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. We'll be going from worst to first, meaning the first few days you'll remember thinking "Thank God!" they were canceled, and the closer we get to the end, your reaction will be more like, "Why God?!" First you'll see our original, undoctored previews. Below that will follow our 2007 post-mortem. Enjoy!

STARCRAFT GHOST — ORIGINAL OXM PREVIEW (AUG. 2003 COVER STORY):

The next great hero on Xbox isn’t even technically a hero — she’s a heroine. Meet Nova. Born into a universe divided into three conflicting races (the Terrans, the Protoss, and the Zerg), Nova is a female Terran (human) with exceptional physical and mental abilities – she is what they call a Psionic prodigy.

On a planet continually under siege, the government trains humans with Nova’s special skills as “Ghosts” — ultra elite soldiers called in to execute missions that no others have the expertise to handle. They meet mission goals 100%. They kill under orders without question. But, after so many missions, the lines are becoming blurred for Nova. Who is she fighting against? Who is she fighting for?

MISSION BRIEFING

Welcome to StarCraft, where Terran Ghosts are the most elite warriors. Trained in stealth, killing, and utilizing their Psionic powers, all of these skills cannot be learned — they are woven into a Ghost’s physical makeup from birth. They’re basically efficient, remorseless killing machines. Their job is not to question why, but to simply figure out how.

With two other races (the Protoss and the Zerg) beating down the Terrans’ door after a mysterious compound is discovered deep in a remote Terran mining post, you play as Nova. On your commander’s orders, you’re sent on a string of missions that will unravel a complex plot. Of course, throughout said missions and while unraveling said complex plot — you’ll be kicking booty.

A lone soldier on a path that’s shrouded in secrecy, danger, and possible conspiracy, you don’t say? Sure, we’ve been there and night-visioned that before as Solid Snake and Sam Fisher, but after getting some valuable hands on time with a playable Nova at Blizzard’s offices, we’re happy to report that StarCraft: Ghost may wear its influences on its bump-mapped, pulsating-neon-lit sleeve, but it certainly promises to come away stronger, smoother, and — dare we say it? — fun-ner than its male-led counterparts.

LOW-PROFILE

Your main objective in every mission will always be to stay in the shadows. Nova is a badass, but she still can’t withstand a direct onslaught of gunfire for long. And since she’s solo — it’s your job to keep out of sight.

To do this, you’ll have to do lots of planning. Ghost will be challenging, but it won’t be frustrating. The developers placed plenty of darkened corners throughout each area for this purpose. But you’ll have to do more than simply crouch and hide.

If your mission is to get from Point A to Point B, and the hallway between is like a crowded dance floor for enemies, you may want to rely on some of Nova’s other talents. For example, if there’s a pipe above the hallway, jump up and grapple it to stay above your foes’ periphery. But these are smart bad guys and often they’ll (gasp!) look up. If this happens, you’ll be forced into a hanging “hug” — Nova pulls up and wrap her body around the pipe to avoid detection.

This shows off one of the game’s coolest features: interaction with Nova’s surroundings. In addition to Nova’s pipe-hanging follies, you’ll be able to look to other ways of non-confrontation by slinking through large pipes, or going invisible with your Cloaking ability, or by delivering a little visual impairment with a smoke bomb. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

SHOOT TO KILL

Unlike many other stealth-action games, Nova doesn’t have a massive inventory of high-tech gadgetry or unlimited rounds of ammo behind a large range of firearms. Blizzard wanted to stress that this is a game where you’ll have to use your head, rather than your trigger finger, in order to succeed. Therefore, you’ll have to conserve your grenades and bullets for when it really counts.

So, how’s Nova to survive? Well, even if she doesn’t have a huge plethora of firearms, what she does have can get the job done nicely.

As far as a traveling armory, at the outset, you’ll be equipped with three different guns: snipe, lob grenades, or single-pull rifle shots. Sniping is key, since you’ll be trying to remain out of view — and the fact that each round is auto-silenced helps. When you enter into Sniper mode, you’ll also be able to zoom in and out freely while moving around.

Yet in some situations where you’re either caught by surprise or have to take out a group of enemies, you’ll have to rely on your other guns: a rifle and canister gun. The rifle does what it says: fires off single-pull rounds directly at its target. Though it isn’t particularly powerful against most of the enemies, it will deliver enough damage to stun most of them to enable your get away.

But it’s your grenades that will keep you in business. Armed with around a dozen different grenade types, ranging from EMP grenades to help you power down enemy defense shields to concussion rounds, which will temporarily stun foes allowing you time for a clean getaway. You’ll have to decipher when the best time is to use them on enemies. But be aware that they’re limited and the game won’t deal them out willy-nilly to you around every turn. The team wants the emphasis of gameplay to be put on choosing the best time to strike and the best way to strike, rather than an all-out aggro bloodbath.

