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100% complete unreleased games

Now that Star Fox 2 is coming for the SNES Classic Mini and is a +20 years old cancelled title that never saw the day of light even being 100% complete at the time of decision, there are more titles on this same status? (Complete but unreleased)

As far as I remember, Half-Life for Dreamcast was completed but never released as well. So I read on a thread that Marble Madness 2 for NES was cancelled despite being finished and ready for release.

It's very likely that Wii U version of Alien: Colonial Marines was finished after being pulled off on the eve of it's release, as the cancellation annoucement said it was "indefinitely postponed."

There are more examples of games under this situation?
 
Thrill Kill is one. The game was finished, but EA bought Virgin and decided that they didn't want to publish a game that violent because they thought it would hurt their image, so they canned it.
 

The Dink

Member
FF II on the NES? I believe that one was ready but they wanted to push the SNES right?
Mother aka Earthbound Beginnings was also complete but never released.
Although both of these...haven't aged well...

Edit: Oh wait, completely unreleased anywhere. Ugh. Ignore me. Thrill Kill then? That one was ready right?
 

B_Signal

Member
Propeller Arena on the Dreamcast. A leaked version got out which I remember being a little choppy, but it seemed a good game
 

c0de

Member
Thrill Kill is one. The game was finished, but EA bought Virgin and decided that they didn't want to publish a game that violent because they thought it would hurt their image, so they canned it.

I don't think it was finished. I played the version that was leaked and clearly there were man hours left to finish the game.
 
Propeller Arena for the Dreamcast

maxresdefault.jpg
 

petran79

Banned
There was an arcade port of Bubble Bobble 2 for the Playstation 1. There is a working version with glitches


Also Tiny Toon Adventures:Defenders of the Universe.Can be played on modded PS2 and emulators. Developed by Treasure.Most likely cancelled due to financial issues by the publisher.
 

DogDude

Member
Wasn't there a baseball game developed for GameCube that was finished but never released because MLB 2K or whatever came out instead?
Yes. Pennant Chase Baseball. It was completed. Since Nintendo has an awesome history with baseball games, I would have loved to seen this.
 
According to rumors over the years DeeDeePlanet for the Dreamcast was 100% complete and shipped out until it was pulled at the last minute due to a huge networking bug. Allegedly retailers were told to send the copies back


The game still hasn't surfaced, and no media either other than the promotional material pre release


https://youtube.com/watch?v=Vv5qGfl-b9s


Its confirmed that SoA has a copy of the game laying around in their archives

One of the coolest looking games ever
 

Garraboa

Member
Quoting myself from another thread

I can think of two holy grails still in Nintendo's possession. Bound High and Dragon Hopper. Those were finished, DH even reviewed by Nintendo Power and BH leaked a while ago. But those are Virtual Boy titles, so their demand wouldn't nearly be as high. Unless Nintendo releases a Virtual Boy Classic with them bundled, lol.
 

deadduck

Member
3D lemmings for PS2 (kinda 2.5d) which Picturehouse developed at the same time as another team just made STD lemmings. Sony cancelled it at 90% and just released STD lemmings.
 
According to rumors over the years DeeDeePlanet for the Dreamcast was 100% complete and shipped out until it was pulled at the last minute due to a huge networking bug. Allegedly retailers were told to send the copies back


The game still hasn't surfaced, and no media either other than the promotional material pre release


https://youtube.com/watch?v=Vv5qGfl-b9s


Its confirmed that SoA has a copy of the game laying around in their archives

One of the coolest looking games ever


Oh yeah, I forgot about this game too. The Dreamcast has quite a few unreleased games.

Gunvalkyrie was also apparently completed for the Dreamcast but was cancelled due to the surprise death of the system. They had to port the game Xbox.


user_2_gunvalkyrie_dreamcast_cover.jpg
 

RetroGameAudio

Neo Member
There's an unreleased Erik the Viking NES game that was apparently almost completely finished. No one even has a prototype of it, we only know about it because Neil Baldwin (one of the devs) wrote about it-

http://dutycyclegenerator.com/

Here's an excerpt on it-
We were producing the game for the now-defunct Japanese publisher, Video Systems and had pretty much completed the whole game. However, geographical and language problems made the testing and bug-finding phase frustratingly difficult. We were almost solely reliant on the publisher finding bugs/issues simply because there was only 4 of us trying to deliver this fairly large and complicated game and as we didn't speak Japanese and they didn't speak much English, it made for an interesting process. Even I had to get involved in map building and putting together trigger/behaviour scripts for the game's events as well as writing all the music. It was all good fun though and the last version of the game that we submitted to the publisher was in great shape and actually good fun to play!

However, things ground to a halt as the shared frustration of trying to communicate bugs and issues led to a breakdown of the relationship with the publisher and we parted ways with the game destined for the scrap-heap. Sad, really, as neither party actually did anything wrong and both sides were enthusiastic about the game until the end. I remember a particularly funny communication from them right at the end that simply said "There are bugs. Please fix them."

He did salvage the soundtrack though, which is some top notch stuff for the NES.
 

jeremy1456

Junior Member
So many that ended up on PS2/Xbox/GC when DC went down too.

Always wondered if SoulCalibur 2, Sonic Heroes, Billy Hatcher, Jet Set Radio Future started out on DC 🤔

With how late those were released I highly doubt it.

I do however bet that Super Monkey Ball was being ported to the Dreamcast.
 
So many that ended up on PS2/Xbox/GC when DC went down too.

Always wondered if SoulCalibur 2, Sonic Heroes, Billy Hatcher, Jet Set Radio Future started out on DC 🤔

I edited my previous post with Gunvalkyrie, I have heard rumors that it was 100% complete. I also heard some stories that Super Monkey Ball may have been finished on the Dreamcast as well.
 

Brandon F

Well congratulations! You got yourself caught!
Dragon Quest 4 (PS1) - I believe this was pretty much ready to launch when suddenly Arte Piazza and Enix USA kind of closed shop leaving this one to never launch(until Nintendo and DS stepped in many years later). May be off on the details and whether the localization was truly that far along though...

Propeller Arena on the Dreamcast. A leaked version got out which I remember being a little choppy, but it seemed a good game

9/11 pretty much killed this release. Then the DC died soon after confirming it would never see the light of day sadly.
 
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