These famous and memorable video games arose from concepts that had been abandoned for their original purpose.
The likelihood of the project changing grows over the lengthy and hard process of building a video game. As time passes, the intricacies of what the game began as and what it is becoming can collide.
This occasionally results in the terrible cancellation of a game that we will never be able to play, but it can also lead to something even more interesting.
Reusing existing assets and ideas to save money or resources is a widespread practice in the industry. It’s clever and one of the most unusual parts of the industry, where a concept is developed for a specific project just to be scrapped.
But what about that old concept? Well, every now and again it is dusted off and shocked back to life into something magnificent.
7. BioShock
Even though BioShock became a historic release when it was released in 2007, the original premise may have been even more intriguing.
BioShock is a political game that casts a suspicious eye on objectivism and capitalism, although it was originally intended to be a story about a cult deprogrammer.
The developers hoped to present the player as a cult deprogrammer hired by a US senator to kidnap a lesbian woman.
Even for the fairly serious tone of the time, this was really heavy stuff. The developers eventually decided that the tale was too dramatic and transformed BioShock into the game it is now.
6. Doom 2016
As one of the pioneers of the first-person shooter genre, it’s natural for Doom to steal from the games that inspired it. Call of Duty cast a long shadow on the demon-killing franchise.
That is exactly what happened during the creation of Doom 4, a game dubbed “Call Of Doom” or “BattleDoom” by various persons within id Software.
The concept was abandoned after id Software was purchased by ZeniMax Media in 2009, and the project started a new phase of development.
It’s worth mentioning that components of the project, like the glory kill system, did eventually make their way back into the 2016 version of Doom.
5. Banjo-Kazooie
Rare was thrilled to employ their new technology for something different after their outstanding work on Donkey Kong Country.
Rare employed Silicon Graphics workstations to create stunning 3D sprites that were used to develop DKC’s worlds and levels. With this in mind, Rare chose to use it in a completely new and original project called Dream: Land Of Giants.
However, as development progressed, game director Greg Mayles noticed that the game’s focus shifted away from the main character, who became less and less important to the project.
Edson’s character was replaced with a bear named Banjo and a bird named Kazooie, resulting in the creation of Banjo-Kazooie.
4. Metroid Prime
The Metroid franchise was in a holding pattern after skipping the whole Nintendo 64 generation. Nintendo attempted to create another title but finally decided to hire an outside firm to handle Samus Aran’s next journey.
Shigeru Miyamoto paid a visit to Austin-based Retro Studios while they were working on four different projects.
Miyamoto took note of a first-person shooter they were working on, asking them to reconsider and make it the next Metroid release.
Retro dropped that and other projects under his leadership, instead focusing on Metroid Prime and allowing players to observe the world through Samus’ visor.
3. Resident Evil 4
By the time RE4 was in development, Capcom had made it a habit to create numerous iterations of a Resident Evil game before settling on the final one.
During the early stages of Resident Evil 4, director Hideki Kamiya devised a plot centered on the mystery of a man named Tony and his unique set of abilities. However, as production progressed, series creator Shinji Mikami called an audible.
Although it was regarded as out of character for the Resident Evil series, many of the images taken by Capcom workers during excursions to Spain for textures and assets were repurposed into a demon-slaying action game in which Kamiya was able to fully flesh out the scenario. The end outcome was Devil May Cry, released in 2001.
2. Legacy Of Kain
Following the release of Blood Omen: Legacy Of Kain in 1996, a complex legal struggle erupted between Silicon Knights and Crystal Dynamics over the rights to make a sequel.
As a result, Crystal Dynamics acquired the rights to create a sequel, dubbed “Kain II” internally. Amy Hennig was working on a project called Shifter Inside Crystal at the time.
Shifter, based mainly on the poem Paradise Lost, was to be about a fallen angel seeking vengeance on the false god who had wronged him.
Shifter was abandoned after Crystal Dynamics took over the brand, and pieces of it were reworked into Legacy Of Kain: Soul Reaver.
1. Parasite Eve
It’s hard to think that the original Final Fantasy 7 game was about a detective named Hot-Blooded Joe who lived in modern-day 1999 New York.
Joe was discarded as a result of further development, but the idea of an RPG detective story set in New York didn’t sit in Square’s headquarters for long.
While the Sorceress Edea character was eventually re-used in Final Fantasy 8, Square launched a dark detective RPG that was later modified as the survival horror RPG Parasite Eve.
Joe appears to have been gone forever, yet Square was able to rescue one part to produce one of the most intriguing games of the 1990s.
