With the year drawing to a close and the Xbox 360 already two years old, we've seen a lot of high-profile titles hit the cutting room floor before ever seeing the light of day. And the original Xbox had a couple of big-name titles never make it out of the game development birth canal either. So we thought it'd be fun to spend the next seven days taking a look back at seven of the most memorable Xbox games that never were. First you'll see our original, undoctored previews. Below that will follow our 2007 post-mortem. Enjoy!

AMERICAN McGEE'S BAD DAY L.A. -- ORIGINAL OXM PREVIEW (DEC. 2005 ISSUE):

In the wake of the Hurricane Katrina tragedy, a game that takes a humorous and cartoony look at disasters, both man-made and natural, wreaking havoc on a large American city may seem frightfully inappropriate. But if we can’t laugh at what scares us, then we wouldn’t be human. And what game auteur American McGee is asking us to laugh at in his strange and controversial Bad Day L.A. is our fear of such terrible events and the things we do to combat them. Remember, all we have to fear is fear itself. That, and zombies, of course.

At the center of the chaos is an unlikely hero for a videogame: Anthony Williams, a cynical and slightly deranged homeless guy who loves women as much as he loves his shopping cart. The game begins with terrorists crashing a plane full of zombie-creating poison gas onto the 405 freeway during rush hour and continues with earthquakes, tidal waves, and meteor showers. As the world begins to fall apart around him, our antihero must find his way to “safety” any way he can.

Escape is the central function of all ten stages, and along the way your actions help define the overall level of chaos. Put out fires with your fire extinguisher (one of your main “weapons”), and people will start chilling out. Start shooting paramedics, and the crowd will quickly turn against you. The chaos is monitored by a tongue-in- cheek Terror Alert-style gauge that lowers the more smiley face icons you net (from helping people) or raises the minute you start to amass too many frowny ones (from ignoring those in need or actively harming them).

Along the way, you’ll pick up various accomplices that help you in your quest to escape the chaos. A little boy that is constantly puking (your first mission is to get him to an ambulance, which produces hilarious results), a gardener that turns out to be a general in the Mexican Army, and a right-wing maniac are just a few of the characters you’ll encounter.

Other comedic bits come from weird power-ups like dog poo (pulled from a real-world fact that rubbing feces on yourself is the best way to ward off an angry mob). And those American flag power-ups? They instantly lower the Terror Alert gauge a full notch.

It’s this parody of things we’ve become used to that lets Bad Day L.A. deliver a massive punch to the irony bone. And we all could use a laugh when the real world is as scary as it is.

THE 2007 OXM RETROSPECTIVE

We actually got to play this on Xbox. We had an early preview build that was so not-yet-ready-for-Xbox that the on-screen interface prompts all showed PC controls (for example: "Press Right Mouse Button to talk to NPCs"). It was a pretty messy build, technically speaking, and it really wasn't very fun. The humor just didn't work, and the gameplay consisted of uninteresting fetch quests. This is another that was better off dead. Unfortunately, PC gamers weren't as lucky, as Bad Day L.A. did release for Windows in September of 2006.

DAY 1: THE ACRONYM SAYS IT ALL

DAY 3: MISSING GRANDMA'S BOYS

DAY 4: GHOSTS (NOT) IN THE MACHINE