There Was A Cancelled Fast & Furious Game That Could’ve Been Great

It’s a wonder that there’s never been a half-decent Fast & Furious game. Surely, a big developer would’ve had the rights to the world’s biggest car-associated film franchise and made something real of it by now, right?

Many, many attempts have been made over the years, but not a single one to any great effect. Most recently, that was Spy Racers: Rise of SH1FT3R, a quite frankly terrible way to consume your free time.

Even spin-offs of existing games to include the franchise have never really hit home. Forza Horizon 2 Presents Fast & Furious was an okay attempt at doing that, but it was short and very easily forgotten.

Yet, one cancelled project could’ve turned out to be a genuine great in racing game history.

We wax lyrical a lot about the latest Tokyo Xtreme Racer title, but that’s merely an entry in a very long-running series. Developer Genki has been producing them since 1994, titled Shutokō Battle in its home country of Japan.

Its PS2-era games were the ones that first made it to the West. The games were pretty well received, though they never really gained a huge following outside of Japan, largely down to a lack of awareness that they even existed.

Now, take those games and apply the Fast & Furious branding, and you’d surely have had an all-timer of a title. That very nearly happened.

Announced in 2002 at E3 (RIP) and with a demo shown a year later, The Fast and Furious was meant to release on PlayStation 2 in November 2003 before arriving on Xbox in 2004. A trailer was shown, and that even made it to the bonus menu on DVDs of 2 Fast 2 Furious.

Genki would develop it, and Universal Interactive – a company part-owned by Vivendi Universal Games and Universal Studios, which produces the film franchise – would be publishing it.

So why don’t you see it on every ‘Best PS2 racing games’ list you’re reading at 1:30am to stave off an existential crisis? Simply put, it got cancelled.

Universal Studios cut ties with Vivendi, and Universal Interactive was killed as a result. So too was The Fast and The Furious.

Still, why didn’t Genki continue to develop it and convince Universal to allow someone else to publish it? Surely, a big money spinner was in both parties' hands? Well, internet stories suggest Genki’s deep-rooted Japanese company culture meant it wasn’t actually all that keen on making the LA-based game at all, so it took the opportunity to park it. How true that is, though, is unclear.

So tonight, pour one out for The Fast and The Furious. We’ll never know what it could’ve been, and we'll never forget about it, 'cuh.