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Games Entertainment

Unfinished Adventures 221

Posted by michael from the beat-goes-on dept.
Obiwan Kenobi writes "Just Adventure has an interesting article on unfinished games that were nixed in mid-development. Amongst the casualties are incomplete trilogies, an off beat 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea game, Blizzard's ill-fated Warcraft Adventures and the Star Trek title "Secret of Vulcan Fury.""
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Unfinished Adventures More

Unfinished Adventures

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  • Just an observation... (Score:5, Funny)

    by rusty0101 ( 565565 ) on Friday November 29, 2002 @11:29PM (#4782445) Homepage Journal
    ... I don't think the Vulcans would have much of a feeling about Vulcan Fury. It wouldn't be logical. The title doesn't make much sense either.

    -Rusty
    • that'd be highly illogical

    • Re:Just an observation... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 29, 2002 @11:33PM (#4782464)
      You obviously don't know your Vulcan history. In the time before Surak, Vulcans were an emotional and extremely destructive species (similar to the Romulans). Surak was able to bring logic and peace to his people but only by burying all emotion.

      • Re:Just an observation... (Score:5, Funny)

        by ajuda ( 124386 ) on Friday November 29, 2002 @11:40PM (#4782493)
        You obviously don't know your Vulcan history. In the time before Surak, Vulcans were an emotional and extremely destructive species (similar to the Romulans). Surak was able to bring logic and peace to his people but only by burying all emotion.

        You don't get laid much, do you?

        • Re:Just an observation... (Score:1, Funny)

          by Anonymous Coward
          Every seven years. Why?

        • "Secret of Vulcan Fury.""

          trekkie shame on you all. Vulcan Fury was part of the mating ritual. Spock betrothed refused to mate with him and she chose Captain Kirk to defend her right to refuse Spock as a mate in a fight to the death. Bones injected Jim with a serum that made him appear to have died. During the Vulcan matting ritual Spock went ballistic but latter complimented his erstwhile bride on choosing Kirk as her champion as she knew Spock would refuse her for having forced him to kill his Captain and friend. Spock thought her choice immenently logical.

          • The big flaw with that line of logic is that it assumes Spock will himself act rationally. Isn't it more likely that in the throes of Ponn Farr, Spock drinks Kirk's blood like a vampire and then throws down whatsername and f*cks her into oblivion? Then has some moderately well-acted poignantly pseudo-logical non-emotional remorse the next day, which is so annoying that it finally drives Bones over the edge and he deconstructs Spock's famous ears with a poorly-adjusted laser scalpel? Well? ISN'T IT???

            -Graham

            • , which is so annoying that it finally drives Bones over the edge and he deconstructs Spock's famous ears with a poorly-adjusted laser scalpel? Well? ISN'T IT???

              Almost but what Bones really does is activate the micro detonator he surreptiously implanted in Spock's brain stem when he reconnected Spock's brain after Bones and Kirk got it back from the Amazonian babes who stole it.

    • You and the people who posted below obviously never read the article...it's about a weapon, not an emotion. And after all, one doesn't need to be emotional in killing, simply motivated.
      • Very good point. It's clear what the emotional basis of motivation is: We do things to make ourselves feel good. (cf. Freud, Darwin et. al.)

        But what is the logical basis of motivation? Why is it logically necessary for Spock to be on the Enterprise, rather than anywhere else?

        -Graham

  • I have cancled many games. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by packeteer ( 566398 ) <packeteer@@@subdimension...com> on Friday November 29, 2002 @11:31PM (#4782452)
    I always have great plans to make some sweet ass game. As a programming student i get myself way in over my head and end up scratching it long before it becomes playable. Typical problem or not organizing and shooting too high.

    It makes me think that i dont wanna do coding as a living becuase if i actually did make progress and someone cancled my work it would not be very fun at all.

    • Re:I have cancled many games. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Subcarrier ( 262294 ) on Saturday November 30, 2002 @03:21AM (#4782972)
      I always have great plans to make some sweet ass game. As a programming student i get myself way in over my head and end up scratching it long before it becomes playable. Typical problem or not organizing and shooting too high.

