Cancelled Games & Tech Demos

[Fryguy64]

I guess this as good a place as any to put this...

I've still got to put up a few cancelled games pages for the various systems. With the Wii U I also put up the first page for Tech Demos, something which I'd like to go back and work on for the other systems as well. However, my memory ain't so good these days, and I could use some help remembering them all and finding some images.

Here's what I've managed to remember:

Cancelled Wii Games

• Project H.A.M.M.E.R.
  
• Likely cancelled: Cosmic Walker
  
• Likely cancelled: Wii Vitality Sensor
  

Wii Tech Demos

• Cube Shooter (Point the controller at the screen, and shoot the cubes that appear with the B button)
  
• Fishing (Became fishing minigame in Wii Play)
  
• Kururin (Line up the controller with the center of the rotating stick on the screen. As soon as a "connection" has been made, you can drag the stick around the screen, avoiding walls and obstacles while collecting coins)
  
• Air Hockey (Became the Air Hockey minigame in Wii Play)
  
• Basketball Morph (Morph the shape of the court to create hills or holes to pass a basketball around a court and into your opponent's basket)
  
• Pokémon Search (Find a particular Pokémon in a 3D field)
  
• Plane (Fly a plane around an island resort - became the flying sections in Wii Sports Resort and Pilotwings Resort - the island was developed into Wuhu Island)
  
• Metroid Prime 2 Echoes (Reconfigured Gamecube game using the new controls)
  

Cancelled Nintendo DS Games

• ...nothing... Everything that has been announced has been released.
  

Nintendo DS Tech Demos
The Nintendo DS tech demos all seemed to turn into games. Considering how close to its release the system was announced, this isn't hugely surprising.

• PictoChat
  
• Super Mario 64x4 (the screenshots show something slightly different to the final game)
  
• WarioWare DS (became WarioWare: Touched!)
  
• Metroid Prime: Hunters (eventually released as the Metroid Prime: Hunters - First Hunt demo cart for early adopters)
  
• Balloon Trip (became the first part of Yoshi Touch & Go)
  
• Submarine Game (became 3DS title, Steel Diver)
  

Nintendo 3DS Tech Demos
I actually don't remember this all that well, and I haven't gone exploring to refresh my memory... There were some 3D Nintendo artwork picture demos... probably some other stuff. Submit it ;D

Older systems
I still have lots of info to put up on GameCube and other systems, but if you feel like listing some it will help me to not forget to add them

[Da Robot]

NeoGAF has a some info on cancelled titles.

For some odd reason Nintendo cancelled a bunch of Wii titles so they could focus on game with "wider appeal"


Project HAMMER was cancelled and NST turned into a casual title named "Wii Crush" which was also cancelled. NST then tried to make an "escape the room" game which also got cancelled. In the end a fuckload of NST vetrans (including Colin Reed who worked with EAD at one point) got snatched up by good job deals at Microsoft and that's why NST hasn't done anything major game project in ages,



Kuju/HeadStrong games tried to make a another "Wars" game called Knight Wars for the Wii


N-Space startd work on a Wii title right after Geist was finished named Sphear.

[Fryguy64]

I saw some of those titles listed over at Unseen64, but wasn't sure which ones were supposed to be published by Nintendo.

I didn't realise the story behind Project H.A.M.M.E.R. was so convoluted! That oughta be an interesting article.

[Leon]

Cosmic Walker is dead, the company that was making the game went out of business.

[Shadrio]

This was said at E3 about the Wii Vitality Sensor:

www.mcvuk.com/news/44759/E3-2011-Wii-Vitality-Sensor-still-alive

(Am I the only one who knew about this? I remember reading it on IGN during E3 time)

[nocturnal YL]

I think there was a GBC demo as a Game Pak (later ripped and available as a ROM download). The fish scene and the "Nintendo Game Boy now in Color" text (with "now in" removed) made it in Tetris DX.

[The Qu]

Repost from another thread time!

