Cancelled game series or shuttered devs, talk some about your most noted one.

tempy_thinker.png

Ray said:
No! Watching TV shows doesn't create psycho killers... cancelling TV shows does!

This time of year usually sees people look back on the year just past and to the year coming up, or at least the year coming up until things get announced at E3. Those are taken care of elsewhere so here we are going to look to the cancelled games and devs that got shuttered, possibly for no great reason. Also playing are things where the game series might have been given to or picked up by someone else, and things which radically changed between the initial announcements and earlier showcasings and final release.
Bonus internet points for those making it about 2017. Did Scalebound's promise of PlatinumGames and Hideki Kamiya taking on Bethesda raise hopes and dash them? Visceral games is no more but did they deserve it? Mass Effect: Andromeda seems to have ended the franchise, thoughts?

[prebreak]Older titles[/prebreak]
MX vs ATV, or indeed the Motocross Madness franchise that preceded it, has a rather interesting history. After THQ's demise it was purchased by a company many would have said was a distributor, there was an effort at a new one in 2016 which was not amazingly well met and apparently we get another this year some time. Similarly the Skate series seems to be not there any more, EA's black box studios being shuttered and no real further announcements on its fate, and for all EA might have done it was this that hurts the most for me. That said them selling an everything unlock DLC cheat was probably a sign of things to come. In any case those two franchises represented two of the better options for me for free roam switch off and play, replacements for them being a bit thin on the ground.

This is another entry in our new series exploring game mechanics, concepts within games and other such things. Previously we discussed story canon. We have a long list of topics already planned but guest spots and suggestions are certainly welcome.
 

FAST6191

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Mega Man Legends 3. There's no valid reason to cancel it. The fans all want it.
Have you met megaman fans?

Also I as whatever I am playing the hypothetical businessman would have wondered if it was N64 times again, not mid 2010 on the 3ds or whenever it was when the footage was shown. Want another legends game by all means but what I saw of it was not something to get worked up about.
 

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I was there for the cancelled thread and the footage found of it.
Looked like a bad N64 take on such a game. The franchise itself may or may not have had promise but I can't get to being upset that the thing shown never made it to market.
Capcom's handling of the whole situation was unprofessional and being the hugest fucking god damn piss-drinking-and-vomiting-it-back-in-everyone's-face jerks about it.
 
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Kioku

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Have you met megaman fans?

Also I as whatever I am playing the hypothetical businessman would have wondered if it was N64 times again, not mid 2010 on the 3ds or whenever it was when the footage was shown. Want another legends game by all means but what I saw of it was not something to get worked up about.
That's like, your opinion man.

If we're talking about what a game "looks" like, there's a laundry list that should have been canceled.
 
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FAST6191

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Graphics were but a part of that.
The movement, the animations, the timings, the NPC behaviours, the styles involved and more played into my calling N64 time portal (and to bad games land at that) then and to this day.

Capcom's handling of the whole situation was unprofessional and being the hugest fucking god damn piss-drinking-and-vomiting-it-back-in-everyone's-face jerks about it.
While I would like to believe I would have done better the megaman fan base is seldom pleased so if Capcom's policy on the matter was "don't even try" I could get behind it.
 

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Graphics were but a part of that.
The movement, the animations, the timings, the NPC behaviours, the styles involved and more played into my calling N64 time portal (and to bad games land at that) then and to this day.


While I would like to believe I would have done better the megaman fan base is seldom pleased so if Capcom's policy on the matter was "don't even try" I could get behind it.
Capcom is weird with marketing and publishing..
 

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Graphics were but a part of that.
The movement, the animations, the timings, the NPC behaviours, the styles involved and more played into my calling N64 time portal (and to bad games land at that) then and to this day.


