Canceled Video Games With Playable Demos

Key Takeaways

• Games get canceled often, but some still have playable builds circulating online.
• Examples include Mario Kart XXL, Saint’s Row Undercover, and Sonic Crackers.
• Rayman for SNES, Resident Evil 1.5, and Blue Angelo also have unreleased playable builds.

Whether we hear about it or not, games are constantly being canceled. Sometimes it’s just rotten luck, a game that a publisher thinks won’t drive enough profit. Other times its a game that gets off the ground before you realise its just not technically feasible. Sometimes games are cancelled before word of them even reaches the public.

Sometimes though, if you’re lucky, those early games that met an untimely fate find their way into the world. Plenty of legal complications make this a rare occurrence, but it’s hard to stop the spread of a game you never claimed existed. Here, we’ve gathered up a healthy selection of canceled games that, in one way or another, still have playable builds.

Updated November 5th, 2024 by Hilton Webster: Games get canceled all the time, we just don’t hear about it usually. With how long games take to develop now, and how large they are, it’s hard for pieces to leak out, especially with how harsh publishers are on copyright. That said, plenty of older games still leak out to this day, decades after they’ve been canceled, and we’ve added a few more of them to highlight that.

16

Thrill Kill

Originally being developed by Paradox Development, who would go on to become Midway Games, Thrill Kill was a very violent fighting game in the tradition of Mortal Kombat. Fully rendered in 3D for the original PlayStation, that gory nature presented quite a few issues.

So controversial was the game that after the rights were bought by EA, they simply refused to release it nor sell the game to anyone else. It did eventually get stripped down to form another game, Wu-Tang: Shaolin Style, though plenty of ROMs of the original game made its way to the internet as well.

15

Timeshift

The Timeshift game that currently exists, and the one that was originally showcased to the public are quite different games. After ownership transferred from Atari to Sierra, the game was effectively rebooted. This meant plenty of the content changed, including the protagonist from voiced to silent.

However, a playable demo for the PC and Xbox was made available before the game was rebooted. While this demo isn’t publically available anymore, you can still find plenty of preserved versions of it out there.

14

Mario Kart XXL

We all know the Mario Kart series. Of the many Mario spin-off series, Mario Kart is by far the most popular next to Super Smash Bros. Great party game! It did at point also have a Game Boy Advance version in development.

The game was never actually officially announced, and was really more a pitch by Denaris Entertainment Software to showcase its 3D rendering tech on the Game Boy Advance. It never advanced beyond a beta phase, though both the ROM and even physical catridges with the unfinished game were later found.

13

Saint’s Row Undercover

Saint’s Row Undercover was a PSP spin-off that was more-or-less finished. Due to THQ closing and the PSP’s dwindling sales, this led to the core team dropping it. It had you playing as a corrupt cop in the city of Stilwater, giving a twist on the typical Saint’s Row formula.

What’s more interesting is the fact that the game was later released by Volition itself in 2016. It’s nothing more than a beta build of the game since it never got the chance to be completed, though the fact that it is technically legally playable is a rarity in regards to many games that get ultimately canceled.

The Elder Scrolls Travels series of games first appeared as mobile entries in the Elder Scrolls series, mainly releasing on early phones. The Elder Scrolls Travels: Oblivion eventually released as another mobile game, though this was not the original version in development.

Prior to that, the Elder Scrolls Travels: Oblivion was intended to be a PSP game, as evidenced by the leaked builds of the game. It was never formally announced, though decent headway seems to have been made on the PSP version of the game, featuring a more cartoonish look compared to the original Oblivion.

11

Diablo Junior

When you think of Diablo, you probably don’t really imagine it as a family-friendly game, do you? So you probably couldn’t really imagine a specially built prequel being made for the Game Boy Color as a tie-in to the main game. It was an odd choice, and likely part of the reason it never released.

And judging by the leaked ROM of the game, it seems it never got very far in development, either. The build that released showcases some very basic art and animations, and next to nothing else. It’s a proof of concept that the game could literally run, though may not have been a great idea. At least you can check otu out for yourself.

10

Batman: Revenge Of The Joker – SNES

When it came to the 1990s, you could get plenty of Batman games wherever you looked, and one such game was Batman: Revenge of the Joker. It was released on the NES at first as Return of the Joker, with the Revenge remake appearing on the Sega Mega Drive.

Except a SNES remake was also in development, but was never formally released or even announced. A fairly complete build of the game was later found online that you can play, though it’s not the most stable of games.

