I'll start. Donkey Kong's Fun With Music was going to be released alongside DKjr Math and that Popeye english learning game. As the name suggests this game was going to try and teach children about music. It also had a karaoke mode which probably didn't work at all since the Famicom mic sucks ass. The game was shown in some early promo stuff for the Famicom but never got released. There is a rumor that the game found its way onto some bootleg carts but there is no evidence to back that up.
Kikstart 2 for the Atari 8-bit machines.100% finished but never released because the publishers were bough out by Sega who then then killed themselves.https://youtu.be/HCZusssDrK4?feature=shared
Butaman for the Famicom. A copy has resurfaced in the sense that somebody who worked on it still has a prototype, but beyond that there's no ROM online or any other carts known to exist. It's by Sigma, and appears to use the same engine and graphical style as the game Time Zone.
>>11101104
A lot of unreleased games have promotional screenshots, previews, flyers, and even videos, but I'm also interested in "name but no meaningful data" unreleased things. As in, there's mentions of the game, with maybe a description of gameplay and maybe a mockup logo or something, but no videos or screenshots. I find these to be fairly intriguing, even if just to know if they ever were in development, or if they were just rough plans which never really materialized into anything resembling an actual game. Probably the most tragic (if you can call a videogame not being released "tragic") are the games which were 90-100% complete, but scrapped at the last minute for whatever reason. Nightmare Busters for the SNES was one such title, but fortunately that saw a release many years later -- but only after one of the main developers who worked on it died.
>>11101127You'll love this then. On one of the ads that features Fun With Music, they revealed some game titles that would be released in March of '84. They name Donkey Kong 3 and Pinball among some other games, but the three most interesting are Bowling, which never came out, then two games that don't even have names, Space War Game and Adventure Game. Space War Game may be Defender 2/Stargate, but that's just speculation on my part. As for Adventure Game, I have no idea what that could be. It's too early to be Zelda and I doubt it's Super Mario Bros either. None of those 3 games have any screenshots or really anything available last I checked. Japanese Internet may have lead to better results but I don't know moon runes unfortunately.
>>11101257I'd have to imagine that they at least started something for Bowling, given that their early lineup of Famicom games tried to hit a lot of the basic videogame-friendly sports things.
For me it's Christopher Columbus for the Super Famicom. It's attributed to Misawa Entertainment, but it seems like they were just a publisher, and since many/most of their releases were Japanese localizations of western games, I'm not really sure what to think of the potential quality or who would've even developed it. Regardless, a shmup featuring Christopher Columbus in a flying boat, fighting giant monsters ripped straight from a 1400s decorative world map, is just too awesome of a concept.
>>11101842Actually based on the copyright, I'm guessing it was developed by Atena. Which makes sense, they developed some other shmups for the console
I'm really sad about the cancellation of VB Mario Land, we could have had a great direct sequel to SML2.
I guess not VR but I remember reading about stock exchange Visual Novel game for the Nintendo DS made by the team that made Ace Attorney, I remember two screenshots but nothing ever came out of that.
>>11101004I wonder if this got repurposed into Mario Paint.>>11101127Personally I care less about this one. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Miyamoto said Pikmin 4 was "near completion" in 2015, but it wasnt announced until 2022. Just kind of sounds like some people say random shitmaybe that's me being a negative nancy though. Metroid Dread was leaked before 2010 with no screenshots, but in the long run, sounds like that was probably true and was cancelled for a long time i know these are non /vr/ examples, they're just examples why i personally dont care about named games with 0 screenshots
>>11102690>I wonder if this got repurposed into Mario Paint.I was going to say "no" but with Nintendo you never know, not crazy to think some ideas made it into Mario Paint>>11102690>Pikmin 4Well it was "near completion" in 2015. 2 years after Pikmin 3 so I'm guessing it either got shelved all those years and eventually released or that version was just like an expansion pack of Pikmin 3 and got cancelled for being too similar. I dunno, haven't played Pikmin 4 to know.>DreadI think Dread was indeed in development and just kept getting cancelled for one reason or another, development hell is a thing.Then you have Metroid Prime 4 that got cancelled and started from scratch, who knows how that one is but perhaps an early build of that could eventually leak
Kimba the White Lion for N64.iirc Miyamoto was in the directors seat for this one so it could have been his last game instead of Mario 64. Ive never seen much discussion or interest about this one online, probably because its not a Nintendo IP and doesn't have a guy in a red hat in it, but it could have been a cool game. Surprised we didn't see it in any of the recent leaks.
