You feel that in the air? The constant buzzing of press releases and hype trailers? It's E3 season, and that means it's time to get excited once again about the future of video games. Usually, the E3 lifecycle works like this: watch a trailer and some gameplay footage for a hot new game at E3, get really excited about it, wait about a year or two, then finally walk to your local store and pick up a copy of the game.

Sometimes, though, games get stuck at the 'waiting' step and never find a way to get out. Time continues to march on, E3s come and go, and these games either disappear into the aether, or get cancelled outright, leaving behind a video or two and brief demo a handful of people actually got to try. So let's gather ‘round, reminisce on promises left unfulfilled, and pour one out for these E3 vaporware games.

When the Wii was originally unveiled at E3 2006, Nintendo also showcased an array of games that would make a case for its then-unheard-of motion controls. Look at all these beautiful people flailing the Wii Remote around as they wield a virtual sword, baseball bat, or hammer! And while demoed games like Red Steel, Wii Sports, and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess saw the light of day, it was Project H.A.M.M.E.R. that was doomed to get the axe.

In Project H.A.M.M.E.R., you would play as a burly dude covered in power armor, and your objective was to swing around a massive sledgehammer, obliterating every enemy and object in sight. That seems to be about as far as the dev team got, as the game was considered "paused" as of E3 2007. While not officially cancelled by Nintendo, it's been nearly nine years since its initial unveiling, so make of that what you will.

Some console names are a bit strange (seriously Nintendo, the Wii?), while others are a bit more obvious, perfectly encapsulating what the machine is and does (like the PlayStation). But no name is more perfect than The Phantom, a console developed by Infinium labs that, other than brief showing at E3 2004, never saw the light of day.

The Phantom was a console developed by Infinium Labs (rebranded as Phantom Entertainment in 2006). Revealed in 2003 then arriving at E3 in 2004, the idea behind it was, at the very least, ambitious. For under $399, The Phantom was to be a PC that hooked up to your TV like a console, letting you download and install games directly to the device via the internet. It was essentially a Steam Machine before Steam was even a thing, but release dates came and went as the machine's release ended up pushed beyond 2005, finally removed from Phantom Entertainment's website in 2006. Perhaps the world just wasn't quite ready for a living room PC solution, but at least there's a silver lining to this story: Phantom Entertainment still exists, and - a couch-based keyboard originally designed for the The Phantom console.

Exclusives are important for any console manufacturer. Each box essentially does the same thing, so you have to give people a reason to buy your machine over the competition's. So when Sony announced in 2007 that a game from the studio behind Grand Theft Auto was coming exclusively to PlayStation, it was perceived as a big get for the company that sat firmly in second place.

It's unfortunate, then, that the only official image we've seen of the game since its E3 unveiling was the logo. A few screenshots have leaked out since then, and publisher Take-Two still claims that the game is in development. Rockstar Games is known for taking its sweet time developing games, but eight years on a single game is a bit much.

The 21st century hasn't exactly been kind to LucasArts. For every Knights of the Old Republic, there was a Star Wars Kinect; for every Mercenaries, there was a Fracture. It wasn't exactly a surprise when LucasArts effectively ceased operations in 2013 following Disney's acquisition of basically everything George Lucas owned. But it was still a shame - especially because it meant cancelling the one project that could have put LucasArts back on the map: Star Wars 1313.

Starring a young Boba Fett, Star Wars 1313 would have followed the bounty hunter's first adventures, and made it out to be a third-person shooter filled with heavily-scripted set-pieces, similar to Uncharted. Except, y'know, it's Star Wars. While the demo looked promising, 1313 was officially canned a year later, as LucasArts laid off the majority of its staff.

Some games are lucky enough to escape their vaporware fate, and there's probably no greater turnaround story than Prey, that somehow actually turned out alright considering the circumstances. Unfortunately, its sequel didn't end up so lucky.

While a sequel was reportedly in development shortly after the first game's release in 2006, it wasn't officially unveiled until 2011. Taking place after the events of the first game, Prey 2 would have followed the adventures of US Marshal Killian Samuels, a single human living among an array of alien races, hunting bounties and earning cash to survive. Prey 2 made a showing at E3 that year, but shortly after, rumors began to swirl about its cancellation. Bethesda continued to deny rumors until 2014, when Bethesda VP Pete Hines confirmed that development on the title had ceased.