Sept 10, 2011 6:31:19 GMT -5 The Qu said:

Not sure where else to put this. A cancelled Mario volleyball game. Man, from golf, tennis, soccer, baseball and basketball to volleyball.

[Evie ❤✿]

I know a couple more Nintendo DS tech demos.

There was a tech demo called shown at E3 2004 called Mario's Face.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRmxmBLPnW8

Another Nintendo DS tech demos included a Pikachu tech demo, called Pikachu: DS where you could stretch Pikachu's face, trace Pikachu in drawing mode and play with instruments.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHGxSfxkY7

Not sure if this counts, but at the PokéPark theme park there was a fishing game called PokéPark: Fishing Rally DS only available over download play with a 12 hour time limit which disappears after turning off the game.

In Pikachu: DS, Bulbapedia says that you could also scratch cards, although another source suggests that there was a separate tech demo alongside Pikachu: DS called Pokémon Scratch.

The same thread also mentions "Carving", "Special Effects" and "Table Hockey". There's a video of Table Hockey on Youtube below.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=tn9FcoyS0AY

There was a The Legend of Zelda photo gallery known as Zelda Gallery, should this be counted?

[The Qu]

An update from E3: the frequently seen shuriken Wii-U demo is now part of Nintendo Land.

[Evie ❤✿]

www.geocities.jp/chirimenyugido/game_nintendo/nintendo_soft/tyuusi_ikou_soft.html

I found a page that has information about various cancelled Nintendo games not listed on the site. It's fairly old (2008) but relevant. I hope you find some of the information below useful.

There is a screenshot of Fighting Polygon on this page. I wasn't sure if you already had one.



*Sphere Tetris (テトリスフィアー) for the N64 was in development by H20 Entertainment, and was going to be published by Nintendo.



*A Nintendo 64 game known only as "Creator" (クリエイター), developer not known.

*A Nintendo 64 game called Boogie Buggy (バギーブギー), developer not known.

*A Nintendo 64 game called NBA Basketball '98, developer not known.

I wanted to let you know something regarding Mini Racers. Did you know how videos of Echo Delta made it on to NicoNicoVideos? Olivieryuryu recently acquired prototypes of Tamiya Racing 64/Mini Racers and made a community dump, meaning there is now more information about the game through the ROMs and the Internet.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuCoMhx1KQI
www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMPp7hC8bug

*Kirby Tilt 'n Tumble 2 - This game was shown as a GBA title at Nintendo Spaceworld 2001, but in 2002 development had moved to the GameCube, Kirby was removed from the game and the game became known as Roll-o-Rama (ロール－オ－ラマ)

*Stage Debut.

*A Game Boy Advance game called Hanasaki Battle (はなさき合戦) aka Flower-Blooming Competition. I mentioned this game in another thread, and previously the only article which I could find about it was from an English source.

Unfortunately, I don't have any other way to prove it existed.


* A Wii game announced called "Start with 100 words! English conversation" (100語でスタート！英会話) is yet to be released.




*A Wii game called Cosmic Walker (コズミックウォーカー) is believed to be cancelled.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYjhCxGg2Ew


I'm now confident Horse Racing Creation Derby (馬穴大作戦, Baketsu Daisuken) was going to be published by Nintendo, I bought the 2001 edition of a book called Game Boy Encyclopedia and have access to a small blurb about it. The publisher is 任天堂 (Nintendo).



Famitsu lists Baketsu Daisuken as copyright Nintendo as well.

www.famitsu.com/game/coming/2001/01/19/cs11.html


There's something else I'd like to note. Some people believe that Pocket Monsters RPG (where Pocket Monsters 64 and Hey You Pikachu! were revealed separately) was going to be a fully-fledged RPG rather than Pokémon Stadium (Pocket Monsters Stadium 2) given that Satoshi Tajiri of Game Freak was said to be developing it and it was explicitly stated the first Pocket Monsters game would be 'more of a encyclopedia of monsters', while the second would be more of an RPG.

Although, there's nothing solid about the game, I believe in Redstar's logic that there were more Pokémon games for the 64 and 64DD revealed than were actually released.

