Trivia Browser
subdirectory_arrow_right Sonic Riders (Game)
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A version of Sonic Riders was also being developed for the Game Boy Advance, but SEGA wanted to make the game "more 3D", resulting in the GBA version being scrapped entirely.
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In Volume 5 of his Famitsu column "Toby's Secret Base", creator and director Toby Fox revealed that Ralsei's name came from a period in elementary school where he and his brothers constantly experimented with RPG Maker, having long had a shared interest in game development. Fox's oldest brother spent years working on a game called New Genesis, which featured a protagonist named Ralse; Fox simply appended an "i" to the name when incorporating it into Deltarune years later.
In the same column, Fox stated that the prolonged development of New Genesis discouraged him from making games for a long time. When he finally returned to the field in his teenage years, he sought to temper his expectations from the outset by making smaller-scale titles and preemptively planning out his approach to development to avoid biting off more than he could chew.
In the same column, Fox stated that the prolonged development of New Genesis discouraged him from making games for a long time. When he finally returned to the field in his teenage years, he sought to temper his expectations from the outset by making smaller-scale titles and preemptively planning out his approach to development to avoid biting off more than he could chew.
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Concept art for the 2001 build of the cancelled Foodfight! game developed by Midway Games West was released on artist Jason Leong's website, showing a set of character concepts and game scenarios with various fictional and real-life product mascots. The character concepts shown include:• The red, yellow, and blue M&M's carrying vitamin supplement boxes with muscular hammer-wielding arms coming out of them.
• The Keebler Elves firing bows and arrows with flaming Tootsie Pops.
• A team-up of the Green Giant, a muscular version of Poppin' Fresh the Pillsbury Doughboy, and a jacket-wearing Kool-Aid Man.
• Mr. Clean commanding an army of Scrubbing Bubbles.
• Cap'n Crunch shooting a bazooka made out of a Pringles can.
• Hawaiian Punch's mascot Punchy punching a soup can made by Brand X, a fictional brand from the movie.
The game scenarios seem to feature various mini-games among main game missions, including:
• An early human version of Dex Dogtective swinging with a grappling hook, finding shortcuts between products, being launched from Hamburger Helper's mascot Lefty in platforming sections.
• What appears to be a mini-game where Dex and a Brand X mascot would bump into one another on shopping trolleys.
• A mission where fictional mascot Daredevil Dan flies above the supermarket in his plane.
• The Green Giant rolling over tiny Brand X bots with either a barrel or a mango bowling ball. This mini-game has two pieces of concept art, one that presents it as akin to the game Tempest and another that shows the Green Giant stepping on robots.
• Dex commanding the M&M's in a shooting mini-game.
• A platforming mini-game with Cap'n Crunch jumping off of barrels.
• A mini-game where fictional mascot Polar Penguin must destroy pillars on the ice.
• A cow-herding mini-game featuring Twinkie the Kid.
• A food-fighting mini-game, like the climax of the movie, specifically themed around Chef Boyardee.
• A mini-game where Dex throws Lucky Charms at Brand X drones.
Of the licensed characters featured in this concept art, only Mr. Clean, Punchy, Chef Boyardee, and Twinkie the Kid would appear in the film when it eventually released in 2012.
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In December 2020, Steel Wool Studios announced that the "Curse of Dreadbear" DLC originally released for the game in 2019 would be ported to Xbox consoles and Nintendo Switch. While the DLC would be released for the Switch version of the game on September 28, 2021, development on the Xbox version appears to have been abandoned as there have been no updates on it since the initial announcement in 2020.
Port announcement:
https://twitter.com/SteelWoolStudio/status/1339038204125536256
Nintendo eShop page with release date:
https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/five-nights-at-freddys-help-wanted-curse-of-dreadbear-70050000023397-switch/
https://twitter.com/SteelWoolStudio/status/1339038204125536256
Nintendo eShop page with release date:
https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/five-nights-at-freddys-help-wanted-curse-of-dreadbear-70050000023397-switch/
Company: Kane Carter
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Kane Carter is known for being the creator of the Five Nights at Freddy's fangame series "POPGOES", and all the titles that he has made or conceptualized since 2015 have has been part of that series. However, in August 2023, Carter revealed that he, his girlfriend (known as "Turntail" online), and fellow developer Emil Macko worked on a scrapped concept for an original Unreal Engine horror game around 2017-2018, named "Floodbound." Carter described the basic story as:"You play as a murderer, trapped in a rainy purgatory parallel world, after almost dying in a car crash that happened while you were fleeing the scene of your third victim. [...] It's home to a single, bizarre villain named Drain Face - a creature who was once human, turned into a mutated monster that survives only off of the rainwater that falls in the rainy parallel world. [...]"
Carter also stated that the goal of the game was to travel through three large areas while dodging Drain Face.
The original programmer was going to be Nikson, known for his work on The Joy of Creation fangame series and Glowstick Entertainment games. Nikson replied to the post offering to continue work on the game if Carter ever decided to go back to it, saying that he loved the idea and the enemy design proposed for it.
