Summary

  • Rockstar reportedly wanted to port The Warriors and Bully to Nintendo's GBA and DS, respectively, once upon a time.
  • Its Leeds-based subsidiary is said to have scrapped a near-finished GBA version of The Warriors due to lowered sales expectations, among several other reasons.
  • The DS port of Bully was supposedly shelved at an early stage of development because Rockstar Leeds staffers were reassigned to a bigger project, possibly LA Noire.

Rockstar came close to bringing The Warriors and Bully to Nintendo consoles, according to a newly emerged report. However, both of these purported Nintendo ports are said to have ultimately been abandoned for different reasons.

The Warriors and Bully emerged during Rockstar's fruitful mid-aughts, releasing exactly one year apart, in October 2005 and 2006, respectively. Both titles were met with critical acclaim and are still considered to be among Rockstar's weirdest and most memorable games.

Rockstar Reportedly Scrapped Near-Finished The Warriors GBA Port

Some 16 months following its debut on the PS2 and the original Xbox, The Warriors also made its way to the PlayStation Portable. In between those two events, the GTA developer shelved the game's Game Boy Advance port, Time Extension reports, citing former Rockstar employees familiar with the matter. This version of The Warriors is said to have been in the works at Rockstar Leeds, then known as Möbius Entertainment. It ran on the same proprietary engine used for the now-forgotten GBA port of Max Payne, which was made by the same studio.

Much like Max Payne, The Warriors was reimagined as a top-down action game in order to account for the technical limitations of the GBA hardware. It also made use of its unique capabilities, like offering support for four-player co-op multiplayer using Nintendo's Link Cable, as per the same source. And while the project was near-finished, Rockstar reportedly scrapped it in 2005 and focused on the game's PSP version. One of Time Extension's unnamed sources cited the poor sales of the company's previous Nintendo console ports as one of the reasons for the game's cancellation. The fact that Nintendo wasn't eager to help market M-rated titles and that Sony's first portable system was gaining momentum at the time are also said to have contributed to this purported PSP pivot.

Bully DS Port Was Reportedly on the Cards, As Well

Several years later, Rockstar Leeds tackled a DS version of Bully, as per the same report. The project is said to have started right after the studio wrapped up work on GTA: Chinatown Wars, which hit the market in March 2009. The DS version of the game was supposedly meant to use the same top-down perspective, but "didn't make it too far" before getting shelved because the studio's staff was reassigned to a much bigger project.

That was around the time when the company started assisting Team Bondi on LA Noire, making that game the likeliest reason why Bully never made its way to the DS. According to multiple past reports, Bully 2 was also canceled during this turbulent period for Rockstar Leeds.

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Rockstar Games
Rockstar Games
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Date Founded
December 22, 1998
Headquarters
New York, New York, United States
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CEO
Sam Houser
Parent Company
Take-Two Interactive
Subsidiaries
Rockstar North, Rocksteady Studios, Rockstar India, Rockstar Lincoln
Known For
Grand Theft Auto