xyla

Member
Oct 27, 2017
8,525
Germany
Left 4 Dead 3 - there was some Source 2 stuff from a few years ago that showed that it was in development.
On that note - In the Valley of Gods looked incredible but was put on the backburner indefinitely to get HL Alyx out of the door.
And on that note.... Episode 3 set in the deep snow. I'm owed pelted headcrabs.
 

GTOAkira

Member
Sep 1, 2018
9,380
Tekken vs SF most likely got cancelled and akuma was scrapped from it. It would actually be quite similar to what happened to capcom vs snk 3. CVS3 was cancelled and, similar to how akuma was incorporated in tekken 7, capcom was going to reused K and put him in capcom fighting all stars. Sadly that also got cancelled lol.
For me it has to be the original Warcraft 3 reforged. I know it wasnt technically cancelled but it still somewhat count lol
 

Aranjah

Member
Oct 27, 2017
2,186
Still sad about StarCraft Ghost. I think I was/am just really interested in the idea of a more personal-PoV StarCraft game. Would also be interested in a (single-player, story-heavy) sort of thing in the WarCraft universe.

I know we recently had that dev build leak of the original Dinosaur Planet, but it still stings that we never got the completed, polished version of that, and got Fox slapped in there instead.

I know it's not the Fable game that Fable fans wanted, but as someone who wasn't already into the Fable series at the time, I thought the concept of Fable: Legends was pretty cool and I was sad that that game didn't make it. (To be fair, I'd have been just as satisfied with it being a new IP so that Fable fans could get their desired game.) While there was definitely some number tweaking that needed to happen with the store prices and the monetization model in general, the idea itself was fun. I hear lots of people say "I want a game with a D&D-style setup where one person plays as the DM, and sets up the levels and controls the monsters, and the other players play as the group of heroes! Why has nobody made that?!" Well, here was one. It needed refinement but the foundation was there.

Edit: Not sure if this counts, but for a second unpopular opinion, I want to submit Anthem 2.0. I'm disappointed that it ended up being vaporware. It was visually really pretty, I liked the suit designs, the suit customization blew Destiny's limited armor customization system out of the water, the flight mechanic was cool... I dunno, maybe this is me being petty, but as someone who burned out on Destiny and Bungie's "microtransaction creep" over the years, I want a game to present enough of a challenge to Destiny that Bungie has to at least pay attention. In another universe, where Anthem had the dev time and budget that Destiny had, and didn't have the project mismanagement issues that it did have in this universe, Anthem could have been that game.


Honorable mentions go to Wildstar and Gigantic, for being games that actually did release, but never really took off and were shut down way too soon. :(
 
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Tregard

Member
Oct 27, 2017
5,221
'Television', which was due to be an Ouya exclusive:



It was set to be an adventure game where your controller acted like a TV remote, and you'd interact with a range of different channels, each with some WarioWare-esque Microgames, such as being in a car chase or watching birds in a wildlife documentary. A really cool idea that just sort of dissolved.

Eyedentify for the PS3:



A Playstation Eye exclusive I guess? You play a sort of Charlie from Charlie's Angels role for a group of spies. A neat concept, always looked ridiculous and clunky but I wanted it nonetheless.
 

apathetic

Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,003
05fWwFn.jpg
 

Deleted member 1839

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
11,625
Enders Project.

Was suppose to be one of the three Fox Engine projects directed by Kojima with it, Silent Hills and MGSV being the three. The game was suppose to be a reboot of Zone of Enders where the mechs were more monster looking and seem more like human size exos. It pretty much got canned due to the poor reception of the ZOE 1&2 remaster during the PS3 era so it never made it out of concept.

enders_project_006.jpg

340
 

Mentalist

Member
Mar 14, 2019
18,592
Prey 2, obviously. Still hoping RoundHouse makes a spiritual successor now that they're under Microsoft's umbrella.

