For every game that makes it to release, there are dozens of canceled games. Titles that remain mere concepts, some that never leave the first prototype, and many others that, for different reasons, had to be abandoned in advanced stages of development. Today, because I love imagining what might have been, we look at a handful of those games — all based on horror movies!
Hellraiser (NES)
The cancellation of the Hellraiser video game is probably one of the most painful. The concept was great: you would control a character trapped inside the Lemarchand box, the terrifying puzzle that opens the doors of hell. Of course, the cenobites would be the main enemies, all with their horrifying and bloody powers.
Your mission would be to solve the puzzle first to escape the box, then reverse the process from outside to close it again and send the cenobite demons back to hell. Inside the box, you could find ways to manipulate the outside, moving the puzzle and creating new play areas, in a style that sounds very Metroidvania but probably isn't.
Hellraiser, the canceled NES game, was going to be so large and sophisticated that it required a special cartridge, known as the “Super Cartridge”, which contained an extra processor that modified games in the cartridge's RAM without alerting the NES processor. What's more, the graphics were to use the same "pseudo-3D" of DOOM, because Color Dream, the company in charge of development, had licensed id's engine to adapt it to their technology. Color Dream even had the rights to the film! So... what happened?
Well, let's just say that, maybe, the cancellation of Hellraiser for NES wasn't so bad after all. Color Dream refused to pay Nintendo for game licenses and had developed technology so its products could bypass the “anti-piracy protection” of the NES. At first, it worked. But then Nintendo became furious and warned the retailers that if they found a single unofficial cartridge in their stores, they would stop receiving Nintendo merchandise.
With Nintendo as the king of the hill, everyone complied with the law, and Color Dream's games disappeared from major retailers. That setback, combined with the extra cost of manufacturing the “Super Cartridge” at scale, sabotaged Color Dream's attempts to bring Hellraiser to 8 bits. And I said it might have been a stroke of luck that things turned out this way, because Color Dream later became Wisdom Tree. Yes, Wisdom Tree, the company responsible for the infamous Bible Adventures, among other deplorable religious NES games. And, of course, the incredibly strange Super 3D Noah's Ark, which finally used the engine licensed from id.
A Nightmare in Elm Street (NES)
Yes, there is a game based on A Nightmare in Elm Street, but it's not the one it should have been. What we got was an atrocity for 4 players with an interesting concept but terrible execution. The canceled version was the complete opposite: instead of the “dream warriors”, you would control Freddy himself. Your mission would be to kill all the Dream Warriors, who are scouring the city for your bones. If the teenagers managed to collect your complete skeleton and give it a sacred burial, it's game over. But Freddy would have powers similar to the films, able to travel through mirrors or move through electrical cables, and achieve terrifying transformations (the poster shows Freddy in snake form).
It is believed that this version of A Nightmare in Elm Street was canceled because of the controversy over violent games, which had less and less space on store shelves, systematically refused to sell them due to pressure from parents. Possibly, let's be honest, it wouldn't have been that good, since LJN was in charge of development, but it's still annoying that the moral of a few prevented us from what, very possibly, at least, would have been a better game than the one we finally got.
Chucky: Wanna Play? (PC)
The story of Chucky: Wanna Play? is short and painful. In 2012, after 18 months and half a million dollars invested, TikGames decided to seek funds on Kickstarter, launching a rather mediocre campaign. So mediocre that, of the $925,000 goal, they only managed to raise 585. The idea wasn't bad at all. You would control Chucky (for which the company had secured the license), and you should go through different scenarios killing people. What more could you ask from the game of a cursed killer doll? Unfortunately, the resounding failure of the campaign discouraged the developers, who canceled the project. If we let ourselves be guided by the game's images, again, maybe it was for the best.
Campfire: Become Your Nightmare (PS2/XBOX)
Who doesn't like a good slasher? The classic ones, eh. Halloween, Friday the 13th, My Bloody Valentine, etc. The best! And that's why it hurts that a project like Campfire: Become Your Nightmare was canceled. Even from the trailer it won our bloodthirsty hearts. Had it materialized, Campfire would have been a “reverse survival horror” in which you got to play the serial killer from the movie. Yes, with the slasher! The setting was planned to be epic, set in the 70s and 80s, during the golden age of the genre, and the game would have let you choose from several psychopaths to terrorize and massacre dozens of poor teenagers.
The game should have come out in 2009 for PS2 and Xbox, but it never saw the light. There was even a mobile version planned, which suffered the same fate.
George A. Romero's City of the Dead (PS2/XBOX)
The joy I felt when I learned, back then, about this game! As a die-hard fan of Romero's work, on which it would have been based, and at a time when zombie games had not proliferated, this was one of my most anticipated games. The trailer showed a more or less open FPS, where zombies populated the streets, a concept not too explored in those years (around 2005).
The action would have taken place on the island of “No Future”, where military experiments would have raised the dead. City of the Dead would have had Tom Savini himself lending his voice and appearance to a character that would initially be secondary but later playable.
It is believed that George A. Romero's City of the Dead was canceled due to financial problems at the company in charge of development, Hip Interactive. According to those who could see videos of the game in motion during E3 2005, the game was super violent and full of excessive blood and gore, just as we would have liked. What a shame!
Tremors: The Game (PS2/XBOX/PC)
In 2002 it became known that Rock Solid Studios was working on a Tremors game, the glorious saga of underground monsters and in whose first film we saw a super-powerful Kevin Bacon fighting prehistoric killer worms. It was to be a third-person action game, survival style, where you had to fight Graboids and Shriekers, using the terrain to avoid attracting their attention and to hide your body temperature from the Shriekers. The game was canceled in 2003, silently and without details.
Well, those are all the canceled games based on horror movies that I know. Do you know any more? Leave a comment! And, by the way, a question: of all these failed games, which one would you like to play if you had the chance? Oh, and if you want virtual reality horror games that you can actually play, click the link.
