11 death rattle games that tanked your favorite studios

Nice to know you

It's a shame when a studio you like shuts down. Downsizing or "restructuring" is one thing, but the total loss of a development team is no fun for anybody. Bloated budgets, simmering stockholders, and doomful deadlines can cause some of your favorite studios to shut down. Sometimes it comes down to one, final failure: a death rattle game, if you will.

Shadowrun runs Fasa Studio under

What would you say if told you an old-school tabletop RPG was being turned into a first person shooter? Dungeons and Dragons becoming an Unreal Tournament-like title would be pretty cool, right? That was the motivation behind Shadowrun, the flagship title of Microsoft's Games for Windows Live, and it was the first big release to support PC-to-Xbox 360 connectivity. The big MS went to Fasa Studio, developer of various Mechassault and MechWarrior titles, for the job.

Hellgate: London dooms Flagship Studios

Hellgate: London was promising. Flagship Studios was formed by former Blizzard employees, and its first game looked to follow in the action-RPG footsteps of classics like Diablo. Shiny guns and swords to loot? Check. Lots of demons to fight? Check. A grimy, post-apocalyptic London to explore? Check.

Growlanser: Generations casts death on Working Designs

RPG fans of the 90s appreciate Working Designs for hits like Arc the Lad, Dragon Force, and Lunar. The publisher worked tirelessly to bring JRPG hits to American shores, and for that you should be grateful.

Homefront puts Kaos Studios in the red

Kaos Studios was born out of the PC mod community, so it was a home for promising multiplayer titles. Only two games came out of this promise, Frontlines: Fuel of War and Homefront. Unfortunately, it was the latter that did them in.

Homefront was too hyped for its own good. It was painted as a thought-provoking shooter about the invasion of the United States by a unified Korea, but an ever-changing development cycle (publisher THQ disagreed with Kaos on several fronts) led to a half-baked product. Lukewarm reviews led to poor sales, and poor sales led to the demise of Kaos Studios. The series became something of a curse after that, with the sequel taking studio Crytek UK down just a few years later.

Lair burns down Factor 5

It's tough to find a Star Wars fan who doesn't enjoy the Rogue Squadron series. The spacey vehicle shooter games made waves in the early 00s, leading developer Factor 5 to try its formula in a different setting: medieval times.

That venture is Lair, and it flopped during the early days of the PS3. Poor Sixaxis controls - and the studio's refusal to patch in new control options - led to poor reviews and poorer sales. Oh, and even though it was the first PS3 game to offer remote play (featuring an actual analog stick!), many portions of the game couldn't be completed with the PSP's limited controls. Lair just wasn't meant to fly.

Star Trek Online sends Perpetual Entertainment into darkness

The impossibly popular Star Trek property online? It preempted Star Wars: The Old Republic (rife with its own problems) too. Can you smell the potential success? Perpetual Entertainment smelled it, so it put its only other project, Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising on hold.

I bet you already see the problem here: a studio with zero finished products put in the driver's seat of one of geekdom's biggest properties. The game shifted focus several times, and Perpetual was hit with lawsuits for unfinished promotional materials: it was simply too much for the fledgling studio to handle. Both Star Trek Online and Gods & Heroes were sold off and released by different studios. For a company called perpetual, it sure stopped pretty quickly.

Def Jam Icon disses EA Chicago

Why can't you be like your big brother? That's the main criticism of Def Jam Icon. It's a perfectly acceptable fighter featuring MCs like TI and Eminem throwing down in urban alleys and basketball courts. Shame it's just not a particularly mind-blowing fighter. But Fight Night Round 3 is stellar, and it also came from EA Chicago.

Okami proves too beautiful for Clover Studios

Critical darling: a game beautiful to critics but tragically passed over by the public. In the world of gaming, Okami is the prime example. Clover Studios was an independent studio behind titles like Godhand and Viewtiful Joe 2, and it got better and better with each game. This reached its climax with Okami, a water-color Zelda-esque tale of a wolf and her celestial paintbrush.

APB puts a bullet in Realtime Worlds

APB, or All Points Bulletin, isn't the only MMO on this list, but it's the most distinctive, trading castles for skyscrapers and spaceships for cop cars. An MMO of that ilk isn't unheard of, but APB was first to really turn heads. The studio was founded by a Grand Theft Auto creator, and its first game was Crackdown: what better team could you want for a crime MMO?

Tribes 2 crashes Dynamix

Starsiege: Tribes showed up at the close of the 1990s and rocked the world of first person shooters on PC. The Unreal Tournament-like arena shooter was hugely popular, with 40 maps, a slew of weapons, and one of gaming's favorite jetpacks.

And so it was that the PC community eagerly awaited a sequel. Unfortunately, 2001's Tribes 2 was rushed out of the door, and fans were massively disappointed in its overload of vehicles, constant crashing, and generally poor performance. Expansions were canceled, patches fixed problems by nerfing other game mechanics, and community features were cut entirely. When Dynamix's parent company, Sierra Online, was bought the same year, little Dynamix was left behind.

Showdown: Legends of Wrestling choke slams Acclaim

Acclaim once stood high, releasing Turok and WWF games year after year. But when the well ran dry on Turok and the WWF license was lost, it had to take risk: Legends of Wrestling. It was a novel idea, a wrestling title sporting wrestling legends of the past like Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant. It was also hella expensive thanks to the likeness fees of those retirees.

Goodbye for now

It hurts to say goodbye, but sometimes it's necessary. If you miss any of these developers more than others, feel free to leave them a eulogy in the comments below.