Vapor Trails - On Famously Unreleased Videogames

Thanks to GamePro for its article discussing formerly in-development videogames which never actually got released. Some of the more unconventional include Data East's Tattoo Assassins ("2D video-captured fighters, whose tattoos come to life and whack on other players. Characters included a Nancy Kerrigan clone and a giant running hot dog"), Sega's Virtua Hamster ("...[involving] polygonal rodents with rocket packs and skateboards swooshing through a huge hamster habitrail, collecting popcorn kernels to spit at enemies"), and Runandgun!'s partially resurrected Duelin' Firemen! ("...[an FMV] game about singing, dancing firemen [starring Rudy Ray Moore].")

Hamsters?

[neostorm]

That's such a funny idea. I would have loved to see that.

Reminds me of "Battle Hamster" http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?id=3403

Why not games that would've (could've) been good?

[wheresdrew]

Why most the ones in the article look like there was a good reason they got shelved.

Why not list Half-Life for Dreamcast or Macintosh? What about Thrill Kill for PS1?

(Okay, Thrill Kill made it out in various forms - I still have my copy - but it wasn't ever "officially" released.)

I would think Malice for tXBox deserves a mention.

[freidog]

Malice [gamershell.com] was one of the titles used to show of the power of the XBox before it was released . If you paid attention to the XBox hype, chances are you saw some Malic screenshots.
It was widely expected to be a release title in fact. But here 3+ years latter, no release date ia availibe, the Official [sierra.com] webpage no longer exists, and we've heard nothing from Argonaut Games in the last year or so.

Fallout 3 & Xcom

[samsmithnz]

Don't forget about the ill-fated Fallout 3...
http://www.petitiononline.com/fallout3/petition.ht ml [petitiononline.com]
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/fallout3/news_60856 20.html [gamespot.com]

and XCom, I don't know how many times this project has been canned and then resurected again 2 years later...
http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~xcom/x6x1.shtml [gamespy.com]
http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~xcom/x8x1.shtml [gamespy.com]

These are the two biggies for me...

Other games that dissapeared.

[nixon66]

Check out . They are doing something similar to this and finding the people who worked on some of these abandoned projects and finding out what happened from the inside. [lostlevels.org]

Penn & Teller's Smoke and Mirrors

[Pluvius]

If I had to pick one piece of vaporware I'd want to be able to play, this [segacd.org] would be it. It was a bunch of screwed-up mini-games, including this one where you have to drive from somewhere to Las Vegas in a tour bus. I remember reading a preview for it in Video Games (aka the best gaming mag ever); a couple of the staff members actually took turns playing the tour bus game for like eight hours before they accidentally wrecked and ruined all their "progress."

Rob

Re:Marble Man?

[Thedalek]

The ROMs are out there, it's just a matter of getting them leaked.

Don't you mean a matter of getting them dumped?

I recall a few years back (before CPS2 encryption was cracked) someone started posting to some Mame dev boards saying that he owned a MarbleMan cabinet. Once someone asked him how much he would want for such a thing, he quoted some absurd figure.

That didn't discourage the Mame fans, though. They started a collection to reach the mark (I think it was $10,000), and were making serious progress before he decided he wouldn't sell.

Polybius!

[Man In Black]

Polybius [coinop.org] is one game that I've always wanted to see surface some day... any game that was written by the military/CIA/(insert conspiracy theory here) and can give people amnesia and horrible nightmares has got to be one hell of a game!!

Sadly, I think it's actually been proven to be a hoax.

Ben, we hardly knew ye

[spyrochaete]

Too bad the world will never see Full Throttle 2. Lucasarts [lucasarts.com] axed it because it did not meet their high quality standards. Also, the actor who voiced the protagonist Ben passed away a year or two ago. Shame. The original was a cool, cool game.

Chrono Break

[wanderers_id]

Relativly new vaporware. Square Enix had trademark registration for the title, but that registration has recently expired. I read an article at RPGamer that stated Square Enix staff said that the company is no longer persuing the title.

They probably never started development. Too bad, I'd have liked to see it.

http://www.rpgamer.com/news/Q1-2004/011304a.html

When Squaresoft trademarked the name Chrono Break in December of 2001, many Chrono Trigger fans became hopeful for the release of a third game in the beloved series. For the past two years, rumors and speculation have run rampant across the internet, raising hopes and creating dreams. This optimism persisted in spite of the fact that Unlimited SaGa, a name that was trademarked at the same time, became an actual game, while Chrono Break remained nothing more than a mysterious moniker.

That has come to an end. Various sources report that Square Enix abandoned its trademark on the Chrono Break name as early as last November. Furthermore, sources at Square Enix assert that the company has never begun work on a third installment of the Chrono series.

Re:Dueling Firemen

[Allison Geode]

see, I thought the same thing: this would make an AWESOME screwball midnight movie. they seriously should dust off the non-interactive segments (what am I talking about? its an fmv game, there ARE no interactive segments.) and sell it to some cable network. I mean, hey, I saw a movie where aliens implant people with alien dna via easy listening music and graham crackers, and the aliens only weakeness was polka late at night on cable. it was the stupidest thing I've ever seen, and if I knew the title of it, I'd look for a dvd of it. (hint hint: cookie for anyone who knows the title.) Duelin' firemen looks at least twice as screwed up, and twice as awesome. truly a travesty it never got released: would have been the best game on the 3do, except for Gex. but that got ported, so it doesn't count.

Re:Ben, we hardly knew ye

[Black Hitler]

The original was a cool, cool game.

And the new one looked terrible. Seriously, the screenshots they released were sub-Grim Fandango in terms of graphics quality and they were describing it as an "action-adventure" instead of pure adventure, complete with lots of fistfights (in fact, most of the released screenshots were of action scenes). Can't say I'm terribly crushed they canned it.