The Nintendo 64 dazzled fans around the globe as it brought to life truly three-dimensional capabilities to beloved franchises that had long been stuck in 2D. With this monumental leap forward, game designers were eager to show off the advancements made in gaming over the past decade and bring brilliantly rendered enjoyment into the homes of the players. Getting permission from Nintendo to design and publish a game was a great honor.
But the battle didn’t end there. For most developers and publishers, that’s when the fight to deliver on the promise of an amazing game truly began. Many finished the race and made their way into the hearts of Nintendo loyalists who owned the console. But too many were unfairly tripped up and canceled before they were released. It’s worth taking a few seconds to look over some of these titles and ponder what might have been.
10 Addams Family Pinball
Someone with inside information about working at an arcade might know this piece of trivia: The best selling, most popular pinball station of all time is The Addams Family Pinball machine. Its 3D objects, voice lines, music, and fast action are still appreciated by collectors today.
If someone wanted to keep their coins and get the experience at home, however, they would be disappointed. Somehow, the plug was pulled on Digital Eclipse despite their good reputation and progress they made on the game.
9 Cabbage
Canceled games are always disappointing, but when a project by Tsunekazu Ishihara of Pokémon fame, Shigesato Itoi of Mother acclaim, and Shigeru Miyamoto of Mario and Zelda legend gets scrapped, that is grounds for a revolution.
Cabbage would have been a breeding simulator. Before the gaming community of animal lovers riots, it should be known that their work did not go to waste. Their accomplishments were gathered up and used as the foundation for other hits like Nintendogs and Animal Crossing.
8 Caesar’s Palace
When considering the best arcade to console ports, casino games should not be entirely disregarded. Gambling games, by far, eat up the most cash. Being able to play at home lets the players hold on to their non-virtual currency.
Caesar’s Palace had plenty of ports prior to the N64, but when it failed to get produced on this console, it was truly the end of an era. Now fans of casino games are drawn to mobile devices where, once again, they are prone to risking their hard-earned coins.
7 Die Hard 64
Die Hard has a game on the NES that is notoriously awful, so bad that it almost made the list of worst movie-based games ever. But when an N64 game was announced with early screenshots looking like a dual-wielding Goldeneye style game, fans were back on board.
The game was never allowed to succeed because of drama with another game. FOX owned the licensing for not only Die Hard, but College Hoops. After College Hoops ’99 became a commercial disaster for the N64, they decided it was best to terminate all relationships with Nintendo gaming entirely.
6 Egghead Shred
During an N64 showcase at a SIGGRAPH conference, a group called Paradigm Entertainment cobbled up a basic game that they felt an audience couldn’t forget. And they weren’t wrong. Egghead Shred featured a snowy hill, complete with obstacles like trees and forks, with a snowboarding mohawked purple egg.
The game was purely fundamental, but attendees were able to control the movement on-screen with a nifty device. Fans thought maybe this was an Indie game destined for great success. But it appears the fun game was actually just a test run for other games that never developed.
5 Mario Paint 64
Competitor PlayStation understands that fan art is part of the magic that makes games real in the minds of their players. Nintendo had an early awareness of this, even making a game for the Super Nintendo to help fans come up with such art called Mario Paint.
The game could also make levels and play songs. It added a host of mini-games. It has such a large following that calling it a cult classic is a disservice. For whatever reason, the folks at Nintendo figured the Super Nintendo version was enough and decided not to update the idea on newer consoles.
4 Mystics
When players imagine an RTS, they think of fan favorites like StarCraft before anything else. Had a game by Realtime Associates had the proper chance to shine, it’s likely that they’d also imagine more medieval time periods and less space-age futurism.
Mystics was a real-time game that featured not bullets but spells. Gamers got to choose between a single-player campaign or a four-player arena skirmish as players battled over various elements and then converted those elements into offensive and defensive spells. The advancements would later be used on the Wii, but the game itself never manifested.
3 Pitfall 64
The action-adventure game Pitfall 64 would have been a grand adventure of looting and spelunking. After the game did not come to fruition on the N64, the franchise would wane until the mobile era. There are some great oldies-but-goodies on mobile devices, so there was some hope for fanatics of the series.
Pitfall! was not one of the good ones. It’s still around as an endless temple runner mobile game, but the Indiana Jones meets Tomb Raider style of jungle survival and treasure gathering has long since died. The uninspired current iteration does not please fans who were teased with a complete N64 title.
2 Warball
Nintendo is a powerhouse when it comes to cranking out great sports games. With the opportunity to tack on another success to their name with the release of Warball, they’d have perhaps made the most groundbreaking sports game yet by revolutionizing digital dodgeball.
Unbelievably, the project was left by the wayside in spite of innovations like a leveling system for players and the ability to choose which balls are in the athlete’s arsenal. Plus, the quick gameplay with the throw and catch mechanics would have aged very well in the era of motion gaming.
1 Young Olympians
Hades is proving that Greek mythology is still a hotter commodity than ever. Perhaps one reason that fans of the game are obsessed with the lore is that directly conversing with the Olympic pantheon does not have an illustrious history in the video game universe.
Young Olympians would have more than satiated this hunger. Players would have met deities from Olympus, then either allied or tangled with them in a profound way. After its cancellation, Nintendo cruelly tried to turn the adventure, role-playing, lore-based game into a fighter on the GameCube before it was mercifully abandoned.
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