Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon was initially titled Ganbare Goemon 5, then Legend of the Mystical Ninja. The Japanese producers desired to break the series’s numerical naming convention to emphasize that Mystical Ninja was very different from its predecessors. Originally developed with a two-player mode, this feature was scrapped months before the Japanese release. Early development pictures showed Impact battling in a modern city against an handgun-wielding foe. Images depicted the battle against the Wartime Kabuki Robot Kashiwagi taking place over a forest and village. Konami also released several renders of Goemon making different poses and facial expressions for magazine previews. A 60-70% complete build of the game was featured at E3 in June 1997; this version still suffered from graphical clipping and camera issues. – [Info from Wikipedia]
Update! A Goemon 64 prototype could be leaked soon, but we need your help. If you love Goemon, read this article for more info!
[spoiler /Clicca qui per la versione in Italiano/ /Nascondi la versione in Italiano/] Goemon 64 – oltre a Castlevania e Hybrid Heaven, uno dei primissimi giochi annunciati dalla Konami per l’Ultra, fu questo Ganbare Goemon 64, seguito dei titoli omonimi per Super Nintendo. La software house japponese cercò si seguire le impronte di Mario 64, trasformando questa saga di platform bidimensionali in un vero e proprio adventure 3D, perdendo però molti degli elementi che distinguevano il gioco, come la modalità cooperativa a due giocatori. Le prime foto del gioco mostravano una grafica molto più definita della versione finale. L’hub su schermo era differente, il numero di vite erano segnalate con una faccia del personaggio in alto a destra. [/spoiler]
[Thanks a lot to Gilgalegrouik for some of these images!]
Blade & Barrel, also known as “Ultra Combat” in the U.S., was going to be one of the launch titles for the new Nintendo 64 console, but sadly it was cancelled. Developed by Software Creations and Kemko, the game was an arcade third-person shooter, focused on battles between flying vehicles that looked a bit like helicopters. An important aspect of Ultra Combat was meant to be the multiplayer mode up to 4 players.
Looking at the beta screenshots and videos below, the environments of the game were just simple 3D arenas, with some empty buildings and roads, but when it was announced, the graphic looked really spectacular for its time. The weapons available were able to create huge explosions, that completely filled the screen with a truly impressive fire effect. Probably the single player mode was similar to the multiplayer deathmatch, with the only difference being that we had to fight against bots, rather than challenge friends.
Unfortunately Blade & Barrel 64 was postponed for too long, perhaps because of low quality gameplay achieved in the beta, and in the end the project was canned altogether. Some concepts of Ultra Combat could have been re-used to develop another game by Kemko, Knife Edge, released for the N64 in 1998.
The two games are somewhat similar: Knife Edge is a shooter with flying machines, but the main difference is that KE is played in first person view as a on-rail shooter, while Blade & Barrel was meant to be a free flying shooter… at least in its original concept: from the Pickford Brothers’s website we can read that:
Blade & Barrel (Nintendo 64): A game originally designed to be simple, 3D update of the old Atari console classic Combat, but which changed to an on-rails shooter once it was signed to a Japanese publisher after John left Software Creations to form Zed Two. In the end the game either abandoned or ‘canned’ by publisher.
Jet Force Gemini is a sci-fi action adventure / third-person shooter developed by Rare that was released in 1999 for the Nintendo 64. The main characters, Juno and Vela, were originally designed as younger in the beta version and their 3D models were more cartoon-like with large heads. They were later changed to their more mature versions before the release of the game. However, a similar set of childish models can still be played with via an in-game cheat.
Jet Force Gemini does not support the 4MB Expansion Pak, although Rare had considered the possibility. This led to some confusion as the box cover for the original release stated that it did support the Expansion Pak. Nintendo provided a quick-fix to the mislabeled covers by providing stickers declaring its rumble pak compatibility and fixed later printings of the boxes. [Info from Wikipedia]
Also, some debug rooms and beta maps were found still hidden in the game thanks to ps3punk7890, Luigi 316 and SubDrag. An interesting note, one of these unused maps is a racing track from Diddy Kong Racing: it’s possible that they used this to test the racing missions in Jet Force Gemini in its early stages.
Kirby Air Ride (known as Kirby’s Air Ride at the time) was originally in development during the early days of the Nintendo 64. It went through many changes during its elongated development period (it looked like a snowboard game for some time and rumors say that this proto could have somehow evolved into 1080°) before eventually being canceled and then resurfacing on the GameCube in the form of a short video preview in March 2003 at the annual DICE summit in Las Vegas. We’ll never know how the various N64 versions could have been played, but the GameCube version is probably similar to the latest concept that Nintendo created for the N64.
