With exclusive games like Final Fantasy VII, Chrono Cross, and Silent Hill, it was easy to forget about how the PS1 was actually struggling to participate in its first console war. PlayStation gamers were happy and on top of the world (when their systems weren’t breaking and playing the dreaded “Fearful harmony”), meanwhile the executives were swamped with self-induced problems to solve. To be sure, the gaming world is much richer for Sony having stuck through their setbacks to become the leader that it is today.
Still, there is a time to look mournfully back on those games that did get messed up and abandoned on that very first console. Licensing disputes, glitches, and poor porting abilities destroyed games that could have easily become franchises and likely prevented a series or two from ever seeing the light of day. Madden 96 and Dungeon Keeper would, thankfully, function on other consoles just fine, but other games didn’t get so lucky.
10 Creation
As players search for the greatest RTS games in the spirit of StarCraft, they will experience games from all time periods that span from the earth to the stars in the heavens. But a lack of underwater games overshadows the genre.
Things could have been different. Creation was set to be a first-person oceanic RTS, but when Electronic Arts bought out Bullfrog Productions, the team was told that “Sub games don’t sell,” and that was the end of this project.
9 Dark Sun: Shattered Lands
There is no denying that Dungeons & Dragons had an impact on early developers. Those who played through a campaign wanted so badly to get a version onto consoles as soon as the technology was available.
While the modern games workshop has yielded some excellent tabletop options, Advanced Dungeon & Dragons game Dark Sun: The Shattered Lands was from an earlier time of limited capabilities. Banking on the technology of the PlayStation was a lost bet, so the team at Strategic Simulations tried to port it over to MS-DOS, where it was too broken to be reliably played.
8 Hyberblade
Some games failed so badly on the PS1 that EA Sports famously refused to give Sony a license for their games. In light of Sony’s low standard of quality assurance, developer Wizbang! Software decided this was their chance to fix the image by making a futuristic hockey game called Hyperblade.
Forsaking other good old-school hockey games for a game that had decapitations and fatal cross-checks, they hoped to take advantage of the PS1’s 3D technologies. Sadly, Sony didn’t feel up to the task and the project was scrapped. The team tried to put a very buggy version on Windows 95, but the game was not playable until after newer graphics cards were made publicly available.
7 I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream
When this game was reviewed by critics back in 1995, they couldn’t get enough of the point-and-click adventure with various endings dependent on player choice. Sony was set for a colossal success with an exclusive release that summer, but they buckled at the last minute due to developer Cyberdreams’s reputation for advanced concepts that targeted an intellectual audience.
The game was quietly released on PC with very little fanfare. Twenty years later, demand from devoted fans would revive the game on Windows and Mobile devices to resounding acclaim. It seems the concept was too far ahead of its time for Sony to risk.
6 The Indestructibles
Originally titled MIST – My Incredible Superhero Team, The Indestructibles was a game determined to give fans of comic book legends another universe of characters to cheer for. The graphics team had completed model vectors and rendering that had not yet been accessible to the public.
It turns out that the strongest of all of the Marvel’s Avengers weapons is their power of litigation. After threatening to sue if any of the characters resembled, in appearance or power, any of Marvel’s characters, Sony got squeamish and put a desist production order on the game.
5 Legions Of The Undead
For the players of today who swap secrets about how to avoid and kill the predator in Predator: Hunting Grounds, it’s a good time to look back at Rebellion Development which put Alien Versus Predator on the video game map.
They almost established another first-person action role-playing franchise with Legions of the Undead. Hailed to be the next Ultima, downsizing from publisher Atari forced them to cut all funding from the project. With the advertising in the papers and critics already playing the game, Atari quietly stopped production, and the public only got wind of the cancellation after the license lapsed.
4 Mace: The Dark Age
People who have worked at an arcade have inside knowledge of games like Mace: The Dark Age. For its time, it was a fighting game with graphics that even exceeded the bar set by trusted titles like Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter.
Another casualty of the Atari downsizing, PS1 players never got ahold of this game. It would later go on to debut in arcades instead, but this medium featured only combat and cut out the advanced plotline that Atari had included in the base game.
3 Major Damage
When a company like Capcom says they’re going to add some brand new characters to their already memorable lineup, even Sony can’t pass that up. Indeed, Sony did not pull the plug on this project, hotly anticipating the new run-and-gun game.
Unfortunately for PS1 fans, Capcom suffered some financial setbacks and had to restructure its US Division to save money, sacrificing the branch of employees working on this game. As a final blow to excited fans, when Capcom recouped the staff to finish Major Damage, Sony had already released Basto and said the games were too similar-looking for another release.
2 Marvel 2099: One Nation Under Doom
Marvel fully embraces that there are several different universes with the same heroes following different plotlines. One fan favorite is the Marvel 2099 series of comics, which more heavily feature villain All-Father Doom and protagonists like The Punisher.
Developer Mindscape Inc. had already made the merchandise and completed the demos for exhibitions, but outspent themselves and had to layoff much of their staff. Strangely, they never officially canceled Marvel 2099: One Nation Under Doom in any capacity, but they stopped paying for its producers to work, effectively ending the process.
1 Thrill Kill
Thrill Kill was the first game to be rated Adults Only not due to sexual content. The over-the-top violence and frequent “fatalities” might have been a bit much for younger audiences, but Virgin Interactive had no problem delivering an experience that even put the graphic scenes in competitor Mortal Kombat to shame.
The same could not be said of Electronic Arts, who bought out Virgin Interactive right before the game’s release. Even with fully printed games ready to ship, EA decided the potential public backlash was not worth it. The game’s engine would be used as the foundation of many other games, but that doesn’t stop players from thinking about what might have been.
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