News on Cancelled Video Games & Lost Media

While working on our book about lost video games, we were able to interview many developers who worked on cancelled projects, but we had to cut some of these interviews from the book because of the 480 pages limit. As promised, we are going to publish all the missing articles directly in our website, and the following interview is one of these! During his career Sean Willsey Kord has worked at Paradigm Entertainment on such games as Duck Dodgers, Mission Impossible: Operation Surma, Terminator Redemption, Stuntman Ignition and on the cancelled Snoopy VS the Red Baron (GameCube).

Unseen64: To start this interview, we would like to ask you to introduce yourself to our readers: we’d love to know more about your career in the gaming industry and what you are working on today.

Sean: Definitely and thanks for keeping game developers hard work in the history books of electronic entertainment :) I’m Sean (Willsey) Kord and I worked at Paradigm Entertainment from 1998-2005 as primarily a character and cinematic animator. While there I modeled and animated for Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2 Century on N64. After Duck Dodgers I animated and modeled characters on an unreleased title for GameCube that I will elaborate on later. Next I created in game cinematics for Mission Impossible Operation Surma. After MI, I was lead in game cinematic artist for Terminator Redemption and finally I created some preliminary work for Stuntman Ignition before leaving Paradigm to relocate with my wife in Denver Colorado area. Due to this move I went into an entirely new career path in forensic animation but having a game development background had its advantages when I utilized the Unity 3D engine for real time feedback on a critical case. Currently, I just relocated back to the Texas area with my 6 year old son and wife and excited to start a new career path in my old stomping grounds!

Unseen64: Can you name some of your favourite videogames? Have you been playing anything lately?

Sean: Favorite video games? Wow hard one to narrow down as I have been an avid gamer since the 80s arcade boom till now. For retro arcade, I have much love for Galaga, Spy Hunter, Frontline, Sinistar and Star Wars. For somewhat more recent titles it is Conkers Bad Fur Day on N64( loved the humor and Rare did such an amazing job) and even more recent would be Assassins Creed. As of now I have been obsessed with one game on PC… Mechwarrior Online and mainly cause I have been a fan of the Battletech universe since it was introduced in the 80s.

Unseen64: You worked for about 7 years at Paradigm Entertainment, while we know a lot about their released games during those years (1998 -2005), unfortunately some of their projects were canned: did you worked on any of these or maybe seen them in motion? Do you remember anything from them? (Pilotwings 64 II, Harrier 2001, Skies, Magik Karts)

Sean: As far as unreleased titles you listed, I had not even recalled Harrier 2001 until you listed this title. I was not a developer on this title but can say that from what I saw it had amazing graphics for an N64 title ( like you display in your images ) and very polished sim controls due to the fact that one of the lead programmers had been an original founder for Paradigm Simulations. As far as Skies, this was another title I was not directly involved in but saw plenty of preliminary gameplay. I remember there being issues with the scale of the environments and characters. Namely the structures had to be so large so the characters could fly and battle and this resulted in characters feeling like small fairies rather than human scale. Still it had such great potential and promise and unfortunately the publisher decided it could not continue development. One title not on your list that I worked on personally was a GameCube game based on Snoopy (Peanuts character ) and his fight with the Red Baron. The basic premise was you would be Snoopy flying his Doghouse in 3rd person and battle multiple enemies in the WWI aerial setting leading to the final confrontation with the Red Baron. It would also have power ups involving Woodstock in turrets and multiple Woodstocks to enhance your firepower. The game utilized a cartoon shader and we had concepts for enemy planes that would have crazy elements like 10 wings layered on top… think Dick Dasterdly and his Flying Machines cartoons ;) I have fond memories of this unreleased title due to the people involved and the passion we all had for the content of the Peanuts universe. It was a very small team as many were back then ( might have been 2000-2001?) and we were prototyping the content and gameplay. Many of these developers on this project have worked on very high profile games since then. My tasks involved modeling Charlie Brown, Woodstock, and Snoopy as well as animations. We were all sad when this project was cancelled early on since we had such amazing chemistry but all enjoyed every minute of our time creating content for this project. I noticed years later a similar game was released on PC called Snoopy and the Red Baron and appeared to have many of the same elements we had planned in our game. I would like to think our early work somehow influenced this future game but you never know ;)

You can see some of the very early gameplay ( I mean very early prototype ) here:

Unseen64: Talking about all the games that you worked on and that were released in your career (Duck Dogers, Mission Impossible, Terminator 3, etc.), was there anything major that had to be cut or changed from the final versions? Is there anything that you wish it would have not changed, even if you were satisfied with the final product?

