Legions in Hiding

And no, I'm not thinking of the song by Testament, but that's a good guess.

Seriously though -- how many times have you seen/read something that just made you drool in anticipation for the future event, and then it never happened? I'm not talking about instances where your friends are "totally getting you strippers for your birthday this year," but rather, games that just never made it.

There's really no rhyme or reason to the games I picked (other than the fact that they have pictures...I know that America can't read without them purdy pictures). Here are a few games that are pissing me off -- RIGHT NOW!

#1. Primal Rage 2 (Arcade, 1996?)

OK, so who here has played Primal Rage? You know, Primal Rage? The fighting game where you control dinosaurs and fight each other with special attacks? Well, if you did, I feel sorry for you. For some reason, Primal Rage was a really popular game in 1994. So much so, in fact, that Atari had planned a sequel (I really didn't see much in it other than the "cheese" system. THAT was clever).
Apparently, the plot was going to revolve around the idea that this "meteor" that crash landed was filled with these human-like deities that were going to fight the dinosaurs.
Yeah.
Wisely, Atari decided to pull the plug in production. What about Enter the Matrix, Atari? What about that!?



#2. Star Fox 2 (SNES, 1995?)
Awww, and they even had the box art ready for this one! Working off of the success of 1993's Star Fox, Nintendo decided to pull out the ol' sequel machine (there have been, what, 4 sequel/spin-offs since?). They had added characters ("Miyu" and "Fay"), customization (now you could customize your ship's stats), and full 3-D roaming. As a matter of fact, an Alpha of the game was shown at E3 that year, and was widely publicized by Nintendo. The game was pretty much done, and never saw the light of day.
What happened?
Apparently, the game was almost too good. Afraid that there would be no distinction in the 3-D between the SNES and Ultra 64 (later the N64), Miyamoto canned the project. Here's what Star Fox 2 programmer Dylan Cuthbert has to say about that: "StarFox 2 was fully completed...[we] expanded Starfox into a full 3D shooting game. The reason for non-release was the then impending Nintendo 64 which of course was intended to be released a lot sooner than it actually was. Miyamoto-san decided he wanted to have a clean break between 3D games on the SNES and 3D games on the new superior 64 bit system. In retrospect, he could have released Star Fox 2 and there would have been over a year and a half before the N64 came out. But hindsight is always 20/20.
Add in the cost of the VFX chip, and you've got yourself a cancellation.

#3. Duke Nukem Forever (PC, "When It's Done")
See, this isn't really fair. Duke isn't exactly canceled...but he has been in production since 1997. He is what we call "VaporWare." Anyways, 3D-Realms recently released this screenshot of the game (in 2007 no less!), so they are still pumping money into it. It's not like they don't have the money either, what with the millions they made off of Duke Nukem 3D and Prey (not to mention Max Payne). Still, 10 years of development has gotta be painful.
Here's the latest peep from the head honchos:
"No, you cannot pre-order the game. If you see some online store saying "We are taking pre-orders", they're just trying to get your money (they usually also make up their own supposed "insider release date info", too). There is no release date set, we are not taking pre-orders for the game. End of story."

Yowza.