Nintendo

Nintendo, Nintendo 64 & 64DD

Blades of Passage [N64 DD – Cancelled]

Celine
18-05-2011
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Blades of Passage, codenamed Project Edge ( also known as Thu Lu Khan ) was a cancelled Action-RPG planned for the Nintendo 64-DD Drive. It was originally intended to be part of the North America launch line-up for the peripheral, and was built to be a sort of 3D homage and expansion to the ideas that Secret of Mana had brought years earlier.

We can read what Richard Knight , developer at Pixelplay Interactive during the latter part of game development, recalls about the project on his site moogle.net :

By the time I arrived at the studio, the project was in a state of flux. Nintendo first postponed and then cancelled the USA launch of the 64-DD, and then not too long after 64MB cartridges became a feasible reality, the marching orders were given for all projects to go to the GameCube instead if possible.

I was hired very late into development as a 3D Modeller, with the eye to move over to Design when it made sense. I started to contribute some models and level environments, but slowdowns in the project forced me to switch to campaign and story design during the final months. (Tools in the days of N64 were tremendously primitive compared to today, so I suppose this wasn’t surprising.)

Project Edge was nowhere near finished, but as the founding and sole project of the studio, there was a lot of hope behind it until the end. Pixelplay had a tremendous sense of start-up pride, and working directly with Nintendo (on an RPG no less!) was a dream for many developers – myself included – and there were people on this project before me for 3 years or more! Losing the project changed the fabric of the company more or less on the spot.

Shortly after Project Edge was shelved, the studio was reformed into Orbital Media, and N64 hardware was changed in for early Game Boy Advance development kits.

Huge props to Richard Knight for sharing some info on such an interesting lost project!

Update: Gilgamesh found some more pics!

Images:

Video (@2:10):

 

Nintendo, Wii

Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles [Wii – Beta]

U64 Staff & Contributors
06-04-2011
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Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles is a rail shooter developed and published by Capcom in fall of 2009.

In one of the gameplay trailers, Claire uses Leon’s Handgun in the chapter Game of Oblivion (Code Veronica).

E3 2009 Stage Demo:

At E3 2009, gamespot.com posted a video of a stage demo that was playable at the event. The stage demo presented at E3 shows different character and chapter selection screens.

Final note: the E3 demo’s pause menu had an option called “Equipment Screen”. It was changed to “status” in the final product.

 

In an interview – posted on videogamer.com – MK was asked about Darkside Chronicles (scrapped) online co-op:

VideoGamer.com: Will you be able to play co-op online?

MK: No, unfortunately not.

VideoGamer.com: Why?

MK: Time lag. Especially wi-fi connection is not that stable. The time lag issue is the main reason that’s stopping multiplayer online. Having said that we have introduced a wi-fi ranking system, so you can compete your score with other people around the world.

Source: http://www.videogamer.com/wii/resident_evil_the_darkside_chronicles/preview-1839.html

In another article, kotaku writes how the first person camera for Darkside chronicles was toned down due to some complaints of how the camera shook around too much.

Source: http://kotaku.com/5342088/resident-evil-the-darkside-chronicles-on-steadier-ground

Developers recently toned down the shake of the camera in documentary-styled shooter Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles to make the upcoming Wii title a bit easier to play, Capcom developers say.

“It was a bit of a trial and error, this shaky cam,” said Masachika Kawata during a meeting at this week’s Gamescom convention in Cologne. “It was probably a little too much, so it’s a little toned down now.”

 

Nintendo, Wii

Donkey Kong Country Returns [Wii – Beta / Unused Stuff]

U64 Staff & Contributors
02-04-2011
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Donkey Kong Country Returns is a side-scrolling 2.5D platform game developed by Retro Studios and released by Nintendo for the Wii console on November 21, 2010, in North America, December 3, 2010, in Europe, and on December 9, 2010, in Japan. It is the series’s first traditional home console installment since Donkey Kong Jungle Beat, and also the first Donkey Kong Country entry not to involve Rare during the development. (Info from Wikipedia)

Development on Donkey Kong Country Returns started in 2008, but it wasn’t until E3 2010 that it was revealed to the public.

On the Gameplay and E3 trailers, we can notify some small things:

  • -Health Icon is a sightly different.
  • -Game general Font is much different.
  • -0:32 = When Donkey Kong bounces on the three enemies consecutively, he does not preform a spin followed by a somersault, like he does in the final version.
  • -0:47 = Diddy and Donkey Kong team Icon is Cyan, on the Final Version, the color is Blue.
  • -1:00 = The bombs on this stage is much more faster them the Final Version.
  • -1:06 = It’s possible to see again the Cyan color, but on the 2-Player Mode.
  • -1:13 = On the final version of this stage, it doesn’t have “automatic” barrels.
  • -1:20 = The stage don’t have storm and darkness.
  • -1:36 = Different scene.