      The person who modded you a troll must be on a fantasy adventure, or something.

      I have to say that I have my share of aborted adventure games in the closet. In my experience, every piece of software consists of two main components: a) the neat bit; and b) the boring bit. I usually wrote the neat bit first (that's the game engine), and then got started on the boring bit (the game itself). As it happens, something else with a neat bit in it usually came along before I managed to finish the project.

      It makes me think that i dont wanna do coding as a living becuase if i actually did make progress and someone cancled my work it would not be very fun at all.

      Writing software for a living can sometimes be like that. In my experience, there are two kinds of jobs: a) neat jobs; and b) boring jobs. Just make sure you are skilled enough to get a neat job. You want to be the one who gets to write the neat bits.
      • I usually start to write a game and get some good ideas. I have wrote some text based adventures and i have a cool idea about how to draw up the map and move around. I write that part out but it gets boring after i finish what i went in for. I made and openGL game in my programming class but once i got a little sip flying around shooting things i lost to motivation to actually put in stages and a game.

        Whenever it has workwed best its usually with other people. In my programming class i did work on other people's project coding certain parts they needed but it becomes difficult to keep going with two visions. When most people start coding what they really want to do is produce a game. They want to be able to design the game and have other people do it their way.
        • These days all serious software projects are written by a group of people. In some ways, a software project is like a marriage. If the people are compatible, the team grows together into a well oiled machine and produces some great software. That can be a very rewarding experience. The opposite can happen too; the team can fall apart because of slackers or strong willed individuals with serious differences of opinion and no ability to compromise.

          I think it's important that the team consist of a variety of people with different talents and insights. The different views enrich the project. While everyone should have a say in where the project is going, someone must also be in charge and be able to make the final decision after the ideas are on the table.

          In real life projects sometimes get cancelled for business reasons that have nothing to do with how the project is going. The many cancelled commercial adventure games are a prime example: no market for it. That is something you, as a professional, will have to learn to live with. If you have been working on a project for two tears, having it cancelled can suck big time. But, all things considerd, it is still only a job.

      • Taoism (Score:3, Funny)

        by fldvm ( 466714 )
        In my experience there are two kind of comments: a) neat comment , and b) boring comment. This one is the latter.

        Taoism [jadedragon.com]

      • Or better yet, develop the skill to turn the boring bits into neat bits.

        If you're doing something repetitive, that's a big, in-your-face hint that it's time to abstract somehow. Perhaps write some personal libraries, or a little language to rapidly solve the problem, or something else. Learning what is part of becoming a truly excellent programmer.

        Only once in my programming career have I been assigned to do something truly boring, and that was converting 50 Word documents to forms people could fill out online, which due to the fact that no two people make a form in the same way, had nothing that could be abstracted out. But then, that wasn't really programming either.

        (Oh, and school assignments, which suck because they actually teach you not to abstract, both because they're too small to matter, and even when the prof. claims the code will be re-used in a later assignment, inevitably something changes in the later assignment which screws your abstraction over. The real world is, believe it or not, not like that; I don't know how to explain it but real-sized projects may have rapidly changing requirements but there's still room for development.)

  • forgot something (Score:4, Funny)

    by GoatPigSheep ( 525460 ) on Friday November 29, 2002 @11:32PM (#4782454) Homepage Journal
    Amongst the casualties are incomplete trilogies, an off beat 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea game, Blizzard's ill-fated Warcraft Adventures and the Star Trek title "Secret of Vulcan Fury.""

    They forgot Duke Nukem Forever
  • ... hunger in the world has become a major problem so research teams are studying sites on the sea floor for potential undersea farming.

    Oh man, that sounds like it could have been greaat fun, I'm SO SORRY that project was nixed, I could really go for some UNDERWATER FARMING right now! What a shame. :-(

  • He's dead Jim. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by nlinecomputers ( 602059 )
    I thought that Vulcan's Fury got shelved because De Kelly got ill and then died before it was finished.
    • Not true. In fact, it was De Kelley's final performance. And it sits on DAT tapes somewhere, never to be heard by fans.