So Nintendo struck paydirt with the Wii, and games like Wii Fit and Wii Sports flourished with an audience who would have never thought to pick up a gaming console in their lives. In an effort to keep that gravy train rolling, Nintendo wanted to create a controller that everyone could use, a controller so simple, all you have to do is put your finger in it and sit there. Enter the Vitality Sensor.

In an ideal world, the Vitality Sensor would have gathered the player's biometric data (namely, their pulse) and the game would then take that data and react accordingly. But despite an initial announcement by Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata at E3 2009, the device essentially disappeared without a trace. It wasn't until 2013 that Iwata confirmed why this strange peripheral never got released: turns out, it only worked for . It doesn't sound like that big of a gap, but when ten percent of the people who buy your product are returning it because they think it doesn't work, it's probably best to shelve it.

Peter Molyneux is basically the Willy Wonka of game design - except Molyneux's Fizzy Lifting Drinks don't do much more than taste like an off-brand Sprite and give you a slight caffeine buzz. Not that he makes bad games; it's just that they end up kind of pedestrian in comparison to the pie-in-the-sky promises that he makes leading up to their release. And there's perhaps no greater example than Molyneux's ability to over-promise and under-deliver than Project Milo.

The idea (as these things tend to go) looked promising, as you interacted with a virtual young boy with voice and hand gestures via Kinect, and the boy would react to your statements and change over time. It all sounded a bit too good to be true, especially considering , despite Molyneux's insistence to the contrary. Considering Molyneux's departure from Microsoft in 2012, it's doubtful this project will be completed.

You'd be forgiven if you don't remember the original Phantom Dust on the Xbox. Even though it was developed by Microsoft Japan, it's still pretty niche, combining third-person action, card-collecting, and multiplayer arena battles. Microsoft's been on a rebooting kick lately, taking old properties that the publisher owns and getting other studios to remake them for Xbox One. Phantom Dust was the latest to supposedly get the treatment, complete with an E3 2014 trailer.

But within a year of its announcement, the studio behind the remake , leaving the ultimate future of Phantom Dust in question. Microsoft has stated that they are committed to the title and that development still continues, but it's probably going to be another couple of years before we ever see anything about this strange hybrid again. I suppose getting shut down quickly is better than getting strung along for years, but still - that was fast.

Las Vegas, that strip of hedonism and hubris out in the middle of the desert, has never really been immortalized in video games (though Fallout: New Vegas gets it pretty close). There are casino games, sure, but there's never been been a game that fully encapsulates the celebrity DJ/bottle service/$7.99 all-you-can-eat buffet experience that Las Vegas is really known for. And thanks to the cancellation of This Is Vegas, we're going to have to wait even longer.

First hinted at in 2006, the splendor of This Is Vegas wasn't fully revealed until 2008, and was scheduled for release later that year. Unfortunately, thanks to publisher Midway's own personal financial woes (many of them likely brought on by This Is Vegas' ballooning costs, as the publisher reportedly spent Keep the Vegas dream alive.

Here it is: the White Whale of vaporware. Blizzard is known for only releasing games when they're "done", which of course means they take years longer to make than most, and the studio isn't afraid to shelve something if they don't think it's worth continuing - even if that means cancelling a game after years of development. StarCraft: Ghost would have put players in the role of the titular sniper as she sneaks her way through various sci-fi environments, completing objectives, and shooting Zerg in the face.

Unfortunately, development didn't go as smoothly as you'd expect. Originally planned for a 2003 release, Ghost underwent numerous delays, and even changed hands from developer Nihilistic to Swingin' Ape Studios. It was then relaunched at E3 2005 and slated for a release in 2006 - which came and went, and Ghost was still a no-show. Around that time, a little game you've probably never heard of called World of Warcraft released, and Blizzard decided to pour resources into its new MMO rather than continue working on a stealth-based PS2/Xbox game, so it put Ghost on indefinite hold. If you're still holding out hope, don't: Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime finally put a bullet in this one, confirming its cancellation in 2014.

Nothing to see here. Move along.

There should be no disagreement: Doom is one of the best games ever made. I like to describe it as a perfect killing engine. Every part of it works in concert to create something you just want to deal death in. Over and over again. It’s fast, violent, uncomplicated, but deceptively nuanced. Two decades later it still holds up because every piece of it pushes toward its goals.

That doesn’t mean there is no room for modernisation or improvement. Mouse look, engine fixes and modern level design via custom-made map packs are a massive boon to playing Doom in the 21st century. But there are some modern shooter tropes that would be unacceptable - not objectively awful, but desperately ‘not right for Doom - if added. I’ve picked out a few that would be especially heinous crimes if visited on id’s reboot. Pray that none of these turn up when the game is revealed at .

