Rage Software's Team SAS was shaping up to be quite an exciting prospect back in the early '00s.
In development for Xbox and PS2, it was created with the input of grizzled SAS veteran Andy McNab, who even went as far as providing motion capture for the game's animation.
Mixing gritty realism with arcade-style visuals, Team SAS looked like it would bridge the gap between "serious" military FPS titles and action-packed coin-ops like Virtua Cop – but sadly, Rage went under in 2003, kicking off a chain of events which would lead to the project's cancellation.
As noted by Games That Weren't, the rights were saved, and a studio called Dangerous Games was established to continue development. Prior to it going bust, Rage had entrusted the PS2 to another studio, and Dangerous Games decided to continue that development. Unfortunately, the studio in question hadn't been paid when Rage collapsed and understandably lacked faith in the project; as a result, the Team SAS developers were moved on to other games.
Unsurprisingly, the development of the PS2 version suffered, and this led to the entire project being shut down by the publisher. While the Xbox version – still in production internally at Dangerous Games – was looking great, all of the commercial hopes rested on the PS2 edition, as that console had the larger install base. It was game over for Team SAS.
Thankfully, level designer Stuart Maine contacted Games That Weren’t this year to share a prototype of the game, which is now available online. It's a pre-E3 build, and while it's not finished, it appears to be close to completion. A few chapters are playable in this build of the game, which has a few glitches and bugs.
So, 21 years after it was shut down, we're finally getting to play Team SAS. Let us know if you've given it a spin by posting a comment below.