Bound High was a Virtual Boy game that was canceled even though it was complete. It was released as a ROM online, a number of years back. Ironically it's my favourite Virtual Boy game. It's very fun.
The developers of Tails' Skypatrol for Game Gear years later made a port of the game for Game Boy with Sega's IP removed under the name Boon Boon Kabun. It was never released and remains undiscovered.
>>11103642>Ive never seen much discussion or interest about this one online.People were talking about it for a decade and stopped talking about it about 20 years ago.
>>11104128dragon hopper and the f-zero game are the real holy grails for sure...faceball got a release but it is noticeably incomplete
>>11101004Duality, the original IP from Double Aught, the company that made Marathon: Infinity. Sci-fi/fantasy in an alien world with a political conspiracy theme, mixed with classic Bungie-inspired 5D space and Borges-influenced writing.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHeVH_0HbY0
>>11105660
>>11101127>"name but no meaningful data" unreleased thingsRodan for the NES has haunted me for over 30 years.
>>11105848Wow, I've never seen that before. What a shame it never came out. Rodan is my boy.
>>11101004Space Jelly (or Moon Jelly) is a recent discovery that I've found interesting. It's a cancelled N64 game by Software Creations, and the most significant proof of its existence is a soundless VHS rip of what is clearly a prototype uploaded to Youtube and Reddit by the son of a former employee. I'm sure this game would be forgotten and irrelevant as just another janky N64 platformer had it come out, but the fact that it had such sparse publication prior to this single upload makes me wonder how many games like this have fallen through the cracks over the last 30+ years.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrXyp-49nmc>>11103619Afaik, Dread was planned as early as 2005 for the DS, but Sakamoto believed that the technology didn't match his vision, so it was a development hell in its own design. The reason it got leaked was because it was going to be part of Nintendo's E3 lineup that year. Game journos were told of the announcement beforehand and were subsequently shocked when it was cut last-minute. DYKG has a very good video about its history.
>>11101842Goddamn it this looks good
>>11101004Obligatory Kirby Gamecube protos mentionFirst one >Meant to be a direct sequel to Super Star, using the same subgame format>Allowed three helpers at once for four player simultaneous multiplayer>Many of its assets were reused in Kirby Air Ride, Kirby Super Star Ultra and Kirby Return to Dream Land Second One (first one in pic)>Full 3D gameplay>Only two screenshots of it exist, both depicting sword kirbyThird One (also in pic)>featured a 'picture book' style aesthetic and upgradable copy abilities>also only has two screenshots, both of Kirby just standing around with no copy abilityThe second pictures were only shown off during a developer conference in 2023 and are near identical to the first ones (possibly on purpose to poke fun at the elusiveness of these prototypes)
>>11106756That second photo would be the perfect modern Kirby look.
>>11101004Batman on PC Engine.Oh, what's that? PC Engine did get a Batman video game? Yes, it did, and it was an odd maze kind of thing, instead of an action platformer like the NES and Genesis got.What could've been...
>>11101257I know there's an unreleased prototype for a bowling game developed by Coconuts Japan for the NES, but it has a copyright date of 1989.
>>11106756Super Star sequel must have been headed by Sakurai and/or Shimomura, so doubtless their departure destroyed the game.3D looks like Blowout Blast with abilities.I'm most curious about the third. It looks like a KDL3/K64 sequel with a revamped upgrade system?