Doom’s most basic enemies - the Zombieman, Shotgun Guy, and Chaingunner - are not there to prove a challenge. There is a reason they are the only enemies to drop ammunition while every Pinky Demon, Spider Mastermind and Revenant leaves nothing but a delightfully colourful corpse behind: they’re interactive ammo dumps, there to be harvested as much as fought. They’re not just enemies. They have a very specific design purpose.

Now, this doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be a threat. An unchecked Chaingunner will reduce you to swiss cheese in moments, and an ignored Shotgun Guy is happy to make mincemeat of your back. But they cannot take the same punishment they deliver, single shotgun blasts felling scores of zombies (more on this later). Even higher difficulties have no effect on this: the wall of meat may be deeper, with more enemies to cut, blast and melt through, but it never takes longer to get through a layer. That’s vital to Doom’s unique pace and flow.

Doom is packed with enemies. If going for 100% runs at levels, you will regularly be blasting away hundreds if not thousands of hellspawn in a half hour period. Equally, they will not come at you one at a time, but in waves, seemingly unbeatable hordes teleporting on top of you with every grabbed key and opened door. Even the Cyberdemon, Doom’s rocket spewing boss creature, feels underdressed without at least a milling crowd of Imps to distract you, absorb your ammo (at the cost of their oen lives, of course) and trap you in a fatal corner. Again, this stuff is fundamental to Doom’s deceptively strategic flow.

Small battles can be used effectively, especially when introducing a new beast. The first episode of Doom finishes with the ‘bruiser brothers’ - a pair of super-deadly, high HP Barons of Hell - stepping out of the walls and assaulting the player joined, only by a few unthreatening Spectres. It’s a memorable moment precisely because it’s so rare, and Barons make all haste to join the rest of the cast in assaulting you en masse later on.

The heroic Doomguy is a man of strong back and many arms. There is no gun that he cannot find a place for somewhere on his person, and he does not need to discard his pistol, no matter how pathetic it may be, to pick up that Super Shotgun, Rocket Launcher or holy BFG. He is no ordinary marine trotting through Call of Duty: Demonic Warfare. Realism went out the door around about the moment the dead started coming back to life.

A varied and always accessible arsenal is a core part of Doom, and an important support strut for its excellent level design and ever-changing situational demands. Each weapon has its place and purpose, be it the Chaingun’s exceptional room clearing ability, the Rocket Launcher’s insta-gibbing of grouped targets at any range, or the BFG’s unique position as a panicked ‘oh fuck’ key. Constant, reliable access to these options is vital, especially if ammo is running low. Plus, the idea of having to pick between the Super Shotgun and Plasma Gun frankly reduces me to tears. Speaking of which...

If Doom is the best FPS of all time, then the Super Shotgun (SSG) is the greatest gun of all time. Forget the more realistic, speciality weapon you may be used to today, throw away the ineffective-at-medium-range ideal. Come sit by the burning demon corpses and let me explain. The SSG is an icon of death, a beautiful blunt instrument for reducing enemies to nothing. Its inclusion in nuDoom is mercifully already confirmed, by way of half of that recent being dedicated to it. What’s important now is that they get it right.

The SSG does more damage than a rocket launcher if all of its pellets hit. Faced with a squad of twelve zombies in two ranks, the SSG will annihilate them in a single click. In enclosed spaces, demons - with all their spiked carapaces, and claws, and three foot mouths rimmed with thick teeth - have nothing on the SSG. It is their god of destruction, your saviour, and every shot fired should fired from it should leave you with no doubt that something on the other end is experiencing Hell on Earth.

This is two-fold. On the one hand, the idea of pressing a button to get into cover is antithetical to what makes Doom. It is, basically, too complicated. With Arachnotrons turning the air green with plasma from half a map away, Mancubi shelling you to within an inch of your life, and the glowing eyes of Spectres bearing down on you with every passing second, you do not need to be worrying about whether the game has decided you’re hiding or not. If there is a wall between you and the bad guys, you are safe, if there is not, you better be moving.

You see movement is another big part of the Doom equation. Like in the many deathmatch FPS that followed, remaining static in Doom is a death sentence. The vast majority of enemy fire comes from big, clear projectiles that can and should be dodged, allowing you to close the gap or find an alternate route. Ducking in and out of cover is an act of sprinting between safe zones, not finding a good camping spot. Cover in Doom is actually about encouraging movement. It’s about speed and freedom not, well...

