Hype is a funny old thing in the games industry - an industry which is, simultaneously, extremely fickle. Games gets cancelled all the time, at various points in their development. The title might not be going in the direction the makers envisioned, they might run out money, it might turn out the initial idea wasn't as bankable as they expected. It gets canned. It happens plenty with movies, books, and really all other forms of media (there are stacks of unfinished paintings by the great masters in archives around the world, even). The difference in video games is that, with the hype machine starting up so early into a game's development - that's just the nature of the industry - we're often made aware of titles that never see the light of day. In fact not only are we aware of them, we're encouraged to get excited about them. So even when a game's only so far along to reveal a couple of screenshots, or even just a logo, the PR department is working overtime to make sure you're pumped to play it. Which leaves even more people than just the developers crestfallen when a title gets cancelled, for whatever legitimate (or illegitimate, depending on how sympathetic you are to the way the games industry works) reason. We're left the wealth of pre-releases information about how ace it was going to be, possibly even having seen trailer or played a hands-on demo in rare cases, but the actual games? We will never, ever get to play them. It's even worse nowadays with the constant churn of updates from online magazines and blogs, and the long-lost titles never being forgotten thanks to footage that's always within reach on YouTube, or detailed articles on any number of websites dedicated to cancelled projects. In some cases fortune smiles on the internet, and the source code to a lost title is leaked through file-sharing sites, letting us get our grubby hands on things that would otherwise have disappeared into the ether. For every uncovered title, however, there are dozens that nobody will manage to boot up. Ever. These are ten such amazing video games you'll never get to play.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