>>11105848>>11106093Literal Vaporware, they announced a game that wasn't even greenlighted.
>>11107230That's hard to say for sure. There's been unreleased games discovered which were never even formally announced (or at least if it were, not widely), like that UWC NES game.
>>11107398and thanks to the "lol old protogames are persolanized creepypasta so random" zoomer movement of the past few years, i have a hard time knowing what is real anymore
>>11101004Sonic X-Treme would've been so cool, /vr/os...
>>11108029>Sonic X-Treme would've been so coolSonic X-Treme was a fucking dumpster fire pending to happen.Not to mention how mentally ill it's dev, Chris Coffin, was. We almost had video game Penders.Thank goodness Naka told the devs they can't make their Bug! ripoff on the Saturn.
>>11108119I'm aware it would've probably been subpar... but I'm a fan of tons of subpar video games, while I'm also not a fan of many that I recognize are good, I think it's mostly about what's appealing to us in a personal manner, Sonic X-Treme would've been a mediocre title I think, but I also think it would've been fun to play for me, though I could be wrong.
>>11108029You mean you don't like it?No fun, anon
>>11101004Earthbound 64
>>11106949Sunsoft weren't playing around
A PC port of the original Medal of Honor on the Unreal engine. As far as I know, these two tweets by one of the guys who worked on it are pretty much the only evidence it ever existed.
>>11108680That's not Sonic X-Treme though...
>>11101004This was a very rough tech demo that made it onto a couple of magazine demo disks for a game called Gruesome Castle:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPPYTY7gOesIt was meant to be a 3D adventure game in the late 90s in the mould of a Scooby Doo type setup. I really enjoyed playing it as a kid.
>>11111084Are you sure?
>>11106949>>11110647Wish KnF’s Athena and Psycho Soldier get TG-16 port
>>11107223>Super Star sequel must have been headed by Sakurai and/or ShimomuraThe higher speed, artstyle and super star derivativeness makes me think it was almost certainly a sakurai game
>>11109173I'm so fucking mad nothing from this came from the gigaleak
>>11113242Nothing made by HAL was in that leak unfortunately, so no Earthbound 64 and no Kirby GCN...
Fascinating thread.
>>11101004Love Quest for the Famicom. This was also released for the Super Famicom.For whatever reason the NSFs are out there.https://youtu.be/jPOquOzbTVI
>>11101004Splatter World, a JRPG based on Splatterhouse for the Famicom.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mw-wSG9PWQ8
Mega Twins from Capcom, home ports for 8 bit machines around 1992. all finished or close to finished but the plug was pulled by UK publisher US Gold
Bouncer was going to be released sometime in 84 and was test marketed in a couple of arcades. But costs and legal troubles led the game to never get a wide release. Strangely, the machine was featured as a prop in the 80s B-Movie Ninja 3: The Domination.
Heavyweight Champ (not to be confused with the 1987 punch out clone) came out in 1976 by Sega and is considered to be the first fighting game. The game was not preserved and the only known cabinet is beyond repair. However, in 2023 some gameplay footage from a news archive was posted on YouTube, so we at least know how it played.https://youtu.be/Szu44xZyQd0?si=Nj67Ro-NHs2_FJ0M
>>11115189It's on Genesis and Turbo CD if you want to play it. I can't really imagine an 8-bit version being great though to be honest
>>11115429yes I know, its just an oddity that all 8 bit ports were pulled simultaneously. versions for the C64, NES, Amstrad, Speccy and MSX. not sure how Capcom felt about this
>>11106949I wonder if that version has anything to do with the PCE Batman reusing the Stage 1 theme from the NES game.https://youtu.be/-KtYL1D4xtMMaybe they had it ready for the cancelled version and just threw it in so it wouldn't go to waste.