Sean: Hmmm… Really I don’t remember much other than the usual iterations you do to get the best game play possible. I guess Duck Dodgers had the most change since at first it had many levels in alpha stage that just didn’t make the cut. Very early in development we even had a gag similar to the Wiley Coyote pause in air, pull sign out saying “Help” and falling to the ground with a big poof except Daffy Duck was in the gag instead of Wiley Coyote. Mission Impossible had a difficult time in the early stages for what was the gameplay actually going to be? All action or stealth. In the end we followed the route taken by another well known game that you probably know all too well and made it primarily a stealth game with quick takedowns for action. I do however love the drone camera controls sequence since it has the best polished controls due to the fact that our programmer was experienced in simulation development.

Unseen64: Is there anything in particular that you learned or that you like to remember from your time at Paradigm Entertainment?

Sean: While game development can be rough at times with long hours and late nights, I wouldn’t take any of it back for the world. Paradigm Entertainment gave me so many great times and friends. I miss them all and its so nice to see all of them succeeding in other game studios or even large VFX studios for movies. It’s interesting to see some of the indie games returning to smaller teams and for me that was where Paradigm shined in its peak. There were times when we had 5 or more projects going on and each project had a dedicated office area separate from the rest. It allowed for great camaraderie and special moments that you don’t feel in 100 man teams. Our teams back then started out at 8 or so and then in full swing hit 20 at the highest point of development. I think we did some amazing work back then and it’s still warms my heart to read reviews or love for our games years and years later.

Unseen64: As most of the Unseen64 Staff is italian, we just LOVE to eat good food :) What is your favorite food ever? Any secret recipe that you would like to share with us?

Sean: Hah! I’m probably the worse person to ask this question as I am not a good cook and tend to eat more unhealthy than healthy but my favorite food is Tex Mex meals (Texas and Mexican food combined). I love tacos and enchiladas and fresh flour tortillas with cheese queso dip ;). Of course I love Italian food just as much and can’t resist spaghetti or pizza any day of the week :)

Unseen64: Well, that was the last question, thanks again for your time!

Others, PC / MAC

Wuppo [PC – Beta]

U64 Staff & Contributors

14-11-2016

1 Comment

Wuppo is a 2D platforming action-adventure game with RPG elements. You play as a little Wum who is just clumsy and who has no special skills or powers. The protagonist gets kicked out of the Wumhouse, where most Wums live together, so the adventure starts with looking for a new home. While searching for that new home, the Wum gets into a lot of exciting adventures for which wit and charm are used and many puzzles will have to be solved.

The developers Lars Korendijk and Thomas de Waard have been friends since highschool and they have worked together on short movies, animations, stories and games since then. After high school both guys went to college and Lars graduated as an animator and Thomas as a composer. Wuppo started as a fun project to work on outside of school/college, but after both guys graduated, they started to work on the project fulltime, using Knuist & Perzik as the name of their indie team.

You can definitely see that these developers have been gamers for a while and they had many sources of inspiration for Wuppo. The first inspiration would be ‘An Untitled Story’, which made Lars start on his own platformer in the first place. The Rayman series was a shared inspiration for both developers, as they look back on Rayman 2 & 3 with much nostalgia. Other games that helped shape Wuppo to the game it is now were:

The Mass Effect-series – influence on the interaction with NPC’s, who all have their own stories
Undertale – a more personal touch in the relations with NPC’s
Paper Mario – the humor in dialogue and questions were inspired by this title
Banjo Tooie – inspired to make a world that feels unique and ‘real’ and to make locations that have a real function in the world.

Differences to the final game
The game has changed a lot during the 7 years it was in development! The entire world has been deleted to start over from scratch once, and the story has been rewritten multiple times. Wuppo’s development could be roughly divided into three phases.

Version 1 was called “Wubblyking”, made in Gamemaker 6.1 ~ 8. The story was about the Wums, then called Wubblies” whose king disappeared. Every Wubbly wanted to be the new king. The developers called this version very ‘random’ – there was no real connection between the different locations and characters.

Version 2 was also made in Gamemaker 6.1 ~ 8. This version already contained parts that stayed in the final game like an early version of the “Wumhouse” and “Wumgarden”. The story was again very different – the protagonist was a world-famous plumber whose wrench got stolen. Still there were no other races than the Wums and the lore/history of the world wasn’t in the game either.