Also, the direct sequel to Legacy of Kain: Defiance (the "Dead Sun" spin-off does not vibe with me, tbh)
 

Spaggy

Member
Oct 26, 2017
634
PREY 2 and Final Fantasy: Fortress by Grin were two big ones for me, and already mentioned a couple times ITT.

Another one I was interested in was called Edge of Twilight, but just as I was typing this post, I looked it up for pictures and I guess it did release in 2016 to pretty mediocre reviews. 🤷‍♂️
 

Fonst

Member
Nov 16, 2017
7,136
I always thought vaporware was just games teased but never seen any footage of, almost like a joke/prank April Fool.
 

DangerMouse

Member
Oct 25, 2017
22,415
Eyedentify for the PS3:



A Playstation Eye exclusive I guess? You play a sort of Charlie from Charlie's Angels role for a group of spies. A neat concept, always looked ridiculous and clunky but I wanted it nonetheless.

Was going to put this too so it's cool to see someone else still remember this one.
 

Borman

Digital Games Curator at The Strong Museum
Verified
Oct 26, 2017
854
As I say in every one of these threads, if you have any unreleased games, I would love to work with you to preserve them at the museum.
 

I KILL PXLS

Member
Oct 25, 2017
11,688
This is absolutely the vaporware I'm saddest [heh] about but I've sort of come to the conclusion that it was dead from the start. There was never any gameplay footage or screenshots, no demo video ever produced, and Nibris as a studio made only one of the four games they announced (Double Bloob on DSiWare after having to cancel the retail DS release and four years of development.) I believe their assets and developers are mostly now part of Bloober Team (which was itself spun out of Nibris after getting outside investment) so there was something clearly going on internally from the outset.
All of this is specifically why I never understood the hype for Sadness. I get people were extremely thirsty for more "hardcore" Wii games at the time and a black and white horror game was a novel and original concept for the time, but we never saw any footage or even a screenshot. It's pretty obvious that half the actions done by the player wouldn't have actually been in the game and the others would have probably felt terrible with the OG Wii motion controls. Again though I do understand people just wanting a new horror game for the Wii so I imagine people put more hopes on Sadness than they should have. I don't get hyped for CG trailers or trailers without gameplay before I know what the gameplay is going to be though so it's a bit harder for me to relate.
 

nomemorial

Member
Oct 27, 2017
542
Mega Man Legends 3 really hurt. I can hardly explain how excited I was for that game, only to see it come crashing down. Still a tiny sliver of hope in my heart that Capcom finds it in themselves to revive it one day.
 

Blackpuppy

Member
Oct 28, 2017
4,309
I think my example would be the Rogue Squadron Trilogy port for Wii. God I would have purchased that game in a heartbeat.
 

flyingorion

Member
Dec 4, 2017
360
It will pretty much always be Donkey Kong Racing. DKC trilogy, Diddy Kong Racing, and DK64 were so much apart of my childhood. Diddy Kong Racing is still my favorite kart racing game of all time. Donkey Kong Racing was going to be top quality made by Rare. The riding animal buddies would have been so fresh. It even made it on the Gamecube box.



This will forever make me sad. I wish Retro Studios would work on a Diddy Kong Racing 2 or Donkey Kong Racing. There's just not enough good quality kart racing games nowadays.
 

SharpX68K

Member
Nov 10, 2017
10,634
Chicagoland
How about an entire console and every game that was in development for it, nevermind everything that was rumored to be made for it, with a few exceptions (some arcade games based on the hardware).

the console would have belonged to the 5th generation

Jw0zaJ8.jpg


The M2 and an early controller.
Iwbtxer.jpg


M2 was about two to three times as powerful as the Nintendo 64 (even though the systems OS and drivers were always slow, but was properly designed to use dual CPUs in parallal (unlike the Sega Saturn) had double the amount of RAM and a 4x speed CD-ROM drive from the start, and a 4x larger texture cache.

And yet, it was no more than 1/5th as powerful as the Dreamcast which is no surprise given that the Dreamcast was developed during 1997 (1998/1999 release dates) while this older console was developed during 1994-95.

