• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Worst Tragedies in Gaming History (Lost Games)

R

randomengine

Banned
Loss or demise of a publisher/developer:

SEGA - Goes third-party and 90% of their game diversity evaporates.

RARE, Ltd - Nintendo -> Microsoft

Konami - Decides that pachinko games are the future.

Complete games that will never be released again or otherwise lost:

Uniracers - Nintendo and Rockstar North (previous DMA Design) created a unicycle racing game for SNES. Pixar sued DMA Design lost the case and now this game will never again see the light of day.

Panzer Dragoon Saga - Lost source code

Star Wars Galaxies - Pre-NGE

Games which never got completed:

Silent Hills - Hideo Kojima and Guillermo del Toro collaborated on a new Silent Hill game. We only ever saw P.T. out of it, which is also unavailable for most.

Half Life 2: Episode Three - Self-explanatory.

What are some others? Are there additional categories?
 
B

BitStyle

Unconfirmed Member
No Megaman Legends 3? Y'all slacking

I get a feeling that MVC:I may be joining the unfinished state list depending on its launch content. I would argue that while I loved Splatoon, it's beginning state belongs on that list as well.
 
F

Fury451

Banned
I would say no legal and easy way to access the No One Lives Forever series is a tragedy. They're basically lost right now, and even Night Dive Studios hasn't brought them back, and they got fucking System Shock 2 out of limbo.

Perfect Dark Zero being a complete step back from the first game in every way and stalling out what could've been a Halo-level franchise. The first game was basically perfect.

Body Harvest never developing into a franchise.

Silent Hill being dead, and the HD re-releases being utter trash due to lost code (allegedly; Bluepoint Games apparently reverse-engineers the retail games and could've likely released great ports).

Also, I'm no Bioshock Infinite fan, but it didn't release in a sorry state. It was very polished and playable, it's just not anything like the concept trailers indicated it would be.
 
Whompa02

Whompa02

Member
- Project Enders is a fucking travesty and never happened due to Zone of the Enders HD Collection being a fucking terrible port.

- And as much as I enjoyed FFXV, which I did a lot, the Versus13 concepts look like a distant memory and much more interesting product in comparison...even if they were just concepts that never really took off. Far from "Worst Tragedies in Gaming History" though.

If you like this kind of depressing stuff, Unseen64 is a great archive of games that never got off the ground.
 
X

xDUMPWEEDx

Banned
Duke Nukem Forever was looking really good the first few times it was shown. The original version of the game was never released.
 
A

a Master Ninja

Member
Microsoft published Ninja Gaiden II (Xbox 360) was rushed out to go toe-to-toe with the PS3's MGS4, in addition to shenanigans that got Itagaki out the door. It clearly suffered from not having a few more months to polish the back half of the game and tweak enemies. It could have been better than Ninja Gaiden Black.
 
P

Philippo

Member
Final Fantasy Versus XIII.

tumblr_m1fyjp2LVY1r02zrho1_500.gif


tumblr_n2wm4nuk9Q1tupx5lo2_500.gif


glHffSR.gif


dBccPLN.gif
 
D

DMONKUMA

Junior Member
Whompa02 said:
- Project Enders is a fucking travesty and never happened due to Zone of the Enders HD Collection being a fucking terrible port.
Click to expand...

Yeah a true shame. If there is a fucking chance of this being revived it would be the equivalent of the FF7 Remake announcement for me.
 
G

GunBR

Member
Bioshock Infinite is a 9/10 for me, so I really disagree with the OT

And for me the worst are some licensed games from the PS2 era
Spiderman 2 is one of the best super hero games of all time and The Godfather is the best GTA-clone of all time, but they will never be released again because of licensing issues
 
C

Canucked

Member
Street Fighter V recovered a bit. And they're shockingly still supporting it.

A real tragedy is we will never see a port of the Ironman / XO Manowar crossover game.
 
T

Triforce141

Member
There were ALOT of unused ideas and content in Crash Twinsanity where it could've been up there with the original Naughty Dog trilogy if Traveller's Tales got more time to work on the game
 
H

Hylian7

Member
The-World-Ends-With-You-2-character.jpg


Let me educate you on the sad tale of a sequel that we were never 100% sure existed, but likely did and was cancelled.

The World Ends With You was an incredible game that came out on the DS. It had an extremely unique battle system, and many mechanics that separated it from RPGs out there. The story was great too. It was a fresh take on the genre. Unfortunately it's sales didn't seem to meet Square Enix's expectations.

Back in 2012, a countdown on the TWEWY website started. Now most people know the warning signs for a Square Enix countdown:

Kjwis9z.jpg


Many people, including myself, chose to ignore it and had high hopes for whatever this was. The countdown added new layers of a godlike remix of music from the game. Then we saw some concerning posts from Duckroll. It wasn't looking good.