FRIEND AND FOE

Mastering Nova’s inventory of moves and skills is one thing. But knowing your enemy is another. Those who aren’t strangers to the StarCraft universe will know full well that Nova’s own friendly Terrans aren’t always as friendly as they seem. Since she’ll often have to work as an operative on the shadowy side of the law, this means Nova will be up against her countrymen under different guises. But the other two races that roam the galaxy are no pushovers, either.

In true sci-fi style, the human Terrans can be seen as sort of a halfway point between the fearful creatures called the Zerg and the incredibly advanced civilization of Protoss. Both are incredibly deadly foes and you’ll have your hands full learning how to deal with all of them.

HIT ‘EM WHERE IT HURTS

But when your super stealth and individual Psi attacks won’t fly, you’ll be able to take care of business in true StarCraft style — by using a “call down” strike to analyze, assist, or simply kick the snot out of enemies.

Basically, you’ll have a choice in your menu to contact the orbiting satellite ship. You’ll have a pull down menu that becomes available once you’ve contacted the space ship that allows you to select different actions. You can ask the ship to zero in on any object or enemy onscreen targeted with your gun, then identify it (think of the Scan function in Metroid Prime). The information can then be freely accessed from the ship’s database at anytime to help you learn its weaknesses, history, etc.

That’s all fine and good, but the ship is also available for some rather earth-shattering strikes. Simply put, you’ll target an area or enemy, then call down any of your ship’s various strikes to obliterate it. Try a nuclear strike on for size — an attack so powerful that, when initiated, Nova will be whisked away to view the giant mushroom cloud from afar. In fact, the nuclear strikes can only be used during scripted moments.

But some of your other “call down” actions are non-lethal but immensely helpful. Stuff like the EMP attack will call on the Terran Science vessel to send down a large area EMP ray to disable any Protoss shields. Or the Irradiate attack sends down a shaft of green light to instantly kill any biological units in the targeted area. Sweet. But the most useful in a tight situation may be the COMSAT Sweep that sends laser to sweep a large area for burrowed Zerg and any cloaked beings (like Observers and rival Ghosts). Very useful, indeed.

UNDER CONSTRUCTION

So, with all this exciting stuff going for Ghost, what else could there possibly be? Well, lots, of course. The team hasn’t committed to including any Xbox Live support, but it’s definitely not ruled out. With the game utilizing seemingly every other aspect of the Xbox hardware (high-res, Dolby 5.1, all the visual bells and whistles), it’s impossible to think that they wouldn’t also include some online functionality.

Also, in true console style, Blizzard is also in the process of creating a feature in the game that tracks several different gameplay stats of your progress. Important stuff like the number of shots fired, or how many times you used Psi, the accuracy of your sniping, how many kills you made, and how stealthy you were… all of it will get tallied into scores at the end of each mission. Where will this lead? Blizzard isn’t quite sure yet. They are quite sure you’ll be able to upload your scores to the Internet for bragging rights, but they’re currently also looking into using your scores to unlock secret goodies.

And in the end, StarCraft: Ghost just keeps getting more and more complex in its mechanics, gameplay, and themes. But it’s the kind of complexity that gamers will excitedly dive into and relish for its challenges, its depth, and its polish. Though its release seems far off now, after playing it and realizing just how deep it goes – the wait seems even longer.

THE 2007 OXM RETROSPECTIVE

This one ranks right up there with the cancellation of Blizzard's other infamous bit of vaporware: WarCraft Adventures. Translation: it hurt.

The quality-minded SoCal developer behind such goldmines as the Diablo, StarCraft, WarCraft franchises (and currently the MMORPG juggernaut World of WarCraft) is certainly not afraid to flush something that's not awesome, as they proved by canning both WarCraft Adventures and Ghost late in their development cycles. Ghost even got so far as to have its multiplayer mode playable on the E3 show floor in 2004. It's also the only game to ever be featured on the cover of OXM that never came out...and it was on our cover twice! It had definitely lost a bit of its luster after Splinter Cell Chaos Theory was shown on Xbox at that same E3, but to say the world was eagerly anticipating Blizzard's Xbox debut would be an understatement.

And just to put any rumors to rest: StarCraft Ghost will never release. It's not to say Blizzard will never put out another console game (in fact, we'd be shocked if they didn't), but if and when they do, it won't be this one.

TOMORROW: DAY 5 PLAYS A SAD TUNE ON THE PIANO

DAY 1: THE ACRONYM SAYS IT ALL

DAY 2: A TRULY "AMERICAN" CLASSIC

DAY 3: MISSING GRANDMA'S BOYS