Introduction
Nintendo has announced that it’s taking gamers on another trip down memory lane with the release of the SNES Mini.
With this compact plug-and-play console, fans will be able to play 20 of their favorite titles from the Super Nintendo era of gaming. One bonus title that’s been announced for the console, however, is the never-before-released Star Fox 2.
Star Fox 2 was a highly-anticipated sequel for the SNES and it remains one of Nintendo’s most high-profile cancellations even now. The game got fairly far into the development process but as graphical advances on Sega’s Saturn and Sony’s PlayStation consoles emerged, Nintendo worried that the game’s increasingly old-gen 3D would look bad if compared to the next-gen 3D graphics.
As a result, the game was cancelled and instead fans got Star Fox 64 on the more powerful Nintendo 64 console in 1997. The game was close enough to completion when it was cancelled that various playable ROMs have leaked online over the years, but we still never got to see the final version.
Now, more than 20 years after we thought we’d seen the last of it, Star Fox 2 is getting its time in the sun. Here are some more games we’d love to see this happen to in the future.
Silent Hills
Silent Hills was an exciting proposition. It was going to be the next and possibly most terrifying game in the Silent Hill franchise, helmed by industry legend Hideo Kojima in collaboration with acclaimed director Guillermo Del Toro. It even had a famous actor, Norman Reedus, lined up to play the lead. It was going to be the cinematic horror game we’d dreamed of and excitement was piqued when its terrifying Playable Teaser took the gaming world by storm.
Unfortunately, the game was cancelled in April 2016. After rumors began circulating that Kojima was planning to leave Konami, it was confirmed that the project would not be going ahead. To add insult to injury, PT was then pulled from the PlayStation Store. Sob.
Fable Legends
Fable Legends is a relatively recent loss and as a result the wound is still pretty raw. We’re big fans of the Fable franchise, from its magical world, its atmosphere of adventure and its highly individual sense of humor.
Though we have to admit we hoped for Fable 4, we were perfectly prepared to return to Albion in Fable Legends after it was revealed at E3 in 2015.
It may not have been what we wanted but it had a promising premise – free-to-play multiplayer that saw you and three friends (or three AI characters) team up to complete quests and objectives while other playing teams tried to stop you.
It’s been rumored that even the Fable development team at Lionhead would have preferred to create Fable 4 rather than Fable Legends which means it’s likely the game got off to a bad start.
After four years of development and $75 million were spent, the game was suddenly cancelled by Microsoft. To make matters even worse only a few weeks later Lionhead Studios closed down. Whether we’ll see the Fable franchise return is uncertain but we’ll always remember it fondly.
Star Wars 1313
We’re not short of excellent Star Wars games – think Knights of the Old Republic and Battlefront. But we’re almost certain we have been deprived of another one when Star Wars 1313 was cancelled.
Unveiled during E3 2012, the game was set to follow the story of Boba Fett, allowing players to bounty hunt their way around the city of 1313 on Coruscant. Slick, fast paced combat, and cover based blaster fights were just a few of the promised features that had us salivating.
With Star Wars 1313 it looked like LucasArts was making a Star Wars game with adults in mind.
Sadly, when Disney acquired the Star Wars universe they shut down LucasArts, which subsequently ended development of Star Wars 1313. Rumor on the street, however, is that Disney still own the rights for 1313. A new hope?
Fez 2
Fez 2, announced in 2013, was to be the sequel to the stylish indie darling platformer, Fez. The game was created by developer Polytron and is often cited as the inspiration for many other popular indie titles such as Monument Valley.
Only one month after its reveal, however, the game was abruptly cancelled by Polytron’s founder Phil Fish. Following a Twitter argument between Phil Fish and a journalist who had criticized him, Fish announced both the game’s cancellation and his exit from the video game industry, something that came as a surprise even to his own company.
Pirates of the Caribbean: Armada of the Damned
Think what you want about the direction the films have taken, but Pirates of the Caribbean is a franchise with a universe that’s always had great video game potential.
Armada of the Damned was announced to be in development by Propaganda Games for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC during E3 2009.
