Card RPG

Baten Kaitos 2 / 3 [Cancelled – Wii]

Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean is a now cult-classic RPG developed by Monolith Soft and tri-Crescendo, and published by Namco for the GameCube in 2003. A prequel titled “Baten Kaitos Origins” was published in 2006 directly by Nintendo, which a year later officially purchased the majority of Monolith Soft’s shares from Bandai Namco.

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Just before Nintendo’s acquisition of Monolith the team started working on the third Baten Kaitos, but the project halted when Namco sold them to Nintendo. We can assume this “Baten Kaitos 2” (as it would have been a sequel to the first game) would have been developed for Wii, as the console was released in late 2006 just a few months after BK: Origins. Yasuyuki Honne (director and producer for the Baten Kaitos series) unveiled some details about their “Baten Kaitos 3” on Twitter in September 2018, as translated by a ResetEra user:

“It’s been more than 10 years since the release of Baten Kaitos II, and even now it pains me that I continue to receive requests for a sequel. I think the statute of limitations has run out, so I can say a little bit about it. Immediately after the release of Baten Kaitos II, Namco (now Bandai Namco) worked on a sequel up until the pre-production phase, but just before Baten Kaitos III could become a reality, the story ended due to the circumstances of the involved parties.

If we made it, it would have been grand-scale game with settings at the bottom of the sea, on land, and in the sky. There’s a large amount of concept art for the sequel sealed away at Bandai Namco. Requests for a sequel should be directed not just to myself and Monolith Soft, but also to Bandai Namco.”

Unfortunately at the moment it seems unlikely that Bandai Namco would ever share or use concept art from this unrealized third Baten Kaitos project. The two released games sold poorly and even if Nintendo would have not acquired Monolith it’s possible that the game would have been cancelled anyway, just as it happened with the announced (and canned) “Baten Kaitos DS”.

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As we can read on Wikipedia:

According to Sugiura, Monolith Soft’s relations with Namco had undergone a negative change after Nakamura retired as head of Namco in 2002, three years before the merger with Bandai. The company underwent changes and Monolith Soft felt they were being given less creative freedom, and the newly-created Namco Bandai was less willing to take creative risks. The company then received consultation from Shinji Hatano, an executive director at Nintendo, who advised them to continue creating innovative projects. Spurred on by Hatano’s supportive attitude, Monolith Soft decided to break away from Namco Bandai to become a Nintendo subsidiary; this provided Monolith Soft creative freedom in exchange for software development exclusivity for Nintendo platforms. Nintendo’s purchasing of the majority of Monolith Soft’s shares from Bandai Namco Holdings was publicly announced in April 2007.

After the cancellation of the third Baten Kaitos, Monolith Soft developed and released many new games loved by fans, such as Soma Bringer, Disaster: Day of Crisis and the Xenoblade Chronicles series. 

Phantasy Star Online Card Battle [GameCube – Prototype]

At E3 2002 Sega , in conjunction with Nintendo, showed a new exclusive Phantasy Star Online game which had a focus on card based battles, named PSO Card Battle. In the end the game evolved and was released as Phantasy Star Online Episode III: C.A.R.D. Revolution for Gamecube. However what is little known is that when unveiled for the first time at that trade show, the game was a premiere title for a new Nintendo pheriperal: a small LCD screen attached to the system.

At its developer roundtable that year Nintendo revealed Sega new project with a brief trailer and Yuji Naka explained how the idea for the game sprung from Nintendo’s idea to develop a portable screen for the GameCube and create the ability to link four GameCubes together for portable multiplayer gameplay. GameCube linkup feature and portability weren’t the only reasons to use the quirky device in fact Nintendo kept secret the most amusing feature behind the screen that is the ability to display stereoscopic images without requiring special glasses.

Only many years later, when the company was ready to launch its new autostereoscopic handheld system, Iwata confirmed the true nature of the the portable screen showed at E3 2002. So it’s more than likely that PSO Card Battle was one of the first 3D games for Gamecube, the genre is ideal to show off popup graphics, along with Luigi’s Mansion and probably Metroid Prime ( another game displayed on the little LCD screen in that faithful event ).

Thanks to Grooveraider for the brief clip.

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DT 64 (Bloodmaster) [N64 – Cancelled]

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We dont have many informations on DT 64 (also known as “Bloodmaster”): the game was supposed to be an Card RPG with an interesting connection-mode between the 64DD and the Game Boy. The game was in development by Marigul and Media Factory and probably it would have been published by Nintendo. The player had to collect a series of cards to use them in combat as in Magic The Gatering.

DT 64 was shown at the Space World 1999 in a non-playable form: there was just a logo and some text , with the GameBoy Link Cable,  that would have been used to connect the two Nintendo consoles. The GameBoy could have been used as a controller for the 64DD game, to check the card statistics and share data with a presumed Bloodmaster GB version. The two games, one for the 64DD and one for the GB, would had exchanged data to integrate parts of the story and unlock new levels / cards. Players would have been able to  play online with the 64DD Randnet Network, to trade cards and complete their collection.

In a scan from a Japanese magazine, we can read (thanks to Ultrama82 for the translation!): “A controller with a brain.” Even if the translation is not accurate because an ideogram is hide by the reflection of the light, making it unrecognizable, the concept is certainly intriguing. Sadly DT64 was cancelled and it vanished without any more screens or info.

italian_flag.jpg [spoiler /Clicca qui per la versione in Italiano/ /Nascondi la versione in Italiano/]Non si hanno molte informazioni su questo DT 64 (conosciuto anche con il sottotitolo di “Bloodmaster”): il gioco avrebbe dovuto essere un CARD RPG con interazione fra 64DD e GameBoy, sviluppato da Marigul e Media Factory. Il giocatore avrebbe dovuto collezionare una serie di carte ed utilizzarle nei combattimenti, un po’ come succede in Magic The Gatering.

DT 64 è stato presentato allo Space World del 1999 in forma non giocabile, attraverso una vetrina che mostrava il Link Cable, capace di unire le due console Nintendo. La console portatile avrebbe potuto essere utilizzata come controller del gioco, per osservare sul piccolo schermo le statistiche raccolte ed interagire con una presunta versione GB di Bloodmaster. Le due versioni, quella per 64DD e quella per GB, scambiavano fra loro i dati, per integrare parti della storia e nuove situazioni. Gli utenti sarebbero stati in grado di estrarre i dati della propria partita, collegarsi online con la rete Randnet del 64DD e scambiare le carte raccolte in DT 64 con gli altri giocatori in rete, per completare la collezione.

Nella terza immagine, dalle scritte in giapponese si legge: “Un controller con un cervello”. La traduzione è probabilmente errata perchè in un ideogramma c’è il riflesso della luce, che lo rende irriconoscibile, ma il concetto è sicuramente intrigante: quali idee avevano in mente per il gioco? Quali funzioni avrebbe permesso di realizzare il GameBoy come “controller intelligente”?

Traduzione dal giapponese di Ultraman82 [/spoiler]

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