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Game cancellations due to major mess ups?
- Thread starter -SD-
- Start date
Shao Kahn Brewing a Stew
Banned
Game had gone gold. There are quite a few leaked copies out there. Final game is completely broken though.Josh7289 said:
oh I forgot Tengen's Tetris for NES
It was recalled because Mirrorsoft sold them the tetris license for consoles, but in reality Mirrorsoft didn't have it to sell it. Also the Tengen version had a 2P mode which nintendo's doesn't
http://classicgaming.gamespy.com/View.php?view=GameMuseum.Detail&id=281
It was recalled because Mirrorsoft sold them the tetris license for consoles, but in reality Mirrorsoft didn't have it to sell it. Also the Tengen version had a 2P mode which nintendo's doesn't
http://classicgaming.gamespy.com/View.php?view=GameMuseum.Detail&id=281
HammerOfThor
Member
Wasnt there a Final Fantasy game that got canceled because the devs wouldnt fax the source code to SE?
djplaeskool
Member
HammerOfThor said:
I thought most of that stuff was debunked by (then) ex-GRIN employees because all that fluff being reported was due to someone machine translating a Swedish article about the studio closure. Still had somewhat of a falling out, but not to such a ridiculous degree.
PinkCrayon
Member
starcraft ghost. damn that game looked cool.
The urban legends about the internal politics of SEGA are always hilariously inaccurate regardless of whether it's blaming SoJ or whether it's blaming SoA. People believe whatever suits their misconceptions, I guess.
As for the topic, Opa worked on a port from the Genesis/SNES days...
As for the topic, Opa worked on a port from the Genesis/SNES days...
shadyspace
Banned
Yes. It had more to do with this than the DD (though that certainly was a factor).MoogPaul said:
Lovegooder
Banned
Frame City Killer
-True Fantasy Live Online, by Level-5 for XBox. If anybody has the whole story behind this title... that would be interesting. The game looked great!
-Same thing for Cry On, from Mistawalker. The game looked great and had some nice ideas (http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=77289) but got cancelled...
-Same thing for Cry On, from Mistawalker. The game looked great and had some nice ideas (http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=77289) but got cancelled...
Raging Spaniard
If they are Dutch, upright and breathing they are more racist than your favorite player
Not gonna disclose the full details because I, um, cant, but during my time at a certain industry giant we were working on what was gonna be an awesome Wii game. We hired a shitload of awesome people and got 4 months of solid work done for it, things were going great.
Then, we got word that our project was getting moved. Not cancelled, moved. Why? Because according to the higher ups, there was another studio in the company that had no projects going on, and we were gonna give them a hand by giving the entire project to them.
Our thoughts were that hey, eventhough they're a horrible fit for this particular game, we have a lot of work done that they can use and hopefully it'll be awesome, right?
Wrong, they started from scratch, threw away everything we did and the game was cancelled less than a year later.
Then, we got word that our project was getting moved. Not cancelled, moved. Why? Because according to the higher ups, there was another studio in the company that had no projects going on, and we were gonna give them a hand by giving the entire project to them.
Our thoughts were that hey, eventhough they're a horrible fit for this particular game, we have a lot of work done that they can use and hopefully it'll be awesome, right?
Wrong, they started from scratch, threw away everything we did and the game was cancelled less than a year later.
Vulcano's assistant
Banned
Shiggy said:
IceDoesntHelp said:
ThanksGoldrusher said:
That is becuase it is NOT right. They used the Nights engine for EVERYTHING but the boss battles. The boss battles were a completely original idea made by them. It used a weird fisheye effect and the stage rotated. After the team was ordered to stop using the Nights engine and come up with their own the SOJ Pres came to see what they had. They did not have much and the Pres was furious, with the exception of the boss battles. The SOJ Pres liked the effect so much he ordered that the WHOLE game use it.KageMaru said:
Hitoribhoshi
Member
Reveirg said:
OMG THIS LOOKED HOT!
Zuhzuhzombie!!
Member
Shiggy said:Project Offset.
They had no hierarchical team structures and thus the development process was unstructured and lacked direction. It's no surprise that neither NamcoBandai nor Intel wanted to fund the studio any further.