The death of this entire console, the Panasonic (Matsushita) M2 before it released, still really stings.

LMlxyX2.jpg
 

John Marston

Member
Oct 27, 2017
264
Does anyone remember a cancelled game under one of the playstation studios that closed down in 2012 or something (liverpool?) that was aiming to be a life simulator of sorts? I can't remember much but the concept was really amazing and I remember reading about it and seeing some materials for it in the GAF thread. Hope someone here remembers it too!
 

Neuroxia

Member
Mar 31, 2019
967
Van Buren, Starcraft Ghost and more recently Star Wars 1313 and Prey 2.
Although i love Arkane's Prey, i wish for a world were both games would exist.
 

Cantaim

Member
Oct 25, 2017
33,637
The Stussining
I didn't know Megaman Star Force 4 was going to be a thing until a few years ago and it crushed me. From the information that was leaked it sounded like a game young me would have gone wild for. Really wish the Star Force series sold better and could have gotten us more entries.
 
Nov 1, 2017
1,380


yep... sad that it never saw the light of day. such intriguing concept and info at https://www.unseen64.net/2010/04/16/sadness-wii-cancelled/

Nibris as a company might as well have been vaporware but their devs and existing projects actually got taken in by Bloober team.

After Sadness was a big nothing, Nibris pitched a game called "The Children of Night" for the DS which I can't even find a description of let alone a promotional image.

Next they worked on "Raid over the River" for the Wii and DS which all things considered didn't actually look half bad. That would end up never seeing the light of day either though and by October 2009 Nibris would fold and reamining devs + projects would be put with Bloober team.



In December 2009 something with the Nibris logo would eventually be released "Double Bloob" on DSiWare. This is the only footage I've been able to find of it:
 

Deleted member 1839

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
11,625
I might get some flak for this, but:

Metroid-Prime-4-development.jpeg


I know that it's still coming, but its delay and the wait for more information has put a dark cloud over the Switch's entire lifecycle. The fact that Nintendo went with an unproven dev like Bandai Namco Singapore when they should have just given it to Retro in the first place, and then announced the game with nothing to show, was a very bad decision.

Nintendo doesn't seem to know what to do with Metroid after the GameCube/DS/early Wii era.

Like they had already scrapped a 2D and another 3D Metroid. I'd be pissed if Prime 4 out of all was just plain cancelled.

I just want the series to be a place where we got games on the regular like we did during that time.
 

I KILL PXLS

Member
Oct 25, 2017
11,688
Since Prey 2 and a few others I'd call out were already mentioned, I'm going to mention the Phantom Dust remake/sort of sequel. I was so excited for them to give that IP/game a new chance and I'm bummed about how that whole thing apparently went down behind the scenes.

 

LinkStrikesBack

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 27, 2017
16,649
I know that it's still coming, but its delay and the wait for more information has put a dark cloud over the Switch's entire lifecycle. The fact that Nintendo went with an unproven dev like Bandai Namco Singapore when they should have just given it to Retro in the first place, and then announced the game with nothing to show, was a very bad decision

Let's not forget that retro were an unproven Dev when they made metroid prime in the first place, shall we?

Plus, retro were busy on some other project that evidently got shitcanned that they as a studio couldn't finish, so evidently they still weren't in top form either.
 

Dice

Member
Oct 25, 2017
23,192
Canada

I'm still holding out on Capcom making this a "surprise!" revival one day...fuck I would have loved it.


Final Fantasy Tactics 2

novacrystallis.com

Yasumi Matsuno shows off scrapped plans for a "Final Fantasy Tactics 2" - Nova Crystallis

Final Fantasy XIV‘s “Return to Ivalice” raid series reunites Final Fantasy Tactics director Yasumi Matsuno with many of his old team members who are now working on the MMORPG. During a live broadcast today, where both teams were commenting a playthrough of FFT, Matsuno showed off scrapped plans...

Fucking hell, this is a big one. It's like Tactics and Ogre had a baby through a happy union, and everyone was happy, but it was just a dream that was too sweet to be real.