GameCube · 2002 · Capcom Production Studio 4 · Capcom · Cancelled in August 2003
The lost member of the "Capcom Five": a 3D shooter starring a winged man fighting giant monsters over a floating city. It was announced in November 2002 and quietly cancelled the following summer.
In November 2002 Capcom held a surprise press conference in Japan and announced five new games for Nintendo's GameCube, all overseen by Production Studio 4 under Resident Evil director Shinji Mikami. The group, which became known as the Capcom Five, comprised P.N.03, Viewtiful Joe, Resident Evil 4, Killer7 — and Dead Phoenix. Dead Phoenix was the most unusual of the five. It was a 3D shoot-'em-up in which the player controlled a winged man flying around a mythical floating city inhabited by monsters and dragons, shooting enormous enemies with the help of allies fighting on foot. The trailers suggested a game of large scale and spectacle, and Game Informer reported that a Japanese release was planned for mid-2003. That date was never met. By May 2003 the game was widely believed to have been cancelled, although Capcom said at its E3 press conference that year that it was still in development. In August 2003 the cancellation was confirmed. Capcom never explained what had happened, which left room for speculation: IGN suggested the project might have been retooled into a new Kid Icarus game, reflecting Nintendo's habit at the time of licensing its properties to other developers. No evidence for that theory ever emerged.
Of the Capcom Five, P.N.03, Viewtiful Joe and Killer7 all shipped in some form, and Resident Evil 4 became one of the most influential games of its decade, though it later left GameCube exclusivity. Dead Phoenix is the only one that never appeared at all.
Because so little footage was shown, it has become one of the better-known "what if" games of the GameCube era: a brief glimpse of a large-scale aerial action game from the same studio that was simultaneously reinventing Resident Evil.