Cancel Culture

In 1997, Rare started to work on a Zelda-style adventure centered around two inter-woven stories. Dinosaur Planet was supposed to have focused on an orange wolf named Sabre and a blue fox name Krystal, and players would have been able to switch between the two characters. The game was intended to be Rare’s final Nintendo 64 release, but the project was shifted to the GameCube and rebranded as a StarFox title. Krystal was carried over from the original game, but Sabre was replaced with Fox McCloud due to the visual similarities between the two. Sabre was apparently a royal knight and the son of a wizard, but his story will never be told because he kind of looked like Fox! I can only imagine how much furry porn would have been created with Sabre and Krystal, so maybe it was all for the best.

Psychonauts is a wildly entertaining platformer in which players enter the minds of various mental patients in an effort to help them resolve their issues. D’artagnan (or “Dart” for short) was the planned protagonist of the game, but he was kicked to the sidelines and replaced by Raz. I’ve always felt that Dart looked too much like a villain, and there was something about his eyes that made him look suspicious. Apparently, one of the reasons he was replaced was because his long cap was too difficult to animate. The developers were also concerned that players would confuse the cap with a ponytail. Instead of simply removing the hat, the developers opted to removed Dart! He has a brief cameo in the game’s ending, but he has less than a second of screen time and it’s uncertain if he’s even really the same character.

In 2014, a demo for a first-person psychological horror game called P.T. was published on the PlayStation Network. By the end of the demo, it was revealed that we had just been given our first taste of Silent Hills. (Incidentally, P.T. stood for Playable Teaser.) The newest entry in the Silent Hill franchise was being designed by Hideo Kojima in in collaboration with film director Guillermo del Toro. Norman Reedus had been cast as the main protagonist, but few details about his character were revealed. His brief journey through a haunted house in P.T. was unforgettable, and I couldn’t wait to see where his adventure would take him. We’ll likely never find out, unfortunately, since Konami fired Kojima, canceled Silent Hills, and pulled P.T. from PSN. You’ll have to fork over some serious coin for a PS4 with P.T. installed on it. Sad!

With titles like Bayonetta, Vanquish, and The Wonderful 101 under their belt, PlatinumGames is known for intense action games with inventive play mechanics. All evidence suggests that Scalebound would have been cut from the same cloth. The game focused on a sarcastic swordsman named Drew who fought in tandem with a fire-breathing dragon. Drew was armed with blades, guns, and explosive arrows, and he could also transform into a half-dragon hybrid. His flippant personality was reminiscent to Nero of Devil May Cry, and he was arrogant enough to wear headphones into battle. Scalebound had the financial backing of Microsoft and was officially announced at the 2014 E3, but the project was cancelled in 2017 following an earlier delay. Microsoft still owns the IP, but it’s unlikely they’ll do anything with it.

Few gaming franchises are held in higher regard than Half-Life, and the series is rightfully praised for its seamless narrative structure. The star of the games doesn’t exude a lot of personality, however. The simple fact is that Gordon Freeman is a silent protagonist with a generic appearance. An earlier model of Gordon – nicknamed “Ivan the Space Biker” – was a lot more colorful. Gordon looked like a complete normie with his trimmed goatee and thick-framed glasses, whereas the “Ivan” version was more comparable to a Viking. Some of the testers likened the design to a hobo, but I appreciated how intense he looked. The unruly beard, flattop hairstyle, and coked-out eyes made him look like he belonged on an ’80s-era wrestling card. If I imagine a guy who uses a crowbar as a weapon, he’s much more likely to look like Ivan than Gordon.

The Street Fighter series boasts one of gaming’s most diverse rosters, but not every proposed character sees the light of day. Planned characters for Street Fighter V included an abominable snowman, a Brazilian footballer, and a dude with lobster hands for some reason. Without question, my favorite character that didn’t make the cut was Clumsy Cutie. The young woman was apparently so accident-prone that her clothing would rip off during her fights! These kinds of mishaps are common in anime, and many games use clothing damage as a central game mechanic. Clumsy Cutie looked adorable in her concept art, and she didn’t seem to mind that her ass was exposed. I didn’t mind either! A few danger-haired feminists would have made noise on social media, but reasonable people would have appreciated a gal like Clumsy Cutie.

First announced in 2005, LMNO was the working title of a game that was being developed by Arkane Studios in conjunction with Electronic Arts and Steven Spielberg. The game would feature “a mix of first-person parkour movement with adventure and role-playing elements and escape-focused gameplay,” and the story revolved around the player’s relationship with an alien-looking character named Eve. It sounded like the premise for one of Spielberg’s films! Eve was apparently visiting from thousands of years in the future, and she was on the run from government agents. You could draw comparisons between LMNO and Spielberg’s own E.T., but Eve seemed liked she’d have more in common with El from Stranger Things thanks to her superhuman abilities and her angsty mannerisms. Sadly, the ambitious project was cancelled in 2010.

We’ve discussed the drama behind Resident Evil 2 on our list of developmental overhauls, but the gist of the story is that the game was cancelled when it was around two-thirds complete because the producer wasn’t happy with it. They basically restarted from the beginning, and very few assets from the original project were used in the final version of the game. The cancelled version (commonly known as Resident Evil 1.5) starred a rookie police officer named Leon Kennedy and a college student named Elza Walker who was vacationing in her hometown of Raccoon City. Leon’s character remained largely unchanged in the final build, but Ms. Walker was replaced by Claire Redfield. Adding insult to injury, Elza’s motorcycle suit was included as one of Claire’s optional outfits in the 2019 Resident Evil 2 remake.

Tae Ioroi was the intended star of a game originally known as Lily Bergamo. Set in the year 2026 and described as an “extreme action game,” Lily Bergamo looked to follow in the footsteps of other over-the-top Suda51 games like No More Heroes and Lollipop Chainsaw. We can only assume what kind of heroine Tae Ioroi would have evolved into, but I envision her as a unflappable warrior along the lines of the Bride from Kill Bill. Ioroi was covered in bandages and inexplicably barefoot, but her glowing eyes were a window to her unbridled rage. In the game’s only trailer, Ioroi unleashed a super melee attack against a giant monster, so we can assume she was familiar with martial arts. After Lily Bergamo was abruptly re-announced as LET IT DIE in 2014, Tae Ioroi was never heard from again.

Fans have been speculating about a Princess Peach doppelgänger ever since Walugi made his debut. If Mario and Luigi both had evil counterparts, then it stood to reason that the princess would have one too. Camelot pitched this idea to Nintendo during the development of Mario Tennis, but Shigeru Miyamoto vetoed the idea before he even saw the design! Waluigi’s creator, Fumihide Aoki, has since taken to Instagram to share concept art of the proposed character. Aoki envisioned Walpeach as an overbearing princess from a fallen kingdom who liked to boss people around. She’d be clad in purple like Wario and Waluigi, but her outfits would draw inspiration from punk fashion. The response to Aoki’s designs were overwhelmingly positive, and it’s safe to say that gamers would have welcomed Walpeach with open arms. Rule 34 artists certainly have…