Unseen News

Jurassic Park: Trespasser [PC – Beta]

Jurassic Park: Trespasser is a FPS developed by DreamWorks Interactive, which was released in 1998 for Microsoft Windows after much hype and anticipation. The game had a development period of more than three years. Money was the biggest hurdle in the development of Trespasser.

The game severely went over-budget several times throughout its development. Second only to money was time, as the game had to be ready to meet the release of the The Lost World: Jurassic Park film. Originally the game was to be released in the fall of 1997. However due to a number of problems the project was delayed by a year. The rush to release the game caused many features to be either cut, or left unfinished and unpolished.

Due to difficulties coding the behaviour of both arms together developers had to ditch the left arm entirely. A late shift in development effectively changed the game from survival horror to action shooter, and contributed to the many complaints the game received. Lack of experienced management and the use of artists who were unfamiliar with basic game development processes and 3D modeling has also been identified as a cause of problems. Developers struggled for more than two years on some problems and in the end released a game that is set within a very large, attractive, open, outdoor environment. [Info from Wikipedia]

In december 2009, ASSEMbler from the Assembler Games Community, was able to preserve and share an early beta of the game, in which it’s possible to explore the removed Pine Valley level, a Test area and see many other differences. The beta is available to download at the Assembler Forum.

As we can read in the videos descriptions:

This beta show the original far more sexy female character, who has a cut off tank top on, complete with sideboob and cleavage you can look between. The game’s life bar (tattoo) is moved, the breasts more detailed than the final version. The game has less physical objects in it, and runs much faster than the final version.

Videos:

 

U64 Winter Break Time! See you in 2010!

Is it snowing outside? Are you waiting for xmas presents? Well, the Unseen 64 Staff is going in vacation, too! From tomorrow, 21th of December, this site will be in “Winter Break Mode”, we are going to relax somewhere around the world and dream about beta games while we are playing  near the fireplace or skiing down the mountains.

Don’t worry! We’ll be back the 7 of January with all the updates and news from the unseen videogames world. In the meantime, there are still lots of things to do while we are away:

– Look and read: Check our archive of beta and cancelled games and read our articles.

– Contribute: Would you like to help the U64 Archive? Read how you can help us to preserve more beta screens, videos and info!

– Interact: Join the U64 Forum to discuss about unseen games with other geeks! We’ll post some updates and unseen-news in the forum while the site will be in winter break mode.

– Share: Do you have a website or a blog? Spread the unseen! Add www.unseen64.net to your blogroll or in your links page, write a post about lost games, talk about U64 with your friends, and share your beta-geekness. If more people know about this site, we could have more contributions and the archive can grow with more screens, videos, and info!

– Play more: it’s xmas time, probably you got some new games or money to spend into new games. Great! If you buy them from Play.com, from Zavvi, from The Hut, from Sendit or from Playasia using our links and banners, they give us some spare money! For you it’s free, for us it helps paying for the U64 server. Thank you guys :)

– Play the Super Mario World Beta Remake: Did you enjoy all those differences that can be noticed in the Super Mario World beta screenshots? With the SMW Beta Remake created by Randy, you will be able to enjoy the game how it may have been in its beta version! This is the best xmas gift for every Super Mario World Beta lover and it’s free.

– Donate: Your best gift for this xmas? Another year of  unseen games preservation! Donate a bit of your love to U64, to help us to pay for the server that will keep up the site for the next year.

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Thanks to everyone that supports U64 with love. See you all very soon!

The Unseen 64 Staff – 

RS Links: Sands of Destruction VS CERO ratings

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Sands of Destruction is a RPG for the DS that was developed by Imageepoch and published by Sega on September 2008 in Japan (planned to be released in America in January 2010). Robert Seddon has linked us to an interview that  Game Set Watch had with Image Epoch president Ryoei Mikage, and Sands of Destruction Sega producer Yoichi Shimosato, in which they talks about some changes that were made to the game, because of the CERO ratings:

This may be a difficult question, but the high concept of the game, where you are a character who is being compelled to end the world, is very interesting. But why take that and add some very, very traditional RPG fetch quests and anime characters and things like that?

RM: So this is probably the same in Japan, Europe, and the U.S., but the ratings boards — for Japan, it would be CERO — have been cracking down on the game industry. It’s been becoming more and more difficult to make games that are kind of out-there.

So, for this game in particular, Kato’s original scenario actually came back saying… In the final game, humanoids are ruled by the ferals, the beast men. The humans were food for the beast men in the original scenario, and there were scenes in there where the beast men would actually eat the humans.

Obviously, that would be rated Z in Japan. But for an RPG on the DS, the board felt that it would be more appropriate for the actual gameplay content to be something that even kids can pick up and play.

That’s unfortunate — if you had U.S. or Europe as the target market, you would not have had to change that. You would have gotten a Teen rating, maybe, but it certainly would not have been for mature audiences only.

YS: I agree. In my opinion, because this game was made specifically more for the Japanese market, it was appropriate the way we made it. But if it was more geared toward the Western audience, then, as you said, the original idea would have been more fun and compelling.

 

Werewolf: The Apocalypse (Saturn) now leaked!

About a month ago SEGA Saturno in cooperation with Hidden Palace, announced a fundrising campaign to be able to release a “new” prototype for the Saturn. A couple of days ago, finally they reached the amount needed and they released Werewolf: The Apocalypse, a playable demo of the cancelled action RPG that was in development by Capcom in 1995 / 1996!

You can download the file at Hidden Palace

Huge props to the Sega Saturno community for their efforts in preserving all these lost games for the sega consoles! You can find more info on this release at Sega Saturno (in Spanish).

 

RS Links: the unheard burps in Tapper

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As we can read on Wikipedia, Tapper is a 1983 arcade game released by Bally Midway. The goal of the game is to serve beer and collect empty mugs and tips. Robert Seddon has linked us to an article on Edge Online, in which they talk about some removed content from the game:

Sometimes good ideas turn bad when you actually hear them. Such was the case with the burps in Tapper. Wanting to take advantage of a brand-new digitising chip from Texas Instruments, Meyer and Morrison thought it would be a good idea to add a burp every time a character finished a drink.

So, to create the source audio, a group from the Tapper team went into a conference room with a bunch of soft drinks, beers and microphones, and just started burping.

Looking back on the misguided notion, Morrison says: “We put it in, and it was disgusting.” The game was so fast and the drinks were being finished so quickly that you heard constant belching. In the end, the duo didn’t bother installing the burps or the TI chip, although Morrison admits that passing by their office during that phase of development was a treat for all within earshot.

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