A “beta” level made with LunarMagic, based off of beta screenshots of Super Mario World and based off of the SNES Test program Graphics files.
[Updates] new beta screens in the archive
We have added some new beta images in these galleries: Super Smash Bros Melee, Advanced Wars Underfire, Assassin’s Creed & Super Mario RPG.
[New Staffers] Are they enough now? Maybe.
It looks like that there are still some more beta geeks that want to help this beta archive, like Take_It_Slow and kmkanaka, that from today are officially hired in the Unseen 64 staff! We are happy to welcome them in our crew and we can’t wait to see what they can do :) The beta geeks army is still growing…
Nomura talks about KH: Birth By Sleep development
Interviewer: Can you tell us a bit about the development of Birth By Sleep?
Nomura: Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep is being worked on by the same team that created re: Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories. Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep’s development had originally started before the development of re: CoM, but production was stopped to complete re: CoM. At first it felt a bit weird starting the project again. I believe this project started before the other two of the Kingdom Hearts games, and I also believe it will be the last to hit the market.
[Maybe there was a proto of the Ps2 version made before the first KH? or it was just a concept that remained on paper and the real development began only on Psp ?]
Interviewer: In Birth by Sleep, is the gameplay done by choosing action commands lined up in command list?
Nomura: I believe it is necessary to say first, The Command Menu that was shown to the public [A.K.A scans, and video] has now changed. A system close to that of re:COM has been created, feeling like a command deck. However, the present screen shots show it was a bit too close to the idea of re:COM. The battle screens you see in the images now, have already been changed. However the operating sense is similar to that of the Kingdom Hearts series. The gameplay has slight influence from the DS game “It’s a Wonderful World”.
[They changed the command menu.. so the old scans and the video are beta!]
You can read the whole interview here .
RS Links: unused missions in Frontier First Encounters
Frontier: First Encounters is a PC video game released in 1995, where the player can go through space trading and combat simulator. It is the sequel to Frontier: Elite II (1993), which itself is a sequel to the seminal 1984 game Elite. The game was created by David Braben’s company, Frontier Developments. Many fans of the game refer to it by the shortened title of FFE. In the list of unseen-releated websites that Robert Seddon sent to us, there is even a page about some “unused missions in Frontier: First Encounters. (Retro Gamer #47 p. 31 quotes David Braben: ‘The real problem with First Encounters was that it was under an unreasonable amount of pressure,’ says Braben about the difficult project. ‘There was so much interference [from Gametek] that we offered all the money back so we could get out of the deal because I felt it was going to be a disaster. So that was a massive distraction and the game was nothing like what I wanted. As a lot of hackers have already found out there was a lot of extra story in the game that was closed off for the final release, because part of it didn’t even work.’)
At www.jades.org/brokmiss.htm we can read the unused missions text, extracted from the game: “As many of you know, FFE wasn’t finished when Gametek released it. It is possible to look at the contents of the main .exe file, and in the middle of a load of unreadable stuff the mission text is clearly readable. Among this are the missions we know about, but there are a number of other missions we don’t see. This page is dedicated to the missions which, for whatever reason, we have been denied. Note that these missions cannot be flown as the appropriate code is missing!”