StarCraft: Ghost footage leaks online

New games come and go, with many forgotten just weeks after release. A scant few games, though, stick around in our brains without ever even releasing. Well over a decade after Blizzard canceled StarCraft: Ghost, people still bring it up regularly. Now, footage of the game-that-never-was has leaked out onto YouTube and elsewhere.

The embedded video below may be pulled but as of the time of this writing is still available for viewing with about seven minutes of StarCraft: Ghost gameplay footage:

StarCraft: Ghost promised to do for StarCraft what World of Warcraft did for that franchise. Ghost would take the camera down from that far overhead view and bring it down into the lush worlds Blizzard has been known for. The game was to release on the Xbox, PlayStation 2, and the Nintendo GameCube but a rough development cycle would end with the game being put on 'indefinite hold.'

But now, a build allegedly coming from an Xbox development kit has surfaced, and people have found ways to play StarCraft: Ghost as shown in the above direct-feed footage, which shows Nova running through a base. She shoots enemies, picks up some loot, and accesses information on a text database.

Who would have thought a month ago that Starcraft Ghost would leak in some form? pic.twitter.com/24wCp4XBsE

- Andrew Borman (@Borman18) February 16, 2020

Watch this footage while you can

StarCraft: Ghostlooks pretty clunky by today's standards but would've been been a pretty good looking game running on an original Xbox console. A variety of videos have been posted showing off things like Nova's conversations with other characters and off-screen footage that seems to indicate he game is running on a modded Xbox 360.

Blizzard could remove any or all of this StarCraft: Ghost footage through copyright strikes, so watch it while you still can. At the very least, this is a fascinating piece of video gaming history and a surprising leak after all this time. It suggests a future that could've been, where Blizzard entered the console market much earlier than they ended up doing. Blizzard canceled StarCraft: Ghost for a reason, but it's hard not to wonder what could've been, and it seems like a far cry from the company that released the buggy, unfinished Warcraft 3: Reforged just last month.

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