Whats a gaming failure or undeveloped project you wish had a more successful release/was fully realized? For me its tomb raider angel of darkness. There were a lot of problems with the production, ranging from lack of leadership to scrapped concepts to the unpreparedness of the team for the complexity of programming for the PS2. Core design didnt have enough time to iron out the kinks even with all the crunch time, and eidos didnt give them more time because they wanted to release in june.
The game was an unfinished mess, full of bugs and haphazard level design. But its gained something of a cult status within the raider community, with memes centering on its iconic side characters like janice the parisian sex worker as well as lara’s feisty one-liners. Its still being kept alive by a dedicated community of speedrunners and unofficial remasters. I often think what could have been if it had more time to at least be passable at launch. Core planned two sequels that would have continued the story. Obviously they were scrapped, core design went defunct, and tomb raider was handed over to crystal dynamics.
I wish Squaresoft had given the Xenogears dev team some more time to finish up. They probably would’ve made the game five times as long if they’d been entirely left to their own devices, but I’d have liked to see some more of the gaps in that otherwise amazing game filled in. We might have even gotten the initially planned 6-game series.
I wish they’d listened to Gunpei Yokoi and not released the Virtual Boy in the state it was in. It wouldn’t have flopped and the product designed responsible for some of Nintendo’s greatest innovations wouldn’t have resigned from his position in disgrace, and probably wouldn’t have died in a random auto accident shortly after.
I wish Nintendo hadn’t come down so hard on Rare for their attempts to push the limits of the Nintendo 64 with features such as Banjo-Kazooie’s “Stop ‘n’ Swap.” The company probably wouldn’t have jumped ship.