Every once in awhile a project will come along that reignites my passion for video games. Sadly, this topic is both exciting to write about and deeply depressing. I’m referring to games that got canceled. Nothing makes me happier than researching and then informing others about this industry’s past. It’s important to remember where video games came from, where they went, and where they will go in the future. Sure, in the grand scheme of things it may sound silly to a real-life historian, cataloging all of mankind’s achievements and flaws, but art is a part of that culture, right? Therefore, video games are important.

That said there were simply too many games I wanted to cover. I made sure instead to focus on stuff that had a lot of data out there i.e. gameplay footage, trailers, screenshots, and so on. I narrowed it down to create a more visually interesting piece on the matter. There are a lot of known, big titles on here, but there’s also quite a few that I’m sure we, as a culture, have forgotten and/or never heard of before. With all that said, there are links aplenty. I even created a YouTube playlist to catalog a majority of the footage out there in one easy to find link. Let’s think of this article more like an introduction into topics and games you may want to learn more about. There simply wasn’t enough time to cover all twenty-five games in great detail, but again, that’s where the links come in.

25 The Real Battlefront

To say I have a history with Star Wars: Battlefront would be an understatement. It was the very first game I played online. I remember distinctly going over to my friend’s house that just bought the game on Xbox and was connected online. The first time I saw someone running around with their tag above their head made me gasp. I couldn’t believe it. Point is, I was hooked from the very beginning. I even bought the white PSP bundle with Darth Vader on the back, which included the spinoff, Renegade Squadron. For being kind of cramped on the PSP it was really good, but I assumed there would be a proper third game on consoles soon.

Well, I was right, there was. So here’s the scoop. Behind the scenes, Free Radical Design was reportedly working on Star Wars: Battlefront III. Apparently, this was around 2006. They worked on it for two years and in 2008 when it was essentially done, LucasArts wouldn’t commit to helping to finish the project’s finer details. Although, on the other hand, former LucasArts people said the same about Free Radical Design. So what’s the real story? We’ll never know, but out of all these games here there’s a ton of footage out there that points to, yes, this thing was finished albeit in a rough fashion. My heart aches for what could have been.

24 You Got A Friend In Me

Microsoft was on top when they launched the Xbox 360, after being the underdog during their first console generation with the Xbox. They beat both Nintendo and Sony to the punch and I think that extra year really helped them out. Needless to say, they were pretty full of themselves coming into their big reveal event for the Xbox One in 2013. To call it disastrous in terms of a fan and press reaction would be an understatement. From day one, at this reveal, they had a rough go when trying to market the Xbox One, but even with their downfalls, they had some exclusives on the horizon I was looking forward to.

Why won’t they release the dragon?

One of those was a PlatinumGames’ exclusive: Scalebound. This was officially unveiled at Microsoft’s E3 2014 press conference. It starred a teenager with an attitude, similar to Dante from Devil May Cry, and it looked and played like their previous games and oh yeah, you had a massive pet dragon as an A.I. partner. It looked awesome and despite some bad games in their repertoire, I am always curious to see what PlatinumGames has in store. Well on January 9, 2017, it was officially canceled, following a string of other cancelations for similar big-budget Xbox One exclusives. Microsoft, you may be losing, but throwing in the towel makes you look worse.

23 Portable Scrolls

The Elder Scrolls Travels was a series of cell phone games exclusive to the platform. There was Stormhold, Dawnstar, and Shadowkey, which operated like top-down, isometric action RPGs similar to Diablo instead of being in your face first-person action combat. While not designed as a phone game, there was one other game bearing the name and that was a port/spinoff of Oblivion entitled The Elder Scrolls Travels: Oblivion. It was being designed exclusively for Sony’s PSP. Like Saints Row: Undercover, a build, no, actually several builds appeared online in 2016 and they actually work on the PSP.

They’re a lot more buggy than Undercover, but it still runs enough to tell it’s pretty faithful to the original game albeit a bit more messy to control because of the PSP’s limited buttons. Oh yeah, and it obviously looked worse too, but again, for a PSP port it actually looks genuine. That’s two high profile console series that had secret projects on the PSP that were never announced and then all of sudden showed up online. How many more are out there? Did that Vita Uncharted game start on the PSP? Was there a Sly Cooper game in the works? The PSP is such a fascinating flop in the West, but I love it dearly. I hope we see more leaks soon.

