According to a new report speaking with former employees, Rockstar Games cancelled a Bully Nintendo DS port and a Game Boy Advance version of The Warriors game. There’ also some of the reasoning behind why The Warriors GBA was never released and some of its features.
Bully in a new perspective
Time Extension published a report last week sharing details from anonymous ex-Rockstar Games developers who spoke with the outlet. One of the sources revealed they had worked on Bully for the Nintendo DS.
This was in development at Rockstar Leeds right after Chinatown Wars. Another source who could not confirm its existence did say it was plausible given tech from Chinatown Wars DS was being reused.
The DS port was played from a top down perspective. It would have been significantly different in terms of gameplay to the home console versions. The same developer did say though that the team did not get very far along with this port. The reason it was cancelled was the team at Rockstar Leeds were moved onto a larger title in the works. Time Extension believes it was L.A. Noire.
The Warriors GBA port details
“We were going for four-player co-op using the link cable and stuff. We finished the game. It was actually f**king fun to play.
Now onto another cancelled handheld Nintendo port from Rockstar. Based on the 1979 film, The Warriors was released in 2005 and was a Rockstar Toronto production. The launch platforms were the PS2 and Xbox. A PSP port was made by Rockstar Leeds in 2007. Most recently it became available on the PlayStation Network for PS3 and PS4 in 2016.
However, we’ve now learned how Rockstar canned a finished version of the game for Game Boy Advance. Why this is interesting is because how different the GBA and PSP were. Two sources claimed The Warriors game had a GBA port being developed at Rockstar Leeds.
One of those sources shared that the game was fun and finished. It had 4 player co-op using the Game Boy’s link cable. It’s a shame that even though the game was “finished” it never released. The game was said to be made using the same engine that ran the cancelled Max Payne GBA port. Once again, basically finished and cancelled.
One of the reasons why it never came out was apparently due to how popular the PSP was becoming paired with poor return on investment for on Nintendo platforms. Also, Nintendo has always famously preferred to have family friendly titles on their platforms over 18+ games and did not like marketing such games. That’s why the PSP port came about instead.
Time Extension have been doing fantastic work and have other Rockstar Games stories. For example, they got to speak with one of the designers of the iconic Rockstar Games logo. It shed light on how it was made. We covered this report here.
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