Such Things That Never Was

There’s been a lot of discussion lately about a new blog that, gasp, talks about unreleased games, and I’d feel pretty stupid not making a post about it!

Such Things That Never Was is set to detail all sorts of silly things that never made it through production, including movies and, in a very successful effort to steal the thunder away from my lazy ass, games. Its author, the mysterious Surfer Girl, seems to have some connection to the games industry that is more on the developer side than mine, as she’s dug up info on tons of recent projects that never got as far as even being announced.

The post most often discussed is “18 canceled games you never knew existed unless you worked on them,” which is just what it sounds like. And given that I didn’t work on any of these games, all of them were news to me, including an updated Joust (complete with screenshots!), Freelancer 2, an Alone in the Dark sequel by Computer Artworks (developer of the also-dead A Sound of Thunder game), a spooky action platformer by True Crime developer Luxoflux called Ghost World (unrelated to the comic book, I’m assuming), an Oni sequel by Angel Studios (now Rockstar San Diego), and tons more.

And hey, don’t miss her other, somewhat more random blog, Surfer Girl Reviews Star Wars, which has lots of interesting secret tidbits from around the games industry. I don’t know if any of these claims are true, but here are a few highlights that interest me personally: three new Wario games are in development, the Mario/Dragon Quest hybrid board game Itadaki Street DS is getting a release stateside, Ubisoft is working on sequels to both Beyond Good & Evil and Red Steel, Retro Studios is working on a new game that is not Metroid and not an FPS, a Chu Chu Rocket sequel is in development, and these apparently early screenshots of Prince of Persia 4 look a hell of a lot like Ico.

I have no idea who Surfer Girl is, and she wants it to remain that way (as expressed in our email conversations), but like my old boss Simon Carless, I do have a guess, and I’m sure it’s wrong. Assuming she’s not outright lying, here is what we know about Surfer Girl, mostly taken from her interview on Kotaku Australia (there’s a Kotaku Australia???):

-Is a girl
-Occasionally surfs
-Was a journalism major
-Is an industry “insider,” emphasis hers
-Has been playing games for “15-20 years”
-Is a fan of Lost Levels, but hates how infrequently I update (this one’s for you!)

Well, I’m a fan. Hats off to you, Surfer Girl, whoever you are. You had the balls to take one of my fantasies and make it real, and I’m a bit jealous because of it.