D2 had originally started life as a game project for the never-released Panasonic M2 console. Originally, a pregnant Laura was to have died in the opening credits (during a terrorist attack on a plane), but her unborn child would be “warped” back in time. The player would have taken the role of Laura’s son – now a teenager – trapped in a large, European castle, from which he had to escape while being assaulted by supernatural phenomena. The game was practically finished when Panasonic officially announced that the M2 was not going to be released, leaving WARP with no way to sell the title. When given the chance to put out D2 for other systems, Kenji Eno decided to abandon the entire original project and start over from scratch with a new setting. – [Info from Wikipedia]
A video with the intro from the original M2 version was leaked online, showing a castle in transylvania, and a man that is apparently “Vlad Tepes” alias Dracula. You can see a forest of corpses impaled on spikes, and that’s what Vlad Tepes was known for doing to his victims. Apparently Vlad’s tormented with something, maybe the death of his wife (there a scene of a woman lying inside a coffin, it may be her), when suddently he close it and then going mad. After that we can see him reading books, doing a ritual, be consumed by flammes, then a blue light appears and a mask: he speaks to the mask, request a wish maybe, and after that the scene changes to 1998 in Sanfrancisco.
Thanks to Guillaume Pascal & Marshall Leslie & Celine for the contributions!
Thanks to Games That Weren’t for have shared videos from the D2 alpha/tech demo!
Even more info: www.cdi.randomvariable.net/THDO/D2/index.html
Images:
Videos:
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The story , as told by Eno in a old GameFan interview, is about a king in Transylvania that desperately want a son ( an old superstition say that impaling people can help that ).
When the king’s wife die, the king ask the devil to give him a son in exchange of his soul.
The devil agreeing, take Laura’s son from her womb and crash the plane.
The son is warped in the middle age inside the castle and his quest is to defeat the devil himself.
Heaps of pictures! Some similar, but these are mostly all good quality. Thanks, GameFan!
http://web.archive.org/web/19970215185217/http://www.gamefan.com/download/m2/d2/index.html
Tokyo Game Show 1996
https://archive.org/stream/Computer_and_Video_Games_Issue_180_1996-11_EMAP_Images_GB#page/n93/mode/1up
Preview from Next Generation (December 1996)
‘D was an interesting adventure for PlayStation and Saturn and enjoyed massive success in Japan with moderate success in the US.
Warp’s follow-up title logically is D2. Instead of relying upon FMV to tell the tale, the entire game is generated in real-time using the impressive technology that the M2 possesses.
The original character Laura is with child. However, she happens to somehow find that the fetus has completely disappeared from her womb. The child is wisked back in time to one of his earlier ancestors whom has made a pact with the devil in an effort to get an heir.
Gameplay revolves around playing the role of the heir (who has somehow managed to age a bit while traveling back in time) in an effort to regain his foster father’s soul from the devil. To do so he must kill monsters and solve puzzles while wandering about the massive castle that he now resides in.’
http://web.archive.org/web/19961220171458/http://www.next-generation.com/news/120396g.shtml
Thanks as always for all the contributions eSPy! :)
Sent you 3 pages of press.
For quite
some time, Eno (Warp’s president) has been publicly expressing his
displeasure with the lack of information MEI has been providing to
developers that had signed onto M2 before MEI bought the exclusive
console rights. His frustration is understandable. As an outside
developer, MEI has not confided any information about a launch to Warp.
Previously, Warp had declared that if the system didn’t launch this
year, they would take D2 to another platform. Definitely something an
“inner circle” developer wouldn’t do. He was issuing an ultimatum to
get MEI to show its hand. MEI, for whatever reason, has been silent
except to deny that M2 has been killed. Again, Next Gen’s assertion
that the “industry” (which apparently consists of a grand total of two
sources if you carefully read their stories) knows M2 is dead flies in
the face of logic when Capcom (an inner circle developer) says they are
still making M2 titles (one, at least). If Capcom or Konami say M2 is
dead, then it’s dead (in console form). Until then, you have Next Gen
guessing and trying to make themselves sound important. If you look at
their track record, they are not a good source (my personal favorite was
a few months ago when they stated that Samsung and Goldstar are owned by
Matsushita) for hard information. Unfortunately, this is the trend with
most video game magazines.
-Todd Allendorf
Yes, there is video footage of D2, it should be added to this page:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7_SUsLv4nM
Anthony Bacon, a Chicago-based video game collector, has what it seems to be the only surviving file containing data from the scrapped Panasonic M2 version of D2…
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-12-09-collector-unearths-playable-file-for-original-cancelled-d2-the-video-game-thought-lost-to-history