Retro Gaming Australia

Japanese translation blog Yomuka has posted an English version of the three way interview between Shigeru Miyamoto, Satoru Iwata (then HAL Laboratory President) and Mother series creator Shigesato Itoi which was posted not long after the official announcement of the cancellation of the Nintendo 64 version of Mother 3 (known to us as Earthbound 64).

The interview is long, but goes into a lot of detail about where the game was at, what was going wrong with it and why the cancellation occurred.

It’s a fascinating read.

Yu Suzuki, producer and director of the well-loved Shenmue and Shenmue II, is apparently considering using Kickstarter to fund the development of Shenmue III.

Sebastien-Abdelhamid, a French TV reporter, met with Suzuki at the Monaco Anime Game Show. Following their conversation, he tweeted about Suzuki’s interest in a possible Kickstarter project to fund Shenmue III and in creating an anime or manga to conclude the Shenmue story. So, if Shenmue III were to become a reality, it might not be the long-awaited game many fans are desperate for.

Shenmue III was planned for release – its development was even announced a couple of times, but the projects were ultimately cancelled. In 2011, Suzuki indicated that Sega would likely permit him to make Shenmue III, however budget was a issue to overcome. The following year, Suzuki hinted that he can acquire the rights to Shenmue . The recent revelation of a potential crowd funded Shenmue III has no doubt set many fan’s hearts aflutter.

I suppose now is a time for cautious optimism … again.

Source: Twitter

It seems crazy now, but often in the past, video games would make it to marketing stage and be cancelled before release. BioForge Plus was one such game. It was an updated re-release of BioForge which would offer post game expansion content that would continue the story. It was cancelled in a whirlwind wave of cost cutting across Origin in 1995.

An upcoming book entitled Stay A While and Listen by David Craddock is a history of Blizzard Entertainment concocted from interviews with nearly 80 former employees of the company. The book is due for release on October 29, but the author has revealed to Shacknews one of the cancelled Blizzard projects that came up in his research – the Game Boy Color version of Diablo the company dubbed “Diablo Junior”.

After Diablo II, the team split into several groups – one worked on the Lord of Destruction expansion, while the others were to throw ideas around for new IP and new games. One of these projects was a portable prequel to Diablo, intended for either the Game Boy Color or Game Boy Advance:

“Diablo Junior was intended as a single-player-only prequel to the original game. Taking a page from Pokémon’s book, the team wanted to release three cartridges, each packing a different hero in the warrior-rogue-sorcerer vein as well as items that players would have to trade for in order to collect. Heroes started in a unique town before heading into dungeons and wilderness zones. Diablo Junior was ultimately put out to pasture (absent of cow levels, I’m sure) because of the steep production costs associated with developing handheld games.”

A second expansion, following from Lord of Destruction, was also planned, with the focus to be shifted onto the game’s multiplayer features such as a guild hall. The second expansion was quickly scrapped to start work on Diablo III, as the team had felt Diablo II had run its course.

Source: Shacknews

The cancelled Sega Saturn port of Atomic Runner Chelnov – Nuclear Man, the Fighter, a 1988 Japanese side-scrolling action arcade game, has been found in prototype form and shared online.

The port was in development in 1997 and shown at the Tokyo Game Show, but was cancelled for unknown reasons. The title has now seen the light of day thanks to the SEGA Saturn´s Lost Games Recovery Program, whose team is dedicated to searching for lost and unreleased Sega Saturn games and sharing them.

Atomic Runner Chelnov, and artwork packs featuring mock-up boxarts, can be downloaded from the game’s release page for play on a modded Sega Saturn or an emulator.

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 HD, the unofficial fan remake, has been officially discontinued.

On the game’s Facebook page, Team S2HD’s project leader cited problems with the lead programmer and recent resignations as reasons for the sad news. The keylogger allegedly found in the recently released alpha version of the game didn’t help either.

Many Sonic fans were eagerly awaiting Sonic the Hedgehog 2 HD’s release, so the news of its cancellation has been met with much disappointment.

When announcing the PSN release of PS1 Classic The Legend of Dragoon earlier this week, Shu Yoshida (President SCE Worldwide Studios) revealed that a sequel was in development.

Apparently, “Legend of Dragoon 2” was in production after Yoshida left SCE Japan Studio and “ [it] was eventually cancelled for some unknown reason, and the team members moved on to different projects,” He went on to write “Some people still work in the Japan Studio, so we talk about the memories of developing LOD when we see each other at company functions.”

It is a shame that Legend of Dragoon 2 never saw the light of day; it would have made many RPG fans very happy.

The cancellation of this was like a sweep to the last legs of the Dreamcast.

Half-Life was a smash hit on the PC, and plans were quickly brought together to take the game to the Dreamcast. They were even planning to give the Dreamcast version a few exclusive levels in the form of Half-Life: Blue Shift. However, the game was cancelled just days before release, and Blue Shift was redirected for release on the PC.

The legendary Bock, founder of SMS Power has posted a bunch of images from an unreleased port of NBA Jam for the Master System.

Little is known about the port, other than it appears to have been cancelled in 1994, and offers 2 player capabilities that were left out of the similar-but-actually-released Game Gear port. Bock is led to believe that the port was being created internally at Iguana Entertainment.

The prototype ROM will be circulated in the coming weeks through SMS Power.

Not the type of pussy we tend to associate with the Clinton administration.

Socks the Cat Rocks the Hill was an ultimately unreleased video game starring Socks, the Clinton family cat. Someone actually greenlit this project, believing it to be a good idea, and it got very far into development before being cancelled. Ah, corporate stupidity.