Why don't companies release / finish old cancelled games more often?I absolutely understand that it's much easier said than done, along with the original developers having likely moved on, but there are so many promising games that were essentially done, but were victims of circumstance.I just find it weird that we have retro-inspired indies becoming mainstream, endless feux-retro nostalgia merchandising, HD Collections, yet we rarely see many true post-lifetime releases.
Because most of them aren't at the state of completion that StarFox 2 was. Pretty much all it needed were menus and some presentation stuff. Cancelled games are cancelled for a reason, and most of them don't even reach beta, so they would take a significant investment to get to a point where they can be released, that's if they even have the source code archived.Also developing for older systems, aside from the unlikelihood of making decent sales, requires skills that their current teams might not have anymore.
Probably because the people that have inherited those companies had nothing to do with its creation. An aftermarket release is completely unheard of to them.
>>12255631You wouldn't be asking this if you had ever embarked on any creative endeavor.
>>12255631There's still a lot of baked in ideas of progress as a necessary virtue with regards to video games, since video game evolution was concurrent with computational progression for almost its entirety. You still see that kind of language in use, people talking about whether a game or mechanic or genre is obsolete. Things are getting quite stagnant at this point, so we've started to see less calls for continual remasters and an appreciation for various kinds of aesthetics and mechanics for what they are. You have to remember that all of this stuff is very very new.
>>12255631Because they just want lazy profits.
>>12255631Publishers saying no.
>>12255642>Pretty much all it needed were menus and some presentation stuff.SF2 was 100% finished back in the 90's. Those betas that leaked decades ago weren't representative of the completion of the actual game.
I get something that is basically a 1 level proof on concept that is barely a game, but its indeed retarded for them not to cash in on the retro gaymin frenzy. Namco should have absolutely released Splatterworld at some point, like in that recent Famicom Namco museum collection. Nintendo could make easy money from tendie fanatics if they polshed up their prototype nes versions of breath of the wild and kirby superstar and released them. It's pretty surprising though that they released the english Mother and Starfox 2 at all, so i will give them some credit.
>>12255631read thishttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honne_and_tatemaeUnfinished projects have very complicated relationships for these companies, and might involve contacting old developers to understand how to finish the work. If the developer left under acrimonious terms (more common in Japan than you think) then the people in charge at the company will be very reluctant to get back in contact with them and ask them for a favor. But on the other hand if the *don't* do this it could also be considered somewhat dishonorable. So it's a matter that is best just to be avoided and forgotten.
>>12255957Back in the day you didn't have digital releases so there would be significant upfront costs in manufacturing the games, shipping them to stores and you also needed a marketing budget. On top of that, the market was smaller and there was only room for so many games in any release schedule.