Footage of this version:

Version 3 was made in Gamemaker Studio and is the version people can play right now on Steam.

Thomas and Lars were very perfectionist about the game and especially the last area changed a lot. It has been changed completely from the beta and that had a big influence on the story as well! The ‘Fnakkers’ were originally going to build a big machine in an underground factory to kill off the Wums, but Knuist & Perzik decided that the ‘fnakkers’ shouldn’t portray Evil itself. They were much more interested in challenging the player to feel empathy for its archenemy. The end result is a game with no clear line between good and evil. Every person and end-boss has its own story and motives, which might be wrong or bring others in danger, but they never do so on purpose/for fun.

Tough choices
The toughest moment for Knuist & Perzik was to decide to delay Wuppo to make it better. The last area of the final game was one of the things that slowed down the development. It took a couple of months before they felt like the concept was refined. This was also the time they started to look for a publisher – which they found in SOEDESCO, also a Dutch company. They finally released the game on September 29th 2016, to great joy of their fanbase.

In the future Knuist & Perzik would like to make new games if possible, but for now they will keep supporting Wuppo and create additional content for it.

Thanks a lot to Lars Korendijk, Thomas de Waard and Esther Kuijper for their help in preserving these memories from the beta development of Wuppo!

Images / comparison:

PSP, Sony

Duke Nukem: Critical Mass [PSP – Cancelled]

Lesur

08-11-2016

5 Comments

Duke Nukem: Critical Mass is a run & gun shooter game, released on the Nintendo DS platform in 2011 by Apogee Software. The game was originally intended to also come out as a Playstation Portable game but was later cancelled for unknown reasons. Rumours on the game started early as the beginning of 2008 and were later in July of that year confirmed when Apogee Software announced a completely new Duke Nukem adventure: a Trilogy which would be developed for both systems in cooperation with publisher Deep Silver and which would be developed by Frontline Studios. After being rebranded to 3D Realms this would also be the revival of the Apogee brand in game development and publishing. The trilogy would consist of three separate games with Critical Mass being the first; its original release date set in the fall of 2009 and would be followed by the other chapters Duke Nukem: Chain Reaction and Duke Nukem: Proving Grounds.

Besides the storyline the games on DS and PSP would however be completely different from each other; the Nintendo DS version would be more of a side scroller while the Playstation Portable would be more of a third / first person shooter. The game would have on both platforms a multi-mode where players could easily switch between third person, first person, isometric and side scrolling views including some extra options as a sniper mode, a jetpack mode and different boss battle modes. The Critical Mass chapter would have 9 areas to complete, divided into 27 missions and the player was promised 15 different types of weapons, multiple and secret ways to achieve in-game points and on top of that both platforms would have cinematic rendered cut-scenes between levels. The huge difference between the Nintendo DS and the Playstation Portable, being two complete different machines can be seen in the two screenshots below which I took out of a promotional video released by Apogee in March 2009 made specially for the Game Developer’s Conference; the promotional video was cut in two pieces and showed screenshots of both systems. Funny thing was that the PSP version was rated Mature and the DS was only rated Teen. So two complete different games carrying the same story.

In the first chapter of the trilogy some Earth Defense Organization had been sending out special agents on missions into the future to ensure the safety of the Earth; none of the sent agents however reported back and our hero Duke Nukem is sent into that same future to figure out what is going on. In that future Duke Nukem finds a ruined world in complete chaos and disaster, mankind is almost entirely wiped out and the remains of it are reigned and controlled by aliens. Duke then discover that things might have gone wrong because of him; the moment he left the earth for the future it was attacked by those same alien forces. In the second chapter “Chain Reaction” Duke heads back to the present time in hope of fixing things in the present and thus also in the future. In the third chapter “Proving Grounds” Duke would see things getting worse and ends up being involved in a new World War.

