New Cancelled Games & Their Lost Media Added to the Archive

Microsoft, Xbox

Ninja Gaiden [XBOX – Beta]

U64 Staff & Contributors
16-04-2008
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Ninja Gaiden for the Xbox was released in 2004, but it was first shown in 2002, with a trailer that contain many beta elements and differences. In 1999, Team Ninja started work on the “Next-Generation Ninja Gaiden Project”. The first stage of development was to create the game on the Sega NAOMI arcade system board. They then planned to move the project to the Dreamcast console for further development and release, but this was abandoned when Sega announced the end of Dreamcast product line in 2001.

At this point, Tecmo decided to release Ninja Gaiden as a launch title for the Sony PlayStation 2 in the United States. Itagaki, however, had other plans; the Team Ninja Leader was impressed with the software development kits for the Xbox and pushed for his team to develop for the Microsoft console.

In the 2002 beta Ryu’s model / suit is slightly different from the final one.  The copter boss was in the train turnstyle area, instead than on the bridge like the final game. In this same area we can see Ruy on the electricity tower, but he cannot go over there in the final. Other scenes, as the one with a ninja that  came out from the ceiling of the first level, were never used. Also the graphic of the game was still incomplete, with ugly textures and a lot of aliasing. There are a Green “U” Nimpo in the same screenshot of the “X” item, this Nimpo doesn`t appear i the final version and this “X” neither appear in this level, in the final version, this appear in an alley where you find the windmill shuriken.

There are even some screens with a removed (?) puzzle in wich Ruy has to find an X item (that looks like the Xbox prototype  / development hardware) to open a passage. It’s possible that this puzzle was used in some demos or side missions from the Black version, but we dont have any confirmation about it. The X item was reused in Ninja Gaiden 2 as an easter egg and it heals all your magic and health.

Thanks to www.gamerhistory.com for some of these screens!

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train turnstyle
Microsoft, Xbox

True Fantasy Live Online [XBOX – Cancelled]

U64 Staff & Contributors
16-04-2008
1 Comment

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TFLO was an MMORPG in development by Level-5 for Microsoft’s Xbox video game console. After a long and troubled development cycle that lasted close to two years, the game was cancelled on June 2nd, 2004. The game was to take place in a massive fantasy setting where up to 3,000 users, each with their own fully customizable character, could adventure around with each other fighting monsters and collecting various items. Often cited as one of the most disappointing project cancellations of recent years, True Fantasy Live Online was highly anticipated almost right from the moment it was announced in 2002, and was touted as one of the premier titles for the Xbox and its Xbox Live online service in Japan.

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Yet despite being “fully playable” and near completion according to Microsoft around the time of its cancellation, the title’s development was littered with complications from the very beginning. One such problem was Level-5’s inexperience with online network coding, and their inability to properly implement voice chat compatibility into the game. It was a feature never before implemented on such a large scale in an MMORPG, however Microsoft was very adamant on its inclusion, as it was a key feature to their Xbox Live service.

Relations between the two companies soon began to spiral out of control as Level-5 struggled to meet the demands required by Microsoft, who in turn grew frustrated at the lack of progress being made on the game. There were also significant disagreements on the direction of the title, with Level-5 aiming to make a more casual based MMORPG, similar to World of Warcraft, and Microsoft demanding a more long-term, Everquest-like title that would draw players in for months to come. After an extremely short and rather underwhelming showing at the Tokyo Game Show in 2003, True Fantasy Live Online was quietly delayed from its initial Fall 2003 release into 2004. From then, little was seen or heard about from the title, and after a surprising absence during the year’s E3 convention, it was officially cancelled by Microsoft on June 2nd.

In the months following, Level-5 President and CEO Akihiro Hino stated in a Japanese interview that the poor relations between his company and Microsoft, partially due to the latter’s inexperience in dealing with Japanese developers, was one of the major reasons behind True Fantasy Live Online’s cancellation. He also heavily implied that the two companies did not part amicably, and it stands to reason that the two companies most likely will never work together again.

[info from Wikipedia]

Microsoft, Xbox

Project EGO (Fable) [XBOX – Beta]

U64 Staff & Contributors
16-04-2008
4 Comments

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Fable is an Action RPG developed by Big Blue Box, a satellite developer of Lionhead Studios, originally published by Microsoft for the Xbox in 2004. Originally developed under the name Project Ego, Fable’s development involved more than seventy people. The game’s release was widely anticipated, due in part to Lionhead creator Peter Molyneux’s enthusiastic hype of the game. [Info from Wikipedia]

Many of the features promised for Project Ego were never implemented: the original concept was to give the player total freedom on the game’s world, but the final game was instead very limited. A cooperative multiplayer mode was planned too, but it was later removed. Most of the places seen in the early screenshots were removed from the final game or heavily changed.

