Illbleed & Blue Stinger Premium Cut (lost builds of cancelled original Xbox enhanced ports of Dreamcast games; 2004)

Poster for both series.

Status: Lost

Blue Stinger and Illbleed were both 3D action survival horror games developed by Crazy Games (Formerly Climax Graphics) and released on the Sega Dreamcast, the former in 1999 and the latter in 2001. Blue Stinger was published by Sega in Japan and Activision outside of Japan. While Illbleed was developed and published by Crazy Games in Japan, and AIA outside of Japan.

Blue Stinger is about a 28-year-old Elliot Ballade stranded on an island called Dinosaur Island where it is infested with monsters. He runs into a few other people on the island such as Dogs and Janine. Also finds an alien named Nephilim who helps locate the monsters. You play as either Elliot or Dogs and must explore the island, defeat the monsters, and can be able to buy, and use different weapons and buy food to restore your health.

Illbleed is about a high school girl Eriko Christy who explores a horror themed amusement park where she has to find her friends, while trying to find and destroy hidden traps and enemies in each attraction.

History

In 2015, John Andersen made an article on Game Developer sharing his friendship and experiences with the developer of both games Shinya Nishigaki. Anderson stated, an enchanted port of Blue Stinger and Illbleed were considered to be made for the original Xbox. The ports would have been handled by Coolnet Entertainment who had partnership with Sega to remaster their games from their previous generation consoles to the Xbox. They did the Rent-a-Hero No.1 port on the system in 2003. They confirmed that the Illbleed port was 90% completed.

However, due to Nishigaki's unfortunate death in 2004, coincided with the staggering sales of the original Xbox in Japan, and the soon-to-be-released Xbox 360. The planned ports were shelved, despite Andersen's efforts of pushing for them to be released.

Availability

As of March 2022, no screenshots or video gameplay has resurfaced online, only articles from when they were announced. It was confirmed that the Blue Stinger Premium Cut was going to include new characters and new stories, and it would have been possible though unconfirmed that it also could have had slightly improved the graphics. It is unknown of the whereabouts of the developer company Coolnet.