Retronauts Episode 105: Cancelled Games

Dat Gimmick! OST Goodness.

I have to nerd correct you here because the Vampire the Masquerade game by Nihilstic Software was not the incredibly impressive 1st person Bloodlines game from Troika Games (also of Arcanum, published by Sierra.) The Nihilistic game was an odd third person rpg, almost like Neverwinter Nights, and was not actually very good. I mainly correct you here to get you to go and play Bloodlines. Its truly a really, really good game, especially with the right patches. Please play it some day!

Ironjoe99

oh my god jeremy's "okay" when bob gives him the proper use of the word claymation

Matt Bixler! Hello!

Ah yes, Robotech: Crystal Dreams. I was breathlessly looking forward to this one, especially as it had some really notorious use of fake screenshots and renders to generate hype. (See example below) The Ultra 64 was new and no one knew what to expect after all. I don't mourn Crystal Dreams, as it likely would have been a lousy game. But my lingering itch had me buy the sub-par Robotech: BattleCry some years later. Harmony Gold are villains. Their (potentially unlawful) hostage taking of the license has kept some great Macross content away from the west, including good games made by the likes of Sega's AM2. <a href="http://www.x-cult.org/images/games/1126/Robotech:_Crystal_Dreams/robotech-crystaldreamsunreleased2robo.jpg" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://www.x-cult.org/images/games/1126/Robotech:_Crystal_Dreams/robotech-crystaldreamsunreleased2robo.jpg</a>

Loved the censorship of Bob's old employer. Good improv!

The Robotech TV series was comprised of: Macross, Southern Cross, and MOSPEADA. There was a Robotech "Movie", it used footage from an OAV called Megazone-23, from the same studio that did Macross and Southern Cross (one of the characters in Megazone-23 is basically the same character design as Minmay from Macross). But the Robotech Movie only got a limited release and bad reviews, probably partly due to being released at the same time as the Transformers movie. At one time AnimEigo had licensed Macross and gave it a great release in the early days of anime on DVD, once that license lapsed ADV picked it up, along with licenses for Southern Cross and MOSPEADA, and released them all. Macross has continued on as a huge franchise, and has a ton of great music, unfortunately the existence of Harmony Gold and Robotech makes it very difficult for Macross series to get licensed at released. Southern Cross and MOSPEADA didn't spawn long running franchises, though Megazone-23 did get two sequels.

Phillip

For some reason, the first cancelled game that comes to mind is a PS2/Xbox (and probably Gamecube) Daredevil game that I believe was intended to come out in 2003, around the time of the movie. I remember reading about it in some gaming magazines, seeing a few screenshots, and then it kind of fizzled out and disappeared. All we got was an unrelated and awful GBA game.

Dylan (batmanboy11) Freitag

I played SC: Ghosts at my first E3. ;)

Frederick G.

Real talk..I thought yall were reviewing the California Raisins at first. I'm like NOOO!!

Normallyretro

Wow. That is insanely funny LMFAO

Normallyretro

I'm actually re-reading 100 Bullets right now, and I just remembered that there was a canceled (PS2, I think?) game that was actually reviewed in Game Informer from what I remember. Even at the time I thought it was a stupid idea anyway, so good riddance

John Learned

one cancelled game that I'm sad never made it was Getaway 3. Loved the series an an alternative to GTA

Frank Grimes

Thank you for reminding me of Congraturaisins.

Admiral H. Curtiss

Given Bob and Chris' combined cartoon knowledge, I was surprised that Jeremy was the one giving a basic plot summary of Robotech/Macross.

Chris