Fighting Force is beat ’em up developed by Core Design that was released for the PlayStation, PC and Nintendo 64 in 1997. A Saturn version was in development too, but it was later cancelled. Now, thanks to Hidden Palace and its community, an aplha of the Saturn version is leaked to the public! It seems that the project was initially named “Judgement Force” and it was meant to be a new game in the Streets of Rage saga. I have never played Fighting Force, so i dont know if this proto has some differences from the final version, maybe someone knows? You can download Judgement Force at Hidden Palace.
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Here are 3 scans from an old magazine called Saturn Power. It’s a preview of this version – gives you a good look at what this game was originally going to be.
http://i.imgur.com/EBJg8uz.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/nsDJCw4.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/bZT8EZl.jpg
Those artworks are really nice, thanks for sharing Letsgetacid!
An official demo was released with Saturn Power magazine issue #1. The music track doesn’t appear to have been used in any of the released versions for other consoles.
Did’nt the story concerning the Saturn version go something along lines of this:
After being annouced for Saturn, Edios later decide they don’t want to publish the game on Saturn, leavong the proverbial door open for Sega themselves to step in and publish it on Saturn, if they feel it’s worth releasing in Europe/there’s a market/demand for it….
Saturn coding falls behind that of the PS1 version (a very familar tale from that era), PS1 version is released, lot of the UK Press reviews slag the game off, Sega takes note and decides they are’nt interested in publishing a game with this reputation……..
Edios then come out and say they’ve now canned Saturn versions due to ‘hardware limitations’ on Saturn….
A very poor face-saving attempt by Edios which fooled no-one.
I had the game on PS1 and a 3D Streets Of Rage, sadly it was’nt :-(
According to Adrian Smith (Operations Director, Core Design) Both Fighting Force and Ninja started out as Sega Saturn specific titles, but diversified onto the Playstation, for no other reason that when coding began, the lead coders were more experinced on Saturn than PS1.
Saturn games were to use a Mode 7 floor which was a real issue to do on PS1 in terms of doing efficently so they were going to use polygons instead.
Edge for all it’s ‘sins’ (passing off screens Core had told them were mock-up’s as actual Jaguar screens in the Jaguar supplement etc), were a great source of info for fans of Core Design…some fantastic interviews from the team from the Mega CD era through to the Playstation/Saturn era and beyond.
You got some superb insights into how they approached the more harder to code for platforms (Saturn+PS2) and why games had changed from inital host platforms etc.
They also spoke far more highly of the much mocked 32X and Mega CD hardware than many others in UK Press did.
It would of been very interesting to see what had happened to fortunes of Sega and Sony, had SEGA secured the Tomb Raider series as an exclusive (say a scenario where series was PC+Saturn only, with spin-off games appearing on GBC etc).
Sony would still of had the flagship games like Tekken/Ridge Racer/MGS/FF7/Wipeout/Resident Evil etc etc, but not the iconic Tomb Raider and it could of convinced a lot of gamers to buy a Saturn as second console, as it’d be the cheaper alternative over a PC.
Given the complexity of Saturn hardware, we might not have seen sequels pumped out as quickly, with Core taking time to get more from hardware and thus taking more risks (design wise) with the sequels?.
Sadly having far better versions of Hexen+Duke Nukem 3D as well as a published version of Quake (and very respectable version to boot) at a time Playstation did’nt, did nothing to reverse the saturns fortunes.
I was a PS1 owner at the time, only later coming to Saturn, but i was impressed by what it could offer, if coders put time/effort in to code for the hardware.
I think this game could have ran well on the Saturn, the prototype (Judgment Force) it’s a proof. The fact that the game is glitched is because it was unfinished. Sadly it never got released for the Saturn, but I have the working prototype rom for my SSF emulator (props to hidden palace). Same thing with Ninja: Shadow of Darkness, it was going to be released for the Saturn, but I don’t think there are any working prototypes because the game was canceled early in development. Here you go guys, a few images:
https://imgur.com/H29LWGI
https://imgur.com/K9p0vwI
https://imgur.com/JtMMBHx
https://imgur.com/JVej612
https://imgur.com/wbLaTWC
One more article that I found on Saturn Power magazine (Janurary, 1998)
https://i.imgur.com/WtWpMDh.jpg