While I would like to believe I would have done better the megaman fan base is seldom pleased so if Capcom's policy on the matter was "don't even try" I could get behind it.
No, no, Capcom went from awesome to "wtf" on the spin of a dime and went schizophrenic on the fans. To sum up, they said it could happen, then said it didn't, then said it would, then said no, then finally said their in house development wouldn't do it. Then fans and some small staff said they would take reigns to do it if Capcom granted them permission, and Capcom allowed it and gave them permission to use the IP and gave some resources as well. They were being awesome and positive towards this development, and the development was going really well. At some point, Capcom suddenly said they needed to know this was even a valuable asset that people would buy, so they told the developers that they had a deadline to get a free demo up on the eshop, and they would greenlight it if they reached a minimum amount of downloads to ensure people would buy the game. It reached way above the number of downloads and every one was excited, until Capcom just slammed down on every one a few days later and said "nope, stop development, this thing is cancelled." They have some piss-poor excuse why this was, which contradicted everything they had said.

Okay that didn't sum it up, but if you really don't want to read, the biggest sum up is this:

Capcom led a long development life of a small team and suddenly gave them a deadline and conditions to meet, only to out of no where completely demolish the entire thing with no known reason even though it met the deadline and conditions.

EDIT: I also recall some shady things done by them during development as well but I can't fully remember so I didn't include anything like that.
 
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Jedi Knight III (even though Jedi Academy had a horrible story, hopefully they'd have turned that around by III.)
Knights of the Old Republic III (Even though II did not feel entirely Star Warsish.)
Wonder Boy V (is it still coming?)
Though Soul Reaver was released and despite the fact that it's one of the best Metroidvania's EVER, it was still only half complete for which reason I wish they'd reboot that puppy with it's original scope in mind.
 

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No, no, Capcom went from awesome to "wtf" on the spin of a dime and went schizophrenic on the fans. To sum up, they said it could happen, then said it didn't, then said it would, then said no, then finally said their in house development wouldn't do it. Then fans and some small staff said they would take reigns to do it if Capcom granted them permission, and Capcom allowed it and gave them permission to use the IP and gave some resources as well. They were being awesome and positive towards this development, and the development was going really well. At some point, Capcom suddenly said they needed to know this was even a valuable asset that people would buy, so they told the developers that they had a deadline to get a free demo up on the eshop, and they would greenlight it if they reached a minimum amount of downloads to ensure people would buy the game. It reached way above the number of downloads and every one was excited, until Capcom just slammed down on every one a few days later and said "nope, stop development, this thing is cancelled." They have some piss-poor excuse why this was, which contradicted everything they had said.

Okay that didn't sum it up, but if you really don't want to read, the biggest sum up is this:

Capcom led a long development life of a small team and suddenly gave them a deadline and conditions to meet, only to out of no where completely demolish the entire thing with no known reason even though it met the deadline and conditions.

EDIT: I also recall some shady things done by them during development as well but I can't fully remember so I didn't include anything like that.
The Devs worked unpaid overtime on it.
 
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specht

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I still have dreams about what life would be like if Silent Hills wasn't cancelled. Can't wait for Death Stranding to see what (if any) concepts make it into that.

Would've liked to play the original Resident Evil 4 as well. Not what eventually turned into Devil May Cry, but this:
 

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I still have dreams about what life would be like if Silent Hills wasn't cancelled. Can't wait for Death Stranding to see what (if any) concepts make it into that.

Would've liked to play the original Resident Evil 4 as well. Not what eventually turned into Devil May Cry, but this:


WAT this is amazing, why did Capcom change this for a fucking Action game?
 

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WAT this is amazing, why did Capcom change this for a fucking Action game?

Well it seems they were experimenting with alternate camera styles already as early as that video. I don't know about the sales of Code Veronica or RE3 but at that point it's probably safe to assume most new players were turned off by the tank controls.

But yeah then came E3 2004 and we got an arcade shooter. While fun and groundbreaking at the time it was a far cry from the Resident Evil we grew up with.
 

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I hate that all the games I looked forward to when I was younger got cancelled.

Resident Evil for Gameboy Color was one, but thankfully hackers finished the leaked ROM and it's fully playable.