Doomguy does not get tired. He does not need a wee rest after running the 100 meters. Doomguy has a walk-key for being optionally careful, not a run-key for getting somewhere optionally fast. He gets everywhere fast. He is Usain Bolt on a specially concocted IV drip of jet fuel, energy drinks and exploding suns. Doomguy will stop when he’s dead. And even then, only for a bit.

If all other pieces of advice here are discarded, let this one remain. It is vital to the Doom experience that you move quickly, constantly. Not only in comparison to the size of levels, but in relation to enemies as well. They don’t get to run away, and you will outrace all but the most deadly projectiles. Not only that, side-stepping fireballs and even melee attacks is a bigger ego boost than all the perfect headshots in the world. Outnumbered, and even rarely outgunned, Doomguy is never, ever outpaced. That’s what it’s all about. That’s Doom.

The protracted, cinematic cut-scene is perhaps the least Doom thing in modern gaming. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy being told a story as much as the next functioning human being. But I don’t need a reason to shoot a seething horde of anathema in their evil skulls. They are the eternal Bad Guys; that they were summoned here by the machinations of some foolish scientists messing with teleportation (or, Satan forbid, ‘unlocking the 24th chromosome’) is largely irrelevant. Now that they’re here, they just need to die, and I have the tools to make them die.

Going to the extreme of the original games’ end-of-episode wall o’ text isn’t an option in 2015, but thirty-second cutscenes that inject some purpose or a sense of place will be very welcome. Tell me where I am, what happened here, and what I’m doing next, but never wrest control from me for too long. All should be skippable, with any additional exposition hidden away as Dark Souls-like environmental secrets, or inserted into the UI in some unobtrusive and easily ignored way while I’m clearing another room of hostile hellspawn.

Nobody in Hell likes everyone else in Hell. They don’t like anything - they’re in Hell. Doom’s monster in-fighting proves that the forces of evil are inherently racist, and the gameplay is all the better for it. Why would a Mancubus, fatty hide charred from an errant fireball aimed at your sprinting form, not turn his cannons on the foolish Imp that threw it? And when his aim falters and takes out half the advancing line of Pinky Demons, why wouldn’t they become distracted for a moment to chew his rebellious little face off?

This sounds like an impossibly intelligent AI fantasy-land but it was all possible, common and downright fantastic in 1993. Without the benefits of in-fighting, ammo would quickly become a scarce resource and, presumably, even your ringed knuckle would fall off from overuse eventually. Beyond that, it’s just bloody fun. It’s another way in which you’re smarter than your enemies, able to manipulate them to your will and make them take each other out while you’re in another part of the level. And it just makes Doom even more brilliantly, cleverly chaotic.

Through Doom’s impressive bestiary there is precisely one reskin, not counting invisible variants of other enemies. The Baron of Hell is the bigger, tougher, red cousin of the Hell Knight, with twice as much HP. That’s it. He’s the only reused monster. While you will kill hundreds of each type of enemy throughout a campaign, each is so different from the rest - in both look and purpose - that it never gets old.

The ultimate example of this is the Arch-Vile. The flickering flame decal that obscures 90% of the screen is a warning sign that one is nearby and locked on to you. Break line of sight immediately or take a crippling amount of damage. Out of its way? OK, it will now start resurrecting its slain friends, creating a wall of very angry shielding to get through before you can directly damage your main foe. They are nothing like any of their Hellish compatriots. Correct deployment of Arch-Viles in custom maps makes powerful memories. Every enemy in Doom has similar possibilities and uses, and that should - in fact must - continue.

Perhaps Doom’s most underappreciated factor is its colour. Behind all the gore, the wonderful selection of weapons, and the brutal bestiary of enemies is - usually - a lovely Technicolor texture. There is chrome, and mud, and even sewer levels in both original games, but the water is a deep blue, the chrome a glowing silver, and the sparsely-used dirt such a disgusting shade of brown that you can’t help but marvel at it.

This is partly due to the technology of the era. Enemies, danger areas, and pick-ups all have to be easily parsed at resolutions that would make your 1080p-accustomed eyes bleed. More than that, maps are so large and open that objects regularly have to be identified at long range. The upshot of all this is that every sprite and texture is still instantly recognisable, partly caricatured out of necessity, but dripping with personality as a result.