Looking Glass Studios

System Shock 2 [Dreamcast – Cancelled]

System Shock 2 its a FPS originally released in 1999 for PC developed by Irrational Games and Looking Glass Studios and published by Electronic Arts, in may 2000, a week after Looking Glass Studios closed doors, Vatical Entertainment announced a dreamcast port for a end year release, the port was being made by Marina Games, and they missed the release date, in 2001 Vatical said that the port was still in development, but no release date was given, in the end the game was cancelled, and Marina Games closed without a game made or ported, the possibly reason was SEGA decision to exit the console market.

In april 2010 gamer_s from dreamcast-talk forum found in his devkit, a System Shock 2 and Thief 2 folders, while System Shock 2 could be bootable, Thief 2 was in very early stages and lacked many of necessary dreamcast files, the devkit was from a Eidos employee, in 9th september, to celebrate the 11th anniversary of dreamcast in USA, gamer_s released the files, they can be downloaded in this link http://dreamcast-talk.com/beta/

Sadly the port was at beginnig of development too, loadings are very long (about 5 minutes or more), slow framerate, no HUD and you cannot open doors.

Thanks to Vicente for the contribution!

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Wildwaters (Extreme Kayak) [N64 – Cancelled]

Wildwaters (also know as “Extreme Kayak” and “X-Stream”) is a cancelled racing game that was in development by Looking Glass Studios for the Nintendo 64 in 1998 / 1999. The project was announced at E3 1999 by Ubisoft (that was interested as a publisher) while the studio was working on Destruction Derby 64 (published in the same year), but sadly it was never finished.

Wildwaters 64 was very promising as Looking Glass were able to create an engine with real physics running for the waterflow through the river on an N64, but it needed more time and love which eventually ran out. Five different gameplay modes, including Arcade, Time Trial, Championship, Finals and Versus Battle were planned for the game.

Some months later, on May 2000, Looking Glass Studios went out of business during a financial crisis related to their publisher at the time, Eidos Interactive. Wildwaters / Extreme Kayak vanished forever, along with their other promising N64 racing game, Mini Racers.

There was another cancelled water racing game titled “Wild Water World Championships” that was planned for the Nintendo 64, but it should not be confused with this one as WWWC was developed by Promethean Designs.

Thanks a lot to Les Betterley for the help in preserving some images from this lost project!

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Mini Racers [N64 – Cancelled]

miniracerlogo.jpg

Mini Racers is a cancelled 96Mbit multiplayer racing game that was in development by Looking Glass Studios for the Nintendo 64. The project was announced in 1998, but unfortunately it was delayed many times and in the end in was never released. Mini Racers was going to have a strong multiplayer mode, similar to Micromachines or RC PRO-AM, for up to four players, and it could have been an interesting addition to the already rich list of arcade racing games for the N64.

Mini Racers had several game modes in single and multiplayer, including a track editor to create your own course, and a random track generator. The radio-controlled cars could be given a turbo boost with a press of the Z button. N64 Magazine played an early version are voiced their frustration at the poor camera, though when they next played it at Spaceworld 1999 they noted the angle and viewing distance were now configurable and could even be played in a top-down view. Most likely the game was cancelled because it was shown in the final days of the Nintendo 64, when the new 128-bit consoles were almost out.

A playable beta / almost finished ROM version of Mini Racers was leaked online in April 2012 , thanks to olivieryuyu

Thanks to Gilgalegrouik for some of these images!

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