      The game was axed for budgetary reasons. Interplay simply couldn't afford to finish it at the time (they were inches from chapter 11) and now they don't have the license.

      • Re:He's dead Jim. (Score:5, Informative)

        by ctaylor ( 160829 ) on Saturday November 30, 2002 @03:36AM (#4782997) Homepage
        I worked at Interplay at the time of Secret of Vulcan Fury.

        DeForest Kelly was too ill by the time of the voice recording to actual record his lines. He never did record SoVF dialogue. They used a voice actor in his place.

        The main reason SoVF was cancelled was:

        a) Not enough progress had been made on the game due to a couple changes of directions in the design, change in management on the project and the typical delays associated with game development.

        b) Budgetary reasons and the decline of the adventure game market. They had spent millions on the project, and it needed millions more to be completed (mostly due to art: lots and lots of animation time, and lots of rendering time). They did a basic P&L (profit and loss statement) and the project was not going to make money.

        As cool as the project was, Interplay could not afford to develop a game that would automatically lose money over games that would only potentially lose money... :)

        pax,

        -Chris

  • Warcraft Adventures didn't TOTALLY die... (Score:5, Informative)

    by D'Arque Bishop ( 84624 ) on Friday November 29, 2002 @11:32PM (#4782459) Homepage
    Actually, while everything they said about Warcraft Adventures was true, they did leave out one bit of information: the storyline was too important to the Warcraft mythos to drop entirely. Warcraft Adventures was later reworked and became the book Lord of the Clans [amazon.com] by Christie Golden. The events of the book are also referenced in the orcs' backstory in Warcraft III.

    Just my $.02...

  • Another title (Score:5, Funny)

    by doc_traig ( 453913 ) on Friday November 29, 2002 @11:33PM (#4782460) Homepage Journal
    Some would say that Ultima IX was never finished...

    - DDT

    • Some would also say that Ultima VIII would have been better off unfinished...
    • In a way it wasn't. U9 was started far prior to Ultima Online's release. When UO got close to completion, EA, in their infinite wisdom, moved most of their developers off U9 onto UO, leaving UO to stagnate. They eventually scrapped the original game and started over since the original would have been a few years behind technology wise. In the process, they sacrificed the story, removed the party from the game, and basically screwed it all to hell.

      They never finished the original. Or so the legend goes.

      -Restil

    • It's finished now. (Score:2, Informative)

      by DoctaWatson ( 38667 )
      Go to fansforultima.com [fansforultima.com]and download the fan created patches for Ultima 9. If you're an Ultima fan, you owe it to yourself to see a proper ending to the great series.

      The dialogue patch completely fills in the gaping plot holes of U9, and doesn't treat the player like a complete Ultima newbie. The monster and economy patches help out with game balance.

      Best of all, an anonymous fan created a patch that addresses just about every technical problem in the game.

      Take a few minutes and download those patches, and you'll see how good Ultima 9 should have been.
    • sadly :\

      have you read the original script/storysketch for u: IX?

      it kicks the plot that was in the game by 4342349230423miles over the sea.

      but it would have needed a slightly different kind of engine & some stuff like that, and would have not been a cheesy 3d smack em up game..

      there's some project to re-do it with that original script(by hobbyists, on internet, i'm too busy now to look for the links, sry)
  • Team Fortress II to be the headliner ;-)
  • Since these projects were nix'd, perhaps someone should email the companies and ask them to open up the source so others can benefit from them. Note it would make good PR. Ok maybe not SOMEONE, but perhaps EVERYONE!;P!
    • I would imagine that most game companies re-use alot of their code. And they probably have a good ammount of their own intelectiual property tied up in there. Also many of them probably licence code from 3rd parties that they can't re-licence themselves.
      • I'd guess your probably right, but I'm sure any given large game company has a whole slew of code they never had a need to reuse that they could put out into the common sphere. Even outdated code could be a basis for a fun game, especially when you consider what is outdated in the gaming industry.

