One of the earliest games shown for the original Xbox was BC. Dinosaurs! Cave men! I was so hyped for this game, and then it was cancelled.
Games are canned all the time, but it happens quietly and without much fanfare. It’s not like the developers suddenly release the incomplete game into the wild, so people get a sense of what could have been. Instead, it usually disappears.
Preserving Gaming History, however, is a great YouTube channel trying to uncover details about cancelled projects, and they’ve hit the jackpot with BC.
Here’s how BC was described on Xbox.com, back when Microsoft and Lionhead thought it might ship sometime in 2005:
BC is an original third-person action-adventure game that hurtles players back millions of years into prehistory, to the beginnings of humankind. Members of a clan take part in an epic journey of survival, battling against ferocious, prehistoric creatures and exploring vast natural environments.
New technologies and knowledge could be just over the next rise. If humanity is to survive, the tribe needs to evolve into a thinking, resourceful unit that can rise up to become the pioneers in a primeval, unpredictable world.
Not quite. Though announced in early 2004, BC was cancelled later that year. If you try to do a search for anything about the game, you come up mostly empty.
Enter Preserving Gaming History, which somehow managed to get their hands on a build of the game, allowing them to capture high-res footage and explore the various interlocking systems that were being developed for BC years ago.
If you’re curious what in-development games look like, this is a must watch.
You can reach the author of this post at patrick.klepek@kotaku.com or on Twitter at @patrickklepek.