Floodbound reveal:
https://twitter.com/kanethecarter/status/1689427287425302530
Full Floodbound development summary:
https://twitter.com/kanethecarter/status/1690527136119984129
Nikson programmer reveal:
https://twitter.com/kanethecarter/status/1689450445519941634
Nikson reply:
https://twitter.com/nikson_dev/status/1690635505363296257
https://twitter.com/kanethecarter/status/1689427287425302530
Full Floodbound development summary:
https://twitter.com/kanethecarter/status/1690527136119984129
Nikson programmer reveal:
https://twitter.com/kanethecarter/status/1689450445519941634
Nikson reply:
https://twitter.com/nikson_dev/status/1690635505363296257
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Disgaea 5: Alliance of Vengeance was originally considered to have a multi-platform release, including a release on the PlayStation 3. According to Nippon Ichi Software president Sohei Niikawa, this was scrapped as this would have made the PS3 version the standard version of the game, whereas the development team wanted to "offer something that could only be done with the PlayStation 4.”
Platform: DVD Player
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Bubble, a failed DVD game console that exclusively had licensed games based on preschool TV properties, had 6 cancelled games:
•Angelina Ballerina
•Bob the Builder
•Dora the Explorer
•The Koala Brothers
•Pingu
•Postman Pat
•Angelina Ballerina
•Bob the Builder
•Dora the Explorer
•The Koala Brothers
•Pingu
•Postman Pat
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A port of Bubsy 2 to the Sega Game Gear was planned and seemingly completed, but never released. In the surfaced screenshots of the game's prototype, it appears to be a fully colorized version of the Game Boy version (playing the Game Boy version of Bubsy 2 on a Super Game Boy will give the graphics a slight red tint).
Company: Cyberdreams
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When the company first started, their original first project was intended to be a side-scrolling action game for PC called "Evolver". However, the game was never actually finished, likely due to the company having very few staff members at the time (the company itself only consisted of president Patrick Ketchum, programmer John Krause, game designer Mike Dawson, and graphic artist Joby Otero).
Company: Cyberdreams
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"Reverence" was one of the last announced projects by Cyberdreams, but never made it past the Alpha phase before the company's closure. The game saw the player being chosen by the gods themselves to help determine the future of the human race, whom the gods believed to have grown too apathetic and unjust to live. It was intended to be a first-person shooter game, with the player wielding a variety of guns and spells as they traveled through four different realms to decide the fate of humanity. Each realm was modelled after a real life mythological god, those being Osiris (Egyptian god of the underworld), Kokyangwuti (Hopi goddess of life), Freyja (Norse goddess of love), and Manjursi (Tibetan god of wisdom). While the game itself was cancelled, a playable prototype was leaked in 2015.
subdirectory_arrow_right Cyberdreams (Company)
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"Wes Craven's Principles of Fear" was a planned collaboration between Asylum Entertainment and Cyberdreams for the PC meant to release in 1997 during the Halloween season, but this never happened. As its name implies, the game was based on a concept by film director Wes Craven (best known for films such as "A Nightmare on Elm Street," "The People Under the Stairs," and "The Serpent and the Rainbow"), and would have been his first time working on a CD-ROM game. Described as "the ultimate test of nerves", players assumed the role of an individual trapped in a house of darkness and forced to confront the "Seven Mortal Fears": Fear of the Bad Parent, Fear of the Predator, Fear of Immobility, Fear of Falling, Fear of Drowning, Fear of Loss of Self, and Fear of Chaos. Each fear was tested through various challenges, both real and imaginary. For example, spider webs would hinder the player's mobility, nightmares and hallucinations would feed into the fear of chaos, and supernatural stalkers would lead to a death match with the predator. The player's ability to reason with and come to grips with their inner demons would have been crucial to escaping the house.
According to David Mullich, a creative director for Cyberdreams, the goal was to create an action-adventure game that "encompasses all levels of human fear and conflict within a challenging game scenario,", adding:
According to David Mullich, a creative director for Cyberdreams, the goal was to create an action-adventure game that "encompasses all levels of human fear and conflict within a challenging game scenario,", adding:
"Many games today do justice in rendering ferocious combat, while others take great care in presenting a psychological challenge, but few successfully combine both elements. 'Wes Craven's Principles of Fear' does just that."
Principles of Fear game page:
https://game-nostalgia.com/darkseed/games/principles_of_fear.html
Article about the game:
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/gamers-get-a-taste-of-fear/1100-2466823/
https://game-nostalgia.com/darkseed/games/principles_of_fear.html
Article about the game:
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/gamers-get-a-taste-of-fear/1100-2466823/
subdirectory_arrow_right Cyberdreams (Company)
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During the 1995 Winter Consumer Electronics Show, Cyberdreams announced "Hunters of Ralk", a role-playing game designed by Gary Gygax, the co-creator of "Dungeons & Dragons". Not much is known about the game, other than that it was meant to be the start of a series and would have featured 3D combat in a first-person perspective and texture-mapped graphics. It was slated for Fall of that year for Windows platforms, but was never released.