22 Cyberpunk Hunters

Get ready to be confused because the development of Prey 2 is pretty complicated. So Prey launched in 2006 and was about a Native American given powers by his ancestors to stop an alien invasion on earth. I know, sounds cool right? Well, it was a fine Xbox 360 launch game that doesn’t hold up too well, but because it released within that window it sold relatively well. So much so that a sequel was greenlit just a few months after its initial debut. Okay here’s where it gets intense. 3D Realms held the rights, but the developer was Human Head Studios.

Bethesda then acquired the rights to the name in 2011, but let Human Head Studios continue working. That is until Bethesda canceled it and secretly handed it over to one of their internal companies, Arkane Studios. That’s why Prey from 2017 isn’t called Prey 2. That new Prey is more like BioShock and has zero resemblance to the original 20006 game. Let’s get into the real Prey 2. Essentially you were a space bounty hunter. The premiere CG trailer showed a sheriff running after a thug in this futuristic city that looked like a combination between hard sci-fi and cyberpunk. Except for that trailer, no other public gameplay is available although the press has seen it behind closed doors.

21 Avengers Dissassemble

Video game movie tie-ins used to be nauseatingly common. I say that because nine times out of ten they were terrible. They were rushed out the door, with little development time, just to cash in on a big movie. Sometimes there would be a shimmering gem, but again, for the most part, licensed games were terrible, especially concerning movie tie-ins. The last big budget games that came out were based on the beginning stages of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Sega helped create and publish games based on Iron Man, Iron Man 2, The Incredible Hulk, Thor, and Captain America: The First Avenger. That whole crop was kind of the last big hurrah before companies made dumb phone game tie-ins instead.

Now, also around this time, a game based on The Avengers was in development via THQ. It wasn’t supposed to be based on the upcoming movie, but rather revolving around the Secret Invasion arc in the comics. That’s where Skrulls, shape-shifting aliens, came into prominence. It was never officially announced, but like Saint’s Row: Undercover, after THQ shut down, assets for this game came into the public eye around 2011. Most of it was done, but due to bad investments on THQ’s part, they had to can it before eventually closing down their doors. You can read all about its demise on Unseen64.

20 Uncharted Stars

Let’s continue where we left off with Star Wars 1313. In that time frame of canceling the game and shutting down LucasArts in April 2013, Disney made a deal with EA to make their Star Wars games going forward in May. A month after that, at E3 2013, their first game was teased with a CG trailer: Star Wars Battlefront. Fast-forwarding to November, Uncharted 4 was revealed via a teaser trailer. Then in March 2014, Amy Hennig, who was the writer and creative director for it and the games before, announced she was leaving Naughty Dog to join Visceral to make a Star Wars game. Finally, In October 2017, the game was canceled and Visceral was shut down.

Start the petition and let’s get EA out of Star Wars!

Phew, I know that was a lot of dates to process, but it was important to draw out the timeline. Given that Star Wars Battlefront was announced within a month’s time of making the deal in 2013, since Visceral assumedly began work in March 2014, I expected every E3 since 2014 to shed some light on their Star Wars game. Aside from some key art, there are exactly eight seconds of early in-game footage, which came out in 2016. Three years and we saw eight seconds. Eight. Seconds. With Star Wars Battlefront II being a dud and this fiasco, I think it’s safe to say Disney should cancel their deal with EA.

19 A Wild Racing Adventure

The Mario Kart franchise is the king of cartoony racers, right? While many may nod enthusiastically, there are scatters of fans out there that prefer other zany kart racers. Crash Team Racing for the PS1 is also very good along with Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed, which has too many platforms to name. There’s even a series within Nintendo’s own franchises that fans prefer over Mario’s escapades: Diddy Kong Racing. It was unique in that it offered not only karts to race with, but hovercrafts and mini planes too. Plus there was a story and even an open world to explore between races. It was ahead of its time and something Crash Team Racing copied two years later.

Now, Diddy Kong Racing released in 1997, and while a sequel was planned called Donkey Kong Racing for the GameCube, the plans were scrapped when Microsoft bought the studio in 2002 making the game impossible to make for either the Xbox, or GameCube due to rights issues. It was even showed in a trailer at Nintendo’s Space World event in 2001 so there was work actually done on for the game. It’s one of the most heartbreaking stories for kart enthusiasts everywhere.