StarCraft Ghost for PC was another. I don't care for the RTS games, but a StarCraft FPS game got me excited.

Dinosaur Planet for the N64 had me excited for another N64 game by Rare. My parents spent a lot of money on our N64, and when I found out it was scrapped and being ported to the GameCube instead, I was sad and angry because we couldn't afford yet another expensive Nintendo console.

Star Fox 2 for Super Nintendo almost made this list, if it hadn't been finished and released on the SNES Mini. I still played the alpha and the prototype, and got a taste and liked it.

I also hate when games are literally ports mid-development, and you can tell by the lack of polygons and shitty textures. One fine example of this would be Animal Forest for the Nintendo 64 being ported to the GameCube for North American audiences. Those are the same blurry textures and the same low-poly models you get on the N64 game. Even the Animal Crossing for the Nintendo Wii looked terrible, and you could tell wasn't running at it's native potential.

Another fine example of this lazy porting technique was Twilight Princess HD for the Nintendo Wii U. I was expecting higher poly models alongside the newer HD textures, but we just got the GameCube version of the game, low poly models and everything, with new HD textures slapped on them. It felt like a rushed port honestly, and it kills me to call it the difinitive version... But I'd have to say that it is.

And this trend is still continuing to this day over at Nintendo. The Switch is getting nothing but Wii U ports and other ports. You can tell that games made for the Switch look much richer, feel optimized, and the textures haven't been reduced to blurred trash. (Mario Odyssey and Xenoblade 2 are shining examples of this.)
 
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Resident Evil for Gameboy Color was one, but thankfully hackers finished the leaked ROM and it's fully playable.
Oh, so that explains the abrupt and sudden release of the game in the scene those years. So the european cartridges of Gaiden must be repros, or just knock offs. Who woulda thunk?

In my case, there are a particular selection i can think of. The one that still hurts me the most was Shadows of the Eternals. I love everything that has to do with the Elder God Mythos and Cthullu, so Eternal Darkness was one, if not, my favorite game of the genre apart from the original Call of the Cthullus. I was severly dissappointed with Silicon Knights and their constant mistakes of not wanting to make the game, even when Nintendo was backing them up, until the point of deciding to do it, just to get into a heavy controversy, putting in hiatus the thing and letting both Nintendo and the game to be in the probervial shelf up until this day.
Right now, there's not too many games that focus on the topic (one that i love to death), and in one time, SK were the synonym of "ideal guys" to get the thing done in modern years. I'll be waiting for someone doing a great game like Eternal Darkness, but who knows when it'll happen. :wacko:

Another one comes from Inafune. but not for what you would think of, @FAST6191 . I'm prettu sure nobody here remebers the little proof of concept game that inafune was working, apart of the other cancelled games that he had with megaman. Kai-oh, the king of pirates, was supposed to be an interesting RPG where you would battle your way through an extense map and had the chance to make the enemies you defeated your allies, and add them to your ever growing party. Sorta like in Suikoden or Destiny of an Emperor, but in 3D and with animals, and as a sort of retelling of Romace of the Three Kingdoms.
This game was a launch game title that got pushed and pushed further until its cancellation in 2015. They say it was because of the more than 461 million yen loss for Comcept, and because the market "was shifting focus over other things", but i suspect it was also because Inafune was being cut from Capcom, and that also meant that he wouldn't have enough money to spend with his newly found company.
I am one of those who loves a good story and a good RPG. When i heard about the game when the 3DS launched, i was stoked. "A new Destiny of an Emperor-like game for the 3DS? Count me in!"...now, we only have this little tidbit of trailer to remember it.
 

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Oh, so that explains the abrupt and sudden release of the game in the scene those years. So the european cartridges of Gaiden must be repros, or just knock offs. Who woulda thunk?
Resident Evil Gaiden was a totally different game, I'm talking about the original Resident Evil from the PlayStation, made for the Gameboy Color.

Resident Evil:
hqdefault (3).jpg



Resident Evil Gaiden:
REGaiden1.jpg
 
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