10 Crowdfunded Video Games That Never Saw The Light Of Day
5. Kung Fu Superstar: Become The Ultimate Martial Arts Stuntman
Goal: £200,000
– Raised: £94,010
Spearheaded by Kostas Zarifis – a former employee of Lionhead Studios – Kung Fu Superstar: Become the Ultimate Martial Arts Stuntman was a disappointment, failing to raise the necessary funding to jumpstart the project back in 2012.
Endorsed by Peter Molineux himself, the game was planned to utilise motion controls aimed at teaching genuine martial arts techniques, transferring those techniques to players through gameplay.
As the creator of the project, Zarifis attributed its failure to motion controls, suggesting that “hardcore” gamers hated the very prospect of motion controls because of previous disappoints such as Rise of Nightmares, Steel Battalion and Star Wars: Kinect.
In reality, Kung Fu Superstar simply struggled to find an audience, and never sold the concept to a more general audience. That, and the endorsement from Molineux probably did more harm than good.
In the end, despite several efforts to salvage the project, Kung Fu Superstar was unsuccessful in raising even half the necessary funding, dooming it to oblivion. Who knows? Maybe – had the project been successful – motion controls might not have died such a premature death.