Summary
Not every idea gets made, and not every plan comes together. Some projects either remain as concepts, get canceled part-way through development, or worse, right before release. Tim Burton’sSupermanis famous for nearly putting Nicolas Cage in the superhero’s tights.
Then there are video games. They offer plenty of canceled projects that are intriguing to read about, likeScalebound,Mega Man Legends 3, Hideo Kojima and Guillermo Del Toro’sSilent Hills, and more. But some companies have a whole host of almost-made video games under their wing, like Sega. These are the most fascinating canceled video games made either by Sega or for Sega’s machines.
1Air NiGHTS
Dreamcast
The originalNiGHTS into Dreamswas one of the Sega Saturn’s best games. It was a unique platformer that offered smooth flying at a time when analog movement was only just being introduced. Yet it didn’t get a sequel until 2008’s mediocreNiGHTS: Journey into Dreamson the Wii, and its lead character has only received a few cameo roles and references since.
However, Sonic Team had planned a motion-controlledNiGHTSgame way before the Wii was thought up.Air NiGHTSwas first designed for the Saturn before its production shifted to the Dreamcast. It would’ve used a new, Wiimote-esque motion controller to move Nights around too. After the game was canceled, Sega reworked the motion controllers into the Maracas for the rhythm gameSamba de Amigo.
2X-Women: The Sinister Virus
Genesis
The X-Men are perhaps Marvel’s most popular heroes after Spider-Man. Capcom’s famous crossover fighters with the company started withX-Men: Children of the Atomand ended when Marvel put the ixnay on their inclusion inMarvel Vs Capcom: Infinite. The “X-Men” name has also stood the test of time, despite them having a lot of female members. It just sounds more striking than X-Force, X-Team, or X-People.
However, Clockwork Tortoise did want to put its most popular women in the spotlight when they worked onX-Women: The Sinister Virus. It would’ve seen players pick Storm, Jean Grey, and/or Rogue to fight off Mr. Sinister and find a cure for the Genesis Virus, which incapacitated their male counterparts. There was a playable demo at E3 1996, but all that’s left of it today are a few screenshots and promo videos.
3Penn & Teller’s Smoke And Mirrors
Sega CD
On the other hand,Penn & Teller’s Smoke and Mirrorswasn’t so much canceled as unreleased, as people can play it in full via emulation. The game’s original publishers went out of business, and no one else wanted to publish it because it was made for the Sega CD. The Genesis add-on was practically dead by 1995, and its successor, the 32X, wasn’t looking any better.
It lived on via reviewer copies, which eventually got ROM-dumped on the internet. The game was a collection of “scam minigames” meant for people to trick their friends into playing. For example, “What’s Your Sign” saw Penn guess their star sign, only to make fun of astrology as a whole. Theinfamous Desert Busmade them drive from Tucson, AZ to Las Vegas, NV for 8 real-time hours.
4Sonic-16
There are enough canceled Sonic games to make up their own list. The cult classic Metroidvania gamePopful Mailalmost got turned intoSister SonicuntilMailfans cried foul.Sonic 4: Episode 2teased a third episode before it got patched out.Sonic Marswould’ve seen the hedgehog dive into the VR world to save its inhabitants from Dr. Robotnik. It also would’ve featured characters fromSonic SatAMlike Sally Acorn and Bunny Rabbot.
The series would’ve also gotten a more dedicated game, codenamedSonic-16. It would’ve been set directly on Mobius and got gameplay demos showing Sonic sneaking past Swatbots to meet up with Sally. There were speedier, more traditional platforming segments planned, but it never got that far.Sonicco-creator and Sega Technical Institute head Yuji Naka wasn’t impressed, which led to its eventual shutdown.
5Doctor Who
Doctor Whois famous worldwide nowadays, but that wasn’t always the case. Outside the UK and sci-fi enthusiasts in North America, it was a cult classic at best, especially during the lull between the original series' 1989 cancelation and its 2005 revival. But was it famous enough to receive a Genesis game during that time?Mean Machines Segamagazine thought so, as issue #22 reported Sega was making aDoctor Whogame in 1994.
