A prototype for a new Turok FPS, based on the N64 game, was in development for the GameBoy Advance. Although, the project was shelved soon after.
In February 2009, Hidden Palace was able to procure this playable build of the prototype, which you can see below:
Videos:
N+ is an awesome hardcore platform game developed by Metanet Software, released for Xbox Live Arcade, DS and PSP. Robert Seddon linked us to an interview that Game Developer magazine had with the developers of the Xbox Live Arcade version and the problems that they had to include the level editor in the final game.
“Microsoft supported the idea but expressed a very reasonable need to limit users from creating offensive content such as hate speech, representations of male genitalia, offensive language, and so on. The problem was that severe limitations would cripple the user’s ability to create interesting content, negating the editor’s reason for being. […]
Because of limitations of the leaderboard system, Microsoft was unable to delete the specific offensive content uploaded by a user of Forza, which could also not be flagged by other users, and was resolvable only by the deletion of the entire user account.
Near the end of N+ development, we were told to disable the content-sharing features for launch, with the suggestion that they could be re-enabled when and if the leaderboard back-end was altered to allow effective user-created-content control.
We complied, regretting the backlash that would surely occur, but were optimistic for the future when we could re-enable. Unfortunately, this last-minute change caused a certification failure, and a lengthy launch delay for N+, but we worked to get through the new issues.
We pushed to keep developing content creation and sharing in because we knew it would benefit everyone: the game would be more popular because players would appreciate the creative possibilities, and it would add a lot of value to N+ as available levels would become essentially infinite.
Perhaps, though, we should have just cut it when Microsoft initially started expressing reservations. It was a lot of work for everyone, and since there was a chance that it would be cut, it’s possible this was a case of poor risk management on our part. As it stands, this feature is not likely to be allowed any time soon, if ever.”
You can read the full interview at Game Set Watch and check an interesting presentation about the development of the game from the official Slick Entertainment site!
Some days ago VL-Tone (creator of the wonderful Toad’s Tool 64 editor) found an unused trampoline object hidden in the Mario 64 code. The yellow question mark texture with a red background was already found some time ago, but now he was able to even find the polygon and the geo layout data, to repare the object into its original (?) form! As VL-Tone wrote in the topic:
This thing looks like some air switch which would work much like the red ground pound switch in Super Mario Galaxy. Or maybe it’s a trampoline. The line pattern on the red/yellow question mark texture indicates that this part would be compressed between the two checkerboard platforms when Mario jumps/pound on it.
Frauber was even able to recreate some of its functions, as you can see in the video below (from a hacked version of Flatworld with the banks that contain this trampoline loaded).
It’s interesting to notice that “there’s a lot of other polygon data left in the “blanked” ROM, which may or may not be unused stuff in the game” so we it’s possible that we’ll see even more unused M64 objects in the future. Huge props to VL-Tone and Frauber!
If everything worked correctly, you should notice all around this post a new graphic style for U64. In April 2008 we evolved our old html website into a better WordPress archive, but as we did not have much free time to think about a new graphic to go along the new site, we just kept the base WP theme. After a year, in April 2009 we decided that U64 needed a better theme too. And here it is! We are still working on some details (let us know if you find some bugs), but we are happy enough with this new graphic style.. what do you think about it? Probably we’ll have an even better one sooner or later, but right now this is the best we can do with our limited free time. Thanks to everyone for the support!
Robert Seddon has linked us to an interesting interview that TrueChipTillDeath.com had with Neil Baldwin, chip music composer and director at Eurocom (a UK-based video game developer founded specifically to develop games for the NES), in which he revealed a previusly unknown (?) – and unreleased – NES game:
“I do remember the game very well. The game was practically finished. We just kind of lost communication with the Japanese publisher and it got shelved. It was based on a Terry Jones book. I have a ROM of it. I’ll have to see if I can twist some arms and get the game ROM released like Hero Quest. The unreleased game [is] actually pretty good. I seriously would love it to get out into the community; if only to put the music into context. It’s a role player, similar to the old Zeldas. It was one of those rare occasions when I actually paid attention to what was in the game. “
You can check the full interview at TCTD. It’s nice to know that he’s interested to share the game with the community and we can only hope that he could be able to release it soon!
Update: on Neil Baldwin’s Website there are some more info on the game and some “unheard” music tracks to download! The book on which the game was based is “Erik The Viking”
We were producing the game for the now-defunct Japanese publisher, Video Systems and had pretty much completed the whole game. However, geographical and language problems made the testing and bug-finding phase frustratingly difficult. We were almost solely reliant on the publisher finding bugs/issues simply because there was only 4 of us trying to deliver this fairly large and complicated game and as we didn’t speak Japanese and they didn’t speak much English, it made for an interesting process.
Even I had to get involved in map building and putting together trigger/behaviour scripts for the game’s events as well as writing all the music. It was all good fun though and the last version of the game that we submitted to the publisher was in great shape and actually good fun to play!
However, things ground to a halt as the shared frustration of trying to communicate bugs and issues led to a breakdown of the relationship with the publisher and we parted ways with the game destined for the scrap-heap.