SNES
Final Fantasy Extreme
Despite the worldwide success of its Final Fantasy franchise, Square was always worried about how to market it to the West. Final Fantasy V was one game to fall prey to such short-sightedness, with translator Ted Woolsey explaining at the time that “it’s just not accessible enough to the average gamer”. Plans to release the game to hardier ‘advanced’ Western players under the title Final Fantasy Extreme were also scrapped.
FX Fighter
After the success of Star Fox, Nintendo was keen to flex the muscle of the SNES’s Super FX chip, and began to rally as many 3D titles as it could. FX Fighter was one such game. Sadly, development delays meant that Nintendo dropped its support to concentrate on the N64, while FX Fighter only received a PC release.
Star Fox 2
Like other Super FX SNES titles that never got released, the reason Star Fox 2 got canned was due to the then-imminent release of the N64, with Miyamoto not wanting to diminish the significance of the new console’s full-3D capabilities. Which is a shame, given that Star Fox 2 was fully completed and ready to ship. We’ll buy a copy if Nintendo’s selling.
GoldenEye 007
Everyone’s favourite N64 first-person shooter could have been something very different indeed had developers Rare gone with their initial plans for the franchise: a Virtua Cop-style on-rails shooter for the SNES. Luckily, the fact that Rare’s development team was a bit inexperienced back then led to the delay that birthed the seminal N64 shooter.
