A canceled Daredevil PS2 game has surfaced

While appearing throughout several franchises as a playable character, Matt Murdock, aka Daredevil, has never starred in his own game. Or has he? A recently recovered 2004 video game, starring the blind lawyer, actually might prove he would easily be a strong protagonist.

Originally known as Daredevil: the Video game, then later changed to "Daredevil: The Man Without Fear", the title was designed as a classic third-person beat ‘em up action game. Encore Inc. was going to publish it for PlayStation 2, Xbox and PC, with 5,000 Ft. studios heading development.

The story would see The Kingpin, Daredevil's classic nemesis, biting the bullet, an event which would start a gang war in Hell’s Kitchen. While the gangs were competing for control of the entire city of New York. Those events would, apparently, also bring Elektra back from the grave.

Development on the game actually started in 2002, before the movie was even in production, with a small budget which would fit the relatively inexperienced 5000 Ft studio well. But then, with the movie by Sony starting production, the budget got larger and the original idea for the game was expanded upon.

With demands from Sony growing, a new 3D engine was apparently necessary, as the development studio tried to make up for the growing costs and longer time by developing their own internal engine. Originally planned as an open world action game, after missing its initial release date of February 2003, the project was scaled down to a linear beat em up.

According to Hidden Palace, the game was in development at least until 2004, before many from the studio would start leaving. But the final nail in the project was Marvel outrightly refusing Sony's demands, leading to the end of the project. According to rumours, the game was almost completed when it was axed.

A Ps2 copy - donated by an anonymous former developer at 5,000 Ft - was dumped and, after some tinkering, has been brought to a playable state, despite various bugs and issues. We don't know yet if the game will ever be made public, but we are happy that something from the hard work of these developers has, at least, survived.