Intel cancelled Project Offset because it was designed around their horrible and also cancelled GPU.
SatelliteOfLove
Member
Madden 96 for PSX
Iirc, the team were treating each player partially like sprites; as in painting up completely different models for EACH of the teams instead of using textures.
Iirc, the team were treating each player partially like sprites; as in painting up completely different models for EACH of the teams instead of using textures.
JennyTablina
Member
In the case of Sonic Xtreme, the entire development was an absolute shambles, the NiGHT's engine was just a near final nail in it's coffin
(all title links go to the titles respective entries on the Sonic Retro wiki, credit goes to them for the info and images)
Sonic-16 (1993)
In 1993 STI were tasked with coming up with the next major title in the Sonic series after "Sonic and Knuckles" - originally started on the Mega Drive/Genesis - this was only one of the many swaps the project made on the way to Saturn
The title was based around the "SatAM" series, with characters such as Sally Acorn appearing in-game. However the project did not go beyond it's proof of concept
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lb9jH6tCf10
Apparently this was sent to Sega of Japan and rejected by Yuji Naka, so STI tried once again to kick start a Sonic project...
Sonic Isometic Game (untitled) (???)
Originally the project started as a proper Sonic title by STI for the Mega Drive, only a single concept piece exists of that.
It was going to be a isometric platformer but never got anywhere, this was made before Sonic 3D was released according to Chris Senn (who released most of the Xtreme details available and made this concept art piece)
Sonic Mars (1994)
Named Sonic Mars after the systems original code name. Some animation and proof of concept art was made, and a script was put together that even in an early stage included Tiara Boobwiski and her father. During the course of the project the Saturday Morning series elements (which had been carried forward from Sonic-16) were dropped.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHLqSAoE0bk
The title was cancelled, presumably due to the poor sales and quick death of the 32X and moved onto SEGA's next gen platform
Sonic Xtreme
Sonic Xtreme started out initially developed for SoA's Cartridge based system (which they were putting forward as a candidate for the new Next-Gen system, against SoJ's disc based system) - the project soon was moved over to SoJ's system, the Saturn
Chris Senn, who had taken charge of the Mars project when the original lead designer left, was also cast as leader for the Xtreme project. With Ofer Alon's team creating the main engine of the game, and Chris Coffin in a second team creating a seperate engine for boss encounters. This in itself caused issues, with communication issues hindering progress
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftNgzZ3Ovig (video of the gameplay engine)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HE9FIrMtuuE (video with various images of the Boss engine with a remix of the boss theme for the game)
To begin with the gameplay engine for Xtreme was wholly unique (the fish eye lens one) , however while the engine ported okay between Mac and PC, the engine suffered major performance issues on the Saturn, causing a major slowdown on the project. STI management intervened, and outsourced the gameplay programming to another company. However the 3rd party opted to use an older version of the engine to port, rather than an updated one. Ofer continued to develop his engine further
STI showed the 3rd party presentation behind the developing teams back, the results were not favourable to SEGA Japan, and they didn't bother looking at the updated presentation the actual team had built as a result. Then-president Nakayama pointed to Chris Coffin's boss engine and told STI to make the entire game like that instead. However because the Boss engine wasn't designed for gameplay (and because it shared some similarity with the NiGHT's open world engine) - the team asked then-CEO of Sega America, Bernie Stolar to arrange a copy of the NiGHTS engine to be delevered to them - which arrived days later. However Yuji Naka was not informed of the request, and threatened to quit if SEGA did not deny the team use of the engine.
