“The Dead Ahead project was a very unsual one. The game was being funded by Tomei, but there was also a middle company; Optical Entertainment who was also involved. Optical were designing the game for Tomei and Software Creations were chosen by Tomei (Tomy) to develop it. It was a very ambitious design which included free roaming in large environments, fighting, vehicle use and puzzle solving. One of the intentions of the game was to, at some point, create Toys based on the main characters. I was responsible for managing the team developing the game. Even before production started, this was already known as the “hot-potatoe” project that nobody wanted to do. Myself and the team made a good account of ourselves, but the game was never finished.” – Haydn
Thanks to Haydn Dalton for the great contribution!
Thanks a lot to Gilgalegrouik for some of these images!
Attack! was an action game developed by DMA Design (the same software house responsible for Body Harvest and Silicon Valley) that was officially announced in april 1999. It was described as a Spiritual successor to Lemmings and gaming magazine at the time wrote that it was planned for PC, Playstation and N64. Edge saw design sketches littering walls of DMA HQ during a visit. Game was described as “Millwall supporters let loose in Jurassic Park’ and set to feature a range of diminutive dino’s.” It seems, however, that the game was going to be released only for the pc.
Mike Dailly that worked at DMA, wrote:
“Well, Attack was never for the N64, it was a PC only (at the time) title and was canned well before other ports were started or even considered.”
There is virtually no information about it, and the only images that we have are some artworks. Judging from these few pics that we managed to recover, Attack was set in the prehistory, and the protagonist was going to be a caveman. According to some rumors, the main character was able to tame the various creatures and use them to advance in the game. The project was potentially very interesting: the titles that DMA developed for the nintendo 64 had many innovative features that were later used as the foundations for some successiful titles. In the autumn of 1999, DMA Design was acquired by Rockstar and renamed Rockstar North, the team that two years later created GTA III.
[English translation by yota]
Thanks a lot to Gilgalegrouik for some of these images and to Ross Sillifant for the contribution!
Hype: Time Quest for the PC is certainly the best tie-in of the legendary Playmobil toy series, so it is a pity that the Nintendo 64 version, presented at the E3 98, was never released. The story of the game was about a swordsman called Hype, who was sent back in time by the Black Knight after trying to defend the King Taskan IV’s reign. Needless to say, Time quest’s gameplay was clearly inspired by Zelda, and even though it didn’t reach the complexity and the overall quality of the Nintendo game, it was especially interesting for the way the time travel affected the puzzle solving.
It seems that, aside from the split-screen multiplayer, the Nintendo 64 porting was going to be identical to the pc version.
[spoiler /Clicca qui per la versione in Italiano/ /Nascondi la versione in Italiano/]
Hype per PC è sicuramente il miglior videogioco dedicato alla leggendaria linea di giocattoli Playmobil, ma è anche un buon titolo per i non appassionati. E’ un vero peccato quindi che la versione Nintendo 64, presentata ufficialmente all’E3 98 non sia mai stata rilasciata. Nei panni del cavaliere della corona Hype, dovevamo cercare di ritornare nel nostro tempo dopo che il cavaliere nero Barnak ci aveva spediti in un lontano passato per poter cosi eseguire più facilmente i suoi malefici piani. Inutile dire che il titolo Ubisoft è chiaramente ispirato a Zelda come struttura (la più classica degli adventure), e pur non raggiungendone ovviamente la complessità e la qualità generale, è interessante sopratutto per la modalità con cui il viaggio del tempo incide nella risoluzione degli enigmi.
La versione N64 doveva essere virtualmente identica a quella per computer ( e quindi vantare un comparto tecnicamente veramente notevole), se si omette una prevista modalità multiplayer in esclusiva per la console Nintendo..[/spoiler]
Roswell Conspiracies: Aliens, Myths and Legends is a cancelled Nintendo 64 game that was based on the animated series with the same name, which (as you can guess from the subtitle), is inspired by sci-fi themes and aliens. The TV series was enough popular in the USA and the producers decided to create an action adventure for the Nintendo 64, Playstation and GameBoy Color. As already happened many times, the N64 version was cancelled, but you can check some screenshots in the gallery below. The Playstation version was released in 2001, developed by Red Storm Entertainment, and probably it’s similar to the unreleased N64 one.
In the end the game is just a mediocre, repetitive and linear action game, with two mini-games to try to cure the lack of variety in the gameplay. For once, we are almost happy that the Nintendo 64 version was never released .
[spoiler /Clicca qui per la versione in Italiano/ /Nascondi la versione in Italiano/]Roswell Conspiracies: Aliens, Myths and Legends è una serie animata uscita in america nel 1999, che da come si può intuire dal sottotitolo, si ispira ad uno dei luoghi comuni più utilizzati all’interno della sci-fi: gli alieni in realtà sono sulla terra da migliaia di anni ma preferiscono mostrarsi come il lupo mannaro e il conte dracula in modo da non far scoprire mai la verità sulle loro solite mega-cospirazioni.
Visto che la serie a quanto pare aveva incontrato discreti consensi in USA, i produttori decisero di farne un action adventure per N.64, Playstation e per buona misura anche GBC. Come già accaduto molte volte in passato, la versione N.64, i cui primi e unici screenshots sono apparsi nell’estate del 2000, non ha mai visto la luce. Impersonando i due protagonisti del serial Nick Logan e Sh’Linn Blaze, dovevamo cercare di investigare le conspirazioni in cui erano coinvolti gli alieni facendo attenzione nel contempo a mantenere segrete tali indagini.
Sembra accattivante come premessa, ma la versione Playstation, identica a quella che doveva essere la release N64, risulta essere un gioco veramente mediocre, ripetitivo e lineare per quanto riguarda il level design, e soltando due mini-games a cercare di rimediare alla scarsa varietà delle varie conspirazioni.. Anche la grafica, che in teoria doveva essere uno dei punti di forza per la sua particolare estetica, rivela che ci vuole ben altro che una ricercata stilizzazione per creare comparti tecnici originali e godibili. Corollario: Per una volta siamo quasi contenti che un titolo Nintendo 64 non sia stato rilasciato. [/spoiler]
Spooky is a cancelled action game that was in development by ICE (International Computer Entertainment), shown for the first time in October 1997, but later vanished without any official statement. The gameplay was going to be somehow similar to Freak Boy, another unreleased Nintendo 64 game. The player would had to save a bizarre alien world, from the menace of the “ArchMorph”, an evil alien race survived after a major disaster. The screenshots in the gallery below seem to be taken from a target render, as the graphic looked a bit too much nice for a N64 title.
As in Freak Boy, the protagonist would have been able to mutate into three different forms, to resolve puzzles and to fight better. In the game’s levels we had to collect 30 pieces of a mirror, to be able to “absorb” the evil Arch-Morph, transform into it and be able to win the fight. Sadly Spooky was never finished, probably because ICE never found a publisher interested in the project and the N64 software market was in serious decline at the time.
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