  • Why not make the source open? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by DAS1 ( 413527 ) on Friday November 29, 2002 @11:33PM (#4782463)
    It seems like such a waste having all those resources put into games just to have the it scraped in the end. Why doesn't the game developing community just make the unfinished code open-source and set up a sourceforge project around it :-) i could imagine some pretty cool games coming about this way.
    --david
    • I would imagine that most game companies re-use alot of their code. And they probably have a good ammount of their own intelectiual property tied up in there. Also many of them probably licence code from 3rd parties that they can't re-licence themselves.
    • some reasons.

      most games, codewise, are just mods to a game engine, which is/was very much used, and not something you give away, with a few exceptions (doom, quake).

      the plots can be recycled, again not something you give away. Same with any artwork, cinemas, etc.

      they can, however, be bought. these guys [gooddealgames.com] have bought out a few scrapped sega cd, vectrex, cd-i and colecovision games, finished them, and offers them for sale.

      Similar community based efforts may work. Though not enough are interested in anything but 'latest newest highest poly-count' FPS titles.

  • Curiously (Score:5, Interesting)

    by slycer9 ( 264565 ) on Friday November 29, 2002 @11:36PM (#4782474) Journal
    There's no mention of PC based Halo (bought by the great Satan to promote a substandard console...'nother story tho'), Mac OS9 ports of Half-Life, OSX ports of everything, Linux ports of Starcraft/DiabloII/DeusEx, etc... At the risk of sounding a troll, compared to these titles, I could care less about those listed in the article. Interesting read nonetheless.

    • Maybe that is because... (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      They're talking about ADVENTURE GAMES?!
    • Possibly because the PC version of Halo will actually be finished and released...
    • The whole point of the article was adventure/RPGs that were never released.

      Unlike an action game, when an adventure game gets canceled, any storylines that would've been resolved are left unfinished.

      And to Donut: the X-Box is just a warmed over PC circa 1999. So nyah :-)
  • These games are among a plethora of unfinished adventures, to name a few: [...] Leisure Suit Larry 8...

    Leisure Suit Larry! Who can guess why this game was canceled? Give this [hispeed.com] a try.

  • The Babylon 5 flight sim? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Platinum Dragon ( 34829 ) on Friday November 29, 2002 @11:39PM (#4782487) Journal
    I still remember the B5 space combat sim being deep-sixed by Sierra. Too bad, as it looked like a good game in the making with something close to realistic physics.
    • I got a free promo mousepad and watch when they were pitching the promo stuff when the game was killed. as i understand it was almost done.
    • That's the one I was looking forward to the most. Differing reports on how close it was to completion. Some said it was 90% there. Other reports said at least another year of work. In any case, there was a tremendous amount of work done including great models and new content with the original cast.

      I have boycotted Sierra ever since. Not only did they kill the game, they chose to throw away the work done instead of selling it to someone who would finish the game. A group of the original developers formed a company and tried to finish it independently, but Sierra would not cooperate. Since Sierra held the B5 license, they not only killed this game, they killed any hope of someone else doing a B5 flight sim.

      • Re:Babylon 5: Into the Fire (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Picass0 ( 147474 ) on Saturday November 30, 2002 @02:39AM (#4782888) Homepage Journal
        Yeah, I haven't purchased a Sierra game since the B5:ITF game was killed. I can't help but get a little mean glow inside thinking that Sierra killed the Lord of the Rings game at the same time, and LOTR has become one of the hottest licensing properties around. They blew the chance to make A LOT of money because they had their heads of their asses. Sierra shitcanned the B5 team and the LOTR team on the same day. I hope the developers feel a bit vindicated.

        As a B5 fan it pisses me off that the last performances of these actors in their roles will never be seen. As a gamer I relly wanted a top notch Starfury flight sim.

