It might feel like there has never been a shortage of Star Wars games on the market. There have been quite a few, sure, but there are so many more that never make it to store shelves! With so many characters to follow, genres to play in, and stories to tell, tons of Star Wars games have been canceled, whether fan know of them or not.
For this list, we’re going to look back the flurry of unreleased Star Wars video games to see why they got canceled in the first place. Some of them look awful, some of them look great, but, either way, unless you helped develop them, you’ll likely never get them in your hands. Seriously, some of these look too good to be scrapped!
10 Star Wars 1313
Let’s start with the most infamous example of a canceled Star Wars game. Star Wars 1313 would have followed a young Boba Fett learning the ropes of bounty hunting. He would have fought his way through Coruscant’s level 1313, the literal criminal underground of the seedy metropolitan planet. Think Uncharted, but in a Star Wars world.
Despite the great reception to early footage, it would never see the light of day. After George Lucas sold the company to Disney back in 2013—an event that canceled many of the games on this list—the Mouse House promptly ceased development. 1313 showed lots of promise, but Disney must have thought otherwise.
9 Battle of the Sith Lords
If you’re a fan of both Star Wars and the Batman: Arkham Asylum games, then prepare for disappointment. Battle of the Sith Lords was an action-adventure game starring Darth Maul. It would have explained his survival of The Phantom Menace before The Clone Wars did and placed an emphasis on stealth combat like Arkham Asylum.
Gameinformer wrote a story on it years ago, and prototype footage was even released. Sadly, after some odd creative input from George Lucas and abrupt lack of communication, Lucasfilm told developer Red Fly Studios to cancel the project. Most fans are still itching for a Jedi-centric video game experience, and this could have been it. Maybe EA’s Jedi: Fallen Order will fill that niche, but until then, cross your fingers.
8 Star Wars: Imperial Commando
Star Wars: Republic Commando was the Galactic take on the Rainbow Six franchise. A streamlined tactic-based shooter, Republic Commando retains a strong following to this day. The sequel, Imperial Commando, never got off the ground.
The sequel was planned during the production of the first game, but with middling sales at launch, development fizzled out. The game would have focused on elite soldiers of the Empire as they fight against the Rebel Alliance. It is unclear if these elites were Delta Squad, the main characters of the original.
Imperial Commando was only in conceptual stages, and it’s unclear when the project was officially canned. It happened long before Disney acquired Lucasfilm, so it sounds like this just wasn’t meant to be.
7 Star Wars Rogue Leaders: Rogue Squadron Wii
Nothing has captured the space battles of Star Wars quite like the Rogue Squadron games. Fun, accessible, and faithful to the films, this franchise is among the best in the brand’s canon. This makes it especially disappointing that developer Factor 5 was prepared to release a remastered collection of the games on the Nintendo Wii.
Rogue Leaders would have collected the entire trilogy. Each game would have been remastered and even feature four-player co-op! Sadly, legal and financial turmoil plagued Factor 5 throughout development. Between Lair, the 2008 financial crisis, and their similarly-canceled Superman game, Rogue Leaders crashed and burned.
Factor 5 managed to stick it out, though. Studio president Julian Eggbrecht told IGN that he hopes the collection may find a home on the Nintendo Switch.
6 Project Hermes (Super Bombad Racing 2)
Very few fans remember Super Bombad Racing. It was a tie-in video game for The Phantom Menace, mimicking the cartoon-style kart racing of Mario Kart. With mixed to negative reviews upon release, the game was viewed as a bizarre use of the Star Wars license. Little do most people know that there would have been a successor.
Project Hermes used the big cartoon heads and childish designs, but little information is available beyond that. The only screenshot of the project depicts characters from different Star Wars eras walking around Tatooine. It’s unclear what Hermes was intended for or why it was abandoned, but it sounds like it would have applied the kid-friendly art style to another video game genre.
5 Star Wars: First Assault
While fans desperately awaited the suspected-but-never-released Battlefront III, LucasArts was planning another Star Wars shooter. First Assault made it all the way into the prototyping phase before cancellation. Footage of the tech demo features a playable Tatooine level with working combat and traversal systems.
The game would have been downloadable on Xbox 360 and PS3 had it continued development. It was envisioned as a precursor to Battlefront III, which was in progress at the time. This would release in 2013 while Battlefront would have dropped in 2015.
Once Disney acquired Lucasfilm, the company put First Assault on hold. It doesn’t help that First Assault can’t really justify its existence in the first place. Why develop two different Star Wars shooters for release so close together?
4 Ewok Adventure
This one is quite the throwback. Star Wars: Return of the Jedi: Ewok Adventure (a mouthful, yeah) was meant for the Atari 2600 back in 1983. It was only one of the two Return of the Jedi tie-ins. The other was Death Star Battle — and unlike that game, Ewok Adventure never saw store shelves.
Believe it or not, Atari Games actually finished the thing before they decided to cancel it. Players would take the role of an Ewok on a hand-glider during the battle of Endor. It’s rare for a game to be completed before cancellation, but it sounds like it wasn’t that fun anyway.
3 Star Wars: Attack Squadrons
Soon after canceling a remake of X-Wing Vs. Tie Fighter, Lucasfilm began work on Star Wars: Attack Squadrons. Attack Squadrons was a freemium MMO that would feature the arcade-style space combat of the Rogue Squadron series.
Even after a reveal trailer and months of closed beta testing, Attack Squadrons just wasn’t turning out as expected. Kotaku reported on the game’s shutdown at the time, revealing that players simply weren’t enjoying a half-baked experience.
Perhaps a full-fledged title would have won fans over, but the free-to-play approach just wasn’t engaging. Fans wouldn’t be able to indulge in space combat until EA’s Star Wars Battlefront I and II, which also garnered flak for shallow gameplay and pay-to-win features often found in freemium games.
2 Project Ragtag
The cancellation of 1313 broke fans’ hearts, and just as Visceral Games came to the rescue, their hearts were broken again. The Dead Space developer was designing Project Ragtag, a third-person action game about a heist in the aftermath of A New Hope.
The production was headed by Uncharted creator Amy Hennig, something that only excited fans further after the loss of 1313. Sadly, fans would get mere seconds of footage before the game was canned. Creative differences and mismanagement by Electronic Arts led to a production process that crumbled as time when on.
EA pulled staff and resources away from the project for fear that it might “fail” because it wasn’t a multiplayer game. Further mismanagement led to the closure of Visceral Games completely and the loss of yet another promising experience.
1 Star Wars Battlefront III
This is the Star Wars game that got away. Battlefront III was stuck in development limbo for years. Footage of different prototypes are available all over the web, and, although the game went through several changes, the core features were dreamlike. A story-driven campaign, revamped graphics, and surface-to-atmosphere ship combat were all included.
Between a lack of resources, time constraints, and technical difficulties, Battlefront III just couldn’t shape up. The game was never officially announced or canceled—it simply entered development and couldn’t make it out before the console generation was over.
While EA has brought the franchise back, the reboots are controversially designed and shadows of the former games. The prototypes are dated by today’s standards, but the remnants of Battlefront III are painful reminders of what could have been.
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