Long-Lost Xbox Exclusive Seahorse Game Resurfaces
An undeveloped Xbox unique from TIE Fighter studio Totally Games would have had gamers trip flying seahorses and battle foes by jousting.
Long-lost footage of an Xbox-exclusive seahorse jousting sport has just lately been unearthed, offering an interesting have a look at what may have been launched on the genesis of Microsoft’s first gaming console. In 2001, the unique Xbox launched and redefined a number of features of console gaming, introducing a built-in ethernet port for web entry. Xbox additionally pioneered a number of now-iconic franchises like Halo and stays one of many greatest names within the online game trade.
One of the sport builders that was properly famend on the time of the unique Xbox console was Totally Games, a largely PC-centric studio identified for traditional Star Wars titles like 1994’s Star Wars: TIE Fighter and its many follow-ups – which themselves have just lately gotten a non secular successor within the type of Motive Studios’ Star Wars: Squadrons. However, within the early 2000s, Totally Games labored with Microsoft to deliver flight simulation gameplay to the Xbox with a title that will finally by no means see the sunshine of day.
Earlier this week, Axios uncovered a trailer for Knights of Decayden, an unreleased first-party Xbox sport as soon as in improvement by Totally Games. According to author Stephen Totilo, Totally Games founder Larry Holland shared this footage, which was later posted on Totilo’s YouTube channel (through GamesRadar). As this trailer reveals, Knights of Decayden (or Archipelago, because it was additionally known as), put gamers answerable for a warrior named Davro, who could be tasked with defending the “Kestrel Clan” by using what gave the impression to be a flying seahorse throughout a variety of environments within the fantasy world of “Alhanna” – together with huge oceans and erupting volcanos. Armed with an energy-firing lance weapon, gamers would problem enemies to joust-like battles each within the air and underwater, launch fish as makeshift projectiles, and uncover the secrets and techniques of a misplaced race.
Totally Games initially pitched Knights of Decayden to Sony as a PlayStation 2 title in 2000 underneath the working title of Knights of Utu, although it might later be picked up by Microsoft with plans to launch it as an Xbox unique someday across the system’s launch in 2001. However, the undertaking would finally be scrapped in early 2002, with Microsoft reportedly eager to focus its efforts on titles that will higher compete with Sony and Nintendo – resembling 2001’s Halo: Combat Evolved. When requested about Knights of Decayden, Totally Games founder Larry Holland remembers the sport as being “incredibly ambitious and sort of foolish in equal measures,” along with his studio being put underneath a large time crunch to get Knights of Decayden completed in time for its deadline – a pattern that sadly continues to be prevalent at studios like Cyberpunk 2077’s CD Projekt Red.
The mixture of this unstable work setting and Microsoft’s diminishing curiosity in Knights of Decayden finally led to the undertaking’s cancellation, however its early gameplay trailer stays an attention-grabbing look into earlier sport improvement. There is not any telling how a accomplished model of Knights of Decayden would have fared on the daybreak of the unique Xbox, nevertheless it’s attention-grabbing to consider Microsoft having one other main flagship franchise for its still-prevalent Xbox model if the undertaking had been profitable.