Big Blue Box wanted to create a time system in which seasons and years  would pass according to the game’s time, making our character to age and the world to change according. This hyped time-system was completely removed. The main character does age in the game, but after a cutscene and not following the game-time. As we can read from an IGN preview:

Not enough to convince you of how intelligent this game may be? Well, let’s say you are a mean cuss and one day you cut a kid. That cut will become a scar and if you return to that town twenty years later, that kid will have that same scar and a serious hate-on for you. Or maybe you’re more into plant mutilation. Carve your name in a tree and it will stay there through the years.

As you can imagine, this is not possible in Fable.

Even if one of the beta screenshots shows that we could have been able to kill even kids, that was not possible in the final version. As noted by ResidentDante from the NeoGAF Forum:

I remember Peter Molyneux telling about this on a documentary on tv. They let you kill children in the beta version, which they tested with a group of people. When they noticed a guy playing the game killing all the children around in the village, they decided to remove this “feature”.

Thanks to FullMetalMC for some of these images!

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Microsoft, Xbox

Kameo [XBOX – Cancelled]

U64 Staff & Contributors
16-04-2008
4 Comments

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Kameo was originally slated for the Nintendo Gamecube and was set to be one of Rare’s flagship titles for the system, along with Star Fox Adventures and Donkey Kong Racing. However, when Microsoft announced its purchase of Rare in late 2002, Kameo’s future was put in question. It was decided that work would continue on the Xbox, and a planned release date of 2003 was given. After several revamps, causing repeated delays, Kameo was put on indefinite hold in late 2004. Following this, rumours began that the game was once again undergoing a platform change, this time from the Xbox to the Xbox 360, where it was finally released as a launch title. – [info from Wikipedia]

[Thanks to Matt Gander for some of these images!]

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Microsoft, Xbox

B.C. (Lionhead Studios) [XBOX – Cancelled]

U64 Staff & Contributors
16-04-2008
8 Comments

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BC was going to be an action-adventure video game in development for Microsoft’s Xbox video game system by Intrepid Computer Entertainment, a satellite of Lionhead Studios. It was cancelled in 2004, having been in development for some time; why is not known though it has been alleged that it was “overly ambitious“. Set in a Harryhausen-esque prehistoric time period, BC featured the player having to advance their tribe in a world inhabited by dinosaurs and other anachronistic creatures. From what is known, the player would assume the role of a tribal chief who is responsible for the welfare of his people. It is up to the player/chief to spur his people’s technological development and lead his tribe of cavemen to a Valley free of predatory dinosaurs and savage ape-man where they can evolve in peace. Part of that means that the player/chief would assign various duties to his tribesmen. However, it would also have been possible to play as any member of the tribe.

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Early images at E3 showed extreme clarity and self shading but early reviews called the artificial intelligence the most impressive thing. According Gamespot.com’s information on the game, the game would have had a foodchain, like Peter Jackson’s King Kong (video game), in which each thing would have been subject to being eaten by something higher on the foodchain. In addition the dinosaurs and other creatures would have been intelligent, interacting with each other acting independently of player. It would have been possible to affect the videogame world as a whole, leading some people to comment on the driving certain species to extinction.

Other things would have included capturing and training certain animals to use against tribal enemies. Animals known to exist in the world would have been Tyrannosaurs, Velociraptors, Pachycephelosaurs, Sabre-Tooth Tigers, Apatosaurs (or Brontosaurs as the game would have focused on anachronisms) dodos, ape-men, and others. As part of the exaggeration, the game, in addition to anachronims in dinosaur ages, would have featured dinosaurs as larger than they really were. In one preview, Molyneux was quoted as saying that the Rex seen in screenshots was a child, a third the size of its parent. the game was also planned to be very bloody. Gamespot quoted Molyneux as saying that the dinosaurs will spill “swimming pools full of blood” when killed.

At the moment, the game has been cancelled, fans believing that it was too ambitious to be made; indeed, even while the game was still in production, Molyneux said that he was unsure when he could release it due to “the ambitious nature of the gameplay and the high standards the people developing it are pushing for.” According to one article, as of May, 2002, “[the demo build] was roughly 50 percent complete“. Its cancellation was announced in late 2004 with Molyneux saying “The decision to suspend work on any games project is always a very difficult one, particularly when it is a title with the potential of BC.” However, fans hope that Molyneux will live up to his suggestion that the game might be revived at a later date. [info from Wikipedia]

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