I'm not confident about it though.

Zeta says there was an issue in Nintendo Power 'around 1997 or 1998' where it was revealed there would be a Pokémon RPG where the protagonist's name would be 'Leo'. If this is true, its probably worth noting, given that Leo is the protagonist's default name in the Japanese version of Pokémon Colosseum.


Here are a couple of tech demos. It's not much, unfortunately.

www.unseen64.net/2008/04/14/zelda-ii-snes-satellaview-remake/

- A Zelda II concept that was used to show the graphical capabilities of the SNES.

An extract from an interview, apparently published in the Japanese guidebook for Star Fox 64 (Shogakukan)

"Koizumi:

Yeah. You might say that, but before Super Mario 64, I had actually been making Zelda II: The Adventure of Link in polygons with Miyamoto-san.

Iwata:
Before Super Mario 64… You mean for the Super Famicom System?

Koizumi:
Yes. We were experimenting with a thin, polygon Link seen from the side and fighting with his sword. Chanbara was a pending issue at the time. We couldn’t really bring Zelda II: The Adventure of Link into form at that time, but I kept that desire to achieve a sword-fighting Zelda game until I joined this team."

A Kid Icarus tech demo for the Nintendo Wii developed by Factor 5. www.unseen64.net/2009/02/02/kid-icarus-wii-concept-proto/

Minor:

Sabre Wolf for Game Boy Advance (Rare) was once going to be published by Nintendo, rather than THQ.

[mopinks]

Jun 12, 2012 13:07:56 GMT -5 Evie ❤✿ said:

*Sphere Tetris (テトリスフィアー) for the N64 was in development by H20 Entertainment, and was going to be published by Nintendo

www.nindb.net/game/tetrisphere.html
released everywhere but Japan!

[Evie ❤✿]

Jun 12, 2012 18:46:12 GMT -5 mopinks said:

Jun 12, 2012 13:07:56 GMT -5 Evie ❤✿ said:

*Sphere Tetris (テトリスフィアー) for the N64 was in development by H20 Entertainment, and was going to be published by Nintendo

www.nindb.net/game/tetrisphere.html
released everywhere but Japan!

Thanks mopinks, I didn't realize that mistake.

It looks like the author of that page did not know the game was released as Tetrisphere.

I've got a question for Fry, should we list games that did not make it in Japan - or would that be outside of the scope of the site. Perhaps on their release dates as 'cancelled'. One of them I did not know was Game & Watch Gallery 4 (ゲームボーイ ギャラリー４), was supposed to make it to Japan yet was never released there.

[Da Robot]

Some new images of Perfect Dark Zero (GCN version and also the original Xbox version (not 360) have appeared online from Rare artist Will Overton (From NeoGAF, where more images can be seen)

www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=488190

www.unseen64.net/2008/04/16/perfect-dark-zero-xbox-proto-cancelled/

For those wondering, GCN PDZ was originally going to have a "anime-y" art style. (But than again PD was influenced by Ghost in the Shell, and it would have been impossible to do some of this art stuff on the N64)






Also mentioned in the GAF thread, Will Overton worked for a UK N64 magazine called "N64 Magazine" and he drew this cover when they had a PD64 review. He was hired by Rare afterwards and became the lead artist on PDZ.

[Evie ❤✿]

My friend PPLToast recently made a post about For the Frog the Bell Tolls DX in the Unseen64 page comments. It seems it was all a hoax, rather than the screenshots just being "mockups". So that might want to be removed from the cancelled games list. I'm also bumping this thread in case Fry wants to update the cancelled games section on the site or if anyone wants to discuss more recently discovered cancelled games/tech demos.

I know I’m years late on this but I just want to set the record straight for anyone else stumbling upon this page.

While it’s mentioned here that the screenshots are “mockups” and that the announcement itself is legit., this isn’t the actually the case. The writer of that site mentions in the footer how it’s all a hoax in red colored text.

web.archive.org/web/20021026205206/http://www.geocities.co.jp/Bookend-Soseki/4279/dematu3.html

The name of the page itself is also デマ通 (Dematsu). A play on Famitsu where Dema is shorthand for fake news en.wiktionary.org/wiki/デマ

The guy also wrote two other hoax announcements.

