Ah, 2006 has come and gone and now, as we enter the first year of the next-gen console wars, I feel the need to reflect upon yester-year’s allotment of titles. While this year saw the release of many exciting new games and the launch of both the Playstation 3 and the Wii, many of us had high hopes to find some certain games on either their local electronic store’s shelves or in their stockings.
For many games, that was not to be their fate. While games like Gears of War, Resistence, and Rainbow Six Vegas served to fill the hole under the tree that some vaporware games did not, one still wonders what happened to them. Join me as I explore my top ten picks for the best games you have not and may never play…
Before we begin, let us define the term ‘vaporware.’ It defines a piece of software as being in a continued state of development with no known current whereabouts, status, or even if the project is still on-going. Thus, games that fall into this category are ones that have not been updated as to their status since their initial announcement or it has been a significant amount of time has passed since an update as to the game’s development cycle.
Developer: Saber Interactive
Publisher: Vivendi Games
Platforms: Xbox 360, PC
Announcement date: November 2005
Background: Caught you off guard on this on, eh? Well, Timeshift promised to be a fresh entry into the first-person shooter genre with the ability to control time, ala the Prince of Persia series. In addition, the game promised some impressive voice talent, including Michael Ironside and Dennis Quaid.The game even saw fit in August of 2006 to have a demo published in the US for the Xbox 360, as well as the release of marketing materials shortly thereafter for retailers. With seemingly tight controls and impressive graphics, the game looked to be a great title for 2006.
Status: MIA
Sadly, the game was officially pushed back to 2007 and has not been heard from since. Rumors persist of entire redesign plans for many elements of the game, which is not encouraging.
Trailer | Timeshift
Developer: Namco
Publisher: Namco
Platforms: Xbox 360
Annoucement date: May 13th, 2005
Background: Way back in May of 2005, in the days when the Xbox 360 was first announced and shown to the world, Frame City was one of the first titles shown to the world. The game was simply breathtaking, as can be seen in the fact that the game was one of the first to be developed on the Unreal 3 engine by a Japanese developer. Taking place in the mid-21st century, it followed the life of an assassin with the goal of killing a drug lord in East Asia.
Status: Cancelled
Though it was a launch title, the game suffered from many delays and was consistently pushed back past the 2005 holiday season and into 2006. The game was eventually cancelled one year after its announcement so that Namco could focus on development of other games, including Mobile Ops for the Xbox 360. The possibilities are fascinating to think about, but it looks like we’ll never find out.
Trailer | Frame City Killer
Developer: Bethesda Softworks
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Platforms: PC
Announcement date: July 12th, 2004
Background: Fallout, oddly enough, was one of the most successful game series in the late 90s. Set against the backdrop of a post-armegeddon world, the game combined crude humor and excellent gameplay to create an exceptional game. The series saw fit the release in the form of RPGs in the first two games, a strategy known as Fallout Tactics in 2001, and as a console hack-and-slash in Brotherhood of Steel in 2004. While there has never been a bad Fallout game, Bethesda has taken its time with the next installment in the series.
Status: MIA
While the game has been confirmed to be in development, nothing else has been made public about the game. Conflicting reports suggest the game will either be another RPG like its precidessors, a MMO, or both. Hopefully Bethesda will have something to say in the near future.
Developer: Guerilla Games
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment
Platforms: Playstation 3
Announcement date: May 16th, 2005
Background: Killzone has been a questionable game series over the past couple of years, and continues to be to this day. The original Killzone, released in 2004, was what many Sony fans expected to be their answer to Microsoft’s Halo. While this obviously didn’t turn out to be the case, the game sold viciously well, earning a recent entry on the PSP this past year. In 2005 however, everything changed when Sony showed off its first titles at E3. The footage shocked on-lookers, but led many to doubt whether the footage was real or not, which was later confirmed to be cinematic footage and not gameplay.
Status: MIA
Short of small tidbits mentioned here and there by Guerilla, absolutely nothing has come to light of the game since E3 2005. The game was a no show at E3 2006 and not a single bit of information since January 2006 has been spoken. Everyone know’s its coming, but with the PS3 needing a killer-ap other than Resistence to stay in the game right now, Sony could stand to give the world an update on its progress.
Trailer | Killzone 2
Developer: Square Enix
Publisher: Square Enix
Platforms: Playstation 3
Announcement date: May 16th, 2005
Background: This game is argueably one of the most fan-supported and beloved games of all time. The original’s release in 1997 truely put the first Playstation console on the market in a time when Nintendo still believed in cartridges and Sega was still a console maker. At E3 2005, Square Enix blew everyone’s minds when they showed a video of the intro to the game remade for the PS3. That was, of course, until Yoichi Wada, the president of Square Enix, said it was but a technical demo. The psuedo-sequels released in 2006, the movie known as Advent Children and the PS2 shooter Dierge of Cerberus, continued from where the original left off, with two prequels, Before Crisis and Crisis Core, are still in development for mobile phones and the PSP respectively.
Status: Not in development
While rumors have persisted for years now of a remake of the game, nothing has come to light of it short of the tech video. Square Enix has said that they are putting the vast majority of their efforts on Final Fantasy XIII, which will be three different games within the same universe. As such, they can not work on a remake of the classic game, BUT once the XIII games are done, the teams could possibly focus on that project.
Trailer | Final Fantasy VII Remake
Developer: Destination Games
Publisher: NCSoft
Platforms: PC
Announcement Date: May 20th, 2001
Background: First hinted about almost five years ago, Tabula Rasa is a persistent-state MMORPG designed to play out like a first-person shooter. Present at E3 2004, 2005, and 2006, Destination Games showed off a title with massive potential, as well as being heavily graphic oriented. The game, unlike many MMOs out there, plays out like a first-person shooter, which is quite refreshing for the genre. It is also packed with some unique and innovative features, such as the ability for players to teleport to “hot spots” within a world as well as the ability to save and load characters with different skills and specializations.
