News Rockstar Came Extremely Close To Releasing 'The Warriors' On GBA

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Back in 2007, Rockstar Leeds released a port of Rockstar Toronto's The Warriors for the PlayStation Portable. But something you might not know is that it actually wasn't the first handheld platform Rockstar considered porting the game to.

Recently, while interviewing a former Rockstar Games employee (who wished to remain anonymous), our conversation switched over to cancelled projects that they had knowledge of, which never saw the light of day. This led them to share with us the existence of a Warriors game for the Game Boy Advance that was in development at Rockstar Leeds (which we've since been able to corroborate with other former Rockstar employees).

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According to these sources, the game would have used the same engine behind the Game Boy Advance port of Remedy Entertainment's Max Payne (developed by Rockstar Leeds under the name "Möbius Entertainment Limited") and was pretty much finished and ready for release before being canned in 2005. We actually know of a copy of the game that exists, but sadly, it doesn't seem like this will ever see a release, due to the owner not being in a position to share it (presumably for fear of Take-Two's lawyers).

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On the subject of the game, one of our sources told us:

"We were going for four-player co-op using the link cable and stuff. We finished the game. It was actually f**king fun to play. But there it sits never to be released because that's when the PSP was gaining momentum and we weren't really seeing good returns on Nintendo. Nintendo at the time didn't like promoting M-rated games. We were comfortable in Sony land, so we went with The Warriors direct port on PSP."

What's interesting is our original source also mentioned another game that was being considered for development at Rockstar Leeds: Bully for the Nintendo DS. This apparently didn't get as far as The Warriors and was supposedly cancelled when Rockstar Leeds staff were pulled over to a bigger project (which is believed to be LA Noire):

"We had Bully on the DS. Right away Chinatown Wars, we did Bully. The same thing. Top down and everything. But it didn't make it too far."

This one has been a bit more difficult to confirm with other former Rockstar staff, but one former Rockstar Leeds employee did say it sounded "plausible" as the team was experimenting with how to reuse some of the same technology after work was finished on Chinatown Wars.