Canceled Too Soon: StarCraft Ghost and Six Days in Fallujah [LAMENTS]

Games get cancelled all the time. Some never even get noticed while other get canned on the big stage. Whether because of dwindling budgets or media criticism some games just never get made. Here are two games that failed to get going but should have been. The two games are both shooters that never quite made it to gamers.

Six Days in Fallujah

Atomic Games goal with Six Days in Fallujah was to create the most realistic military shooter possible. The story goes that Atomic was working with a group of Marines on training tools for the military. Atomic worked with the Marines on the tools until they were eventually sent off to Iraq for the Second Battle of Fallujah. By the time the Marines came back from war they asked Atomic to make a game based on their experiences in the battle. The developers took the request and began building Six Days in Fallujah a few months later.

The idea for the game was to not only create realistic combat but also real stories based on the Marines experiences. Gamers would be faced with decisions that soldiers consistently face during wartime. Situations would have no clear answers; how do you handle friendly fire and the accidental shooting of civilians?

By 2009 the games was being shown at conferences by publisher Konami. The title quickly received criticism from those in the military and media. Many critics thought it was too soon for a video game about the Iraq War to come out. The criticism led to Konami taking its name off the title and refusing to publish it. Atomic Games has said the game is no cancelled but no plans for the games release have been made in the last four years.

StarCraft Ghost

The StarCraft series is well known as a RTS franchise for Sci-Fi fans. However, once upon a time developer Blizzard Entertainment was going to bring a third person shooter to the sci-fi universe. StarCraft Ghost would follow a Terran spy named Nova attempting to uncover a military conspiracy in the years after the conclusion of StarCraft: Brood War. The stealth-focused Nova would have had a variety of weapons and psychic abilities at her disposal.

Along with a single player campaign, the game would have featured a full assortment of multiplayer modes. Blizzard reported that the game would have come with deathmatch, capture the flag, and king of the hill gameplay modes.

The game had the interest of gamers but continued delays and the development of new consoles eventually caused it to be scarped. Development was suspended in 2005 and has yet to ever go back into development.