However they were still under pressure to deliver Sonic Xtreme for Christmas 1996 so the Team started over. Working all day and all night on the project till the main programmer - Chris Coffin, fell ill with pneumonia - doctors telling he had weeks to live if he continued working day and night on the project The Saturn project was indefinitely delayed, with an enhanced port of Sonic 3D rushed to the Christmas market in it's place
Chris Senn and Ofer Alon would try to give the project one last stab, by offering the title to SEGA's PC division, as Ofer's engine ran without issue on systems without need for porting. However the PC division turned it down, opting for safer and cheaper ports
TL;DR The project moved Mega Drive, to 32x, to Neptune, and finally to Saturn. Was killed by SEGA management ineptitude, and a direct victim of the political war waged between Sega America and Sega Japan. The only reason the team quit is because getting the game finished would of literally killed them. Even the PC division turned it down, killing the project entirely. Resulting in Sonic 3D for Saturn
(all title links go to the titles respective entries on the Sonic Retro wiki, credit goes to them for the info and images)
Sonic-16 (1993)
In 1993 STI were tasked with coming up with the next major title in the Sonic series after "Sonic and Knuckles" - originally started on the Mega Drive/Genesis - this was only one of the many swaps the project made on the way to Saturn
The title was based around the "SatAM" series, with characters such as Sally Acorn appearing in-game. However the project did not go beyond it's proof of concept
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lb9jH6tCf10
Apparently this was sent to Sega of Japan and rejected by Yuji Naka, so STI tried once again to kick start a Sonic project...
Sonic Isometic Game (untitled) (???)
Originally the project started as a proper Sonic title by STI for the Mega Drive, only a single concept piece exists of that.
It was going to be a isometric platformer but never got anywhere, this was made before Sonic 3D was released according to Chris Senn (who released most of the Xtreme details available and made this concept art piece)
Sonic Mars (1994)
Named Sonic Mars after the systems original code name. Some animation and proof of concept art was made, and a script was put together that even in an early stage included Tiara Boobwiski and her father. During the course of the project the Saturday Morning series elements (which had been carried forward from Sonic-16) were dropped.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHLqSAoE0bk
The title was cancelled, presumably due to the poor sales and quick death of the 32X and moved onto SEGA's next gen platform
Sonic Xtreme
Sonic Xtreme started out initially developed for SoA's Cartridge based system (which they were putting forward as a candidate for the new Next-Gen system, against SoJ's disc based system) - the project soon was moved over to SoJ's system, the Saturn
Chris Senn, who had taken charge of the Mars project when the original lead designer left, was also cast as leader for the Xtreme project. With Ofer Alon's team creating the main engine of the game, and Chris Coffin in a second team creating a seperate engine for boss encounters. This in itself caused issues, with communication issues hindering progress
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftNgzZ3Ovig (video of the gameplay engine)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HE9FIrMtuuE (video with various images of the Boss engine with a remix of the boss theme for the game)
To begin with the gameplay engine for Xtreme was wholly unique (the fish eye lens one) , however while the engine ported okay between Mac and PC, the engine suffered major performance issues on the Saturn, causing a major slowdown on the project. STI management intervened, and outsourced the gameplay programming to another company. However the 3rd party opted to use an older version of the engine to port, rather than an updated one. Ofer continued to develop his engine further
STI showed the 3rd party presentation behind the developing teams back, the results were not favourable to SEGA Japan, and they didn't bother looking at the updated presentation the actual team had built as a result. Then-president Nakayama pointed to Chris Coffin's boss engine and told STI to make the entire game like that instead. However because the Boss engine wasn't designed for gameplay (and because it shared some similarity with the NiGHT's open world engine) - the team asked then-CEO of Sega America, Bernie Stolar to arrange a copy of the NiGHTS engine to be delevered to them - which arrived days later. However Yuji Naka was not informed of the request, and threatened to quit if SEGA did not deny the team use of the engine.
However they were still under pressure to deliver Sonic Xtreme for Christmas 1996 so the Team started over. Working all day and all night on the project till the main programmer - Chris Coffin, fell ill with pneumonia - doctors telling he had weeks to live if he continued working day and night on the project The Saturn project was indefinitely delayed, with an enhanced port of Sonic 3D rushed to the Christmas market in it's place
Chris Senn and Ofer Alon would try to give the project one last stab, by offering the title to SEGA's PC division, as Ofer's engine ran without issue on systems without need for porting. However the PC division turned it down, opting for safer and cheaper ports
TL;DR The project moved Mega Drive, to 32x, to Neptune, and finally to Saturn. Was killed by SEGA management ineptitude, and a direct victim of the political war waged between Sega America and Sega Japan. The only reason the team quit is because getting the game finished would of literally killed them. Even the PC division turned it down, killing the project entirely. Resulting in Sonic 3D for Saturn
EmCeeGramr
Member
Oh come on, you can't post this without some kind of hint.Raging Spaniard said:
Sgt.Pepper
Banned
Why does this hurt so fucking much?Boney said:
KageMaru said:
If I remember correctly, it was cancelled due to contract issues otherwise there would be no point in cancelling it as most of the money was spent on the production of it anyway (i.e. the developers lost a lot of money).
