New Video Shows First-Ever Footage of Cancelled SNES Green Lantern Game

There are many, many video games that were cancelled before they were finished, and some are better-known than others. Still, even now, there are never-released games emerging into the wild for the first time. A new video from gaming historian Liam Robertson represents the first public footage of an unreleased Green Lantern game from Ocean Software, which was supposed to come out for the Super Nintendo in 1994.

As the lengthy video states, this Green Lantern game went through quite a few changes during development due to both personnel turnover at Ocean and various happenings in the world of DC Comics. For example, Hal Jordan was originally the protagonist of the game, but Jordan became the villain Parallax in a comic book storyline, which forced the developers to change it unexpectedly.

Originally designed as a platformer with puzzle elements, the game's troubled development resulted in gameplay that mixed various genres, including R-Type style horizontal shooting, and it was eventually shelved due to those issues. The project was later picked up as an after-hours endeavor by a lone programmer and transformed into a side-scrolling shoot 'em up similar to Contra or Gunstar Heroes, and that's the version you see in the video. That version was abandoned due to the approaching release of the original PlayStation, which resulted in the advent of 3D games. We did eventually get a Green Lantern game in 2011, called Green Lantern: Rise of the Manhunters. The less said about it, the better.