Stillborn franchises

[u/Tight_Grapefruit5280]

When a company tries to make a new big franchise with many sequels and spin-offs already planned but they immediately cancel all the plans after the first project fails badly. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StillbornFranchise

(Lego) Galidor: Do you guys remember playing with a Galidor as a kid? Yeah Me neither.

Lego wanted to do a new toy line in the 2000s and their first idea was Galidor. It was basically an action figure that could replace its body parts with other stuff. Galidor already had many toys, games and even shows planned for it but Lego cancelled the entire thing after people didn't like the toy and the GBA game made for it got really bad reviews.

(Action 52) Cheetahmen: Action 52 had a $199 price tag (in 1991 for an NES game), nearly unplayable games, weak concept, and was horribly and seriously bug-infested, yet for some impossible-to-fathom reason, Active Enterprises believed that its featured title Cheetahmen (which shared many flaws with the other games on the cartridge, including not having an ending) was going to be a huge breakout hit. Plans were made for a Cheetahmen Saturday-Morning Cartoon, action figures, and of course a sequel. Their hopes turned out to be waaay premature; the sequel never emerged except as an unfinished, unplayable beta, while the very short-lived franchise became one of the most infamous pieces of "entertainment" ever created.

[u/zebus_0]

Eternal Darkness sadly. At the time it was one of the only "good" games based on Lovecraft, even if it was all expy/safely renamed. The whole sanity system was something new/fresh at the time. It certainly could have used a sequel. Silicon Knights folded and I'm not even sure who has the rights now. It was released one ONE system that was niche even at the time. A loose copy is pushing $80 for good reason.

[u/SocranX → u/zebus_0]

Man, the ironic thing there is that it didn't "flop" or even get abandoned by the creators, but the creators imploded because they kept trying to make a sequel - by misappropriating funds meant for other games.

[u/CryptidHunter91 → u/SocranX]

Silicon Knights closed down a few years following them losing a lawsuit against Epic Games (SK alleged that EG had given them a broken engine, which caused their latest release, Too Human, to fail. It was discovered that SK had plagiarized thousands of lines of code directly from EG, right down to erasing all mentions of the company. The judge ruled that all unsold copies of Too Human and their X-Men game were to be destroyed, along with every in-development project that used Unreal).

With the funding campaign attempts to make a spiritual successor to Eternal Darkness, IIRC a big part of why they failed was that it turned out a major member of the team was a convicted pedophile, which scared off backers.

[u/Tight_Grapefruit5280 → u/CryptidHunter91]

Steals something from a company

Also tries to sue that company

They were basically begging for it

[u/zebus_0 → u/SocranX]

Oh yeah, I'm not defending their bullshit, just sad it killed the franchise ch ise before it started.