So the DS version was released, being it much later then planned: what happened to the PSP version of the game? In March 2009 Apogee Software confirmed that the release date of both versions was still set for September of that year. They then went a bit silent and rumors about Apogee’s mother company 3D Realms closing its doors start to spread; everybody expected that the same would also happens to Apogee Software. Apogee however denied all rumors and stated that the company under no circumstances would be affected by the 3D Realms situation and that the development of the Duke Nukem Trilogy was going according plans. 3D Realms was at the time also working on Duke Nukem Forever. In May of the same year Take-Two, who was at that moment the holder of the publishing rights for Duke Nukem, filed a law suit against 3D Realms, stating that 3D Realms failed to deliver the game. In 2010 Take-Two announced that Forever had been shifted over from 3D Realms to Gearbox and that it had sold all the rights and the intellectual property to that same company. It was later announced that Critical Mass could no longer carry the Duke Nukem license. They decided to change the game with replacing all traces of Duke Nukem like player models, logos and even voice-overs. The name of the main character was also changed and replaced by a new hero called Cam Nash. Frontline Productions even had a new name for the game, “Extraction Point: Alien Shootout” and decided that the new game now would be released on the Playstation Network. Their biggest problem now was that they faced having to deal with a complete new IP, without a well-known and thus easier selling IP like Duke Nukem.

Things then got even weirder when later in 2011: Apogee Software stated that they did not lost the license for Duke Nukem and that the release date for Duke Nukem: Critical Mass was set for June 2011, but just the DS version. A PSP version was no longer spoken off and was said to be cancelled when developer Frontline was taken off the project; the real reason behind this decision still remains a bit vague but the confusion on loosing or not loosing the original license must have been a large part of that decision. Apogee Software denied that the decision to cancel the PSP version had something to do with the loss of any rights and they even said to have submitted a complete build of the game to Sony for final approval. Unfortunately Apogee declined all comments when asked why the game never got a PSP release.

The Nintendo DS version came out as scheduled in 2011. It was labeled as the worst handheld game ever and received some very hard and killing critics when reviewed. End of story? No not at all. There is a complete version of the PSP version of Duke Nukem: Critical Mass. Leaked? Nope. Later release? Nope. Port of the game? Also nope.

The Library of Congress in the United States is probably the biggest library in the world. It archives besides just books also things as magazines, comics and yes, also video games. Through the copyright registration process the library receives roughly 400 games in a year. About 99,99% these games are physically released and published computer games. In 2014 a technician of the library was performing an inventory of acquired video games and he stumbled upon a DVD-R labeled Duke Nukem: Critical Mass (PSP).

Most of the time however these DVD’s contain footage of gameplay of a game. The technician was however triggered by a line of text in the copyright database record: Authorship: entire Video Game, computer code, artwork, music. He put the DVD in his computer and discovered a file directory with the source code of a complete PSP game; a game of which he later found out to be an unreleased Playstation Portable Game. All the contents of the found disc are however copyrighted material and the disc will be stored in the digital archive of the library. Unfortunately it seems that its content cannot be shared. According to Apogee the disc is an early alpha version of the game and it was submitted to the library as required for the copyright process. Duke Nukem: Critical Mass will probably remain another cancelled PSP game that will never be released.

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Best Video Games Books: Our Top 100+ List!

U64 Staff & Contributors

05-11-2016

26 Comments

To celebrate the release of our book “Video Games You Will Never Play” (published in September 2016), we would like to suggest to you even more amazing video game books you can read while trapped at home during the upcoming cold winter or to buy as a Christmas present for your nerd cousin who loves video games. There are already many “top 10 books” lists with some nice suggestions (such as the ones at Goodreads, Wikipedia, Games Radar, Heavy, PC Gamer and The New Yorker), but those usually don’t have less known titles we love and often they list the same books over and over. We’d like to suggest many more books related to games, with the help of our readers, like you!

This long list with all our favorite games-related books (available in English) was originally meant to be added as a bonus in our own volume, but as we had to cut a lot of content to fit our articles in the 480 pages limit, this “best video game books” list had to be canned too. In the end we decided to still finish this huge article and to publish it on our website, so here it is!

We also asked to some of our favorite authors and gaming historians (such as Bob Pape, Brian Schrank, Chris Kohler, Clyde Mandelin, Felipe Pepe, Gabe Durham, Jeremy Parish, Jesper Juul, John Szczepaniak, Nathan Altice, Nick Montfort, Rob Strangman and Sorrel Tilley) to suggest a book themselves and in the end, we collected more than 100 titles. We would like to add even more videogames books, to create the most complete list ever to help people to find the most interesting ones. Each book is listed with details, price, number of pages, size and average price on Amazon, so you can easily compare them (remember: always check the current price on Amazon, as they often change day by day and could be on sale!).