[spoiler /Clicca qui per la versione in Italiano/ /Nascondi la versione in Italiano/]Lui è kirby, è una cosa rotonda e rosa, vola e mangia i nemici, è il protagonista di platform, picchiaduro, flipper e probabilmente altro ancora, ed allora perchè non farlo diventare una star delle corse? è questo probabilmente quello che i ragazzi della HAL hanno pensato mentre ideavano questo Kirby Air Ride. Probabilmente, cosi come l’idea era arrivata, è stata cancellata per N64, per poi venire riesumata su GameCube. Voci dicono che le basi del gioco furono in seguito riprese per costruire 1080° Snowboarding.[/spoiler]
Banjo-Kazooie was originally known by the project name Dream for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. The project starred a boy named Edison, who owned a wooden sword and got into trouble with a group of pirates lead by Captain Blackeye. Dream was also scheduled to include a rabbit that looked like a man, a dopey dog and a bear that became Banjo. A screenshot from the Project Dream phase, shows Edison in a pirate town, but we do not know if it is a concept art or a Nintendo 64 tech demo. Finally, Project Dream was shown at the 1997 E3 as Banjo-Kazooie. [info from wikipedia]
From Grant Kirkhope’s website we can read many interesting facts about Dream’s development and download some unused / beta songs:
I started at Rare in October 1995 and when I got there “Dream” was already going. The core team from “Donkey Kong Country” had given DK to another team to carry on with and was working on this game which was going to be Rare’s greatest SNES title. It was very secret and Tim Stamper was leading the team, nobody outside the team knew anything about it. […]
I was shown the demo of the game running on the SNES and was blown away; it looked beautiful and was obviously going to be a big step up from “Donkey Kong Country”. […]
Pretty soon after I joined the game it was decided that it was too big for the SNES and was converted over to the N64, plus we were going to be using the extra “bulky drive” add on, that Nintendo told us they had in development. […]
The game was a huge RPG, which I loved as I was a huge “Zelda” fan, and I tried to write some really strong themes for all the characters. The demos that I’ve put on the site are all using proper samples as opposed to the N64 versions which were obviously not as good quality due to memory restrictions.[…]
I think the final nail in the coffin for “Dream” came from another one of Rare’s teams. The “Killer Instinct” team had started “Conker” and it looked and played fantastically. In “Dream” we had this elaborate floor system that meant we could stretch the polygons into any shape to create some really great looking landscapes that really hadn’t been tried before, unfortunately the N64 just didn’t have the power to run it at a decent frame rate and we were struggling to make it work. The “Conker” team had gone more the tried and trusted route as used in “Mario 64” and had left us behind. I remember Tim trooping us all across the courtyard to look at “Conker” and our hearts all sank as “Conker” was really good.[…]
So we went back to our barn and tried their method, “Dream” started to run great. Then Tim was unhappy with the whole boy/hero thing and said we should change it to an animal. A bear was our first creature and “Banjo” the bear was born. So now we had “Banjo” running around in an RPG, I really can’t remember when we added the back pack and “Kazooie” but it was around this time. Again Tim still didn’t think it was all good enough and after seeing how good “Mario 64” was and with Rare’s platforming heritage it was decided to scrap “Dream” and do a platformer with ” Banjo” as the main character.[…]
In the gallery below you can see various screens and videos from the beta version of the game, with removed enemies and levels. One of the most famous beta areas is the “Giant’s Lair”, that should have been the world’s HUB before Gruntilda’s Lair. The “Mount Fire Eyes” is instead a beta level, that is talked about in the final game, as an easter egg. You can check the video below created by VIDEOmakerNezuke to read more info on the Banjo beta.
Some more info on Banjo Kazooie Beta listed by Mew Mew:
there were originally 16 levels planned for the game
some of the cut levels were reused in banjo tooie (as witchy world, glitter gulch mine and mount fire eyes)
it seems that mount fire eyes turned into the lava side in hailfire peaks
clankers cavern also went through a few changes in its devlopment for example there is a video which shows clanker the whale as a real whale not made of metal with the fungi forest music from donkey kong 64
clankers cavern is rumoured to have been a part of fungus forest (similar too donkey kong 64), as the level is very close to the underwater entrance to the click clock woods puzzle podium, which is covered in moss or fungus (this was believed to be where the orginal entrance or puzzle was for fungus forest)
This description of the game is still a work in progress, if you would like to write a better article on the development of the game, let us know!
Thanks to Princess Toadstol, Saga Darvulia, cheat-master30 Anon and BM for the contributions!
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