About a day before the end of the countdown, the result was leaked. A new soundtrack was coming out, that was probably it.

Then the countdown ended and there was technically more to it, however not what people were hoping for. Instead it was an iOS version with a gimped version of the battle system. The soundtrack release was nice, and there was new music for the iOS version, but it was a still a huge letdown.

Then when people finished the iOS version and finished the secret boss, they were rewarded with the image at the top of this post. No explanation behind it, just there. It was clearly a teaser for what was likely a TWEWY sequel. This was all back in 2012. To this day we have heard nothing concrete on what happened to the TWEWY sequel. Many believe that it was silently cancelled. It's a damn tragedy that this sequel was likely cancelled, and even sadder that we never got to see any of it.
 
NOLA_Gaffer

NOLA_Gaffer

Banned
Sega's fate in the early 2000s.

It was their own fault, of course, but Sega was one of the few companies able to compete with Nintendo in the originality department. Sega's third party efforts held up for a few years but eventually fell apart and now they're basically a company that makes Sonic games and endlessly pushes their old IP via emulation.

I miss Jet Set Radio, Skies of Arcadia, Space Channel 5, Crazy Taxi, Chu Chu Rocket, Samba de Amigo, and so on. The really great Japanese-developed games that we don't see enough of these days.
 
F

Fury451

Banned
Opa-Pa said:
The missing story bits in MGS5 give a fantastic game a deeply disappointing and bizarre conclusion.
Click to expand...

This one is pretty true. The gameplay is fun, but everything else feels listless. Knowing more of what happened behind the scenes though, I guess it makes some sense.

Still, it's a story that will always feel incomplete.
 
R

randomengine

Banned
NOLA_Gaffer said:
Sega's fate in the early 2000s.

It was their own fault, of course, but Sega was one of the few companies able to compete with Nintendo in the originality department. Sega's third party efforts held up for a few years but eventually fell apart and now they're basically a company that makes Sonic games and endlessly pushes their old IP via emulation.

I miss Jet Set Radio, Skies of Arcadia, Space Channel 5, Crazy Taxi, Chu Chu Rocket, Samba de Amigo, and so on. The really great Japanese-developed games that we don't see enough of these days.
Click to expand...

You are absolutely right! I think the lost of an entire publisher is enough to create a new category!
 
E

ElectricBlanketFire

Member
As far as my own personal tragedy: Not being able to legally purchase a digital copy of Pilotwings 64 for over 10 years now since the existence of the VC/eShop.
 
D

daveo42

Banned
ElectricBlanketFire said:
This...seems pretty close to what we got?
Click to expand...

We got the rail riding, but not nearly as open as in the gameplay or reveal trailers. As for Elizabeth's role, her impact during combat was severely limited in how her abilities could be applied and mostly was there to throw shit at you when you needed it. Personally I found the game fun, but ultimately disappointing after stepping away from it. The back third of the game lasted too long and the ending was just a bunch of timey-wimey bs to make everything else work.

It's not a bad game, but it's no where near as good a game as it should have been.
 
T

Toxi

Banned
The first category is far more interesting than the other two. I didn't realize they didn't even have the source code for Panzer Dragoon Saga.
 
L

LinkSlayer64

Member
There's another thread about games that'll never be recovered. I think it specifically mentioned some Korean games that would never be found due to disconnect of communication, and other things. if I find it, I'll link it, but it genuinely made me sad to think some game someone loves may never be found again.
 
I

Imp the Dimp

Member
Generalpsyduck said:
Prey 2 being cancelled
Click to expand...
The actual Prey 2 is, like, one of the best slow-paced FPS since STALKER. What are the odds the cancelled Prey incarnation would have been better than this? There honestly zero reason to lament the cancellation of that game given how good the actual sequel we got is. Hell, Prey 1 was completely average. There was no reason for Prey 2 to turn out this fucking good.
 
Y

yanipheonu

Member
Surprised MGSV hasn't gotten a post yet. Released in an unfinished form, and its essentially the end of the series at this point.

And don't get me wrong, I love Phantom Pain, but it's still clearly unfinished.

Survive, while clearly a spin-off, inspires no confidence they can continue the series after Kojima's departure. Could be argued the series is essentially dead
 
A

ActWan

Member
Silent Hills will always be #1 for me. It was really too good to be true...
MGSV sure does hurt, but I adore what Kojima has managed to do despite the cut content.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Felix the Cat & Rocket Knight re-release collections coming to Switch and PlayStation via Limited Run Games
News
35
2K
PanzerCute replied
  • Poll
Rate The Game Awards 2023
News 2 3
107
5K
Shakka43 replied
The most exciting games you'll never get to play
38
3K
Krappadizzle replied
Hideo Kojima or a cult game designer and his story
Game Dev
40
6K
brian0057 replied
10 Best Dogs In Video Game History
Opinion
35
2K
phil_t98 replied
Top Bottom