5 Insanely Popular Games That Almost Didn't See the Light of Day

Final Fantasy Type-0

Though Final Fantasy Type-0 only recently made it to North America, the game’s been out since 2011. And this may come as a surprise since a full-blown HD remake now graces the PS4 and Xbox One, but Type-0 very nearly didn’t make it out the front door.

“In a recent report in IGN, the game’s director Hajime Tabata revealed that the game’s developers came close to cancelling its development in favor of another game called “The 3rd Birthday.” Tabata was heavily involved in both games’ development in 2010. “The 3rd Birthday” was released in March 2011, earlier than “Final Fantasy Type-0 HD.”

If you’ve never played the Parasite Eve games, The 3rd Birthday capped off the series on the PSP in North America and has a very similar battle system to Final Fantasy Type-0. Thankfully, both games made it out of the arena and Type-0 did well enough to get it across the Pacific.

GTA

If this comes as a surprise given the smashing success of GTA V, you can’t be blamed. GTA was originally designed in the DOS-era of gaming. One of the old dev’s doesn’t really mince words when he describes the game’s bleak outlook:

“[The original GTA] was a real mess for years, it never moved on, it never went anywhere,” GTA dev Gary Penn told Tristan Donovan in an interview reprinted on Gamasutra. “It never really felt like it was going anywhere. It was almost canned. The publisher, BMG Interactive, wanted to can it, as it didn’t seem to be going anywhere.”

There were two big issues confronting the project. The first was the game’s instability. Penn says it “crashed all the fucking time.”

Now, almost two decades later, the franchise boasts the best selling videogame of all time. Puts the phrase “humble beginnings” in a new light, no?

Call of Duty Zombies

Apparently GTA wasn’t the only enormously successful franchise to have its troubles. Call of Duty may never have faced problems with its main titles, but one of the best-loved modes of the games almost got the axe:

…Treyarch’s Mark Lamia revealed the time he almost cut the zombies mode from Call of Duty: World at War.

While World at War was in development, a small group of programmers spent their off-time working on a Nazi zombies prototype just for fun. Since the game was in crunch, and zombies didn’t fit with the franchise’s setting, Lamia considered telling them to stop wasting time and focus on the primary game. It was a move he described as something “that would have been the biggest mistake of my career.”

Hindsight might be 20/20, but the poor guy would have been kicking himself for years when another game pulled it off instead.

Bayonetta II

The story of Bayonetta is one of a close call, depending on who you ask. Yes, Bayonetta was initially released on the PS3 to critical praise, but its sequel was for a long time a pipe dream. Hideki Kamiya of Platinum Games cites SEGA’s funding cut as the primary reason:

When development had progressed to a certain degree, in SEGA’s situation it turned into “This isn’t a good plan”, so development halted temporarily.

Without funding we didn’t have the possibility to continue development…Bayonetta 2 was about to get terminated completely…

Then Nintendo swooped in and saved the day, despite Bayonetta being a heroine not typically associated with their platforms. Nevertheless, Bayonetta 2 managed to outperform its predecessor and remains one of the highest ranking games on the Wii U.

Duke Nukem Forever

It wouldn’t be a list about almost-cancelled games without mention of poor, poor Duke Nukem Forever. After all, not many games get their own development page on Wikipedia. Though if one spends about 15 years in development spanning across the millenial leap, it’s bound to make history.

Duke Nukem Forever’s story is legend in gaming. Spanning multiple graphics engines and some courtroom drama, Duke Nukem Fovever was officially announced in 1997 and almost died on May 8, 2009 when the dev team was laid off at 3D Realms.

Then it actually died in 2011 when it was released as critics slaughtered it in print. Oh well; they can’t all be Grand Theft Auto.

Got any other titles that barely made the cut? Share ’em below!