tech demo

Nintendo, SNES + Super Famicom

Squaresoft Mode 7 Demo [SNES – Tech Demo]

U64 Staff & Contributors
28-10-2010
1 Comment

Squaresoft Mode 7 Demo is a “tech demo” made by Sunsoft for testing the system hardware of the Super Nintendo…

Squaresoft Mode 7 starts with Squaresoft logo and appears a exclusive “panda” on the screen:

The name of this character has been discovered with the ROM IMAGE, Panda Squaresoft Mode 7 Demo (PD) showed up on an SuperNintendo Emulator. You can read more about this cartridge at SNES Central!

Back in the mid 90s, Square set up a studio in Redmond, Washington, and produced the game Secret of Evermore. Keith and another person named Craig Bergman got to tour Squaresoft’s office as part of a high school job shadowing activity. While there,  Squaresoft scanned and put two drawings made by Keith happened to have into a Mode 7 demo (the other had a caricature of Craig).

In July 2010, this cartridge has appeared on Ebay, the curious about it, this demo have an similar controls to the airship parts of FFIV. This tech demo has been dumped years ago, and posted at the Internet

About the controls, you can flip the camera, zoom in, and stop the animation with start button… That’s all

Also, the scanned “panda” character made by Keith:

 

Nintendo, Nintendo 64 & 64DD

VX Vampire XDV-7 [N64 – Tech Demo]

monokoma
25-07-2010
11 Comments

VX Vampire (aka Vampire XDV-7 or Ultra Copter 64) is a flight simulator that was planned to be ported to the Nintendo 64 by Paradigm Simulation / Entertainment. Previously Paradigm worked on realistic flight simulation for space, military and aviation clients, but  in 1994 it was contacted by Nintendo to aid in the creation of one of the Nintendo 64’s launch titles, Pilotwings 64. It seems that VX Vampire was originally one of Paradigm’s military simulators, that they though to convert to a more “arcadish” game to enter in the mass-entertainment market.

In 1995 Nintendo / Paradigm send some screens of Vampire XDV-7 to magazines (that you can see preserved in the gallery below), claiming that the Ultra 64 would have been able to achieve similar level of graphic details. In reality, VX Vampire was running on the Silicon Graphics Onyx Reality Engine, the same engine used for the Magic Edge Hornet Simulator Hardware, a technology much more advanced (and expensive) than a normal Nintendo 64.

When Paradigm had to finish Pilotwings 64 in time for the release of the N64 in june 1996, they probably had to shift resources to Nintendo’s project and the VX Vampire XDV-7 port went on-hold. In the end Pilotwings 64 was a critical and commercial success for the developer, causing the simulation and entertainment divisions of Paradigm to separate and focus on their respective products. The newly independent Paradigm Entertainment continued to develop for Nintendo’s 64-bit console. [Info from Wikipedia]

Some years later, Paradigm Entertainment announced Harrier 2000 / 2001 for the Nintendo 64, a new flight game that sadly was never released. It’s possible that their plan to port VX Vampire XDV-7 changed when they understood that it would have been too difficult to convert an Onyx simulator to an N64, so the project evolved into a new, different title: Harrier 2000.

Thanks to jorcyd and Celine for the contribution! Scans from Cd Consoles #4, Console Plus #49 and Edge #29

Images:

Videos (@ 04:10)

 

Nintendo, Virtual Boy

Virtual Boy Tech Demos

monokoma
19-05-2010
1 Comment

The Virtual Boy was released in July 1995 in Japan and August 1995 in USA. It was met with a lukewarm reception that was unaffected by continued price drops. Nintendo discontinued it the following year. Due to the short lifespan of the system, only 22 games were released. Of them, 19 games were released in the Japanese market, while only 14 were released in North America. [Info from Wikipedia]

Celine found some images from early Virtual Boy Tech Demos / Target Renders in Super Power magazine issue #34. Most of them look like early visualization of released Virtual Boy games, such as Golf and Mario Clash. We can also notice the “Sample Demo” that came with the VUE Debugger software, in which you can move a ball around a three-dimensional field.

Also, Grooveraider preserved some videos of the demos shown at the Winter CES 1995 in his Youtube Channel!

Thanks to Jason for the english corrections!

Images:

Videos: