2010 Square Enix
Platform: Microsoft Xbox 360
Gun Loco was a rather unusual third-person shooter being developed by Square Enix exclusively for the Xbox 360. Set on a remote prison planet populated by some of the universe’s most dangerous and unhinged criminals, the game would see rival inmates battling for survival and ultimately attempting to escape.
The game had a very distinctive style, with a cast based on physical figures created by Hong Kong toy designer Kenny Wong. Characters included everything from street thugs to inmates wearing oversized rabbit heads, while the action mixed third-person shooting with a heavy emphasis on fast movement and brutal close range attacks.
Sprinting was a particularly important part of the game. Players could vault or slide beneath obstacles, dodge around the environment and combine movement with shooting, including sliding attacks and particularly violent finishing moves. Multiplayer was also a major part of the plans, with support announced for up to 12 players.
Gun Loco was announced during Gamescom in August 2010 and was playable shortly afterwards at the Tokyo Game Show. Various hands-on reports online described the game as having an interesting and unusual concept which was still clearly in need of further refinement, with criticism aimed at areas such as the AI, camera and general polish.
The game was due for release during 2011, but on the 18th March that year Square Enix announced that development had ceased and Gun Loco was cancelled worldwide. No official explanation was provided for the decision. Interestingly, Square Enix would later reveal that it had introduced tighter selection criteria for its forthcoming line-up, resulting in a number of project cancellations. Gun Loco had been cancelled shortly beforehand.
Thankfully, in early 2020, a September 2010 build was discovered by DoublesAdvocate on one of a collection of discarded Xbox 360 development kits originating from Canada. The build was identified as the version demonstrated publicly at the Tokyo Game Show. It was released by ObscureGamers on the 1st March 2020 as part of their 2020 release-a-thon and has since been documented by Hidden Palace.
Further material would surface in January 2023, when Archive.org user Lander uploaded another collection containing previously unknown Gun Loco builds. However, there was more hiding within the surviving development material. A user named fangboy12 shared an unlock which allowed access to hidden single-player content within one of the builds, opening up substantially more of the unfinished game for exploration.
This is where we first became aware of just how much Gun Loco material had survived. Aeritha got in touch with Games That Weren’t after spending a considerable amount of time exploring the prototype and recording what appears to be one of the most comprehensive looks at the cancelled game so far.
The resulting long play runs for around six hours, working through all of the accessible single player levels in the order presented by the development build. Not everything functions correctly, and some missions appear to be missing or inaccessible, but a surprising amount can be explored.
Aeritha also extracted and presented all of the movie sequences contained within the build, including several which don’t normally play during the available missions. Some provide additional story context which would otherwise be very difficult to see.
Other surviving content includes vehicles such as a tank and helicopter, while Aeritha has also produced separate videos showing the playable characters, a spacecraft-based fast travel mechanic and the original TGS 2010 portion of the game. Multiplayer unfortunately remains inaccessible, as the surviving builds attempt to connect to servers which are no longer available.
It is a fantastic amount of footage which is worth deep diving into (See below!)
With a huge thank you to Aeritha for highlighting the recovery and putting so much time into documenting the surviving content. Screenshots are from Aeritha’s video.
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