There has never really been a better time to be a gamer. There are awesome new consoles on the horizon, and the current generation of consoles keeps pumping out hit after hit. In fact, it often feels like there are too many great games and not enough time to play them!
Nonetheless, longtime gamers can’t help but think of the great games that could have been. These are the games that get announced, developed, and then abruptly canceled, leaving us to ask, “What the hell happened?”
Some games get canceled because they are rubbish. But other canceled projects look like they may have transformed the entire industry. Here, then, are the top 10 canceled video games we wish we could have played!
Star Wars: 1313
There has never been a shortage of Star Wars games. However, 1313 was going to be something special. In it, players would take control of Boba Fett as he navigated missions in the depths of Coruscant’s underworld.
Sadly, Star Wars: 1313 got canceled in 2013 when Disney bought Lucasfilm. You’ll have to enjoy the next best thing by watching The Mandalorian, a show which recycled designs from this game.
Project Titan
Blizzard is mostly known for franchises like Warcraft, Starcraft, and Overwatch. But in order to grow, they are always trying to develop the next big thing. Project Titan was, in many ways, going to be their followup to World of Warcraft.
Blizzard planned the game as a sci-fi MMO focused around war and espionage. After numerous delays, Blizzard canceled the project altogether in 2014. However, many of this game’s designs and themes eventually made their way into Overwatch.
Mega Man Universe
You may think that if you’ve played one Mega Man game, you’ve played them all. However, Mega Man Universe was a game set to change all of that!
The basic gameplay revolved around the classic sidescrolling action genre. However, it also had a killer feature: a level editor that would allow fans to make and share their own Mega Man adventures.
Mega Man meets Mario Maker would have breathed new life into this classic character. Sadly, Capcom pulled the plug in 2011 before franchise fans could “get equipped with Mega Man Universe.”
InSANE
Video games often try to emulate movies. Is it any surprise that filmmakers often want to try their hands at making a video game?
Oscar-winning horror maestro Guillermo del Toro wasn’t just planning a single game. Instead, he envisioned a trilogy of games in his InSANE series. Gameplay would focus on decisions that constantly forced players to ask if their character was going crazy.
The game got canceled 2012, but del Toro still owns the rights. Maybe we’ll eventually see his final vision for these games?
Silent Hills
If you’re a Silent Hill fan, you might wonder what could possibly make this franchise better. Here’s two words to answer that question: Hideo Kojima.
The legendary mind behind Metal Gear Solid was set to reboot Silent Hill. He wouldn’t do it alone, though: he intended to work with horror director Guillermo del Toro and The Walking Dead star Norman Reedus.
You could even play a demo for this game, but it got canceled in April 2015 and eight months later Kojima left Konami. However, he got to realize a collaboration with del Toro and Reedus in 2019 for his quirky hit game Death Stranding.
Gotham By Gaslight
Gamers have seen Batman in many different ways. But they’ve never seen him like this!
Gotham By Gaslight was a game based on the Elseworlds Batman comic of the same name. In it, a Victorian-era Batman takes on one of history’s bloodiest villains: Jack the Ripper.
THQ created some prototype work and footage for the game, which was released in 2012, but ultimately could not secure the rights to take the project any further.
Starcraft: Ghost
To longtime Blizzard fans, Starcraft: Ghost is an old pain. This was going to be an FPS starring the Ghost named Nova, and Blizzard announced it way back in 2002.
It was going to be one of Blizzard’s earliest efforts to take an existing property and branch into a new genre. However, it kept getting delayed and sidelined until we got an official cancellation notice in 2014.
Fortunately, Blizzard successfully expanded another property, Warcraft, into the MMORPG space. The rest is gaming history! Meanwhile, Nova still pops up in games such as Heroes of the Storm.
Daredevil: The Man Without Fear
It’s tough for creators to get Daredevil right. Sometimes, you get the dreadful 2003 movie. Other times, you get the awesome Netflix TV show or Chip Zdarsky’s run on the Daredevil comic.
Daredevil: The Man Without Fear was going to be a versatile superhero game that took advantage of the character’s fantastic powers and training. If this game had come out, it could have beaten Arkham Asylum to the punch for “revolutionary superhero game.”
Sadly, everything from rights disputes to development difficulties kept this game from seeing the light of day. It was canceled in 2004.
LMNO
What if the world’s most famous director could transform video games? That was the idea behind LMNO, a game developed by none other than Steven Spielberg.
The plot will sound familiar to Spielberg fans: an alien lands on Earth and is being hunted by the government. And her only hope is a young protagonist who befriends and protects her.
Spielberg wanted a game just as emotional as his famous movies. Unfortunately, Electronic Arts pulled the plug on this digital dream in 2010.
Fez II
Fez feels like a game that needs no introduction. It combined platforming with a perspective-shifting mechanic that felt both fresh and innovative when it was released in 2012.
Everyone was ready for Fez II. What happened? The internet happened! In 2013, game developer Phil Fish had a major Twitter argument with critic Marcus Beer after Beer attacked Fish via the GameTrailers website.
The next day, Fish announced on Twitter that he was canceling Fez II. He later clarified he was getting out of game development altogether because the abuse he often endured was simply not worth it.
Which canceled games do you wish you could play? Tell us in the comments below!
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