Status: MIA
Unfortunately, Tabula Rasa has been plagued by delays and incidents that delay its release. Several redesign issues prevented its release in 2004 and 2005, along with a shift from a mythological to that of a sci-fi genre. In 2006, several incidents arose, including fines and the lay-off of over 70 employees within NCSoft due to declining sales. Unfortunately, there is no set release date for the game, but given that its been in development for over five years, one can expect it out sometime this year.
Trailer | Tabula Rasa
Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom
Platforms: Playstation 3, Xbox 360
Announcement date: July 20th, 2005
Background: What can be said about the Resident Evil series that hasn’t already been said? Well, for one thing, as long as Capcom can continue to churn them out, people will buy them. This one, the first announced next-gen entry in the series, premiered in trailer form at the Tokyo Game Show in 2005 showed us a title far different from all the other entries in the series, departing from the zombie genre that started the series and creating a realm of true survival horror against the backdrop of ethnic cleansing in the Middle East.
Status: MIA
The game was a no show at E3 2006 and has continued to baffle the public with its abscence from the spotlight. While the game is tenatively scheduled for a 2008 release, the lack of news is discouraging.
Trailer | Resident Evil 5
Developer: Swingin’ Ape Studios/Nihilistic
Publisher: Blizzard
Platforms: Xbox, Gamecube, Playstation 2
Announcement date: September 20th, 2002
Background: One of the most elusive and sought-after games of this past generation, Ghost was a title born from an exceptional heritage and tremendous potential. Anyone who has played Starcraft knows what Ghost had to live up to, and it is believed that it could have surpassed its predicessor in quality. Every time a new trailer or image would appear, console gamers around the world would stop and gaze in fascination at what the game was shapping up to be.
Status: Cancelled/On hiatus
Beset by near constant delays during development, the game missed release dates throughout 2003 and into 2004. After two years of development, Nihilistic, the original developer and major contributor to the game’s overall code, left the project in June of 2004, only to be replaced by Swingin’ Ape Studios shortly thereafter. Again beset by delays in 2005, Blizzard decided to shift its focus to the next generation of games, the game was finally put on “indefinate hiatus” while Blizzard considered and evaluated the possibilities of the next-gen consoles. While the project isn’t officially cancelled, it is dead in the water. Hopefully we’ll see it arise once again, this time on the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3, but until then, Starcraft: Ghost will have to remain a bitter memory of ultimately disappointing anticipation.
Trailer | Starcraft: Ghost
Developer: Maxis
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Platforms: PC
Announcement date: March 11th, 2005
Background: Will Wright, throughout the course of his career in the video game industry, has never served to disappoint. How else could the Sim series be one of the most popular and well-known game series of all time? Born of a theory about how games should evolve in the coming generations, Wright created a Sim game that has the potential to be one of the most grandoise scale ever seen in a simulation, as players are given the ability to manipulate life and guiding it through various stages of physical and mental evolution. The entire galaxy is at your disposal in Spore.
Status: MIA
Unfortunately, one of the side effects of being a fan of any Will Wright project is that you’ll be waiting quite a while before it comes out. Originally promised for a 2006 release, the game has been pushed back to the second half of 2007. While it is obvious that the final product will be nothing short of fascinating, don’t hold your breath waiting for it.
Trailer | Spore
Developer: 3D Realms
Publisher: Take Two Interactive
Announcement Date: April 27th, 1997
Background: If there is one thing you can say about this series, its that Duke is a king. The series was born as a side-scrolling shooter in the early 1990s before switching to being a first-person shooter with the release of Duke Nukem 3D in January of 1996. The game was stunningly good, rivaling the other king of the genre, Doom. Forever was announced a year later and scheduled for release in 1998 on the Quake II engine. However, the company switched development to the Unreal engine that year and delayed development. The team again switched engines to the Unreal 2 engine in 2002. The physics engine was changed from the Karma engine to one developed by Swedish developer Meqon in 2004. Since then, the game has been near constantly delayed with little or no explanation as to why.
Status: MIA
Yes, Duke is a king, but his realm is one of constant delays and criticism from fans and developers alike. The Duke Nukem Forever is literally taking forever, as this year will be its eleventh year in development. Troubles between 3D Realms and Take Two have not been helpful, and Take Two’s public announcement of their willingness to give a $500,000 bonus to the company to get the game out by the end of 2006 (which didn’t happen obviously) is not encouraging. The departure of several key personnel from 3D Realms in August of 2006 only serves to hinder the project. In the end, Duke Nukem Forever will probably be one of the most talked-about games of all time, but all that talk will be nothing but one of disappointment if 3D Realms can’t deliver like they’ve been promising for almost a decade.
Trailer | Duke Nukem Forever
There you have it folks! Lets all hope that 2007 brings us the titles you’ve read about. Happy gaming!
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January 15th, 2007 at 8:14 am
God I wish Spore were real… REALLY REALLY WISH it were so. I guess there’s just so much hype, that if it is vapor-ware, it’d make sense.
:(
January 21st, 2007 at 2:19 pm
Spore is real, it comes out Q2 of this year. Please check your sources.
January 22nd, 2007 at 6:30 pm
Hunter,
You should probably actually read the post before saying “Please check your sources”. Especially since the article clearly says the game is currently on track for the 2nd half of 07.
The reason it’s on this list is because it’s been being promised for quite some time now, just like other games on this list.