subdirectory_arrow_right Cyberdreams (Company)
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"The Incredible Shrinking Character" was a cancelled action adventure game to be developed by Go-Go Interactive Studios and published by Cyberdreams for the PlayStation, Sega Saturn, and PC. Set in the year 1959, players would have assumed the role of a private investigator, hired to find Julie Caldwell (the daughter of a wealthy industrial family) after she had disappeared while visiting the castle of Dr. Warren Franklin. When the player arrives, however, the doctor springs a trap on them that causes them to start gradually shrinking. Thus, the player must not only save Julie (who is implied to be trapped in the castle's dungeon, due to the sound of a female screaming), but also find an antidote to their shrinking as they contend with otherwise harmless creatures (i.e. the doctor's house cat) that become more dangerous the smaller they get. The game would have included at least ten levels, with the player being smaller in each one, and would have included several size puzzles. The exact reason why the game was cancelled is unknown, though may have been in part due to Cyberdreams going defunct in 1997.
Franchise: Killer Instinct
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On the 19th of February 2024, designer Kevin Baylis revealed a pitch he made for Killer Instinct 3 for the Nintendo 64. It was meant to be a prequel featuring younger versions of the characters, where players could hone the characters' moves, then gaining more before moving on to "the next chapters of their lives". The game didn't make past the concept phase because the people at Rare thought that "the fighting game ‘fad’ was over".
Company: Next Level Games
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Next Level Games once had a project pitch for an action game called "Catalyst" that would have been released for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. As the game was never officially announced, not much is known about it other than what is seen in the pitch video, which involves an unidentified man attacking a group of soldiers using a device called the "Catalyst" after they had betrayed him and kidnapped his daughter. The game was never released, likely due to not being able to find a publisher.
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When Stellar Blade was first announced as "Project Eve", it was stated to be coming to the PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One. However, during the September 2021 PlayStation Showcase, it was announced that the game would instead be exclusive to the PlayStation 5, after Sony Interactive Entertainment had agreed to publish the game.
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The cancelled Atari Jaguar game Tiny Toon Adventures: Plucky Duck in Hollywood Hijinks ran into trouble with its art direction. It originally used photorealistic backgrounds, uncharacteristic of the cartoon and described by a developer as "build and[sic] engine and insert your favorite licensed character here." Despite a complete reset being done to the game's art direction following this iteration, the art did not live up to Warner Bros.' standards for how the Tiny Toon characters and world should look, lacking color and brightness. After Warner Bros. provided model sheets with specific instructions for drawing the characters, the development team instead switched to taking photos of the TV show and converting those into sprites, which caused issues as the sprites would come out corrupted. Atari ultimately concluded that no artist at Telegames was able to create proper Tiny Toons art, requiring art duties to be swapped out to Digital Delirium, which also failed to deliver Warner Brothers-quality animation, which caused the game's development to start implementing pencil tests into their animation process, which slowed down the game's development significantly. Eventually, all of the art for the first 2 worlds was finished, however Telegames stated they did not need the art at that point, with the art (and its respective levels) not being implemented over a year later. Telegames laid out an offer where they would only release a milestone document if a fully laid-out stage map could be provided, something the developer who released this story believed was a stalling tactic, as they already had the art and mockup stage layouts. Shortly after this, the artist assigned to complete the level layouts was laid off, requiring Digital Delirium to be brought in-house, and some music was made for the game that was completely unfit for the source material.
subdirectory_arrow_right Next Level Games (Company)
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In 2011, Next Level Games began work on a game called "Clockwerk", that never made it to the prototype stage before its cancellation. The game was about a pair of elderly Hausmeisters named Otto and Herman, who take care of "The World Clock", a magical clock tower that governs the flow of time throughout the universe. On the day before their retirement, however, a group of gremlins attack and dismantle the clock tower's innards, forcing the grumpy pair to defeat the invaders and fix the inner workings before they can finally retire. Supposedly, it was pitched to multiple companies (including Sega and Nintendo), but was ultimately cancelled when the company they had partnered with felt that the gameplay was too similar to another game they were publishing.
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While Bubsy 3D is often considered to have killed the Bubsy franchise until its revival in the late 2010s, the franchise was not killed by Accolade as one may expect. Accolade wanted a new installment titled Bubsy 4 (Bubsy in Fractured Furry Tales not being considered part of the franchise's official numbering) after Bubsy 3D's release, but series creator Michael Berlyn was the one who pulled the plug on the franchise, believing that Bubsy 2 and Bubsy 3D had dealt too much damage to it:
"I pitched [Sparky and Bolt, an unmade, Jetsons-inspired game] to Accolade, and Accolade said, "Ummmmm, I don’t think so. We’re more interested in a Bubsy 4." And I said, "I really think Bubsy’s dead by now. Between what you guys did with Bubsy 2 and what I did with Bubsy 3D, it’s time to move on." They didn’t agree."
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Ghostbusters is a modified version of an unreleased game called Car Wars. According to the game's developer David Crane in a 2010 interview, Car Wars was "a game about buying cars, tricking them out, and dueling them against other cars around a fictional city." After one month of development, Activision co-founder Gary Kitchen called and met with him to discuss making a game based on the then-upcoming Ghostbusters film to release on the same day as the film, and Crane immediately devised a way to change Car Wars into a Ghostbusters game with only minor changes and additions.