A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away there was a space game planned for the Nintendo Wii, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. This wasn’t just any space adventure though – this was set in the one and only Toy Story universe, and was being made by the creators of toys-to-life game, Disney Infinity.
For the veteran gamers out there the Toy Story games – especially the year 2000’s Toy Story 2: Buzz Lightyear to the Rescue! – hold a dear place in our hearts, and the thought of getting another (another that was set in SPACE of all places!) might be too much to handle.
Unfortunately for the whole world, a few former Avalanche Software employees recently confirmed to Kotaku that in a parallel universe we would have gotten to play a new Toy Story game, which was being developed under the name Star Command.
Avalanche Software, the former in-house studio who worked on Disney video games, was actively working on a game to tie-in with the cinematic hype of Toy Story 3.
The doomed project would have been released on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii, and “other platforms” in 2009.
“Star Command is what we called it internally,” said a staff member who worked on the title.
According to Kotaku‘s anonymous sources, Star Command was originally going to be an expansion for Toy Story 3, but then ended up as its own game.
Sadly, the project was canned in 2010 in favour of Disney Infinity, which of course focused on lots of Disney IPs instead of just the one.
“We were testing a lot of the ideas during Toy Story 3,” said one of four people interviewed by Kotakuwho worked on the game. “Toy Story 3 was essentially two games in one. The ‘movie’ version that Disney was known for and the ‘Toy Box’ version to test this new open world experience. The Toy Box would eventually turn into the idea for Infinity.”
Star Command was planned to be a “third person action-adventure game with a world loosely based off Buzz Lightyear’s fictional space force,” writes Kotaku.
The game would also use Toy Story 3‘s sandbox-style gameplay known as Toy Box, and allow players to take on missions and take part in minigames.
The hub world for Star Command was going to be a spaceship like the ones in which Buzz Lightyear dolls (sorry – action figures) are sold in the movies.
“There would be a story mode where you’d follow an original narrative, and then a toy-box type town building mode,” said one of the interviewees, explaining that players could take on the story or just live out their own lives at their own pace.
So why did Star Command kick the bucket?
“Multiple games were being worked on at once, but near the end of a development cycle, it was almost all hands on deck to get the game done in time,” said a former Avalanche employee. “We also did a few things on the side [of Toy Story 3]. We made a display for Disney Cruises. We were also working on some VR stuff, like a Toy Story mini-game that was sort of like the ride at the parks. And a Star Wars one where you flew around in a ship.”
Disney ultimately wanted to cash in on the toys-to-life game model, and the Star Command team were moved over to work on Disney Infinity.
Hopefully the game is something that Disney will want to come back to in the future because I definitely want to play it!
Credit: Disney/Pixar