A new video from the always excellent Unseen64 has uncovered two previously unheard of Star Wars games that never saw the light of day.
One was to be a Rogue Squadron title that focused on the Dark Side (Dark Squadron), while the other was an action-adventure game that let you play as Chewbacca.
Both sound fucking awesome on paper – so what happened?
Apparently, LucasArts were left to decide which of the two games should be greenlit for production. Dark Squadron was to be developed by Factor 5 – the team behind the previous Rogue Squadron games – while LucasArts’ internal team would work on the Chewbacca game.
Chewbacca won out, but the video claims that George Lucas himself shut down the project. It seems he wasn’t happy with the idea of a game that focused on the Wookie as a lead character – racist.
LucasFilmThe unnamed Chewie game would have taken place between episodes III and IV, and explored the time in the Wookie warrior’s life before becoming Han Solo’s partner crime.
Fortunately, the team who worked on the Chewbacca game eventually went on to put out The Force Unleashed, which was a truly incredible Star Wars title.
Dark Squadron meanwhile, would have been a space combat game with a hefty dose of Imperial action. We would have played as some guy called Darth Vader, commanding an Imperial fleet, and generally being an evil badass.
Check out the video below.
Ah well, at least we have DICE’s Star Wars Battlefront… said nobody ever.
Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.