You might be surprised how many great video games get canceled far into their development cycles. Plenty of titles go all the way to having fully playable build, only to have the plug pulled at the last minute. Millions of manpower hours has been put into games that never saw the light of day, even though they look like they might have done respectably well if they'd seen the light of day.
But, thanks to the internet, games that never had a chance can still be seen and appreciated on the web. Even if they might not look good, you can appreciate what the developers were going for. You just might not ever understand why they got canceled in the first place. Read on for our list of the greatest canceled video games, and ponder about what might have been.
Jerry from BagoGames says, "Disney has been striking out when it comes to video game development. Armada Of the Damned is yet another sad tale of an amazing game we will never play."
Developing a game is an intricate process. Thousands of lines of code have to be written with thousands of graphical assets. The publishers have to spend thousands of dollars on marketing. Speaking on the behalf of the developers, it hurts us beyond measure when we don't get to witness the fruit of our labour.
Here are The Gaming Report's top 5 games that did not see the light of day.
An investigative look into what happened to Disney's open world Pirates of the Caribbean game.
This would of been good, this is what Ubisoft should of done with all the Pirate stuff in AC4, instead of Black Flags fill in the gap Armada of the Damned left. Least then they wouldn't be restricted with the Assassins Creed story.
I remember seeing this game at E3 and getting so excited. I was completely bummed when it got canned.
edit: btw... great read! Hats off to Tyler, I hope you put forward more pieces like this.
Thank you! This is what gaming journalism should aspire to! Investigative reporting, well written prose, thought provoking articles, and no inflammatory headlines or claims.
It's EXTREMELY rare to read well-written articles on this site. Job well done, sir!
You should consider investigating in alot of cancelled titles, make it a series of articles.
Turok 2 was another title I anticipated, because when was the last time we've had a dinosaur game since ever?
It's clear these types of pieces are popular. I'll start working on another one as soon as possible. I have lots of ideas.
I would of loved B.C. (need a good dinosaur game)
Pirates of the Caribbean looked pretty awesome too, who knows why that was canceled.
Remember Possession? The game where you control the head of the zombies in a semi-RTS third person type game? That was unveiled as one of the first next-gen games to come out. Its a shame it never came out because that was an interesting concept.
http://www.youtube.com/watc...
Where is Huxley? It looked like a brilliant FPS MMO. Shame it got stuck in development hell. I guess it also was a bit too old-school in its mechanics maybe to warrant a release.
http://www.youtube.com/watc...
No 8 Days, Getaway 3, or Halo DS.
The single greatest game ever that was cancelled:
Baldurs Gate 3
Stargate Worlds :(