There is this one claiming a GBA remake of Famicom Detective Club web.archive.org/web/20170407015921/http://www.geocities.co.jp/Bookend-Soseki/4279/dematu.html

And another claiming a “SaGa Collection” is coming for the GBA. web.archive.org/web/20021026210324/http://www.geocities.co.jp/Bookend-Soseki/4279/dematu2.html

Of course neither one of these are true.

Also in 2019 I started this list www.niwanetwork.org/wiki/List_of_cancelled_Nintendo_games - it has some more games people may not have mentioned on the forum or site which there is some solid evidence for, like Sutte Hakkun GB, Chinese iQue DS NetCard games, Zhēng Shàngyóu, Tuōlājī Dàzhàn, Zhōngguó Xiàngqí (爭上游/拖拉机大战/中國象棋; sorry I'm not sure how the consensus is to romanise these and I took those names from Google Translation's romanisation suggestions), but it has also had inaccuracies which I've removed (and others) and need to be checked - and I tried being a little stricter www.niwanetwork.org/wiki/Talk:List_of_cancelled_Nintendo_games for instance, Kirby's Dream Land 2 DX may have never existed, nor Metroid II: Return of Samus DX (only teasers/mockups). It also can be easy to regard something as cancelled which was only a consideration or there wasn't enough evidence for any solid development (such as the case today for Pokémon Grey, Pokémon Pink etc.) There are different divisions then which complicate things.

0. Similar to 1, but it's an hypothesis with no evidence at all (e.g. the unused asset shares in Japanese Super Princess Peach look like they could have been from an unreleased game, but really they could have been just experiments). Or the Pokémon Pink leak in the Pokémon Yellow source code could have just been a placeholder (like "Yellow & Pink" similar to "Red & Blue" etc.). Or how sometimes trademarks are registered for potential games - there could be another explanation such as a strategy to catch fan hack projects etc. examples: www1.ipdl.inpit.go.jp/syutsugan/TM_SEARCH_A.cgi Or Pokémon Moss; it could have been a joke for Mobile System GB taken out of context tcrf.net/Mobile_Trainer

2002-63587 ＼ [Pokémon Topaz]
2002-63591 ＼ [Pokémon White Gold]
2002-63588 ＼ [Pokémon Tourmaline]
2002-63590 ＼ [Pokémon Moonstone]


2008-93270 [Pokemon Brown]
2008-93272 灰 [Pokemon Gray]
2008-93273 [Pokemon Scarlet]
2008-93274 紫 [Pokemon Purple]
2008-93275 [Pokemon Crimson]
2008-93276 [Pokemon Scarlet]

1. Placeholders, considerations, things confirmed which haven't left pre-alpha (even with an official interview, it can be hard to tell the extent of how much something was fleshed out - and are these more experiments/tech demos/hypothetical art projects than full cancelled games? Example: Luigi's Mansion predecessor Nintendo 64) and sometimes reporters/YouTubers/other people with influence etc. can make it seems like they were more than these.

www.nsidr.com/archive/the-making-of-the-game-luigis-mansion/
web.archive.org/web/20030118103502/http://www.nintendo.co.jp/nom/0109/lu_inter/index.html

2. Games we know have at least had one prototype build and were planned as evident by announcements or interviews which provide images/assets as proof, etc. Example: Dragon Hopper, Untitled Kirby prototypes (Nintendo GameCube, Wii), Kid Kirby. However, we don't have access to the prototype.

3. Cancelled games which were dumped, compiled from source code or leaked and are playable in some form. Examples: Bound High, Sound Fantasy, Sutte Hakkun GB, Game Boy Bunko: Hajimari no Mori, Hello Kitty Pocket Camera

Also as for tech demos, I didn't make such a list on NintendoWiki but two which may not have been mentioned on the forums are Mirror House Cornflakes and a snake game (Snake Tail).