        Fuck Sierra. Fuck them right in the ear.
      • Differing reports on how close it was to completion. Some said it was 90% there. Other reports said at least another year of work.
        Those aren't necessarily mutually exclusive ;). See also the Ninety-Ninety Rule [jargonfile.com].
      • They were one week away from releasing a demo when Sierra gave them the axe. After that...Sierra said they'd sell the game to Sector 14 (which hastily organized in the wake of their firing), then Sector 14 got funding, then Sierra said they wouldn't, and eventually it slowly dragged into the toilet.

        About this time (to bring back to the topic of adventure games), Sierra also announced that Space Quest 7 was canned for the third (fourth?) time and I lost any remaining faith I had in them. Sierra's living on Tribes and Half-Life right now.
    • Ya, I bought one of the left over posters after they cancelled the game. Sad how the ultimate space sim never made it out of development. But then again, Sierra and Relic did make Homeworld, which IMO is damn good.

      Another game that never made it was Star Control 4. Although Warcraft adventures might make a come back. I saw something like it at E3 this year, a Diablo type game in 3D with humans and orcs.
  • At first, I thought this was a list of games that were never won. By anyone. I know that Pacman was finally completely won... but I don't know if Asteroids was ever won. I know there are a lot of games that I've never won. Pitfall, Castle Wolfenstein, Sonic, to name a few.
    --

  • Fallout 3 (Score:3, Interesting)

    by crumbz ( 41803 ) <<remove_spam>jus ... o spam>gmail,com> on Friday November 29, 2002 @11:43PM (#4782505) Homepage
    We might be able to add this one to the list. It looks like this will (unfortunately) be vaporware and only live on through fan-created fiction...
    A shame 'cause it is truly a great franchise.

  • Babylon 5 (Score:1, Redundant)

    by Sivar ( 316343 )
    I am shocked that he left out "Babylon 5" blah blah.

    Seriously though, I was looking forward to that game, and I rarely look forward to any video game.

  • Common in Console World Too (Score:4, Interesting)

    by frostgiant ( 243045 ) on Friday November 29, 2002 @11:47PM (#4782513)
    Games getting cancelled happens all the time in the console games world too, it seems. Luckily, on consoles, it is common for a prototype or two to survive.
    Take Earthbound 0, for example. Some of you may remember the SNES game Earthbound, but it comes from a NES game known as Mother in Japan. Nintendo of America finished translating the game but never released it. Fortunatley, it has been dumped.

    Countless prototype games have been dumped that may never have been able to see their light of day. Recently, Star Fox 2 for the SNES was dumped too.

    Unfortunatley, playing these dumps is illegal as is distributing them. :-(

    Also, I wish some prototypes would surface for my favorite console, the Virtual Boy!
  • Are open source projects ever really finished? The constantly evolve, gaining new features as they are needed. this [dnsart.com] for example has been updated 4 times in the past 5 days as evidenced by news postings here [dnsart.com].

    As the author I can attest that one hell of an update will be ready when I get home, along with some "political corrections". To compensate for the "political corrections", I'll make LibertarianTux playable.

  • Dry eyes (Score:5, Funny)

    by Sean Clifford ( 322444 ) on Friday November 29, 2002 @11:49PM (#4782522) Journal
    Overall, my eyes are dry. With the exception of Secret Of Vulcan Fury, all the other games were cancelled or died for good reason. I'd much rather have a cemetery full of unreleased poopy games than a shelf full of them.

  • Earthbound 64's Unfortunate Cancellation... (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Although it isn't an Adventure game, Earthbound 64 lingered too long in development and was nixed by Nintendo. MANY fans were anger/saddened/enfuriated and still want it to come back [starmen.net].

  • descent 4? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by moosesocks ( 264553 ) on Friday November 29, 2002 @11:50PM (#4782525) Homepage
    what about descent 4?
    the earlier descent games were fabulous

    • Re:descent 4? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Tetrad69 ( 526053 )
      Volition was working on "Descent 4", but it was later revealed to be Red Faction.

      So it wasn't given up, exactly... more like a change of focus.