I'm trying to remember the name, but there was this amazing racing game that supposed to be released by Acclaim before they went bust. The demo was released on official Xbox magazine and the graphics at the time was awesome too. I don't remember the name though but I know I still got the demo disk somewhere. What a pity that the game wasn't picked up elsewhere because it was awesome.
The Frankman
Banned
I wrote a demo review on NBA Elite 11 back in the day. To think Jesus Bynum died for EA's sins...
Manos: The Hans of Fate
Banned
The dev still owns the rights and you can see some gameplay footage on youtube, not the cgi trailer. Its his account I'll look for the link when I get home.-SD- said:
Suckiest thing was it had this GREAT PR setup with news and updates till the world went nuts and it became like an Emergency site. Really nicely done.
Hitoribhoshi said:
Still want this to come out.
If we are going to do this, there is B.C. for X-box as well. Peter announced it, and Fable released and nothing after that, IIRC.
"The Unseen" isn't a major fuck up, but it was printed in advertising materials for the OG X-box (which I still have a copy of) and nothing after that.
shadyspace
Banned
I might be the only dude alive who still would have preferred Mother 3 on the N64.Stylo said:Earthbound 64. The team simply didn't have enough knowledge of 3D graphics and how to fix the bugs so they pulled the plug
Syracuse022
Member
Myth II had a bug that would wipe your hard drive when you uninstalled it. Bungie recalled all of the offending disks.
TheChewyWaffles
Member
InertiaXr said:
Had zero impact on the development cycle of HL 2.
DiipuSurotu
Banned
Indiana Jones and the Iron Phoenix
The only positive collaboration between SoJ and SoA I've heard of, from that era, was Die Hard Arcade. Supposedly the Naka incident was par for the course because of some weird rivalry/animosity between the two branches. Minor note, but I also heard part of the reason the Sonic Xtreme/Mars engine chugged was because they wouldn't get rid of polygons that could not be seen by the player. Either it wasn't possible and would create a bug or someone had a weird philosophy about just not deleting those faces (or it's just bullshit that I am mixing up with another story).
Fahrenheit
Banned
Disaster Report 4 looked so awesome.
cj_iwakura
Member
Fear Effect Inferno was the greatest loss.
FloppyDelux
Member
Sgt.Pepper said:
cause you wanted as much as the next person
Dr Zhivago
Member
Was this the Lamborghini game?Trojan X said:
A Black Falcon
Member
That's part of the story, but as has been said, it's even worse than that.BiggNife said:
First, there were several canned Sonic projects conceived at Sega of America, after the one they did release, Sonic Spinball (though some of their staff did work on Sonic 2 too, along with Japanese staff, Spinball was the entirely American one). One of these is a side view isometric game based on the Sonic cartoon series. This didn't get accepted.
Then, the idea to do a bigger project on 32X instead came up. That version of the game saw some development too. Here's footage of the 32X pitch demo version. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdFhXyRFJAM Another video of what I think is the 32X version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_DQfU0qJWg For a 32X game, it looks pretty good. Polygonal graphics too. But the 32X faded quickly, so that version was abandoned.
Instead of the 32X, it was moved over to Saturn and redesigned. Two separate teams were working on the game, one working just on boss fights, the other one the levels. Both were internally designed engines. One group worked on the main level engine, which had a fish-eye lens and rotating style that sort of looks like a modified version of the Bug! engine but is different. The other was working on the boss-fight engine. Then, in March '96, some Sega of Japan execs came to the US to see the game. They decided that they didn't like the levels engine and to redo the whole game in the bossfight engine. Problem is, they didn't actually see the newest version of the levels engine -- just an older one that did indeed have problems. Never mind that the newer version of the levels engine was much improved, they had to ditch it and redo the whole thing. So, the two people working on the levels engine were moved to other projects (which never went anywhere either I believe, mostly), while just the one group was left working on X-Treme. Another team was supposed to be helping them, but got little done.
