Daikatana [PC - Beta]

Daikatana is a FPS developed by Ion Storm, led by John Romero and published by Eidos Interactive in 2000. Romero’s initial game design, completed in March 1997, called for a huge amount of content – 24 levels split into 4 distinct time periods, 25 weapons, and 64 monsters.

Despite this, Romero believed that development of the game could be completed in seven months, just in time for Christmas 1997. The game was to license the existing Quake game engine. Ion Storm showed Daikatana at E3 in June 1997. The engine was still running in a software mode, and looked outdated and unimpressive. At the same time, id Software was debuting their Quake II game engine, featuring hardware acceleration and innovative visuals. Romero realized that they were falling behind technologically.

The Christmas 1997 deadline was quietly dropped, and the new plan was to keep creating the content for the game, and switch to the Quake II engine as soon as it was ready. The game was rescheduled for a March 1998 release, but after various problems, the game was finished only in 2000. [Infos from Wikipedia]

In the gallery below you can see a series of screenshots  and videos from the early build on the original Quake 1 engine (with removed and changed levels) and you can read an interesting article on the development of Daikatana in here! In 2004 Romero released this playable pre-alpha version of Daikatana, and you should be able to download it from here.

Thanks to Celine for the contribution!

Images:

 

Videos:

1997 Version

1998 Version

1999 Version

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