  • The death of the adventure game... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DoctorPhish ( 626559 ) on Friday November 29, 2002 @11:58PM (#4782543) Homepage
    was when the text-parser was axed. Adventure games lost the most of their expressiveness and became a game of "Click all the current screens with all your current items to advance" whenever you got stuck, because in the end, that was your only way of interacting with the environment. Maniac Mansion style games were a bit better, but were still a long way off of text-parser style action. Parsers gave the game authors so much more flexibility as to what could be done, and gave the player so much more to do and explore, that there isn't really any comparison between the games of yore and all the rodent infested ones that came after ^_^;
    Or maybe it's just me...

    • Re:The death of the adventure game... (Score:5, Funny)

      by the grace of R'hllor ( 530051 ) on Saturday November 30, 2002 @08:34AM (#4783490)
      Yeah, parsers died. Tragic.

      > Pull lever.
      Nope.

      > Push lever.
      Nope.

      > Yank lever.
      Nope.

      > Twist lever.
      Nope.

      > Kick lever.
      Nope.

      > Yell obscenely at lever.
      Nope.

      > Wave chicken over lever.
      You push the lever. Congratulations.
    • The most recent game in the Zork series (Zork: Grand Inquisitor) was graphical and actually had a scene which made fun of the 'click all the current screens' phenomenon so common in such games:

      I believe you were trying to get into the underworld and it was guarded by some two-headed fellow. The actual solution was fairly complicated and did not, IIRC, involve pulling something out of your inventory. So whenever you did do that, the guard would (mockingly) say something like "Oh, I don't know what to do, so I'll just pull something out of the old inventory!"
    • was when the text-parser was axed.

      Luckily, we still have this [wurb.com], where if you select games by rating, you'll see that modern text adventures have pretty much surpassed anything that was written when they were still commercial.

  • Wasteland (Score:2, Interesting)

    by jpdbest ( 44934 )
    I remember playing Wasteland on the ol' C64. It was one of the few games that I got hooked on and actually finished. It was very similar to the Bard's Tale genre of games, being a text adventure with a few graphics thrown in. I'm feeling nostalgic about it right now and wish I still had a copy.

    This is the first time I've ever heard about Meantime. I did a quick Google search on it and found this tidbit of info about the game:

    Meantime: The Unfinished Official Sequel to Wasteland [bsc.edu]

    It's too bad that the sequel fell through, it would've been interesting for sure. Fallout is a great (if unofficial) sequel. One of the first things I remember thinking about after hearing about it was 'Cool, it's just like Wasteland!' Little did I realize then how much of a connection the two games actually have.
  • I'm not sure how Warcraft Adventure would've turned out, but after seeing side scrolling action/adventure type games that I grew up on like The Lost Vikings and Blackthorne, two very nicely done games, I'm sure I would have enjoyed it too. As a side note though, for those that agree with my opinion of how great those two games are, here's an announcement [blizzard.com] detailing their rerelease for the Game Boy Advance. GBA's run only 60-70 or even cheaper on eBay, last I checked, so this might actually convince me to pick one up. It does not take movie-like graphics and a huge staff to come up with a highly addicting, amusing/entertaining, well-done game.
  • ...would be "Dreamland Chronicles: Freedom Ridge" [ign.com] While the name is absolutely impossible to remember (really!), this game had everything to look forward too. Basically it was a new "UFO: enemy unknown" game with good graphics and very proper and broad physics.

    Does anyone ever pick up games that were abandoned? I am still hoping this game will one day come out :)

  • They forgot Champions and the beginning of the super hero computer game curse.
  • So, as you can see, this article wasn't that useless after all.

    Yes it was.

  • two mmorpg for the log (Score:4, Interesting)

    by pyrrho ( 167252 ) on Saturday November 30, 2002 @12:14AM (#4782588) Journal
    (1) Sierra was creating Middle Earth MMORPG for several years before scrapping it. It couldn't straddle the Old and New Sierra eras (the latter being an era where Sierra Doesn't Exist, from the point of view of an old timer).

    (2) Worldplay Games spent millions making Cyberpark, an online MMORPG and virtual environment. The project was bought by AOL which eventually cancelled it. The technology was functional and could house thousands of people, but which floundered over business model concerns at AOL and a related lack of direction. I still don't think that the current MMORPG have as good of a hosting architecture... but I'm biased.

    Indeed, this is the frustrating thing about the game industy, there is a ton of work thrown away or spoiled.

    • I've heard that while Sierra scrapped the Middle Earth MMORPG they were working on, they still had the rights and were planning on starting it over from scratch after all the movies were out.

      Of course, this is just an unconfirmed rumor. Given the popularity of the movies, I think that even a not-so-well made MMORPG based on Middle Earth would steal people away from EverQuest rather quickly.
  • This kind of crap happened all the time in the arcade and pinball market. Games like Marble Madness 2 [klov.com] and the most excellent Capcom pinball Big Bang Bar [wwpf.com] are just a pair of examples of finished games that hit the prototype stage after much work and design only to be killed by marketing departments.

    Midway (who bought Atari arcade) is still guarding the rights to Marble Madness 2, so it seems you won't be seeing ROMs for it anytime soon. Fully designed games that only a lucky few people can play. Sad.

  • Uhm, hello? (Score:2, Informative)

    by AvantLegion ( 595806 )
    To those mentioning Duke Nukem Forever, Team Fortress II, etc.....

    .... do you guys know what ADVENTURE games are?

    Neither of those games are.

  • Lunar 3!? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Maul ( 83993 ) on Saturday November 30, 2002 @12:41AM (#4782639) Journal
    I know a lot of RPG geeks are awaiting a new game in the Lunar series and are still wanting to know if all plans for Lunar 3 are cancelled, or if there will one day be a new Lunar game.

    There has been rumor after rumor regarding Lunar 3. After Lunar 2: Eternal Blue Complete came out for Playstation in the US, there were statements coming from both Game Arts (the Japanese makers of Lunar) and Working Designs (who localized the Lunar games for the Sega CD and PS) that we would soon see work beginning on Lunar 3, probably for the Playstation 2.

    It has been 2 years since Lunar 2: Eternal Blue Complete has come out, and no new information can be obtained about Lunar 3. Working Designs has been silent about the issue, and there doesn't seem to be anything from Game Arts on it.

    Lunar Legends for GBA is translated by UbiSoft (probably because WD doesn't have the lisence to do GBA games), but that is a remake of Lunar 1, not a sequel.

    It seems like Lunar 3 would be an instant hit, but both Working Designs and Game Arts have been silent about it.

    About two weeks ago I saw a message regarding Lunar Legends on the Working Designs message board. It was explained that Working Designs had sold the rights to some of their original Lunar content back to Game Arts (Working designs apparently owned the rights to some of the things they did in their localization, including the name of the White Dragon, Quark) so that this stuff could be included in the US GBA version of Lunar Legend.

    Someone on the board asked if this transfer of the rights meant there would be no Lunar 3, to which I did not see an answer.

    What was not clear to me was if Working Designs had really SOLD the rights to these things back to Game Arts, or if they had LISENCED these things.

    I'm really starting to believe that Game Arts has perhaps abandonded the idea of making Lunar 3. If Game Arts really has abandoned the idea of Lunar 3, then it explains why Working Designs would easily want to sell back otherwise useless IP for some quick cash.

    I hope that this is not the case, but it seems like it may be.
    • Lunar The Silver Star is the game that made me an RPG addict. I had logged many hours with old classics like Dragon Warrior, Eye of the Beholder, and Final Fantasy 1, but my interest lapsed when the 16 bit revolution came (not to mention women and drugs in that time frame). But, Lunar for the Sega CD made me a full tilt closet geek. Let's pray that a Lunar 3 hits shelves, even if you are a godless communist heathen like myself.

    • Re:Lunar 3!? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by jgkastra ( 571174 )
      Game Arts doesn't really have much to do with the Lunar look and feel as much as Studio Alex does. Studio Alex and Shoten do the plot/artwork and Iwadare does the music. Game Arts only did the coding and they were the Sega freaks, hence the many Sega releases. But Working Designs has said they are shooting for PS2.

