Canceled 'Gotham by Gaslight' revealed by UI artist

Art for a Batman game pitched to THQ about two years ago has surfaced, featuring the Dark Knight in a steampunk-like universe inspired by an Elseworlds comic published in 1989.

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Art for a Batman game pitched to THQ about two years ago has surfaced, featuring the Dark Knight in a steampunk-like universe inspired by an Elseworlds comic published in 1989. The art features a logo for the game, entitled Gotham by Gaslight, along with a controller screen pointing to shooter-style features as well as the ability for Batman to go into "slowmo."

Controls indicate Gotham by Gaslight was a shooter

Artist Julie Farrell posted UI concept art on her blog for the Xbox 360-based title. Introducing the images, she wrote:
This was a game I was really looking forward to working on. Unfortunately it was just a pitch. I had a blast creating the menus for this game, as steampunk is really quite unique, interesting and something I love to design. I created the bat logo from scratch and used a variety of different clockwork pieces and other metal pieces to construct it.
Gotham by Gaslight was a comic published in 1989, featuring Bruce Wayne taking the mantle as The Batman in 1889 following his return to Gotham from Europe. In the one-shot, Wayne is framed as the notorious Jack the Ripper and sentenced to hang and investigates the identity of the real Ripper from his prison cell. [via Joystiq]

Xav de Matos was previously a games journalist creating content at Shacknews.

From The Chatty
  • reply
    January 13, 2012 6:15 PM

    Xav de Matos posted a new article, Canceled 'Gotham by Gaslight' revealed by UI artist.

    Art for a Batman game pitched to THQ about two years ago has surfaced, featuring the Dark Knight in a steampunk-like universe inspired by an Elseworlds comic published in 1989.

    • reply
      January 13, 2012 6:50 PM

      Was this really two years ago? It seems strange that a Batman game would be pitched to THQ in the middle of WB's studios making eight billion Batman games (well okay, Batman: Arkham Asylum was being released in fall 2009, but that led to WB's current army of Batman games, with Arkham City and Gotham City Impostors to be revealed later).

      It seems futile and irresponsible to pitch a game for an IP that's owned by a company that also owns a few game developers AND publishes their own games, and to pitch that IP to a completely different publisher.

      Also over two years ago: Idle Thumbs 38, where Nick Breckon said this: "There was a news bit that was dropped... about a developer that was being tasked with a Batman game... what the hell was it?... It was some random... it was NOT Rocksteady, it was some other developer... I think it was Warner's internal... what does Warner have?" Midway and Monolith were thrown around. Eerie that he got that close to Gotham City Impostors, and earlier in the cast, he mentioned thinking about what an open-world Batman game would be like, which is a nice preshadowing of Arkham City. It's like Remo said in Idle Thumbs 43: "We apparently call everything that happens in this industry."

      • reply
        January 13, 2012 6:56 PM

        most of the industry is predictable because it is so conservative lately. they are not prophets

        • reply
          January 13, 2012 7:11 PM

          I know, but it is funny (and depressing) how 95% of announcements fall directly in line with cynical expectations. The only zany surprising one was probably when the rumor came out that Konami was working with Platinum on a Metal Gear game, and then about 7 months later, "Hey, remember that rumor about Platinum doing a Metal Gear game?.... IT'S TRUE!!"

      • reply
        January 14, 2012 3:03 PM

        The open world batman game Breckon was thinking about was the one done by Pandemic I think, since the time line matches up with his comments a lot more than Arkham City.

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