The world of video games is full of strange and inexplicable absences. A film license that should have shone in the medium, but isn't there, doesn't exist. With Kurt Russell at his sharpest as the indomitable Snake Plissken, directed by the great John Carpenter, "Escape From New York" (1981) is one of the best action films ever committed to celluloid. It spawned a sequel that wasn't quite as wonderful (though still pretty good) and a handful of stray comics. But when it came to games, nothing — except a pretty bad C64 fangame. How is this even possible?!
The Game That Never Was
It seems the blame lies with Namco. At some point in 2002/2003, the company secured the film's license and developed an almost complete game starring Snake Plissken, using the talents behind "Dead to Rights 2" and with the full collaboration of John Carpenter, Kurt Russell and Debra Hill. Under the name "Snake Plissken's First Escape", it was supposed to be released in late 2005 for PlayStation 2. But nothing happened. Namco cancelled the game without a single word, and Snake couldn't escape oblivion. It was only in 2013 that it made headlines again, thanks to this video uploaded by a mysterious Vimeo user.
According to the 2003 press release, "Snake Plissken's First Escape" was supposed to be the first in a series of games where "fists, firearms, stealth and brains" would prevail. It would feature the voice of Kurt Russell himself and the pen of John Carpenter and Debra Hill on the story. Everyone seemed thrilled. According to Andre Emerson, Senior Producer at Namco, "the opportunity to extend Snake Plissken's character through a video game franchise is a dream come true for us." So much dream come true, so much dream come true — and they still cancelled it, with not a single clue on the Internet to speculate about. In fact, the video of the game in motion shows something quite spectacular for the era, so it can't have been cancelled because it was bad.
As you can see, the game promised the best of Metal Gear Solid (starring a Solid Snake who is clearly a homage to Snake Plissken) but with the mechanics of Dead To Rights 2 (the team Namco commissioned for development). The game could have been conquered through pure stealth or by making great use of Snake's super-action moves, among which the "disarm" stands out — combos to disarm the enemy and finish him off with his own weapon. It looked fantastic! Why did they deprive us of this, damn them?! Let's cross our fingers that in the coming years some anonymous soul takes pity on us and dumps the ISO onto the web, because the prototype undoubtedly exists somewhere and we all deserve to play it.
Three Cancelled Projects
To add insult to injury, with "Snake Plissken's First Escape" there are now three cancelled projects based on these action films. The TV series "Escape From Earth" (which would continue the brilliant ending of Escape from L.A.) was never picked up by any studio, deemed "too dark and depressing", and the anime, which was being produced by Production I.G. (the same studio behind Ghost in the Shell), came to nothing. Welcome to the human race.
