10 Awesome Cancelled Video Games From Famous Franchises

Couldn't we have gotten Star Wars 1313 instead of Battlefront?

Star wars 1313
Disney

The biggest franchises in video games may sometimes look like unstoppable machines that devour everything in their path, as they churn out big title after big title without any restraint or resistance.

But making a game a reality is a process with a thousand pitfalls, often resulting in hugely promising big-name games never making it to our screens. 

Whether through falling into development or publishing hell, or by, errr, the developer not knowing how to use the controller for its console (nope, that's no joke, you'll see), we've missed out on a whole slew of promising titles over the years.

This is a place where we solemnly bow our heads to 10 games that were meant to mark the pinnacle of their given franchises, but were regrettably cancelled.

10. Metroid 64

Star wars 1313
Nintendo

One of the most iconic and recurrent franchises belonging to Nintendo has appeared on all of the company's home consoles - all except one.

Being Nintendo's first console endowed with proper 3D graphics, the N64 came at that awkward time where it wasn't fashionable to make 2D games anymore, but really tough to make good 3D ones. Although Nintendo purportedly looked to take on Rare as a developer for Samus' 64-bit outing, Rare are thought to have turned down the offer, going on to make the suspiciously Metroid-like Jet Force Gemini instead.

Metroid creator Yoshio Sakamoto said that he didn't work on the game because he "couldn't imagine how the N64 controller could be used to move Samus around". This lead to but a mere prototype for the game being made by Toru Osawa, and what you see above is one of the precious few images of it in existence.

Sadly, that's as far as an N64-exclusive Super Metroid got.

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Contributor

Gamer, Researcher of strange things. I'm a writer-editor hybrid whose writings on video games, technology and movies can be found across the internet. I've even ventured into the realm of current affairs on occasion but, unable to face reality, have retreated into expatiating on things on screens instead.