15 Iconic Video Games That Almost Turned Out Completely Different

By Scott Tailford / September 23, 2016

The major problem with the gaming industry in 2015 is a total lack of originality, especially when it comes to the triple-A scene. When Zelda's big push for a 'new mechanic' is a 'My First Open-World Game' look defined by "See that? Go there!" gameplay, you know the alarm bells are ringing. It wasn't always this way - sure the whole 'money dictates all' thing has always been a factor - but when you didn't need to cough up a few million to render a decent-looking game world, it meant said design could undergo a great many alterations and skin-changes across development. This results in a slew of titles from across the years where although their final forms are still recognised and championed accordingly, they're nothing like what was originally shown to the public, providing gasps of the mind-blowing variety whenever developers reveal what direction a project was originally heading in. Plenty of these throwaway ideas or initial concepts would fly more than ever today - especially when we're consumed by enough zombie and action titles to feel like it's an actual advancing horde baying for our blood-soaked cash - so maybe the prolific teams behind these creations will some day Frankenstein the best of their rest into being, given enough time.