18 StarCraft: Ghost

StarCraft: Ghost is on the same level of a joke that Half-Life 2: Episode III is on. It was a game that when announced, in 2002, it was updated every year past that all the way up until its canning in 2006. So what was it? Unlike normal StarCraft, which is a real-time strategy game, StarCraft: Ghost was going to be a third-person action adventure shooter. There’s a lot of content out there to sift through too and it looks awesome. Kind of reminds me Halo mixed with some Metal Gear Solid action.

Unlike a lot of these other projects, it also looked like a lot of the game was actually completed before it was scrapped. On that gameplay playlist I added, there are about twenty minutes clipped together of all known footage and a lot of it seems to point to these sessions being a bunch of different levels. Blizzard has always had a weird relationship with consoles. In more recent years they seem to be more comfortable with them though via Diablo III and Overwatch, so maybe we’ll get this in some form one day. Actually, it already has been resurrected via StarCraft II’slatest expansion. I guess it’s better than nothing.

17 Mother May I?

EarthBound 64 is another example of a game that technically came out in the form of Mother 3. In Japan at least, but never in the West despite fan outcry. Overall, the series has had its share of troubled times, in the West particularly. For starters, Nintendo completed the translation for the original NES Mother, but shelved it for fear it would look bad by the new beauty that was the SNES. EarthBound came out, Mother 2 in Japan, to critical acclaim that grew over time, but sold poorly. Now we can get to EarthBound 64 proper.

Nintendo, where is Mother 3?

The project began on the SNES then moved to the N64 as a launch game for the 64DD, a disc drive add-on for the N64 in Japan. It was then planned to leap ahead to the GameCube before the 3D assets were scrapped and it was then converted into a 2D game for the Game Boy Advance, which released at the end of that system’s life cycle in 2006. The story is fascinating. If you played the unofficial fan translation of the game, like I have, you’ll recognize a lot of what was shown in screenshots and gameplay trailers for EarthBound 64. It’s sad we’ll never get a real 3D EarthBound, or sequel of any kind, or even an official translation for Mother 3 in the West. There’s always hope, right?

16 Iron Man X

Few things surprise in terms of game announcements. Actually, let me rephrase that. Few things, when announced, look like pranks. As weird as some reveals can get I usually buy them for real products. That is until I read Polygon’s deep dive into a canceled Mega Man reboot that made it into a first-person shooter called Maverick Hunter. I couldn’t believe it. I checked the calendar several times to make sure it wasn’t April Fools or something. Sure enough, this was a real game that was never officially announced, but there’s quite a bit of content to dive through online.

By that I mean screenshots, details, and like three minutes of gameplay I included in that YouTube playlist. Except for the blue suit, it looks nothing like a Mega Man game. It looks more like Metroid Prime, which makes sense since former Retro employees helped develop it. While it doesn’t look good to me I have to remind myself to be more open. Mega Man Legends is also nothing like classic Mega Man and it’s amazing. The fact that this was canceled in 2010 tells me otherwise so I guess we’ll never know. I wonder if this was the first time a FPS Mega Man came into being.

15 Tristram Awaits

Since birth, I’ve always been a console gamer. Okay, that is a little bit of an overstatement, but consoles are what my family got and that’s what I, in turn, played. We never had a PC, or even a computer until I got a hand me down iMac late into High School, which was good for one thing: writing. Since then I’ve dabbled with some indie games, but again, console games are in my blood. All this boils down to me missing the fad that was Diablo. Until the third one came to consoles and then I finally understood the hype.

Diablo: Now in three bewitching flavors!

Anyway, to the purposes of this piece, there was actually a canceled port planned for the Game Boy. There’s even a playable demo online, albeit a very poor one. I discovered it in college while perusing through Game Boy roms for an emulator. You know, as you do being in a poor, experimental phase in life. Visually, even as a demo, it looks good, but you can’t do anything but walk around. Shack News uncovered some more details about the project in an interview with Blizzard in 2012. It was to be called Diablo Junior, would serve as a prequel, and they wanted to release it in three versions: Rogue, Sorcerer, and Warrior. Sadly, it wasn’t going anywhere and they had to scrap it before development really took off.

