10 Cancelled Video Games You Won't Believe Were In Development

What could have been.

Batman Gotham By Gaslight
Warner Bros. Home Entertainment

Do you ever sit and get melancholy for the past, wondering what might’ve been? Things that could’ve changed your life for the better, if only you’d have followed through?

If you’d only said yes to going on that date to see Shrek with Bernadette from Sunday school.

If only you’d said yes to that second mashed potato sandwich. Yes, I’m aware that I’ve already had three and that my potato-impacted intestines hurt, but another one would have absolutely made me happier.

Gaming is no different. The pain we feel from realising we could’ve had something so beautiful, but, tragically, it wasn’t meant to be. As we play our rubbish new games that actually did release (boo!), we think about all those resplendent titles that would never come to be, and feel their thorns forever aching on our analogue-stick fingers.

And no, I’m not going to mention Scalebound. Not once. Okay, so, that once, but not again. That dead horse (wyvern?) has been beaten so thoroughly that it’s practically a mythological beast smoothie.

Instead, there are plenty more to get stuck into.

10. Time Crisis Adventure

Batman Gotham By Gaslight
Namco

You’re at the bowling. You’ve got an overpriced beer, and tried to win a dodgy Spongebob knockoff out of one of those crooked crane games. All that’s left to do is pull the sticky lightgun from its scuffed-to-hell holsters, and play a bit of Time Crisis.

Time Crisis is one of those games that I tend to forget exists, until I see it again and I just have to play it (so I put in a pound coin, get killed in about five minutes, and insist I’m never playing such a rigged game again).

And yet, not once have I thought to myself, “Time Crisis would be ten times better and far less transient an experience... if it was a third-person action adventure”.

Yet, that’s precisely what Darkworks and Namco had intended for it - to release Time Crisis in a more story-focused, adventure format, where the player could really get to know the series’ heroes in a situation other than firing a bright pink handgun at a huge, cracked CRT with the volume turned up way too loud.

The strangest thing, however, is that the game seemed to disappear into obscurity whilst another game - Cold Fear - appeared with a very similar framework to what was initially intended for Time Crisis Adventure. Having found a new publisher in Ubisoft, we can either speculate that the IP wasn’t on the table, or that they just wanted to head in a less established direction.

All I know is, I would’ve loved to have seen an Uncharted-style adventure where my partner would screech “RE-RE-RE-RELOAD!” every few seconds.

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Hiya, you lot! I'm Tommy, a 39-year-old game developer from Scotland - I live on the East coast in an adorable beachside village. I've worked on Need for Speed, Cake Bash, Tom Clancy's The Division, Driver San Francisco, Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise, Kameo 2 and much more. I enjoy a pun and, of course, suffer fools gladly! Join me on Twitter at @TotoMimoTweets for more opinion diarrhoea.