Surfer Girl's 18 Games You Never Knew
Yes, we've been covering the 'Surfer Girl' mystery, and yes, the self-proclaimed industry insider is tending a little towards the self-involved, with a Kotaku Australia interview allowing her to keep her mysterious airs.
But she's still coming up with the goods - witness the '18 canceled games you never knew existed unless you worked on them' post on the 'Such Things That Never Were' blog, which is a genuinely interesting list.
Among the notable ones: 'A.I. [arena fighting game based off the film] (XBOX, ACES Studio/Microsoft)', which was presumably the cancelled game that the 'The Beast' ARG was originally going to be accompanying, as well as 'Fight For Your Right [party game] (platforms unknown, Z-Axis/Activision)', and an interesting claim: 'The Getaway Online [eventually became Home] (PS2, Studio London/SCEE)'.
In fact, you can dig around in here for a while - there's the claim that William Latham's now-defunct Computer Artworks (responsible for The Thing) were working on 'Alone in the Dark: The Abductions' for Atari, and also a mention of 'GhostWorld', a pretty obscure and neat-looking title that Luxoflux were working on from 2000 to 2002 - Joby Otero has a page up about it now, sure.
And actually, it's just about possible for someone to have Googled all of these games from portfolios - here's one backing up Alone In The Dark, here's another mentioning 'Lemmings Forever' - but you'd have to be reasonably tragic to go to that trouble.
And on the other hand, there's a follow-up with pictures of a canned 3D version of Joust, with the following commentary: "In the early 2000s, Midway was working on reviving every single classic arcade game the company made in the 80s (NARC, Gauntlet, Spy Hunter, Defender, Dr. Muto and possibly one or two more) into a slightly-to-vastly inferior three-dimensional versions. Thankfully, Joust was not amongst them, the planned update slated for released in 2002 for PS2, Xbox, and GameCube played much more like a not-very-good version of Mortal Kombat on flying ostriches than like the original Joust." Dr. Muto wasn't '80s arcade IP (was it?), but otherwise, this is on the money - I visited the developers at Midway San Jose while they were making the game.
[Also, our Girl posted and then retracted screenshots of Freelancer 2 - here's one of the images still up on the Blogger site. Wonder why? (UPDATE: Ah, it's back up.) Overall, a bit of an attitude, but continued good information flow, which makes up for it, eh?]
Comments
Wait, I thought 3D Joust was planned for the Atari Jaguar?
Ah, a quick check and search shows that the pictures linked above are not for Dactyl Joust (the canceled Jaguar game) but for some other incarnation.
Posted by: Baines | October 22, 2007 9:44 PM
Oop, OK, _a_ canned 3D version of Joust - I'm not sure I realized there was more than one, heh.
Posted by: simonc | October 22, 2007 10:14 PM
If Dr. Muto was not from the 80s and I'm confusing it with another title, I have not given it enough credit. Joust was bad. The Freelancer 2 shots would have been deleted if there was no future use for them, they'll be back in a future post about that incredible game and the other incredible sequel (to a title that was rather mediocre) that Digital Anvil was working on when it closed.
such things that never was is an entirely different beast from Surfer Girl Reviews Star Wars, I hope it is far less self-absorbed. I intend to put a focus on stories of people and scrapped entertainment projects that somehow relate to them.
I wish I knew beforehand that there was evidence to back up my list on the internet, I would have been able to fill my post with verifiable sources before it had gone up.
Posted by: surfer girl | October 23, 2007 12:45 AM
I don't find surfer girl self-involved. I thought that's what blogs were for in the first place. I like all the political stuff thrown right in the middle of the videogame news. It's something I've always wanted to do, but I haven't found the right way to accomplish yet. I like that she just DOES it, regardless of its connection to entertainment. She knows people will be checking the site for big industry rumors and then forces us to pay attention to important things happening in society at large, not just our make-believe videogame world.
Posted by: Matthew | November 10, 2007 12:17 AM