With the news that Silent Hills P.T., a hugely anticipated game from Hideo Kojima and Gullermo del Toro, will never see the light of day, we take a look at a few other games that suffered a similar fate.

While the reasons for Konami deciding that the Silent Hills P.T. project "will not be continued" are still unclear, one thing that is unmistakable is the fact that there were a lot of people excited about this game. The playable teaser had people raving about what the game would be like, so much so that with the news that it's going to be taken off PSN this week, a few optimistic souls have tried flogging a PS4 with the demo installed on the console online for over £1000. Something tells us there won't be many bidders.

However, this not the first time that the gaming world has seen a hugely anticipated title fall by the wayside, so here are a few of the biggest games that never were. 

Silent Hills P.T.

We have to start this list here, of course, given the story currently unfolding. The names involved in this project were enough to make it pretty exciting; the aforementioned Gullermo del Toro and Hideo Kojima being an interesting enough combo, but the fact that Norman Reedus was also on board, and the playable demo (due to be removed from PSN today) was hugely atmospheric. Given that the gaming industry is clearly moving towards more immersive content, this was a fascinating project that also scared the absolute bejaysus out of us. Needless to say we think Del Toro and Kojima should just take this elsewhere and change the name, and there's bound to be a long list of suitors who will be happy to take on a project that already has a lot of hype behind it and could well be the first in a new franchise. 

 

Streets of Rage remake

There's no denying that Streets of Rage was an iconic game, so anything that mentioned bringing it back to life or even giving it an upgrade and getting it on to new consoles that would give the graphics a boost was always going to be met with widespread joy. Even though this footage was knocked together in a mere 6-8 weeks by the guys at Ruffian Games as a concept of how it could turn out, plenty of people were more than happy with what they saw.

Head of Ruffian Games, Gaz Liddon, who uploaded the clip, dampened enthusiasm by stating that developers tend to work on lots of projects that never get made, and it ended up being shelved along with a whole load of other titles in 2012 when Sega decided that they were going to concentrate on some of their core titles like Sonic instead. If the licence to this could be picked, we're pretty sure it would fly off the shelves. Well we'd buy it at least anyway, we still play the old Streets of Rage from time to time. 

 

Star Wars 1313

When Lucasfilm was swallowed up by Disney, many of the Star Wars games in development - Battlefront, 1313 and Attack Squadrons - were more or less put on the backburner. With the exception of Battlefront, almost all have now been cancelled. 1313, however, really piqued our interest. For one, the developers expressed a sincere desire to make a game unlike any previous Star Wars one. The game was to be grounded in reality - or at least as far as Star Wars would allow. The gamer would play a young bounty hunter in the lower levels of Coruscant and see them face off against criminals and fellow bounty hunters to uncover a massive conspiracy. Early footage was promising, if a bit stilted, but unfortunately, it was all we saw of 1313.

 

Dirty Harry

Dirty Harry's a character that is just ripe for a videogame. The Collective, a now-defunct studio, had plans to adapt Dirty Harry for a videogame and created this pretty amazing trailer for that showed Eastwood's iconic character beating the crap out of people in 1970's San Francisco. Unfortunately, the studio ran into "trouble" and the game's development was shelved pretty soon thereafter. Here and there, talk and rumour has suggested that another studio may take a run at the property, but we're not holding out hope.

 

LMNO

The marriage of Steven Spielberg and EA seemed like it could birth one of gaming's greatest venture. The first teaser was pretty bold - Can a Computer Game make you cry? LMNO looked like it took story influences from ET and centred on an unusual, almost androgynous alien character that was being hunted by the government. It looked like it was going to be a first-person RPG with elements of action and mystery. At least, we think. Footage was so scarce on this, it's hard to know how this would have turned out.

 

Gotham by Gaslight

Back when steampunk was big and before the Arkham franchise came along to blow every single other Batman game out of the damn water, Gotham by Gaslight was a hugely interesting concept that was based on a graphic novel, as Batman went on the trail of notorious serial killer Jack the Ripper. The highly-stylised element to the game was a unique aspect that set it apart from other titles that had tried to do Batman justice, while the foggy, atmospheric setting (that looks quite a bit like old-timey London) meant that this game got a lot of attention, even just based off this prototype footage.

In a small nod to the success of this game that never was, there was a Gaslight Batman skin available in Arkham Origins, but we're sure that there would still be plenty of interest in seeing this project revived.

If you think we've missed any important ones off our list, get in touch on twitter or throw us a comment below and let us know.