Gremlins (lost build of cancelled PlayStation 2/GameCube movie tie-in game; early 2000s)

Cover art for the game.

Status: Lost

Gremlins (otherwise referred to as Gremlins Revenge or Gremlins: Stripe Vs Gizmo^[1]) is an unreleased third-person shooter video game that was developed by LSP for the PlayStation 2 and GameCube throughout the early 2000s. The game was based on the 1984 black comedy horror film Gremlins, and served to continue the plot established in the original film and its 1990 sequel Gremlins 2: The New Batch.

Story

The game takes place 20 years after the events of the original film, with the people of Kingston Hall organizing a massive celebration to commemorate the anniversary of Billy Peltzer and Gizmo's defeat of the rampaging gremlins that sought to destroy their town. But on the night of the celebration, Gizmo is splashed with water, leading to the creation of a new gremlin named Stripe, who locks the Kingston Hall townsfolk inside a dance hall so he can take control of the town himself, with Gizmo being the only one who can stop him.

Gameplay

The game was a squad-based third-person shooter similar to games such as Conflict: Desert Storm and Freedom Fighters, with each playable characters having a division of additional mogwai or gremlins at their disposal who they can issue commands to to assist the player in battle. Unlockable squad members would be hidden throughout the game's levels, each of whom had special abilities that the player could use to their advantage. Both Gizmo and Stripe were the primary playable characters, with the events of the game's plot varying depending on which character was selected.

The game's single-player content was split into two different modes; an adventure mode in which the stages would be played in a linear order as the events of the game's plot took place, and a quick action mode where players could select any stage in any order, with plans also being made for a cooperative multiplayer mode. In total, the game had 11 stages, each of which were locations in Kingston Hall such as a bank, a school, a courthouse, and a cinema among others. Different varieties of gremlin were present in each of these levels, including a scientist, mafia, and policeman gremlin, each of which likely had unique attacks for the player to overcome.^[2]

The levels also each contained their own boss battles, with an alleged former developer on the game claiming that examples of these included the aforementioned scientist gremlin, a thief gremlin in the bank level, a dancer gremlin in a disco club level, and a final boss confrontation with Stripe.^[3]

Availability

LSP would first announce the game on April 15th, 2003, with it only being slated for a release in Europe at that time.^[4] The game was set to release in late 2003, but would ultimately not be released at all. Multiple explanations have been offered for why this may have been the case, ranging from quality issues, lack of funding, or LSP's 2004 merger with Hip Games,^[5] but no official explanation has ever been given.^[6] To date, the ROM of the game has not been made available to the public, with numerous screenshots and the game's opening cutscene being all that has surfaced from it.