    • An another gameplay video (which was playable after the E3 event), shows other miscellaneous stuff:

  • -Font, Health Icon and other lighten stuff is a little different.
  • -At the end, the background is Yellow, on the Final version, it shows as Green.

    • On an ANOTHER video, it shows a MUCH different title screen, and other stuff (which was already shown on the other videos)

  • -Different Title Screen (the Buttons, the Logo, the Font and specially the Background)

    • An Show at the Television did show DKCR gameplay (at before releases)… It shows again the other stuff, but we can also see other stuff:

  • -The Instructions appears from no where, at the Final Version, the Tutorial Pig appears in the background and explains the controls

    • The video below shows some animations of Donkey Kong Country Returns:

    Progressing into the Beta related stuff, when you progress in the game, you unlock some concept arts… They are separated into enemies, characters, levels and others…
    Some interesting stuff of those concept arts, are the Levels… Much levels have been changed in the development, such as Golden Temple… Some characters did changed too, such as Rambi, which was to be much more Realistic…

    It was also found on the Game Disc, that DKCR was to have 4-Player modes, still is unknown about it, but probably other Kongs could be in, similar to New Super Mario Bros. mechanism.
    Maybe was scrapped because of Copyrights of RARE:

    Click to zoom-in, it will open in another tab

    Images:

    Those images shows the stuff from previous videos, like the different icons, fonts and etc.

     
    Nintendo, Wii

    Super Meat Boy [WiiWare – Cancelled / Beta]

    U64 Staff & Contributors
    29-03-2011
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    Super Meat Boy is a platform game developed by Team Meat and is the successor to Edmund McMillen’s and Jonathan McEntee’s flash game, Meat Boy, originally released on the Newgrounds website in October 2008. (Info from Wikipedia)

    The Developers originally announced a release of the game for every major console and computer: Xbox360 Live Arcade, PS3 PSN, WiiWare, PC and MAC…

  • The Xbox360 Version was released in October 20, 2010.
  • The PC Version was released in November 30, 2010, as downloadable on the Steam WebStore.
  • The Mac Version was released December 2, 2010, on Direct2Drive
  • The Wiiware and Playstation Network versions have been cancelled

    • This small article will show the WiiWare’s version progress. Super Meat Boy on Wiiware was taking a pretty long time to be made and had some delayings. After some time, Super Meat Boy has been officially cancelled because of Size Limit problems on Wiiware. The Wiiware service allows to publish games on the store on 40MB Size Limit, sadly, Super Meat Boy was much more then that. It also has been cancelled because they were not able to find a publisher.

    Some trailers and preview videos have beta differences:

  • Promo Video

    • Shows some Informations

  • Trailer

    • Gameplay, some graphics was little different, with more backgrounds and other stuff.

  • Older Trailer

    • The only difference are the Psychics (jumps fall fast, and differences of running). Also, a different animation for the Warp Zone.

  • IGN’s Preview

    • Comments and shows more stuff, like World Map (which is different of the PC and Xbox version, and other stuff)

    Team Meat is thinking for develop Super Meat Boy as a Retail Version, with extras and other add-ons (which wasn’t to be come on the WiiWare Version) or on the upcoming 3DS. They only need a Publisher, as they said:

    If we decided to try to find a publisher & do a boxed version for $20 (with extras) but come out later on the Wii, would you hold out?

    Images (Click on them to open in other Tab/Pop-Up):

    Images Informations:
    Image 1:

    The time counter are on the top right (on the released versions, they are on north eastern.

    Image 2:

    Commander Video lines are more shorter, with no fading and much more thinner.

    Image 3:

    Little different character selection screen.

    Image 4:

    Boss of World 1 is much more different, with some other platforms and more “darken”.

    Image 5:

    No any differences

    Image 6:

    Because of Commander Video have no any fade in the lines, it don’t shows in his jump.

    Image 7:

    Different Map (probably the “D” button hasn’t been changed in the development)

    Image 8:

    The Prologue (intro) text is a little different

    Image 9/Image 10/Image 11:

    The HUD now have been more for the left, but still not as on the Released versions.

    Image 10:

    Only the HUD Difference

    Image 11:

    The stage is much more clarity, the stage is actually more darken on the Released versions.