A playable, 99% complete version of the cancelled gameStar Wars: Battlefront IIIhas found its way online, thanks to the tireless efforts of a group of game preservationists.
Now, in case you’re understandably confused, I’m not referring toEA’sStar Wars Battlefrontgames, but rather to the original LucasArts publishedStar Wars: Battlefrontseries.
The fact that a third entry into LucasArts’ Battlefront series was cancelled at one point in time has been common knowledge for a while now.
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Although the title was never officially announced, Steve Ellis (co-founder at developers Free Radical Design) confirmed in 2008 that the game did exist at one point in time.
Ellis revealed that work onStar Wars: Battlefront IIIwas “pretty much done” but had to be cancelled at the last minute, as LucasArts didn’t want to commit the budget to the marketing campaign.
Since then we’ve seen a few gameplay leaks pop up here and there for the cancelled title, such as back in 2012when IGN was forced to removeleaked gameplay footage from their site following a legal notice.
We’ve got a little bit more than just a gameplay leak today though;we’ve got the whole bloody game.
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Free Radical Design Archive, a team of folks who are “dedicated to Free Radical’s cancelled games”, has released a fully playable build of the Wii version ofStar Wars: Battlefront IIIonline.
“As this game was cancelled during development, there are still bugs and issues which we hope can be resolved through future modding.”
I have absolutely no idea how they got their hands on this, but I’m extremely glad they did. Considering that the game essentially looks complete, it would have been a massive shame for this to have never seen the light of day.
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Almost makes me wonder if, just maybe, one of the former staff members at Free Radical sent this their way…
Topics:Star Wars,EA
