Following on from the surprise leak of Dinosaur Planet last weekend, footage of the cancelled Nintendo DS project Black & White has now surfaced online.
If the name doesn't ring a bell, this is a handheld entry of the god video game series created by the famous video game designer Peter Molyneux (Populous, Fable, Theme Park) and his studio Lionhead, which would have been published by EA.
According to the source, a company called Full Fat was tasked with the handheld release known as Black & White Creatures. It remains unclear exactly why the project was scrapped, But take a look at what could have been (above), courtesy of the YouTube channel PtoPOnline:

"The first 10 minutes or so of an early build of Black & White Creatures, the unreleased Nintendo DS game! It's an early build, even clicking on the menu options can be tough."
A new Black & White game hasn't been seen since the release of the sequel in 2005. It doesn't help that Lionhead also no longer exists and has been absorbed by Microsoft.
Would you like to see this classic series one day make a return? What do you think of this DS version? Leave a comment below.
[source youtu.be, via nintendoeverything.com]
Comments 22
I remember hearing about that. It's not quite Sadness for the Wii in terms of lamented vaporware for me, but at the time I was interested in at least seeing what it was about.
Damn, 2021 is the year of game leaks. Goldeneye XBLA, Dinosaur Planet, now Black & White DS, lol.
I'm less sad it was canceled than I was in the Dinosaur Planet example.
I loved Black & White on PC and probably would have bought this.
I loved the game so much I bought it 3 times. The original version, then I bought it again with an expansion dlc, then a third time that was an ultimate version that had the original game, expansion dlc, brand new creatures and Black & White 2.
I would love to see Microsoft get Rare or Bethesda to work on a brand new entry.
I tried very hard to get into B&W when it first came out (pc), spent lots of time trying. This one probably wouldn’t have been for me, either.
That cat creature is straight out of nightmares.
Just makes me wish someone would revive this franchise.
I remember seeing the PC game in Best Buy back in the days, when they use to sell PC games in big huge boxes. I never played it cause I wasn't into PC games at the time but it's one of my roommates favorite PC games.
"Footage of the cancelled 2001 Nintendo DS project..." How did a DS game get cancelled three years before the DS was released?
@TheFox Oops, that was actually the year when the original Black & White game was released on PC. Fixed!
I feel like I remember seeing screenshots of this in an old Nintendo mag
Enjoyed Black and White back in the day. Can imagine it's aged terribly, though.
Wow, that actually seems like it was pretty in-depth!
And the visuals remind me a lot of playing Populous: The Beginning on my 1997 PC with no 3D acceleration. ^^
it looks like ***** ..no wonder it was scraped
B&w on PC was clearly a masterpiece. A remaster would bem gorgeous
I remember playing the original on the PC, for some reason I always turned evil. Tried to stop my creature from eating people, but whatever I did they loved a person snack
I picked up Spore Creatures a couple months ago on impulse, and as suspected, it has a lot in common with this title! It definitely uses the same engine for the overworld exploration.
EDIT: Just did some cursory research - it looks like EA handed Spore Creatures over to Griptonite (a popular choice for handheld adaptations of console titles), whilst Full Fat were responsible for the following year's game, Spore Hero Arena! I wonder how much overlap there was between all these projects.
But Black & White did come out on the DS and it was fantastic.
...Wait, we aren't talking about Pokémon?
Anyone who knows about GBA shovelware will recognize Full Fat immediately. Mostly licensed stuff came from them. They did make quite a few decent-ish games like Pacman World for GBA.
The dialogue of your conscience really made these games.
Evil Side: "Kill 'em! Smash their stones! Yeah!"
Good Side: "Or we could just break their concentration."
Evil Side: "Yeah, break their concentration with a boulder to the face!"
@Bunkerneath
It is incredibly difficult to play B&W as a good god. Particularly as torching all non-believers and filling their homes with your followers is the easiest way to take over an enemy village >
"Ooooh, we've got this notion
That we'd quite like to sail the ocean
So we're building a big boat to leave here for good.
We're not keen on sinking
So we're all sitting here a thinking
'Cause we built it too big and we've run out of wood.
eidle eidle eee
eidle eidle eee
We simply can't leave 'til we get some more wood.
Oooh, we're not keen on sinking
so that's why we're sitting thinking
cause we simply can't leave 'til we get some more wood."
Those that have played B&W are cursing me by now. XD
You know it's a great tutorial when they tell you do things, but then don't tell you how to do the things.
Guess they never had the time to polish that.
Definitely remember this being listed in Nintendo Power!
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