9

Rayman – SNES

While Rayman is an iconic character now, his floating arms instantly recognisable, it was a long and hard battle to bring him into the digital space in the first place. The game was originally planned for the Atari ST, then the SNES CD-ROM attachment, and finally released on the Atari Jaguar.

Except years later in 2016, a copy of the SNES version was found by an original programmer and released with legal permission online. It’s a dramatically different rendition of Rayman than what eventually released, though one you can finally experience.

8

Resident Evil – Game Boy Color

The original Resident Evil was something of a revelation for the games industry, revitalising zombie games and bringing survival-horror mechanics to the forefront. SInce then, the original Resident Evil has come to plenty of platforms as ports, remasters, and remakes, but never the Game Boy.

Except, this was planned. A Game Boy Color port was in development by HotGen Studios, but translating a 3D game to a significantly weaker handheld console was deemed too difficult before the project was canceled. It eventually became Resident Evil Gaiden, though the in-development builds of the original game were eventually uploaded to the internet.

7

Bio Force Ape

Bio Force Ape is not renowned for the game’s own quality, but by merit of its own existence. It was announced in 1991, only to be canceled a few months before its release, becoming a famed example of vaporware in the industry as to whether the game ever existed at all.

Matters were made worse when a man called Paul Brown posted fake screenshots he claimed were from the game before destroying the game’s cartridge. Except later, Paul Brown reported seeing an actual cartridge for Bio Force Ape, which has since been uploaded online. A wild journey by all accounts.

6

Sonic Crackers

While Sonic may have began as a competitor to Mario, he exists in a wholly different area now, a massive multi-media icon as big in games as he is in movies. He’s Sega’s mascot, and the reason for so much of its success. Which is what makes Sonic Crackers so interesting.

The game, which is really more of a tech demo, is very barebones. It has limited sprites for Sonic and Tails, and is seen as a very early version of Knuckles’ Chaotix. That said, despite being very unfinished and boring elements from earlier games, it’s quite packed with the ideas of what future games would become, and you can find the ROM of it pretty easily online.

The name, Sonic Crackers, is assumed to be a mistranslation and is intended to be Sonic Clackers.

5

Yoshi’s Story (GBA)

Yoshi’s Story originally released for the N64 back in 1997. It was a wonderful little game, Yoshi finally got his starring role. Then Nintendo did something very funny. They made a tech demo of Yoshi’s Story for the Game Boy Advance to showcase just how powerful this new console was at rendering 3D imagery.

It was never intended to be playable to the public, and so Nintendo never made any specific statements on it. That didn’t stop the tech demo itself eventually finding its way online and being surprisingly feature complete as a tech demo port of a fully 3D game.

4

Resident Evil 1.5

While never actually announced by Capcom, Resident Evil 1.5 is the unofficial name given to one of the most prominent prototypes of Resident Evil 2. This build is quite similar to the final game in regards to many story elements and locations, though features very different gameplay and characters.

In it, there is the character of Elza Walker, a biker who would eventually be replaced by Claire. Clothes got damaged as you were attacked, and the game had a slightly stronger lean on combat. It’s a fascinating look at just how many renditions the game went through, and you can even play it for yourself.

3

Resident Evil 2 – Game Boy Advance

Resident Evil sure does go through a lot of prototypes, huh? This one is a bit different because it was never a game officially commissioned by Capcom, but a tech demo pitch made by Raylight Studios. It was intended to be a Game Boy Advance port of Resident Evil 2, which went so well the first time.

It didn’t ever pass the pitching stage, though the tech demo is a great showcase of just how possible it would’ve been to get the game running natively on the hardware. While it was never publically announced, the build still found its way online if you wanted to give it a try.

2

Silent Hills

It’s hard to emphasise the impact Silent Hill had. While it took very heavily from the Resident Evil games for its base gameplay, the themes and storytelling in Silent Hill set the basis for how psychological horror was handled in games, and that eventually led to the absurdly unsettling P.T, the game that was intended to become Silent Hills.

Except that was never to be. After the mistreatment of Kojima and his team at Konami, the project was canceled and P.T. itself was treated by Konami as if it never existed. So if you still have this one on your console, make sure not to delete. Konami might just make sure you can never get it back.

1

Blue Angelo

If you follow the Kickstarter scene then maybe Blue Angelo sounds familiar. What began on the GBA was scrapped, but was retooled for modern systems in HD. However, it did not get funded. On a positive note, there are actually two builds of the original GBA version you can find online, which are actually pretty extensive.

It has quite a fun style to it, feeling reminiscent of earlier Castlevania games in many regards. While the second build released through the failed kickstarter is quite a big more buggy, it features a much more complete version of the game than ever seen prior.