In a recent interview on IGN's podcast Nintendo Voice Chat , President Julian Eggebrecht of the now-defunct development studio Factor 5 revealed his team was, at multiple points, working on two different unreleased Star Wars games for multiple platforms.

Loading

"As you might remember, it leaked from LucasArts that we were working on a trilogy compilation, and that was actually for the [original] Xbox," he said. Containing Star Wars: Rogue Squadron, Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader, and Star Wars Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike, this trilogy was meant to be one massive collection of all three games, all honed and re-worked to run on then-modern consoles. The team had completed nearly fifty percent of this trilogy when a reportedly rocky and unstable environment at LucasArts led to its early cancellation.After the project was cancelled, Factor 5 then moved on to begin work on a launch title for the then-upcoming Xbox 360. Eggebrecht remembers being excited to finally implement something on the new hardware they had been eyeing since the days of the original Xbox: online multiplayer.

Official trailer for Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader

Loading

"The big thing for the Xbox would have been - if we'd had it up and running - multiplayer," he said.The team began moving forward with what would have been the next Rogue Squadron, a space combat game with a heavy emphasis on cooperative multiplayer. Called Star Wars Rogue Squadron: X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter, Eggebrecht explains that it was intended to be a massive multiplayer game with warring factions."It [Rogue Squadron: X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter] was much more about groups, because it's always Rogue Squadron, right?" Eggebrecht says of the title's inherent team element. "So, you would be Red 5, together with the Reds essentially attacking, and there would be the Imperial side. And that would be the two factions duking it out in essentially the [Star Wars] movie battles, and then in additional battles."Development was underway when cancellation again haunted the team. Dubious of creating a launch title, LucasArts decided to kill the project.Not long after cancellation, a promising new opportunity presented itself.

Space World teaser for Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader

Loading

"The moment it [Rogue Squadron] was cancelled, Shu[hei] Yoshida from Sony basically held out his hand and basically said 'come on, guys, come on to the PlayStation team. We're still looking for PlayStation 3 launch titles.'"Eggebrecht pitched the online Rogue Squadron to Yoshida, but the idea was rejected on the grounds of Sony wanting to have an "internal" new game for the PlayStation 3.While workshopping an idea for a new game, the team considered what they could possibly do with similar ideas. The result was Lair, the fantasy game infamous for its poorly-implemented motion controls."It was far too ambitious for a launch title," Julian says of Lair, explaining that developing this game for the PS3's complex hardware was a definite challenge. "It was a pretty big mistake."Once their exclusivity period with Sony ended, Factor 5 turned their attention back toward the Wii, particularly interested because of the advancements in motion controls Nintendo had made with the all-new Wii Motion Plus.

Gameplay footage of Star Wars Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike on GameCube

“ There is an artistic loss of that game, which I think everybody on the team agrees is the best work they've ever done...

Loading

Now able to start creating something new for the platform, the team decided to resurrect one of their previous projects: the Star Wars trilogy originally slated for the first Xbox.After salvaging the code, the team found that the slightly-more-powerful Gamecube hardware found inside the Wii would make transitioning the game from an old generation to new relatively easy.Eggebrecht explains that making the game work on a modern console was only a matter of tweaking the already-existing systems in the half-finished game."...we had our old trilogy project, which we had fifty percent done, which was basically putting Rogue Leader and Rebel Strike with new content, [along] with fixing some of the mistakes, redoing completely the cameras, and everything."It was important to the team that the trilogy would run on any possible control scheme, including both the Gamecube controller and some of the Wii's peripherals.Space combat wasn't the only focus, however. According to Eggebrecht, there were also speeder bike racing levels, third-person action sequences, and even lightsaber battles making the most of the Wii Motion Plus' 1:1 controls.An all-new graphics engine had the game running at 60 frames per second (fps), with a visual fidelity Eggebrecht is still proud of."Believe me, if you ever saw it running on the Wii at 60 [fps], it is by far - and I think I'm not overstating that - the technically most impressive thing you would ever see on [Wii]."The Wii trilogy was eventually finished, but once again, Factor 5's Star Wars project was shut down.Eggebrecht largely attributes the cancellation to the financial crisis of 2008 and the fact that the team had taken it upon themselves to self-fund the project in order to claim a larger "piece of the pie" once it was distributed. It didn't help that two of their potential publishers for other projects went bankrupt, and LucasArts was having "their own financial woes."

An E3 2007 trailer for Lair

Multiple companies stepped in to help out with publishing, but financial hardship, legal snafus, and budgetary restrictions ultimately led to the project's final cancellation."There is an artistic loss of that game, which I think everybody on the team agrees is the best work they've ever done," Eggebrecht says of the cancellation, noting that they are proud of their work on a newer project as reformed studio TouchFactor. "But there's also the human toll, and everything could have been easily resolved by just getting this game out. So, it was a huge bummer."As for developing a new Star Wars game for the Wii U? He says he loves the system, but its unpredictable trajectory and licensing troubles make it unlikely."Maybe sooner or later a hardware spot will be hit again, and we certainly would love to talk to Disney about it. And of course, with J.J.'s [Abrams] comeback to kind of the traditional trilogy feel, I think there's going to be a lot of commotion around that. I just don't know if we will be a part of it or not."To hear the full conversation with Julian Eggebrecht, make sure to check out this week's episode of Nintendo Voice Chat More information on Julian's current studio TouchFactor and their latest game TouchFish can be found on their website.

Cassidee is a freelance writer for various outlets around the web. You can chat with her about all things geeky on Twitter Jose Otero is an Associate Editor at IGN and host of Nintendo Voice Chat . You can follow him on Twitter