When it comes to canceled games, there's something irresistible about them. Haunting, even. I'm not talking about the shovelware or half-baked pitches, but the real ones. The ones that were actually being built, building hype through magazines and interviews, showcased behind closed doors... and then vanished.

It's one of the saddest things in the industry when a game's development nears completion, but ends up in cancellation. However, every now and then, a miracle happens. A build leaks online, and we get to play versions of games that would otherwise have forever remained 'what-ifs'. Through these builds, we get to boot these games up, warts and all, and dip a toe into alternate universes where they were completed and released.

5 The Elder Scrolls Travels: Oblivion for the PSP

Oblivion, but make it portable and arena-based

A build of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion for the PSP sounds like a fever dream, but one did exist. Well, it did for The Elder Scrolls Travels: Oblivion, which was a series all about making the RPG series portable. Oblivion never made it to the PSP, but a leaked build shows the game in a very playable form.

Sure, there are the usual problems associated with leaked builds, with bugs and all, but the core gameplay loop is absolutely solid. The movement and combat system is very much like the original game, but don't go expecting a full open-world adventure like Oblivion. For that, there's always the fantastic remaster we got earlier this year.

This playable build of Oblivion on the PSP was more stage-based, working like an arena shooter where you went from stage to stage clearing out waves of enemies in towns. Outside of that, it started the same way as the mainline game, with your character breaking out of prison, talking to NPCs and getting better stats over the course of the game.

4 Resident Evil 1.5 was infamously canceled

Capcom considered it too small a leap from the first game

Perhaps one of the most infamous sequels that never really came out properly, Resident Evil 1.5 was supposed to be the second mainline RE game after the first one's success. Capcom planned the game with Elza Walker, a new protagonist, and Leon Kennedy, and a lot of the game would take place in the Raccoon City Police Department like it did.

However, their original version of the sequel was very different from the game we know and love today. The tone of this game was drastically different, and even though the game had nearly complete development, Capcom pivoted, deciding to remake the game from scratch.

As such, this build was dubbed Resident Evil 1.5, and a playable prototype for the game leaked to the interwebs in 2013, with the usual problems of progression blocks, unfinished layouts, and entirely disconnected areas. Since then, modders have taken it upon themselves to complete this build of the game, utilizing the assets to recreate and finish what is inarguably one of the most fascinating leaks of all time in the medium.

3 GoldenEye Remastered for Xbox 360

This one ran into issues... licensing issues

Here's one that will always sting. GoldenEye for the N64 was a revolutionary game, and I say that with zero exaggeration. The game proved to the world that first-person-shooter games belonged on consoles when done right, and honestly, had it not been for that game all the way back in 1997, we may never have had the glory days of Halo 3 on the Xbox 360.

Where remakes have been the lay of the land for the past few years, the 2010s were an era of great HD remasters, and that was when Rare nearly finished making an honest-to-goodness HD remaster of GoldenEye for the Xbox 360. It had all the works — upscaled graphics running at 60fps, improved controls, and even a working online multiplayer system. Sadly, licensing issues between Microsoft, Nintendo, and MGM tripped up the game right before it got to the finish line.

It wasn't until 2021 that a fully complete build of this version leaked online, and it was playable from start to finish with nary a hiccup. The levels? Unforgettable. The framerate? Silky smooth. And the nostalgia? Instant and overwhelming. This remaster for GoldenEye even let you switch between the classic and modern graphics at the click of a button without pausing or skipping a beat.

It's a shame how it spent a decade in limbo, but we can always be thankful that the world still got to see this version of the beloved game.

2 3D Realms' original Prey could've come to define FPS games

These were builds that were truly path-breaking

With Prey, I'm not talking about the slick, philosophical space shooter from Arkane in 2017. Instead, this was 3D Realms' original Prey, which they spent a year hyping up as the next big thing in the FPS space. This would've been a tech-forward FPS game, and their early prototypes between '95 and '98 were technological showcases, built around portal mechanics and room-over-room rendering.

Heck, the dynamic lighting looked way ahead of its time, but it was this ambition that led to the game running headfirst into development hell, where rewrites and overhauls plagued the game. The result? A canceled game that never saw an official release, and the one we did get in 2006 was vastly different from the original version.

Decades later, though, multiple early builds leaked online, and it offered us a surreal glimpse of what could've been one of the defining shooters of the '90s. In these playable versions, you can walk around alien ships, try out weapons, and feel just how experimental and ahead of the curve this game was. For lovers of the FPS genre, these builds of the canceled Prey game are nothing short of a time capsule.

1 Star Wars: Battlefront III for the Xbox 360

The curse on a third game in a Star Wars: Battlefront series is two for two at this point — if you're still holding out hope for a third DICE Battlefront III, all the power to you, but EA doesn't need to make that game anymore. The original Battlefront games were some of the best multiplayer action available at the time, especially for fans of the intergalactic IP.

Pandemic Studios, the devs behind the games, couldn't meet the one-year timeline LucasArts set for the third game, leading to development hell, and consequently, the game's cancellation. However, in 2016, a year after DICE rebooted the game, a build for the Xbox 360 version of the third original game leaked on to 4chan.

It was clear that the devs had put in a lot of work into the game already, with working cutscenes, a significant chunk of the campaign being playable, and absolutely solid gameplay that even let you fly out your X-Wings into space and back on to the earth with no loading screens in between.

This is about as playable as a leaked build can be, and it's a shame that Pandemic never got to realize their full potential. Even the subsequent shutdown of LucasArts is a bit of a pain point for any gamer.

There's something so thrilling about playing a canceled game

It's a rare, voyeuristic thrill that we derive from playing canceled games and their leaked builds. These were projects and titles we were never meant to play, and yet, it doesn't end there, either.

Dinosaur Planet on the N64, or Kill Thrill for the PlayStation — they all got the axe, despite nearing completion. These games were banished to something far, far worse than development hell — development limbo.