Wu-Tang: Shaolin Style is based on a bizarre game that was too extreme to be released. It’s not often that a fully developed game gets canceled before release, but in this case, it helped another game to get made.

Fighting games were different way back in the nineties. Franchises like Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat raised the bar, and pushed the boundaries of what fighting games could  be. Despite this, most games were still in 2D and could only support two players. Wu-Tang: Shaolin Style came out in 1999 for the PlayStation, and featured 3D graphics and support for up to four players. Each member of the group was given a unique fighting style and had to fight through the 36 chambers to avenge their master’s death.

The game received mixed reviews, with some praising its four-player innovation and others criticizing its unresponsive controls and low frame rate. What most people don’t know is that Wu-Tang: Shaolin Style was built on a game that was canceled by EA for having too much sex and violence.

That game was Thrill Kill.

It was the first game to receive an “Adults Only” rating from the ESRB for violent content, as all the titles before it received the notorious rating for sex. According to Getpocket, EA, who’d just taken over Virgin Interactive, was too scared to market Thrill Kill and it ended up being shelved completely.

It’s not surprising. Thrill Kill started out as a four-player violent sports game by Paradox Development, but during its development cycle, publisher Virgin Interactive pushed them to drop the sports part and focus on fighting. In an effort to be edgy, they also insisted on making the game hyperviolent with buckets of gore and brutal finishing moves. Virgin also demanded strange,  BDSM-inspired characters in an effort to get the game noticed. The result was game featuring semi-naked people on stilts, cannibals, and serial killers fighting in a hellish room.

Thrill Kill had already finished development, and was just weeks away from release when EA pulled the plug. Paradox had no choice but to repurpose the engine. Luckily, Activision stepped in, and Wu-Tang: Shaolin Style was born. It would have been interesting to see what impact Thrill Kill would have made, had it been released. It lives on in the form of bootlegged uploads on the internet.

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Source: Getpocket