Perfect Dark Beta Analysis: the removed Face Mapping

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As many of you may already know, RARE planned to insert an interesting feature into Perfect Dark: thanks to the Gameboy Camera, you would have been able to photograph your face and your friend’s faces to use them as the face of PD characters in the single player campaign (as enemies) or in the multiplayer mode.

Unfortunately, due to the numerous acts of gun-shooting in American schools, RARE decided to remove this option from the game, to don’t create controversy. A game in which you could have been able to kill a character that had the face of your real friend, would probably have been too much for its time. Here are some screenshots of the removed Face-Mapping mode, perfectly working in the beta version.

Beta Face Mapping

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Using the N64 Transfer Pack with the Gameboy Camera attached onto the back of the N64 controller, this message would have appeared on the screen. 

Perfect Dark Beta Analysis: Beta Multiplayer

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And now we can move on to the beta multiplayer of Perfect Dark.

Beta Multiplayer

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One of the most interesting rumors for the Multiplayer mode of Perfect Dark N64 is the one about plans for the game to have an online mode too. During the initial planning there were some ideas to develope Perfect Dark for the 64DD and to use the built-in modem of the add-on for the Multiplayer mode. However, due to many problems the 64 DD was delayed for months and  years, and eventually this peripheral was never released outside of Japan. It seems that Rare even though about a special cartridge with an internal modem (as used already by another game, released in japan. See the picture above), but as you can imagine the online structure would have been difficult to develope and soon the idea was scrapped.

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Perfect Dark Beta Analysis: Beta Weapons

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A journey in the evolution of the various weapons in Perfect Dark!

Beta Weapons

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In this screenshot you can see that Joanna is holding a very raw / early version of the Falcon 2 / Magsec. The way the weapon is raised is very interesting as it’s not possible to see it like that in the final. 

Deathtrap Dungeon [PSX PC – Beta]

Deathtrap Dungeon is an action game developed by Eidos in 1998 and released for the PlayStation and PC.  Although originally previewed for the gaming press alongside Eidos’ own original Tomb Raider game, Deathtrap Dungeon sat through several years of delays before finally seeing release. [Info from Wikipedia]

Derboo found some early images of the game in a Korean gaming magazine (Gamepia 8/96): in these screens we can notice a character model in red armor which could be an early version of the female player character, an unknown character model and a still from a FMV described as a machine for making humans into monsters, which seems to have been removed from final game.

The female character was changed with a thong leather bikini in the beta, but due to ratings concerns, Eidos gave her some “proper” armor before the game went gold. In some other beta screens, we can see that the game  still looked incomplete, with placeholder models and different rooms layout. If someone could find more info about these or more beta shots, please let us know!

Thanks to Derboo for the contribution!

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Talisman [X360 PS3 – Cancelled]

Talisman was a digital recreation of Workshop’s classic board game, basically a multiplayer turn-based fantasy RPG that was in development in 2007 by Big Rooster & Capcom for the Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network.  Players were able to explore dungeons to combat various enemies with weapons, spells and magic items. The project was officially cancelled in 2008, as reported by IGN:

“Rather recently we have finally stopped development completely. After a misfire at the start, the details of which I won’t get into, we evaluated several options for moving the project to new developers, but the costs of moving forward outweighted the potential revenue. I realize this will be disappointing for the fans of the game.

The rights have reverted back to Games Workshop where I hope someone will pick them up and try again. I too still would like to play a Talisman videogame.”

Thanks to Userdante for the contribution!

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