Beta + Cancelled Action Video Games - Page 17 of 91

Whore of the Orient is a canceled game from Team Bondi and Kennedy Miller Mitchell, planned to be released for PC, PS4 and Xbox One. It was a spiritual successor to L.A Noire.

You would play in 1930s Shanghai and the game would use the motion scan technology that was first used in L.A Noire. From leaked gameplay in 2013 it showed that the game had a focus on hand to hand combat, but still retained the usual cover shooting mechanics found in L.A Noire.

In November 2011, during an interview with Eurogamer, writer and director Brendan McNamara described the game saying “It’s pretty interesting. It’s one of the great untold stories of the twentieth century. So I think it’ll be good”

When Team Bondi sought a publisher for Whore of the Orient, it was reported that no one was interested due to claims of poor working conditions during the development of L.A Noire. When Team Bondi closed it’s doors in 2011 its assets were sold to Kennedy Miller Mitchell where development continued, and Warner Bros Interactive had taken interest in the game, but later abandoned the project in 2012.

In 2013 it was rumored that the game had been put on hold and in June of the same year it was reported that Kennedy Miller Mitchell had revived $200,000 of funding from an investment board. It was then reported that Whore of the Orient was set for a 2015 release date, but that never happened and we would not hear anything more about the game until 2016. In June of 2016, in an interview on the GameHugs podcast, former producer Derek Proud was asked “so will we ever see that game” and he replied “I don’t think so“.

There are still screenshots of the game on the internet, the aforementioned 2013 leaked footage of the game can also be found online.

Article by Nathan Coe.

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Nes / Famicom, Nintendo

The Terror of Tech Town [NES Power Glove – Cancelled]

monokoma

27-06-2016

2 Comments

The Terror of Tech Town (also known as Tektown) is a cancelled NES game that was in development since late ‘80s by Mattel for their classic Power Glove motion controller. Players would move their “robotic hand” through corridors in a series of hi-tech buildings, interacting with objects and resolving puzzles to open doors and finally escape from the town.

Originally listed alongside with other Power Glove titles (Super Glove Ball, Glove Pilot) in an article published in “Compute!’s Guide to Nintendo Games” in 1989, Tech Town was later marked as to be released in Spring 1991 during the Official Power Glove Game Players Gametape VHS Volume 1.

One presumed screenshot of Tech Town seems to have been published in a Power Glove Press Kit showing an updated version of a 1985 Commodore 64 tech demo titled “Time Crystal”, created by Jim Sach. After Jim worked for a while on Time Crystal for Amiga, it seems he managed to sign a deal with Mattel to create a Power Glove version but we are still not sure if the project is the same as Tech Town, as concept gameplay footage of “Time Crystal Powerglove” looks really different from confirmed Tech Town gameplay footage from the Game Players Gametape (as seen in the video below).

The Power Glove Press Kit describes Tech Town with “As you travel through the “corpor-hoods”, the Glove can open doors, search through corridors, and even travel through time and space” so is still possible that the “outdoor environment with dinosaurs” could have been a different section of the same game in a different time. We could see more from the game in the soon-to-be-released The Power of Glove documentary, as another presumed screenshot from Tech Town was published in their Kickstarter campaign page.

In the end only two games created specifically for the Power Glove were ever released by Mattel: Super Glove Ball and Bad Street Brawler. The other 3 games announced (Glove Pilot, Manipulator Glove Adventure and Tech Town) vanished forever after the company and the market lost faith in the accessory.

Thanks to Maik for the contribution!

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Microsoft, Playstation 3 (PS3), Sony, Xbox 360

OneChanbara Reboot (Darkworks) [Cancelled Pitch – PS3, Xbox 360]

monokoma

08-03-2016

1 Comment

Darkworks was an independent French studio not widely known by the average gamer, but they released a couple of fan favorite games as Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare (Playstation, Dreamcast and PC) and Cold Fear (PS2, PC and Xbox). The company was founded in 1998 and unfortunately was closed down in 2012, because of economic issues and difficulties in founding new publishers for their titles. In about 15 years of activity, Darkworks were able to successfully complete and release only 2 games, while all their other projects were either cancelled or moved to different developers. There are already a good number of interesting lost Darkworks games in the Unseen64 archive, but many more still remain unseen and even if we tried multiple times to get in contact with people that worked at the studio, it seems almost impossible to know more about what happened to them or to their cancelled games.

Between all those unfinished projects once in development at Darkworks, there was what it looks like a reboot of the OneChanbara series originally created by Tamsoft, the games in which to play as a girl in bikini and cowboy hat, slashing down enemies with double katanas. In the images archived below, you can see that they created a concept art for a western version of Aya (the “clothes” are identical to the original character), one of the main protagonist of OneChanbara. We can speculate that Darkworks tried to pitch to D3 Publisher a new OneChanbara game for PS3 and Xbox 360, during the same time in which D3 also tested a western version of their popular Earth Defense Force series by letting Vicious Cycle Software to develop EDF: Insect Armageddon. Unfortunately for Darkworks, this project was not greenlighted and we’ll never know how good a French OneChanbara could have been. Only a few concept arts remain, to preserve the existence of this lost pitch.

Thanks to Dorwaks for the contribution!

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Nes / Famicom, Nintendo

Switchblade 2 [NES – Cancelled]

yota

19-01-2016

10 Comments

Switchblade 2 is side-scrolling action title originally developed by Core Design and published by Gremlin Interactive for Amiga in 1991. A Famicom / NES port of the game, created by Kemco, was slated for release in november 1992. The player controlled a soldier, nicknamed “Switchblade”, who had to save planet F-S5 from an alien invasion. As in similar action titles, he was able to double jump, use blades, guns, and collect power-ups for the latter. More weapons and upgrades could also be bought in the store.

It’s unknown why Kemco never released their version of Switchblade 2 or if it had any major difference compared to the original Amiga version, graphics aside.

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

TR2N: Liberation [Cancelled Pitch – PS3, Xbox 360, PC]

Liam Robertson

21-12-2015

1 Comment

VIDEO:

Tron: Evolution by Propaganda Games was the official tie-in game for the Tron: Legacy movie, but before Disney published this one for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC in 2008 they asked to different studios to pitch a game for their TRON sequel. The film was still internally known with the WIP-title of TR2N and one of these prototypes was made by Day 1 Studios, a team mostly known for the MechAssault series. In the short pitch demos created by D1S in just a few weeks it was possible to play similar scenes to the ones seen in the first official Tron: Legacy trailer from Sandiego Comic Con 2008: a multiplayer racing track and a single player Identity Disc combat sequence (which had 2 playable versions, one of which was built around a rhythm mechanic). Unfortunately Disney wanted to have a fully complete game in less than a year, to be sure to release it as soon as the movie was out. In the end they greenlight the pitch by Propaganda Games and the TR2N prototype by Day 1 Studios was not developed further.