Here's a video of the Saturn, fisheye-lens levels version of the game. http://youtu.be/6IOd0mQ-uXE
The game was shown at E3, with levels done in what had been the boss engine, by that team. Here's level footage from E3 '96: http://youtu.be/eQZJVhYA_wc Here's a bossfight. Only a second or two of it are in the video though. http://youtube.be/ga0zttflicI
Then, at some point, that programmer saw and liked the NiGHTS engine, so she (on that note, some articles about X-Treme like Lost Levels and IGN's incorrectly call Chris Coffin (the "bosses engine" and then main programmer) male, but that's wrong, her full name is Christina; the other Chris, Chris Senn, who worked on the original levels version, is male) decided to use it, and got Bernie Stolar to get the engine from Japan. Once Yuji Naka heard, he got very angry and threatened to quit unless they stopped using it, so they lost several weeks of work. Then, after far too many months of 16-hour workdays (trying hard to get the game done that year, redoing all the main levels with the boss engine), Coffin got sick and the game couldn't make Christmas. Sega decided to port their Genesis game to be released that year (1996), Sonic 3D Blast, to the Saturn instead of pushing X-Treme to '97.
Here's footage from a level in what is probably the NiGHTS engine version. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VW_Pd-PTAtM This version has actually leaked out, but that video shows all there is to the demo.
Meanwhile, the two people who had made the levels engine didn't give up right away. Instead, on their own they'd kept working on it as a PC game. Sega didn't go for it, though, so that too ended up canned. In more recent years Chris Senn came back and with community help did some more work on this, but I'm not certain where the project stands now.
Thanks for these details, I forgot about the specifics for this part.JennyTablina said:
See my post above, there are longer videos of that game out there than the one you link. I think the 32X should never have been released (horrible mistake), but given that it was, it's too bad it didn't get good software support like this project... looks fun.
Other things I've read put Senn as working with Alon, not as overall lead... or did he team up with Alon later, once the decision to go with the other engine for the whole game happened?
This is a repost of Sonic Retro's post, which, as I said in my post above, is one of the many to get Chris Coffin's gender wrong... apart from that though, it's mostly right. Other problems with that other than the gender one is that I think that Senn and Alon had actually been working on the PC version on their own for a while, before bringing it to the PC division; it wasn't something they just came up with at the last minute. Also, looking at footage of the boss engine, I don't think that Coffin wanted the NiGHTS engine just because they're similar. Honestly the boss engine's more like the 32X engine than it is NiGHTS, in some ways... no, that it was because the boss engine wasn't optimized for levels, and that the NiGHTS engine was pretty good, was probably the main reasons why she wanted the NiGHTS engine in the game. And looking at that NiGHTS engine test stage, I can see why, it does work well.
And yes, the game definitely was a direct victim of the war between Sega of Japan and Sega of America, no question. With Sega of America in charge it would probably have been released. It's too bad it wasn't. The game certainly wouldn't have saved the Saturn or something like that, but it'd probably have been a fun game and would have helped it a little.
I would still buy Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans and Starcraft Ghost, if they were released...Hitoribhoshi said:oh and this>
Contract issues? What contract issues? A PS2 version was released, later that year, it can't be something about console versions... I always heard that it was because Sierra decided that they'd lose money shipping it because it was 2001 and the Dreamcast was dying, so they canned it instead of releasing it even though it was essentially finished. A lot of DC games were cancelled in 2001, after all. Most weren't that complete, but even so a lot of games were cancelled. And yeah, it is too bad, because apart from the long load times and lack of multiplayer, it's a great port. Apparently, Blue Shift actually started out specifically for the Dreamcast version, the PC version of it came later... same goes for the enhanced models that come with Blue Shift.Trojan X said:
One Acclaim racing game was picked up and released, after they went under. It was that "tuner-style" one, Street Racing Syndicate I think. I don't remember this one, though, but yeah, there were some other Acclaim games not picked up.
djplaeskool
Member
NBA Elite 11 takes the crown.
Andrew Bynum died for our sins.
Andrew Bynum died for our sins.