We all remember Conker Bad Fur Day as one of the most original (at least conceptually) games ever released on Nintendo 64. But we also remember how it looked before, when it was called Conker: Twelve Tales or Conker’s Quest: the quintessential cute-looking platform. However, apart from the graphic style, the first version of Conker had some interesting features not found in released version. The overworld was probably bigger and there were more levels, like, as you can seen from the screenshots on this page, a Toy and an Ice stage, more bosses,more moves and gadgets (including vehicles) for Conker. Also, the game was slightly different if played with Berry, the cute friend of Conkey, because she would have had to raise monsters in order to fight the enemies. The most significant feature was however the co-op mode, which allowed two players to cooperate in the adventure mode. Unfortunately, only some places and characters were ported to BFD, although with heavy changes, like the Scarecrow, the Cyclops (that became the giant boss of the prehistoric world), the windmill, many locations and gameplay ideas of the phehistoric world, etc. We can only hope that in the future a proto of this game will be leaked for everyone to enjoy.
The first 64-bit version of Zelda, was originally conceived as a way designed to use the features of 64DD. Internal Clock, rewritable discs with a size double what had ever been used on the cartridge, internet connection and tools for editing images, Zelda 64 was presented by Nintendo itself as a title so huge that it would be impossible to implement on a normal N64.
All this because of the possibility of 64 Disc Drive. But there was only one small problem: the 64DD was not greeted with much interest from professionals, remembering the bad purpose made by all previous add-on for console, the DD was growing slowly postponed, Nintendo itself lost confidence in the project and it was not clear if it ever really left. At this point, Nintendo had no other choice, because of low sales of the N64, they announced that Zelda 64 would have been ported to normal cartridges, so hoping to renew interest in the console market. But this change meant they had to remove all those interesting features that would have been only possible thanks to 64DD and part of the game and history had to undergo an extream cut.
From an interview with N-ZONE magazine (translated with google and reported by GoNintendo) we can read that Aonuma admits that Ocarina of Time originally had more temples and magic abilities that were cut.
Eiji Aonuma: Yes, you may be absolutely right, although I can not remember exactly all the details. There really is a difference between the temples, which we wanted to integrate and those that exist in the final game. And that had something to do with magic. We thought of integrating some actions, some plot threads, and some puzzles that have something to do with magic abilities.
We have come to the conclusion that other, already existing, just regular items to be a worthy replacement. So we had originally three temples, which would capture the young Link, three temples for the adult Link and three in which he was to learn each spell – but instead we have eliminated a temple of it. In the final game is now so 3 plus 3 plus 2, or 8 temples to find.
Also, some more interesting info from the early beta / prototype version of Zelda 64 were shared in the Iwata Asks dedicated to the Ocarina of Time 3D remake:
Iwata: Oh, he wanted to make an FPS (first-person shooter). Koizumi: Right. In the beginning, he had the image that you are at first walking around in first-person, and when an enemy appeared, the screen would switch, Link would appear, and the battle would unfold from a side perspective.
[…]
Iwawaki: But…I do think we tried out a first-person perspective a little. Osawa: I think we made something to try it out, but decided it wasn’t interesting visually and abandoned it right away.
[…]
Iwata: You were originally developing The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for the Nintendo 64DD.13 Koizuma: Yes. Miyamoto-san said he had some ideas, like leaving behind all of Link’s footprints. Iwata: Yeah. (laughs)
[…]
Koizuma: That’s why he started saying that if Link was going to ride a horse, he wanted to include mounted archery and one-on-one battle. (laughs) We were able to include the mounted archery, but not the one-on-one battle. Iwata: But later you included it in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.
Robotech is an old sci-fi anime mash-up created by Carl Macek after fusing 3 different animes (4 if you count the movie) originally released in Japan twenty-two years ago. It was a huge success at home, and it was successfully exported around the world. More interesting for our site, it is probably the anime mash-up with more unseen material, with various series originally planned and never released. Maybe it was just destiny, but Gametek, a software house at the time well-known for her console versions of many famous american shows, bought the rights of the anime in 1994 and began working on a title for the Nintendo 64.
This title was officially announced in may 1995 as Robotech Academy, and it was essentially a battle simulator for the cadets of Robotech. However, at the beginning of 1996, Doug Lanford, a new entry of the small development team and a big fan of the series, dropped this concept, probably intended to be just a cheap rendition of the anime, and created a much more ambitious game that was going to be the first real space combat simulator for console: Robotech Crystal Dreams. First of all, it would have featured the entire solar system, in order to create a big environment for the free structure of the game. In fact, even if it was mission based, the player could directly affect the events of the game, simply choosing for example to avoid the current objective and answer a call for help on another planet, without the need to complete the previous mission.
Also, it would have included many of the weapons, characters,combat mecha, enemies, places of the series, as well as a complex story related to the events narrated in Robotech. Unfortunately, several issues slowed down the developement of the game, like the technical limitations of the Nintendo 64, the small financial resources of the developer, the closing down of Philips Media, the publisher of the game, and it was finally cancelled, even if finished at 90%, in 1998, after the complete bankrupt of Gametek. Eventually an early demo was released on internet, but it was a complete letdown, showing a game largely incomplete,bug-filled, slow-paced, and without the most interesting features announced by the developers.
Donkey Kong 64 (also known with the work in progress title of Ultra Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong World or Donkey Kong Universe) is a platform developed by RareWare and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo 64 in 1999. The game is a follow up to the Donkey Kong Country trilogy on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. There were some rumors about the original release of the game for the 64DD, but in the end DK64 was released on the normal N64, using the 4MB expansion pack.
In the beta version of the game, the characters used “real” weapons models. In the final version they have “fruit” weapons, like coconut gun and peanut shooters. Also, various unused rooms and models were found in the game’s code thanks to hackers! You can see these in the gallery and videos below.
Also Mad Jack, the insane Jack in the Box that Tiny Kong fights in Frantic Factory in the beta was actually going to be called Junk-in-the-box and have the appearance of an old decrepit clown. The area he’s fought in isn’t Mad Jack’s either (info from Mario Wiki). It seems that that when they took him out, the toy box mini boss that Chunky Kong fights was put in instead. It does look like they are fought in the same room though. It also seems that Junk in the box would have shot fire balls (as Mad Jack does now) and would eventually become vulnerable to a TNT barrel instead of being electrocuted.
The Nintendo 64 was the culmination of work by Nintendo, Silicon Graphics, and MIPS Technologies. The SGI-based system design that ended up in the Nintendo 64 was originally offered to Tom Kalinske, then CEO of Sega of America by James H. Clark, founder of Silicon Graphics. SGI had recently bought out MIPS Technologies and the two companies had worked together to create a low-cost CPU/3D GPU combo that they thought would be ideal for the console market. A hardware team from Sega of Japan was sent to evaluate the chip’s capabilities and they found some faults which MIPS subsequently solved. However, Sega of Japan ultimately decided against SGI’s design. In the early stages of development, the Nintendo 64 was referred to by the code name “Project Reality”. This moniker came from the speculation within Nintendo that the console could produce CGI on par with then-current supercomputers. In 1994, the console was given the name Nintendo Ultra 64 in the West. – [Info from wikipedia]
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