14 Spielberg’s Vision

You often hear about film directors partnering with video game studios for a secret project related to either medium. One of those directors was Steven Spielberg. In 2005. he made a deal with EA to help create some games in a new partnership program. Spielberg has had a long history with games prior to this if you can believe it with some say on the infamously disastrous E.T. game for the Atari as well as the Medal of Honor series. This was going to be different though as he would have a firmer grasp on the project.

The project was dubbed LMNO, which stands for nothing. In the time of its development, not a lot was known to the public until it was canceled. The now defunct 1UP.com got an exclusive interview that delved into what LMNO was going to be and what went wrong in development. As I just alluded to the site is now closed. It stayed open for a time after IGN bought the rights to help keep its content alive, but unfortunately, that good faith ran out and the article is as lost to history as is LMNO is itself. Parts of it are still alive via articles written about 1UP’s coverage though. There are a few screenshots out there and a target video in that YouTube playlist, but not much else. Hey, we at least got Boom Blox out of him…

13 Shadow Dropped

The first Saints Row game came out in 2006 and I couldn’t have been any less interested in it. It looked like a cheap rip off of Grand Theft Auto. It wasn’t until Saints Row: The Third in 2011 that I jumped in and I’ve been a fan ever since. That is to say, I played and liked the third and fourth games because there haven’t been any more sequels after this since THQ was butchered in 2013. Now they’re back again, kind of, and potentially have the rights back, but that story is for another day because it is rather complicated, but interesting nonetheless.

The Boss is most pleased.

Anyway there actually was another game besides the four core projects and no I’m not referring to the mediocre somewhat related game of Agents of Mayhem. Secretly, without anyone knowing, Volition, the actual developer behind the Saints Row series, was working on a PSP title called Saints Row: Undercover. Three years after, THQ and all of its subsidiaries, like Volition, went belly up, out of the blue they shared not only details about this missing PSP game, but a downloadable build of the game and a 122 page design document. You can find links and read all about the fascinating project that was Saints Row: Undercover in this Polygon article. Let’s hope this becomes a trend for canceled games. Thanks, Volition!

12 A Legendary Fail

As I teased earlier, Scalebound was not the first game to reach Microsoft’s chopping block. This one is even more baffling. So remember Fable Legends? It was announced at Gamescom 2013 with a teaser trailer, again, as an Xbox One exclusive. Details later came throughout the years that it was going to be a four-player co-op action RPG, with a fifth player acting like the Dungeon Master of a Dungeons and Dragons session. The four characters would go through his/her maze and then fight them at the end. Oh yeah, and it was going to be free to play. Everything they showed looked promising and while it wasn’t the big open world that Fable fans knew, a spinoff is always welcome in my book.

Dialing things back a bit it’s important to note that the Fable series has always been a Microsoft exclusive for their systems i.e. Xbox and PC platforms. They were helmed by Lionhead Studios in the UK. So it came as a shock that not only was Fable Legends canceled in 2016, Microsoft also shut down Lionhead Studios. That’s a cold move. Again, I have no idea what the executives are thinking over there. Makes me think this will be the last Xbox generation unless they can get their act together and ship a competent exclusive.

11 Konami’s Fall From Grace

Let’s rewind the clock to Gamescom 2014. At Sony’s press conference they showed a trailer for a creepy first-person horror game called P.T. and they also shadow dropped a demo of it. Suffice it to say it was a phenomenon. Not just because it was a cool demo, but also because there was a major secret inside. If you “beat it” a secret trailer would unlock revealing that P.T. was just a code name for Silent Hills. Not only that, but it would star Norman Reedus of The Walking Dead fame. Hideo Kojima was the mastermind and he was going to collaborate in part with the horror film master himself, Guillermo del Toro.

Still keeping you waiting, huh?

Oh wait, there’s another surprise at hand. It was canceled in April 2015. Following this cancelation it was ousted that Hideo Kojima and other Konami employees were being treated poorly at the company leading to some Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain internal conflicts. Since then, Kojima has left Konami to start his own company, Kojima Productions, where he has partnered with Sony to create Death Stranding. Oh yeah, and he’s also working with Reedus and del Toro again and Mads Mikkelsen has joined the fun too. That’s kind of a happy ending to this very long and complicated story.

