The Vita games that never were

At the end of a machine's life, sometimes years after anyone stopped caring, you hear about all sorts of games that never made it out. The Vita is fast-approaching end-of-life status (except for backlogs, jail-breaking and people late to the party).

Update: Following on from the step-up for 13 Sentinels from Vita to Switch and PS4, Unicorn Overlord is the latest Vanillaware game that it turns out was originally scheduled for the Sony handheld. The team started development in 2016 but moved to Switch and PS5 as the market changed. 

The tactical RPG has all the trademark character art style and team combat against hand-drawn backgrounds. The good news is Unicorn Overlord is already a success with over 500,000 sales in the month since its global launch. 

Original article:

So, its about now that we start to hear about what could have been. Here's a Facebook post (since deleted from Mat Kraemer of Sanzaru, formerly of Sony and Activision, sharing a sketch for an abandoned Vita Sly Cooper sequel. The post was deleted as herds of game-louts claimed it was Sly 5.



How many other games were sketched out, assets created for or coded up to some level of completion? Of course, the most infamous never-made Vita game is Bioshock, when Ken Levine took to the PlayStation E3 launch stage to announce it, despite no contract existing between Sony and Irrational/Take 2 - lying shits! Also shown off around then was Ruin (which became Warrior's Lair, I think, which then became toast!)

Ken Levine talking out of his arse

Other victims include TerrorForge, an RTS under development by Scottish developer Cohort, but never got the green light for full production. 

Going back even further is the marginally-legendary Elder Scrolls Oblivion for the PSP, one of many unfinished PSP titles (like Voltion's Saint's Row Undercover) that looked pretty good and would have been stellar on the Vita if they'd kept up the effort.

There's a list of canned games on a Wiki page, with honorable mentions for a Nier project and Bloodstained, the shitfest that was Mighty No. 9, and the less said about the Final Fantasy farces the better. Most recently 13 Sentinels fell off the Vita bus, and expect more games and concepts to come out of the woodwork in the coming years.

Also, an all-new retro RPG based on Mega Drive hardware Pier Solar was mentioned for the Vita, but cancelled due to a lack of support from Sony. Of course things go the other way too, and we have games like Ultracore coming to the Vita (eventually) from abandoned Mega Drive title Project Hardcore, and I really hope a few devs find more projects that they can finish off or release as abandonware. 

Let us know if you can think of any titles missing from the lists, or projects that are worthy of further discussion. Or, if you're a dev with some awareness of a lost Vita project - do let the world know!