Nomen Quest / Aidyn Chronicles [Beta – N64]

Nomen Quest / Aidyn Chronicles [Beta – N64]

nomenquestlogo.jpg

Aidyn Chronicles: The First Mage is a video game developed by H2O Interactive and published by THQ. It is one of the few console RPG released for the Nintendo 64. Due to a combination of the poor reviews and even poorer sales, projects for a sequel were dropped.  The game has developed somewhat of a cult following, leading some groups to try to remake the game for Wii or DS homebrew with improved graphics and more rigorous bug testing. [Info from Wikipedia]

In the gallery below you can see some screenshots from a target render that was created in the early days of the project, when it was still know as “Nomen Quest“. In these images the graphic was much more detailed and definited than the one in the final game. Some other screens are from a later beta version, with a different HUD.

Thanks to Myron Mason, we found out more beta differences in these early screens:

The beta for Aidyn Chronicles is indeed very different from the finished game. I have the game and I can already noticed the major differences. The characters are either wearing different clothing or have different colored versions in the beta version and the compass and solar/lunar indicator are different as well. Some of the monsters looked different like the Minotaur as well as the cities. For example, in image 5 it shows the observatory in Gwernia castle, the first city you basically start in. It stands next to the shops and is black in the beta version, but in the finished version it is inside of the castle.

Also, it appears that in the beta version you could pick who you wanted to represent the party when walking around outside of battle. And you could also make that character carrie a weapon around with them. In the realeased version, only Alaron (the main character) represented the party and no weapons could be carried around.

Update: Lisa wrote to us for some corrections:

Although I do realise Myron Mason is only claiming he has the retail game and has spotted some differences in the beta pictures it should not be there as non of it is true. The only true part is that clothing is different on a very few characters.

If you played the game and you can notice some more interesting changes, please let us know!

Images:


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5 thoughts on “Nomen Quest / Aidyn Chronicles [Beta – N64]

  1. Myron Mason

    The beta for Aidyn Chronicles is indeed very different from the finished game. I have the game and I can already noticed the major differences. The characters are either wearing different clothing or have different colored versions in the beta version and the compass and solar/lunar indicator are different as well. Some of the monsters looked different like the Minotaur as well as the cities. For example, in image 5 it shows the observatory in Gwernia castle, the first city you basically start in. It stands next to the shops and is black in the beta version, but in the finished version it is inside of the castle.

    Also, it appears that in the beta version you could pick who you wanted to represent the party when walking around outside of battle. And you could also make that character carrie a weapon around with them. In the realeased version, only Alaron (the main character) represented the party and no weapons could be carried around.

  2. Spike

    I’ve owned this game since it first came out, and I have some things to say about it that some might find interesting. I also have some additional info on the game that I can’t find mention of anywhere else.

    First of all, I must say that I’m shocked to learn in recent days that this game has indeed earned a small cult following and is considered a “hidden gem”. I’m sorry to say that it doesn’t quite deserve such an honor, although I can understand why it has been given it. I remember reading about this game in Nintendo Power back in the day. Being a big RPG fan, I was super excited about this one. The N64 had very few RPG’s on it, and even fewer were actually good. This looked like it could easily be the best of them all, and quite possibly even better then Paper Mario, which was just released and was amazing. Unfortunately, this was not to be. The game was rushed out in an unfinished state. I remember playing this game for the first time, putting my party together and heading out of the castle on my adventure. Even at this point, only 20 minutes or so into the game, something just didn’t seem right. The framerate, camera, and control was really not all that great, and everything looked pretty ugly. It just seemed to be really lacking in polish. Then something happened that I found to be so unforgivable that I quit playing, and I never touched the game again until about a week ago because of it. What happened was that I fought a few battles and one of my characters died. I looked for a revival potion of some sort, but I didn’t have one and didn’t know where to go to buy them. So I went online to GameFAQ’s, and I was shocked to learn that they didn’t exist! That’s right, if a party member dies, they are gone forever. Why would they do such a thing!? Well, apparently a revive item did exist in the beta, but it was buggy and they couldn’t fix it in time, so it got cut out. Unforgivable! I didn’t even like the game much anyway up to that point, so that was it for me.

    Fast forward to today. I’m currently giving it another go, and I’ve gotten further into it then I did the first time. But no revival item means that you have to save quite frequently. Thankfully, you can save anywhere, but it’s a major pain. Some of the characters are very weak and lacking in any useful moves. Building them up and making them useful is a very slow process. The game doesn’t run all that well. Playing it in high resolution mode(expansion pak required) makes it run slightly worse, and the graphics only get slightly better. The thing is, the game already plays kind of crappy, so you might as well keep high res mode on. One really cool and very impressive thing about this game is that the world is absolutely HUGE! There is quite a lot to explore.

    I’m seeing some grey cartridges of this game on Ebay(most are black). This has me wondering if they are possibly revisions. If so, I wonder if those have the revival item included back into the game. That would certainly make the game more enjoyable.

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