Unreleased games are the white whale of every gamer. They're allusive, they're mysterious and, most of the time, they are terrible. We here at Gameist would like to remind you of the bullets we've collectively dodged by presenting you with four games you will (thankfully) never get to play.

Note: While the games featured in this article are officially unreleased, this devious age of the Internet allows them to be played through other means. So yes, you could actually play most of them. Kudos on owning terrible ROMs, bro.

4) Tattoo Assassins (Arcade)

By the mid nineties Mortal Kombat had brutally pummeled its way into the hearts and nightmares of every child in America. Never before had fifty cents granted so much ball-busting, corpse-freezing, acid-spitting action. Throw fatalities into the mix and it was official: Street Fighter was totally gay. Data East saw the success in horrific violence and decided to toss their hat into the ring by completely ripping-off Midway with Tattoo Assassins.

The project director opted to base the game on a movie script, in this case one from Bob Gale. If you remember him at all it's because he co-wrote the Back to the Future trilogy, the closest thing Hollywood had produced to a Mortal Kombat film adapation at the time. After a night of binge drinking and regret, Bob concocted a story about magic tattoos that could come to life and kick ass. One of the chosen warriors entrusted with said kick-ass tattoos decided to make a race of mutants to enslave the humankind. Who could possibly stop him? Why, tattooed vigilantes, of course!

Like Billy Two-Moons, a cross between a Native American stereotype and a really nice hat.

Or Truck Davis, who, despite his first name, is actually a biker and not a truck.

Or A.C. Current, a man from the internet who looks far too happy to be wearing a stupid visor.

Somehow even less time was spent on character development then on the plot, so naturally the remaining effort would be put into the 2,169 fatalities:

The game was actually developed by Data East Pinball, a group of people usually not involved with developing video games. To their credit, they did complete the project, but testing soon revealed the obvious: players would rather tear off their opponent's limbs than turn them into a cheeseburger. Tattoo Assassins was never mass-produced and the world continued to not give a damn.

 

3) Colors (Gizmondo)

It may sound like the title of a Lifetime movie but Colors is far from wholesome. At first glance it appears to be a mere free-roaming third person shooter not unlike Grand Theft Auto 3. However, what sets Colors apart from the rest of the pack is how it generates your surroundings. Using the Gizmondo's built in GPS system you could play the game in your city, effectively allowing you to shoot up your local grocery store and steal your neighbor's SUV. Also, you could escape prison through sodomy. Let's see you do that, San Andreas!

Despite the man loving there's not much of a story here. You arrive in Crimson City and immediately start aligning yourself with deviants. Why? Fuck character development, that's why. The game itself is broken into forty or so missions, none of which really tie together. So for those of you who wanted to blindly shoot things but felt the literary depth of Duke Nukem 3D was too much to handle, here you go.

"I'm going to shoot you, but please don't ask why."

Chances are if you've heard of the Gizmondo it was the punchline to a joke. To say the Gizmondo flopped is a grand understatement. The system was sold only on Tiger's website and select mall kiosks with the price ranging from $400 to $229. On top of this, even if you could manage to find one, the GPS software wasn't sold Stateside. So even if Colors was released you wouldn't have the ability to terrorize your locale. Once again, the only saving grace is sodomy.

 

2) The California Raisins: The Grape Escape (NES)

Remember the California Raisins? Of course you do. At one point in history those clay pieces of fruit were bigger than The Beatles. Well, maybe not that big, but they were at least bigger than INXS. They were everywhere, reminding you to eat more California raisins through the smooth sounds of rhythm and blues. Hell, they even released four albums. Think about that: there was a point in American history where four fictional pieces of fruit waltzed into a recording studio and produced four albums that we, the consumers, willfully endorsed.

This is why they hate us, America.

But the death-grip of A.C., Beebop, Stretch and Red didn't stop in record stores. In 1990 the folks at Capcom had been pegged with the task of making an NES game based on the raisins' exploits. We know, you're on the edge of your seat with anticipation just reading that. Rather than striking the deviant who suggested such a thing the NES project saw the green light.

He's spitting smooth rhymes.

The premise was simple: evil vegetables have kidnapped the raisins and their music. The remaining raisin must retrieve his band mates and somehow tangible music before facing off with the vegetables responsible. The game played like Mega Man in that you could complete the game in any order you like, a fine metaphor for the freedom you can only truly experience if you are a dried piece of fruit. The game was actually finished and saw a few reviews, most of them positive, which proves either there is no God or California Raisin money runs deeper than we thought. In the end the game was never released due to the public revolting against their cruel puppet-fruit overlords.

 

1) Penn & Teller's Smoke and Mirrors

Question: which stage magicians deserve their own video game? If you answered that question at all you should be punched in the mouth. Penn & Teller dared to dream, though, and the result is, well, it's certainly something. The game is actually a series of party tricks loosely tied into an adventure RPG game parody, which looks like this:

The mini games generally rely on the player using subtle button combinations to trick their audience. One game, Mofo the Psychic Gorilla, predicts what card your mark is holding. Other games lead the mark to believe that either the game is broken or something is wrong with the television itself. However, one game stands out above the others: Desert Bus.

Next stop: fun!

The point of Desert Bus is to take a trip from Tucson to Los Angeles in real time. Traveling at 45 mph, this takes about eight hours. Nothing really happens; there's no bomb that will go off if you go below 45 mph and there's nothing on the road for scenery. If you don't actively control the bus it gradually veers to the right and once it's off road you get towed back to Tucson, also in real time. If you make it to the destination you're rewarded with one point and the option of making the trip back. Yeah, that's the trick. Funny, right? Though you'd like to think Smoke and Mirrors went unreleased because it was a questionable idea from the get-go the developer, Absolute Entertainment, went under before its release. If only they had the staying power of jazzy raisins.

 

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