Champions (Cancelled Superhero Role-Playing Video Game; Early 1990s)

Champions was to be a RPG-action superhero game for the PC and Amiga; originally developed by Konami, the project was then handed to GameTek.

Based on a table RPG, the game would have been set in a comic-book style superhero universe. The player character would have had fully customizable traits such as built, facial features, outfit, color scheme and of course, superpowers (ranging from superstrength, flight or laser eyes, among others). Of course, it would have also had pre-designed characters to play as.

24 different missions would have been playable, having the player character face equally-powered supervillains or common thugs as base enemies, and there were different ways to accomplish each scenario, adding some replay value.

Gameplay would have been reminiscent of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sidescrolling action games such as The Arcade Game or Manhattan Missions (also published by Konami).

Champions' release date was originally announced in September 1991 (when it was still in Konami's hands) and then in April 1993 (when it was passed over to GameTek). However, development dragged on for so long the graphics were considered outdated by the year's standards. The programming team decided to can the project instead of starting from scratch.

Champions still has a legacy in the Heromaker program (later known as Heromachine), that was based on the character customization segment from the original project.