The article offered few details, aside from suspecting it was going to be based on aDoctor Whomovie. There was a Hollywood project in the works, which eventually became the 1996 Paul McGann TV movie. Still, that wasn’t exactly the “Spielberg treatment"MMSspoke of. Either the movie’s downsizing put Sega off the idea, or it was just a rumor to begin with, given there have been no screenshots, demos, or other evidence revealed in the years since.
6Akira
Genesis/Sega CD
Making a video game based onAkiraisn’t the craziest idea in the world. It could’ve been a cyberpunk mystery game like the 1997Blade Runnergame, or an open-world sandbox likeYakuza/Like a Dragonnowadays. Instead, it got a Japan-only NES game, the pinball-basedAkira Psychoball, and an Amiga CD32 sidescroller that was so buggy and broken that reviewers had to ask the developers for passwords just to get past the miserable first stage.
It could’ve been different though. The more ambitious Genesis game was showcased at the Summer Consumer Electronics Show, where it mixed sidescrolling action sequences with first-personDoom-esque segments andRoad Rash-like vehicle sections. The game would’ve been published by THQ and ported to the SNES by a different dev team. Instead, it was shut down and remained a vague memory untilits prototype hit the internet in 2019.
7Castlevania: The Bloodletting
32X
TheCastlevaniagames are no strangers to canceled entries either. The Dreamcast’sCastlevania Resurrectionhas yet to resurrect. Konami teased a PS3/360Akumajō Draculagame about Alucard at the 2008 Tokyo Game Show, before shifting focus to theLords of Shadowseries. Then there’sCastlevania: The Bloodletting. If all went well, this would’ve been the first game to involve the series' most famous director, Koji “IGA” Igarashi.
IGA wrote the scenario for the game while working onTokimeki Memorial.It would’ve featured Richter Belmont and Maria Renard fromRondo of Bloodcoming back to fight Dracula. On top of that, they’d trade blows with a new rival, possibly named Josef based on references inCastlevania Dracula X. Once it was canceled, IGA and his team reworked its assets intoSymphony of the Night, with Josef becoming the evil Trevor Belmont clone boss.
8Eternal Champions: The Final Chapter
Saturn
The originalVirtua Fighteris more influential than people know. Aside from directly inspiring other 3D fighters likeTekkenandDead or Alive, it convinced Sony to make their PlayStation console 3D-capable, and for studios like Core Design and id Software to give 3D gaming a shot. In other words, withoutVF1, the PS1,Tomb Raider, andQuakewould’ve been very different experiences at least.
So, some people may forgive Sega of Japan (SoJ) for being really precious about it when Sega of America (SoA) was working onEternal Champions: The Final Chapter. It would’ve been the third game in the series, which caught on for its time-traveling premiseand extreme gore. SoJ thought it would eat into the potential sales forVF1’s Sega Saturn port, so they forced its shutdown. The series has been dormant ever since.
9Geist Force
TheEternal Championssituation wasn’t the first or last time Sega’s American and Japanese divisions would clash. They’d fight again overGeist Force, aStarfox 64-style 3D space shooter developed by SoA, with cutscenes byBabylon 5effects studio Netter Digital. Officially, it was shut down after SoJ lost confidence in the project. However, some of their top brass allegedly started plotting how to reuse its assets before its cancelation.
According to producer Mark Subotnick, Yuji Naka visited the studio and spoke openly about what tech he’d poach for theSonicfranchise, and that he’d fire all but one engineer after absorbing the developers into Sonic Team. He did so in Japanese, assuming no one else would understand him, but many did, and they weren’t pleased. After some key departures, and a failed attempt to get help from Visual Concepts, production was shut down.
10Sonic X-treme
The most famous canceled Sega game has to beSonic X-treme. Originally planned for the Genesis, and then for the 32X, it would’ve been the hedgehog’s big debut on the Sega Saturn, andhis first proper 3D adventurebeforeSonic Adventure. Sonic would’ve run around rotating levels via a fish-eye lens (or “Reflex Lens” as they called it) to get six magic rings before Dr. Robotnik could use them.
The game’s development was messy, as the team had trouble working out Sonic’s new gameplay on the game’s new engine. Many of its key staff left over internal disputes too, clashing over the project’s direction. The ones that stayed, like designer Chris Senn and programmer Chris Coffin, literally worked themselves sick. All these factors combined led to its cancelation, and to the Saturn missing out on having its own, dedicatedSonicplatformer.
