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Five Games Thought Cancelled That Eventually Released
People are still reeling from the official cancellation of Silent Hills, grasping at unsubstantiated rumors and clinging to hope that one day the game the game may actually see release. There's not much hope considering the somewhat ambiguous state of Konami and the future of Hideo Kojima at the studio that runs the Silent Hill franchise, but temporary cancellation is not foreign to the video game industry. It's rare, but there have been a few occasions where a game was cancelled, or assumed to be cancelled, only to surface some time later.
Duke Nukem Forever
The poster child of long-term development, Duke Nukem Forever was announced in 1997 and floundered in development changing hands for just under 15 years until finally seeing release in 2011. It's a game many assumed was cancelled after not showing up for a long period of time. The game did eventually release, however, to middling reviews despite our cancellation assumptions.
Mother 3
The Game Boy Advance EarthBound sequel, which never released in North America, has a complicated trajectory. It began as a Super Nintendo title, then it became a Nintendo 64 title, and then it became a game for the Nintendo 64's 64DD add-on hardware, which was a huge flop in Japan. The game was canned, but a few years later development picked back up on a surprising platform – the Game Boy Advance. What ultimately released is much different from the game that would have released for the Nintendo 64, but it shares its name and likely many of its characters and plot elements, though we will likely never know for sure.
Aliens: Colonial Marines
Colonial Marines began its life as a PlayStation 2 game in early 2000, but was cancelled before release. Gearbox's game shares only a name with that project, but had its own protracted development cycle. In 2006, following Sega's purchase of the electronic rights of the Alien(s) franchise, Gearbox announced it was making an Aliens game. Like Duke Nukem, the game floundered in development while inquiries of cancellation were met with assurance that the game was, in fact, still in development. The game finally saw release in 2013 to poor reviews.
Ghostbusters: The Video Game and Brütal Legend
These two games are very different, but they share a similar story. Both were being published by Vivendi Games, a publisher who merged with Activision in 2008. After the merger, Activision decided it did not want to publish these two games and their fates were temporarily in limbo. Atari stepped up to help publish Ghostbusters in 2009 and Electronic Arts published Brütal Legend that same year. Neither stayed "cancelled" for very long, but there was a time of real fear that neither game would make it to retail shelves.
There may be hope, however fleeting, for Silent Hills yet.
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