      Victor Ireland has also stated [rpgamer.com] that they are doing the Lunar 3 translation and Studio Alex, Game Arts, and Iwadare are showing up for another run.

      It's probably a good thing to keep the hype tight lipped. Just because they aren't saying anything doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

  • Leisure Suit Larry 4 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by subuni ( 264682 ) on Saturday November 30, 2002 @12:55AM (#4782671)
    To read the story of the missing LSL4 game straight from the developer's (Al Lowe) mouth, check out Lesiure Suit Larry 4 [allowe.com] and Why Larry 5? [allowe.com].

    Fairly interesting story -- What was supposed to be LSL4, ended up morphing into The Sierra Network, and then getting sold to AT&T for $100 million (and then getting resold to AOL for $10 million).

  • Sierra's Outpost (Score:4, Informative)

    by teamhasnoi ( 554944 ) <teamhasnoi@yahoA ... inus threevowels> on Saturday November 30, 2002 @01:18AM (#4782708) Journal
    I worked at a CompUsa back when P60s were just appearing, Doom was out and I still couldn't afford a computer.

    The Sierra chick came in and was showing me some stuff they were working on - a little rendered (Actual Game Screens!) movie about a game called Outpost. It was supposed to be the end-all of simulation/strategy/resource management games. It looked really cool, and the Sierra chick told me about all the things you were going to be able to do in it.

    A couple of years passed, and Outpost finally came out. PC Gamer reamed it a new one, and so did this guy [the-underdogs.org]. All the features I heard and looked forward to were gone. In their place, a sterile, unfun, buggy pile.

    Outpost 2 came out to much better reviews [avault.com], and there was talk of Outpost 3 [virtualave.net], but as all the links to it are dead, I believe that this may go in the 'Unfinished Adventures' catagory.

  • sounds like the name of a Kung Fu movie, doesn't it? Perhaps this is why it didn't make the grade. ;-)

  • Freespace (Score:2, Informative)

    by SparkyTWP ( 556246 )
    Also another unfinished trilogy, the wonderful Freespace series.

    Volition made two of the greatest space sim fighter games with good storylines. They put in a nice cliffhanger at the end of Freespace 2, then that was it.

    They said not enough copies were sold of Freespace 2 (Which I would blame on bad marketing) for Interplay to warrant a third. So everyone who was a fan of the game was left with an unfinished story.

  • Just to add to the mix... (Score:3, Informative)

    by prototype ( 242023 ) <bsimser@shaw.ca> on Saturday November 30, 2002 @02:27AM (#4782868) Homepage
    SimsVille was a cross between The Sims and Sim City. It offered both a macroscopic view of a town where you could manage Sim life on a neighborhood level and a microscopic one where you could manage Sims and families (although not as granular as you can in The Sims). It died a horrible death sometime in 2001 after Maxis decided it conflicted with what they were already doing with The Sims, Sim City and the upcoming Sims Online. Apparently it was pretty much in a pre-release stage but who knows if anyone will ever see it.

    liB

  • Unfinished game. (Score:3, Funny)

    by Picass0 ( 147474 ) on Saturday November 30, 2002 @02:44AM (#4782897) Homepage Journal

    Don't forget Battlecruiser 3000!!!

  • The demise of the legendary AR series was much more of a loss to me (and many other fanatic players, I presume). Only 2 out of 7(?) parts were released and judging from Philip Price [dadgum.com]'s obvious talents, all 7 would have been worthwhile. There was an attempt around 1995 to develop "Alternate Reality Online" (www.aro.com, now defunct) by Philip Price and Gary Gilbertson (the 2 people responsible for the first AR game, AFAIK), but apparently it never went far.
  • I have an idea for the ultimate video game! Picture a dotted line down the middle of a rectangular field, where two line segments hit a small square back and forth in a virtual game of table tennis. Here is a link [pong-story.com] to what I have so far.
  • With Presto's demise last week, who knows what will happen to the rights to Journeyman Project 4. The script exists, but not much beyond that. The developers were waiting on permission to make it after Myst III, but instead worked on Whacked for the XBox.

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