii – Prototype]

monokoma
14-05-2009
4 Comments

In May 2009, Factor 5’s american studio was closed down, because (as we can read from the official F5’s website) “obstacles created by the sudden bankrupcy of Brash Entertainment for the continuation of operations have turned out too great to overcome in the current economic climate”.  The projects that were still in development should have been moved to the german studio, but it’s currently unknow if  they will be able to complete them or if those games are going to be cancelled.

2 unannounced Wii games were in development at Factor’s 5 as we can read from an interesting article over at GoneIsGone, one of which was a flight simulation game. From the few 3D models available from this “Flight Project” it seems that we would have been able to fly all over the world with different aeroplanes and space-crafts (probably an easter egg from previous F5’s Star Wars titles). We can speculate that this prototype was  developed from the concept of the – never released – F5’s Pilotwings for the GameCube and created with the Wii Lair Engine.

On December 2009, ShockingAlberto from the NeoGAF forum, posted some more assets from this project. One of the images has a different graphic style from the other assets, with a more cartoony / stylized characters. We can speculate that at some point in the development, Factor 5 decided to change the style of the game to appeal more to casuals and families.

It would be really nice to play a new flight simulation developed by F5 and we really hope that they could be able to finish and release this project.

Images:

Others, PC / MAC

P.I.D. [PC/Amiga – Unreleased]

U64 Staff & Contributors
13-05-2009
1 Comment

P.I.D. (Private Investigator Dollarally) was a top-down driving/adventure game created by Finnish developers Terramarque (now known as Housemarque), set for release on the PC in December 1994. It may also have been intended for release on the Amiga, considering the developer’s history of developing for the system. For unknown reasons, the game was cancelled.

The single screenshot of the game in its preview in Games World Issue 6 shows that the game used a similar visual style to the early Grand Theft Auto games, and the description suggests that the open-ended structure was similar too; players assumed the role of a private investigator trying to survive and make money while avoiding the police in the fictional land of Muhmulandia.

Images:

[Gallery=1264]

Microsoft, Xbox

Iron Construct [XBOX – Cancelled]

monokoma
13-05-2009
3 Comments

A misterious project also know as “The Great Steam War” and “Blip and the Great Machine”, that was in development by 1Up Studios for the original XBOX, but after a while it just vanished without traces. Not much is know about the gameplay, but it seems that the player could have been able to control a “robot constructor” and to build parts of the levels to resolve puzzles. Iron Construct was cancelled when the studio closed down.

Images:

Others, PC / MAC

Daikatana [PC – Prototype]

monokoma
12-05-2009
2 Comments

Daikatana is a First-Person Shooter developed by Ion Storm, led by John Romero and published by Eidos Interactive in 2000. In Daikatana, the player assumes the role of Hiro Miyamoto, a Japanese swordmaster in 2455 A.D. He had to travel through various time periods using the eponymous Daikatana, a powerful sword tied to the fate of the world.

Romero’s initial game design, completed in March 1997, called for a huge amount of content – 24 levels split into 4 distinct time periods, 26 weapons, and 64 monsters, as reported by the issue #30 of Next Generation, from June 1997:

NG: How will these four different time periods differ?

J.R.: They all have completely different graphics. There are none shared between the time periods except for some of the artifacts you pick up that are universal. There are 26 weapons — every time period has it’s entire complete set of weapons. Then there are completely new monsters for each episode and 16 monsters in each episode.

Despite this, Romero believed that development of the game could be completed in six months, just in time for Christmas 1997. The game was to license the id Tech 2, Quake‘s game engine. However, as we can read on PC Gamer, in early 1997, the Quake II engine was showcased for the first time, and Romero admitted that their own game wasn’t up to date graphically:

(…) Despite the ambitious scope, Romero estimated that by licensing the Quake engine, his team could have the project turned around in six months. But in early 1997, Romero and Hall saw Quake II in action. They were blown away by its engine, which included among its features coloured lighting and support for hardware acceleration. Their games were already behind schedule, but they figured it was worth the time investment to incorporate the Quake II source code in order to keep their games visually up to date.

At E3 of the same year, a first trailer was showed and wasn’t well received due to low framerate and being outdated.

Daikatana 1997 E3 trailer. Still using the id Tech 2.

Throughout the 1998 year, the project evolved only visually since the source code of the Quake II engine was not definitively implemented until March 1999, almost a year and a half of programming before reaching the final rendering.

The Daikatana team was left to fathom how to incorporate the code by itself. At this time, 3D graphics rendering technology was improving at an exponential rate, and the complexity was compounding with it. As a result, the code base for the Quake II engine was radically different. Ion Storm received the Quake II source code in November 1997, but it would take until March 1999 to fully implement it into Daikatana.

Differences between the 1998 version and the final one are the HUD, the sounds and the design of some weapons, items and the main menu.

Daikatana 1998 trailer

In the gallery below you can see a series of screenshots  and videos from the early build on the original Quake 1 engine (with removed and changed levels), alongside the slightly different 1998 version. In 2004 Romero released this playable pre-alpha version of Daikatana, and you should be able to download it from here.

Images:

1998 version images:

Videos:

1997 version very early build

Another trailer from the 1997 version

1997 version’s demonstration of various areas

A playlist of no less than 25 videos of the 1997 version

1998 Version’s gameplay