Junction Point was shut down by Disney after the commercial failure of Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two, but the studio had many other concepts in development that never saw the light of day.
Project Goliath was one of those concepts. It was an ambitious project conceived from a group of eager college students. The game would have been one of Junction Points’ next projects had it not been for the company’s demise.
Following the release of the first Epic Mickey, games industry legend Warren Spector wanted to give the Epic Mickey series another go, due to his frustration with the game’s critical reception missing his personal expectations. Given the commercial success of the first game, Disney gave the team the green light to develop a sequel.
Meanwhile, a fresh team of college students was working on a new passion project, codenamed Project Goliath. The game was set to tell the story of a biogenetically enhanced gorilla named Tarek, and his human friend Ky. Project Goliath took inspiration from popular platformers like Ratchet and Clank, Jak and Daxter, and Banjo-Kazooie. Junction Point also aimed to bring an open scope to the game akin to Shadow of the Colossus, which at the time was uncommon, especially for platform adventure games.
After Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two released in 2012, Disney abruptly shuttered Junction Point due to the disappointing sales of the sequel, and the fact that Avalanche Software was already hard at work on the Disney Infinity series. Junction Point attempted to salvage the company by pitching ideas like an Epic Mickey-esqe Donald Duck game, and a Disney kart racer, but it was too late, and Project Goliath never got its chance to be pitched to Disney.
Not only that, but the team at Junction Point was later forced to remove themselves from the concept art created for the game, after it was discovered that one of the key artists had plagiarized some of the artwork for the game. For fear of being blacklisted, the team behind Project Goliath had to disassociate with the concept altogether.
For a more in-depth look behind the tragic story of Project Goliath, take a look at Unseen64‘s latest video below.
looks a lot like tracer and winston from overwatch.