The game was going to take players into a timeline before the events of the first film and would follow a pirate captain called James Sterling. Not much was revealed other than this, but the game was going to be open world, choice-driven, independent from the films and include RPG elements, real-time combat and weapon customization.
Unfortunately, in 2010, just over a year after its E3 reveal Disney Interactive Studios announced that it was restructuring and Armada of the Damned’s development team was laid off. The game was cancelled.
It’s a shame this pirate adventure never got to raise its colors as the success of Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag proves there’s an appetite for an open world pirate adventure. Hopefully this year’s big pirate games from E3, Skull and Bones and Sea of Thieves, will fill the hole that remains in the helm of the genre.
MegaMan Legends 3
Mega Man Legends 3 was a game that many wanted to see added to the Mega Man spin-off series lineup. The game would have seen players control two new characters, Aero and Barrett, who would have teamed up with more familiar series characters to save Mega Man Volnutt from Elysium. To make the game an even more exciting prospect it was helmed by the series creator Keiji Inafune.
It wasn’t to be, though. Inafune left Capcom in 2010 and though development was attempted without him, Capcom cancelled the game the next year with the reason that it just wasn’t good enough to go into full production.
Since the cancellation a petition has garnered hundreds of thousands of signatures in the hopes that it’d be released but Capcom has been firm in its decision. You have to give them credit for their commitment to quality control.
Scalebound
If things had gone according to plan, Scalebound would have been a huge exclusive Xbox IP that would have been released this very year. That’s no longer the case.
Developed by Platinum Games, Scalebound was going to be a third-person RPG in which players would take control of Drew on his journey through the world of Draconis, accompanied by his AI-controlled dragon called Thuban.
Players would have been able to use a combination of weapons and the help of Thuban to defeat monsters in the game world. The cinematic footage that was shown for the game at E3 made it look stunning, with an interesting modern twist on dragons (creatures which traditionally feature in medieval fantasy timelines).
Sadly, after a delayed release it was announced in January 2017 that the game was cancelled. As yet there’s been no official confirmation as to why.
Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings
Okay so we have Nathan Drake and Lara Croft, but let’s not pretend we wouldn’t relish the opportunity to play as Indiana Jones. Sure, there have been Indiana Jones games before but the one we really wanted, Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings for PS3 and Xbox 360, never came to be.
Though it eventually released for older consoles including the Wii and PS2, we wanted it on the latest available generation, LucasArts! With the story collaborated on by George Lucas himself! An early look at the game as it was being built for HD consoles was a tantalizing tease of what eventually would never be released.
Sadly, due to severe quality issues, the project was cancelled in early 2009. At least we have these screenshots to show us what we missed out on.
Aliens: Crucible
Aliens: Crucible is a particularly painful cancellation. After the disappointing Aliens: Colonial Marines was released, footage from the game that could have been (Aliens: Crucible) emerged.
The RPG-style game looked excellent and essentially appeared to be a Knights of the Old Republic inspired game set in the Aliens universe. To make matters worse, boss of developer Obsidian, Feargus Urquhart, revealed that the game was ready for release when it was cancelled.
What happened, then? Apparently Sega took a moment in 2010 to “Carefully consider the type of Aliens games to release” and opted for Colonial Marines in the belief it would be more profitable. Considering how close this game must have been to completion we think it might be our best shot in this list for a Star Fox 2 moment.
Gotham by Gaslight
Clash together Sherlock Holmes and Batman and you’ll arrive at a concept similar to Gotham by Gaslight. The idea for this game was drawn from a one-shot comic story of the same name which saw a Victorian-era Bruce Wayne take on Jack the Ripper who was apparently on tour in Gotham City.
Day 1 Studios, the developer behind F.E.A.R, planned to make the game for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 and even created a prototype for which there’s footage online.
Unfortunately, after an unsuccessful pitch to THQ, Day 1 couldn’t find a publisher which is a great shame. The game lives on in the form of Gaslight Batman who’s one of the champions of the 2015 DC game Infinite Crisis alongside Gaslight Joker and Catwoman.
