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Game Boy Advance (GBA)

Dinotopia is a fictional series of books about an misterious island inhabited by shipwrecked humans and sentient dinosaurs who have learned to coexist peacefully as a single symbiotic society. [Info from Wikipedia] Various games based on the Dinotopia world have been produced through the years and in 2002 RFX Interactive developed Dinotopia: The Timestone Pirates, a side-scrolling platform / action game for the GBA, published by TDK Mediactive.

Dinotopia for the Gameboy Advance was a commercial success for TDK, so they decided to create a new game based on the same scenario, but this time as a “point and click” adventure (similar to Broken Sword). A prototype was developed by RFX, but in 2003 TDK had to close down and it was acquired by Take-Two Interactive. Without their publisher, RFX Interactive was not able to continue the development of this new Dinotopia point and click adventure.

Only few screens and pixels remain in the gallery below, to preserve its existence.

Thanks to Hally for the contribution!

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Game Boy Advance (GBA), Nintendo

Shin’en GBA Racer [GBA – Prototype]

Celine

02-07-2012

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Shin’en Multimedia is a development team that was known on Game Boy Advance for the amazing proprietary sound engine and the beautiful 2D graphics of its games (Iridion II, Maya The Bee Sweet Gold etc.). However it is little known that as early as 2001 they were testing polygonal graphics on the little Nintendo handheld with a top down futuristic racing game that resembles F-Zero.

Manfred Linzner, Shin’en co-founder, shared with us the following insights on their 3D engine and the GBA development in general:

We had at this time [2001] a pretty fast 3d engine for flat and textured polygons on GBA running.
We used it in some menu parts in Iridion2 and for intros of our games. It featured 16 colors, 60fps, 1×1 resolution.
The major performance trick for all of our games and this 3d engine was to use the GBAs 16kb ram-scratchpad area to locate as much data and code there because it was much faster then the rest of the ram.
I remember that almost everything in Iridion2 was running in only this 16kb to get the speed we needed.
The rest of the RAM was used to store the background images.

Although the project was never completed because Shin’en had too much retail work to do at that time, a decade later the company released on Wiiware the jaw-dropping F.A.S.T. Racing League, a futuristic racing game with a Wipeout aesthetic but with a very personal twist on the gameplay department based on changing phase.

Manfred was so kind to dig out a 11 year old prototype to preserve its existence to the public. You can watch the video below, just keep in mind that being a “work in progress” build it has some glitches (most notably the sound). Also remember that the game target was the tiny GBA screen (240 x 160), so the graphics result stretched out on youtube.

Racer Prototype Credits:

Graphics: Florian Freisleder
Code+Audio: Manfred Linzner

This image from Iridion II show the icons composed by textured 3d polygons:

Video:

Featured, Game Boy Advance (GBA), Nintendo

Treasure Hunt [GBA – Cancelled]

Celine

13-03-2012

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Treasure Hunt is a cancelled action adventure game that was in development by Orbital Media Inc for the GameBoy Advance. As we can read from Richard Knight‘s website moogle.net:

Treasure Hunt was a prototype overhead adventure game for the Game Boy Advance. The concept itself was meant to be a blend of classical click-adventure mechanics with some new features and a Link’s Awakening style presentation. Suffice to say, we wanted the bar-none best looking game on the hardware.
Treasure Hunt was a sister-project to the studio’s main focus, Racing Gears Advance. As such, it didn’t have much programming support, and ended up being more of an artist test bed. Outside of some E3 showings it has rarely ever been seen.
Treasure Hunt was never meant to be the actual name; it was just the one that happened to stick. It was also trademarked, sparking an internal hunt to find a new name. The process was pretty drawn out, and basically in fatigue we settled on “Jukka’s Treasure”.
After years without consistent programming support, a changing design and a changing budget, I moved on to start Pirate Battle. The art style was thrown out and the game design was redone from the ground up to become Juka and the Monophonic Menace. Very little of the game described above was used; apart from a few character similarities they are entirely different in visuals and gameplay.

Images:

Game Boy Advance (GBA), Nintendo

Odema and the magic book [GBA – Cancelled]

monokoma

28-01-2012

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“Odema and the magic book” is a cancelled 2D sidescrolling action / platform game that was in development by french team Namdoo for the Gameboy Advance. From the video below we can see that Odema was going to be somehow similar to a “kiddy Metal Slug”, with 7 huge worlds with multiple pathes, more than 30 different enemies and 14 Bosses. Namdoo managed to create a playable beta version in 4 MegaBytes only, everything was packed on the cartridge and unpacked on the fly, at 60 frames per second, but there was still no sound or sfx. The game was about 75% complete when they had to cancel it.

Thanks a lot to Collect-Thor for the contribution!

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Game Boy Advance (GBA), Nintendo

Xtreme-G 3 (Extreme-G) [GBA – Cancelled / Proto / Tech Demo]

monokoma

24-01-2012

1 Comment

The original Extreme-G is a futuristic motorcycle racing game developed by Probe Entertainment and published by Acclaim Entertainment for the Nintendo 64. In 2001 Acclaim released Extreme-G 3 for the Nintendo GameCube and PlayStation 2, while Similis were working on a Gameboy Advance version too. Sadly the GBA version of Extreme-G 3 / Xtreme-G 3 was cancelled very early in development.

Below you can see a very early prototype / tech demo of “Xtreme-G 3/XG3” for the Game Boy Advance. It was only about four weeks in development and more meant as a proof of concept. It ran at constant 60 FPS on the GBA using a special graphics mode (not real 3D as this would have been to slow).

Thanks a lot to Collect-Thor for the contribution!

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