If you know of other great video game books that should be added, please leave a message below with a short description to explain why you loved that book, so we can include it in our list! Thanks a lot for your help :)

Jump to:

Books about classic and must-play games
Books on popular video game series and genres
Books on video game history
Books on specific consoles & computers
Video Game Artbooks and Coffee Table books
Books on video game design, theory & social effects
Fiction books based or inspired by video games

Others, PC / MAC

Route 66 [PC – Cancelled]

monokoma

02-11-2016

1 Comment

Route 66 is a cancelled point and click adventure game that was in development in the early ‘90s by Disney Software/Buena Vista, initially planned to be released for 386 (or 286) PCs with 320×200 VGA cards. The game was formatted onto 2 or 3 floppy disks that would play on these computers. The team behind this lost game was composed of talented developers, artists, and designers, such as Darlene Waddington (game design), Jeff Hilbers (art and graphic design), Sue Chow (game design) and Jimmy Huey (programmer). At this time, Disney Software was just a small division of Disney Consumer Products, but they were working hard to create games based on new and existing IPs.

Route 66 was intended to be an interesting mix of adventure and survival gameplay. The main protagonist was a young man named Dart Stranger who was busy hitchhiking from St Louis to Santa Monica along Route 66, a world-famous series of highways in America. Dart’s grandfather (or another distant relative) had died in LA, and had supposedly left some much needed money to Dart. Since Dart lived back in Chicago, players had find a way to get to LA within a certain amount of time in order to be there for the reading of his will. The player would start the game with only a few dollars, not enough for a bus ticket, so the only way to reach Santa Monica was through hitchhiking on Route 66. Getting to Santa Monica alive was the main objective of the game.

Hitchhiking revolves heavily around the drivers who pick you up, and the development team wanted to focus on that aspect of it. There was an interesting gameplay mechanic where each of the drivers had a special personality and the player would have to figure out how to respond to them correctly while in the car. Some want to talk and tell jokes, hear your stories, or maybe they just want to remain quiet. Players could gauge how well they were doing by the driver’s expressions. If handled correctly, they’ll drive you to the next city. If you don’t, they would boot you on the street and force you to find another ride. Just like classic point and click adventures from the ‘90s (Monkey Island, Day of Tentacle, Full Throttle, Sam & Max, etc.), Route 66 was full of humor and weird characters that added charm and funny dialogue to the game.

While traveling on Route 66, Dart would reach several main cities, and the gameplay would become more like a side-scrolling exploration survival game. Players had to look for a place to stay and eat, and hopefully finding some money to survive until you arrive in Santa Monica. During the game, Dart would get good rides and bad rides, make good decisions and bad decisions, meet with good folks and crazy folks, get thrown in jail and beat up by cops, eat bad food, sleep in the rain, get robbed by fellow travelers, become sick and held in hospital, and so on and so forth. This was an original hitching simulation in which strange things could happen, including your own death, all depending on how much attention you pay to the NPC’s behavior.

The flow of all these gameplay segments was controlled by a simple but detailed decision tree, reminiscent of a “Choose Your Own Adventure” book. The team’s goal after all was to achieve some semblance of interactive fiction. Darlene and Sue were busy writing stories and lines for all these diverse eventualities, while Jeff was creating sprite artworks/animations and Jimmy created all the code that made the game run, coming up with a lot of inventive techniques and tools to overcome the restrictions of their target platform (such as a conversation editor tool). They were able to develop some nice playable demos for Route 66 and everybody at Disney Software liked them; all that was left for them to do to complete the game was keep creating new content.

Unfortunately, internal issues among Disney killed Route 66 before more content could be made. The business world became fascinated with “multi-media” and the new “CD Revolution” in 1992 and 1993. Disney’s management also fell into this hype-disease and suddenly Disney Software wasn’t just an uninteresting division of Disney Consumer Products anymore, but a potential cash cow. High-rank producers at Disney wanted a piece of the multi-media gaming pie and the new political environment in the company led to a lot of nasty fratricide among producers, all of whom were looking to improve the status of their own projects by killing somebody else’s. Even with a fun and interesting playable demo, Route 66 was doomed.

After Route 66 was cancelled along with other titles in development (“Jungle Cruise” and “Dog Eat Dog”), the team was fired. They tried to pitch these concepts to other companies, but were turned down time and time again. Luckily, Dog Eat Dog was greenlighted by Trilobyte, the studio founded in December 1990 by Graeme Devine and Rob Landeros (known for such games as The 7th Guest and The 11th Hour). The team was able to keep working on Dog Eat Dog, an original policemen simulator, until its second cancellation in mid/late ‘90s.

Thanks to Jeff and Chris for the contribution! Article edited by Ryan DePalma

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