Games That Weren't^®

Sadly not all Games That Werent investigations turn out successfully, and many times we find out about an unreleased or cancelled game only to find out that whatever work was done on it is also lost to the ether.

I found out about two such games over the weekend.

The first was a planned Megadrive version of Aliens vs Predator for the SNES. The game plays like an AvP version of Final Fight and got mixed reviews at the time. A different version was to be released in the arcades a year later by Capcom but the console version on the SNES was released by Activision who owned the AvP licence at the time. I was intrigued to see if I could track down any evidence of the port given how much of a fan I am of both the AvP franchise and Final Fight.

The SNES version of Alien vs Predator

I managed to contact the producer of the SNES game, Tom Sloane, who confirmed its existence and directed me to the company who were in charge of creating the Megadrive version, Realtime Associates Inc.

Although a Megadrive version of Aliens vs. Predator was indeed planned, along with a PC version, it was scrapped as Activision werent happy with how it was developing. I suspect that if reviews of the SNES version were mixed, then poor sales would have also hampered any willingness to release the game on other platforms.

Sadly nothing exists of these planned versions so while its nice to confirm that a version was planned and it is a genuine GTW, its a shame nothing exists of it today.

The second game I found purely by accident while looking for information on Aliens vs. Predator, as Realtime Associations Incs president, David Warhol revealed to me they were was a planned video game conversion of a comic called Youngblood, which came out in the early 1990s.

The game was planned for the PS1, Sega Saturn and the PC and Warhol (David, not Andy) described it as an action based real-time strategy game.

Like Aliens vs Predator though, nothing remains of this game despite it being more recent (well at least within the last 20 years!).

Its always a shame to discover that certain games were in fact planned for release, only to simultaneously discover that nothing remains of them now but at least we can document their planned existence in the hope that something turns up one day.

Special thanks belong to Tom Sloane of Sloaperama Productions and David Warhol of Realtime Associates Inc for sharing their thoughts and memories on these games, but please do remember to archive everything from now on!