10 In The Name Of Tom

I never read Tom Clancy’s books and, in turn, I was never really that interested in Ubisoft’s use of his name with their random series like Splinter Cell. They just didn’t look interesting to me. That is, until I saw the debut trailer for Tom Clancy’s Rainbow 6: Patriots at E3 2011. It looked amazing! A group of terrorists had taken over the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco and the soldiers were fending them off while rescuing civilians. It looked like a movie, which I know is silly to say now since our video games have evolved to that quality, but seriously, back then, it looked groundbreaking.

Sadly that was the one and only time it was shown off in any capacity before going dark and quietly being canceled after Ubisoft’s unveiled Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Siege at E3 2014. That’s sort of what that game became, which is disappointing seeing as it evolved into a multiplayer only game, something I couldn’t care less about. From the corners of the Internet, people seem to enjoy it, which is good for them. I only wish it didn’t cost me my precious hopes and dreams. At the same time, I applaud Ubisoft for adapting and continuing to support Siege.

9

8 Yo Ho Ho And A Bottle Of Tears

Sea of Thieves launched with less than the first Destiny in terms of content and that’s saying something. Microsoft has announced an expansion on the horizon, but will that be too little too late? Well, it’s not important now. I had such high hopes for the game. Imagine, an open world pirate RPG. Surely that’s never been a thing before. Oh wait, it was. Say hello to Pirates of the Caribbean: Armada of the Damned.

As the name would suggest, it was sort of a tie-in to Disney movies, but only in name. You would create your own character and explore the world, fighting off other pirates with simple action combat as well as engage in naval battles. It was shown publicly with a trailer at E3 2009 and through the next year, it was demoed to big sites like GameSpot and IGN behind closed doors that seemed pretty positive on their experiences. So it came as a shock that in October 2010 the game was canceled. This was just before Propaganda Games launched Tron: Evolution in December. After that, the team was disbanded. There’s about twenty minutes of leaked footage in that YouTube playlist and it looks awesome.

7 The Fortress Has Fallen

Grin was a small video game company based in Sweden that was established in 1997. They mostly worked with bigger companies like Ubisoft, helping make big franchises as a second-tier studio. Their biggest break was when Capcom contracted them to make a remake of the classic NES game, Bionic Commando, which was aptly titled Bionic Commando Rearmed. Pleased with the reception they were given carte blanche to make a modern reboot of the series for then current console aka the PS3 and Xbox 360. Another big Japanese company, Square Enix, also took notice and proposed the idea for them to make a Final Fantasy spinoff set in the Ivalice universe.

Don’t Listen To Ondore’s Lies!

Codenamed Fortress, Grin began development during their work on the Bionic Commando reboot and Terminator Salvation, making it into an action RPG with heavy Norse themes. To make a long story short, no matter what they sent them, Square Enix was not happy with the direction it was going and they never received a single penny for their time. Due to poor reception from the previous two games and Grin paying for a failing project, they had to close shop after Square Enix officially canceled Fortress in late 2009. Further details and tons of artwork can be found via Unseen64’s investigation. Also, there’s somewhat of a happy ending. Most of the team at Grin went on to form a new studio, Overkill Software, where they found success with the Payday games.

6 Noire Of The East

With L.A. Noire receiving a remastered edition last year, this pick is more relevant than ever. This game was delayed time and time again because Rockstar was collaborating with another studio, Team Bondi. Because the two companies were leagues apart, a communication breakdown caused L.A. Noire to be in a long development cycle. It all paid off in the end for a pretty great detective story even though it had plenty of flaws. Point is. I was sold on Team Bondi and I was ready for more games in this style, but just, you know, better. Enter [Redacted] of the Orient in 2012, which I know is a very offensive and terrible name. I didn’t choose it.

Like L.A. Noire it started in hot water and eventually bubbled over once Team Bondi was shut down. For a time, the parent company that bought the rights, KMM Interactive Entertainment, continued to work on it with key members of the disbanded team. Unfortunately, it was eventually canceled in 2016 and there’s really not a lot of footage out there. There is plenty of concept art and blurry screenshots though. It looked like L.A. Noire, but in Shanghai instead. I’m sold if they ever want to restart the project.