Dreamland: Chronicles for me. Was supposed to be a spiritual sequel to X-COM by the Gallops. My all time most anticipated game, got cancelled.
Someone mentioned Sir Tech. Man, great memories. Another great studio that went out of business that made some of my all time favorite games: the original Battlefront games, Mercenaries, many others. Speaking of which, they were also developing Battlefront 3, which looked great and got cancelled.
Wait also XCOM: Alliance! First person squad shooter way ahead of it’s time.
Two builds of Alliance surfaced on a Beta archive forum a few years ago, each offering a snapshot of the game during its time at MicroProse’s Chapel Hill studio. It’s sad that after seven years of development, the game, never saw the light of day, as it was such an ambitious project, and way cooler looking than Enforcer. There’s something about the look of the original Unreal Engine 1-powered games that I still love.
Hired Guns was another really cool looking 3D imagining of a tactics title, also running on Unreal, that was never released, though, unlike Alliance, it was actually finished (the full game’s available online and is pretty easy to get running on modern hardware) but couldn’t secure a publisher once Psygnosis dropped the title and pulled out of the PC market altogether.
Man, the publisher thing is unbelievable. That was the market gatekeeper that killed so many games? Today it seems much easier, like it’s flipped. The release and distribution is easy, now it’s funding for game development that’s the hurdle.
The Warlords TBS series - the final installment - Warlords 4 - was rushed out by the publisher in a terrible state, and that pretty much killed the series.
You can’t even find Warlords 1, 2, 3 (RoH or DLR), or 4 to buy online anywhere, its so dead ;(
Which is a shame, as its one of the all time great strategy series, with a lot of advanced features ahead of its time, and a challenging AI.
Warlords 3: Darklords Rising so such a great stack of doom builder, but has never reached GOG! I heard it was a nightmare to get working on modern PCs, even with DOSbox.
Good God Warlords was good. So many great features. Were they the first series to do the “search in ruins” on the overland map? I still remember most of the unit icons, like the dwarf warriors and spiders.
Warlords 1 was one of my first, and favorite PC games. It had the story building experience that I crave in games. I still remember a game where the AI was steamrolling me and had taken out my capital forcing me to flee to my last remaining city. It took a while but my tattered refugees were able to come back and win and I remember retaking my capital was such sweet revenge. Think I was playing as the giant race. The fact that I remember that much detail from a game I played so long ago… I can hear the battle sound effects (beep, beep, beeeeep) even now.
Well - I’m afraid the method in the article (install on 32 bit system, copy files to your machine, fudge the registry, etc) wasn’t doable for me in my pure 64 bit household.
Designer Nathan Cheever (Wizards & Warriors, NOLF 2, Mafia 3) released some of his design materials from Human Head’s cancelled Prey 2 game on his blog, revealing some previously never-before-seen maps and story details from the project.
Whoa, sealed, that’s crazy. My brother and I used to play Hired Guns co-op with two mice, each controlling two characters. That was a rare experience and so much more fluid and fun exploring and fighting together. How many games did FPS single-screen co-op back in 1993? I don’t think I’ve ever used two mice on one computer since actually…
I was really looking forward to Medieval Mayor. I wish Tilted Mill could revive it somehow.
That Which Sleeps was a big Kickstarter disappointment due to it being dropped.
Correct me if I’m wrong but I have always felt Darklands was unique, that there never was and never has been a PC game like it. I don’t remember ever hearing of Darklands 2 being in the works and now that I have, I am saddened by the “news.”
