World's Scariest Police Chases: Deadly Pursuit, an Unreleased Dreamcast that escaped
If we know the PSX version, World's Scariest Police Chases, released in 2001 developed by Unique Development Studios and published by Activision, we forget that a game of this license was also to appear on Dreamcast. It would have been called World's Scariest Police Chases: Deadly Pursuit, it would have been totally different while following a similar concept.
“You saw it on television. Now is your chance to experience it. You are in control of the craziest police chases there is. (Fox press release) "
World's Scariest Police Chases: Deadly Pursuit developed by an English team, Teeny Weeny Games, was based on the American TV show World's Scariest Police Chases, a series of 56 episodes of reality (1998-2001) broadcast by the Fox videos showing police chases, arrests for example.
"Initially it was a game called ' deadly pursuit ', Fox took it over, added the intellectual property and made it a game for police officers."
The game would have played out exactly like the reality shows in American car chase reality shows, and would have been inspired by their camera angles and helicopter views. As a police officer, the player would have had several cars to choose from and plenty of weapons at his disposal to attempt to complete more than 75 missions designed to test his reactions and composure. One of the planned features, other than multiplayer, was support for the Dreamcast microphone. We could have used it to call for reinforcements.
“He looked a lot like GTA before GTA. The city was open-world, with a linear mission structure supported by many side quests. ”
The screenplay was a classic take on the cop movies Tango and Cash, Lethal Weapon to name a few. A woman, gun fanatic, with a strong sense of humor, teamed up with a man more experienced and calmer than her. The story was about drugs, arms trafficking, turf wars between gangs and cartels to end in corruption cases between the police and the DEA (a US federal agency combating drug trafficking and distribution in the United States).
“We recorded the script in Los Angeles with Ice-T as the main antagonist and a lot of supporting actors.”
The car chase game was about 40% complete, it was playable. Fox terminated the project because they did not see a future for the Dreamcast and did not want to continue funding it. The development team was small and shrinking. One of the game's programmers had mentioned that they had incorporated cars, physics, and most of the city into the game, but no missions had been developed.
“It's a shame, it was a magnificent game. They pretty much canceled everything because it was clear that the DC was doomed. It was also a very strict PI with an America centric audience. "
Deadly Pursuit was very discreet. Some sites and magazines were still able to receive screenshots of the title to show it to their readers.
"We would have had to wait another year before its release, it was not really covered."
Scariest Police Chases: Deadly Pursuit had potential and could have filled Dreamcast aficionados with a game close to a GTA or a Driver.
Thanks to the game producer / designer / writer for shedding light on this Unreleased from the Dreamcast. All we need to do is hope to be able to play it in the future!
He also tells us that he worked on 2 other Dreamcast projects that were canceled, a motocross game for THQ and a racing game, Paris-Dakar, for SoftBank. These two projects, at the technical demo stage, were never announced. They had arrived too late in the console lifecycle.
"Dakar was really only at the level of the presentation and the technical demonstration, so we don't count it as a game :)"
Definitely the Dreamcast had a tragic fate. It was predestined, even before its commercialization, to die!
In my research at Unreleased, I had the opportunity to interview some developers. I took the opportunity to devote articles about these canceled games with new information: