Gunpei Yokoi, producer of Metroid and developer of the Game Boy, the ubiquitous D-Pad and infamous Virtual Boy, died in a traffic accident while working on Bandai's handheld competitor, the Wonder Swan.
The Legacy of Kain series was supposed to have one more game to tie all the loose ends up. However, the departure of series writer Amy Hennig for unchartedwaters and the death of Tony Jay, one of the major voice actors, means that the series is now in limbo.
Not only did Amy leave, but two of the other main writers (out of a group of four, with Amy being the lead and most well-known) left the company as well. The fourth? He passed away.
The death of lead developer Brian Wood of Relic Entertainment may leave the fate of Dawn of War in limbo, as well as the company itself.
Florian Husky, the creator of Super Mario War and one of the founders of 72dpiarmy, committed suicide before progress of the game was ever finalized. While others working on the project tried their best to keep it alive, development has officially ceased, with only a single bug release update left that has yet to show.
RPG developer Nautilus, creators of the Shadow Hearts series, dissolved sometime in 2007. This means no possible anachronistic Lovecraftian adventures set in World War II, the Cold War and many other possibilities.
In a non-death example, with the sacking of Keiji Inafune from Capcom, the Mega Man Legends series is, for all intents and purposes, finished. Guess Roll and Tron never were able to finish that rocket. Doesn't make the fans any less pissed, though.
Downplayed in the case of Merlin's Revenge, where the creator was forced to permanently abandon the series due to medical problems, explaining the whole situation in a seriously Tear Jerker speech.
A sequel to PS1 shooter Blasto was considered after development finished, but dropped after the murder of Blasto's voice actor Phil Hartman (it was his final work). As Hartman's ad-libbed dialog was considered to be the heart and soul of the project, both by staff and reviewers, it was deemed impossible to continue.
Online Games[]
Mechaspyder is a cute, fairly-popular 3D Flash browser game where you are a spider and you jump on squares to get to the gold square. The game ended with a note indicating a sequel in the works. Unfortunately, the game's creator, Richard Barron, died in a car accident before work would be started on the sequel.
MULE was a classic of early computer gaming. Its creator Danielle Bunten was working on an online version when she died in 1998, and the game has sadly been officially out of print ever since.
Reuben Kee was working on making a Samus Aran for Mugen before his boating accident.
Robotech: Crystal Dreams became Vaporware due to the folding of Gametek.
A planned sequel to Twisted Metal Black called Harbor City was scrapped, but four completed levels were included in Twisted Metal Head On: Extra Twisted Edition along with a documentary claiming that Harbor City was canceled because six of the developers died in a plane crash. However, this was Based on a Great Big Lie; the "documentary" was part of an Alternate Reality Game hinting at the development of a Play Station 3Twisted Metal game.
