Catroots is perhaps one of the most mysterious projects ever created for the N64. The first (and only) video, a tech demo from which the pictures that you see in this page were taken, was shown at the E3 2000, but no informations were released at the time, and even the Nintendo employees at the stand didn’t knew anything about it.
Later, IGN was able to interview Miyamoto about the game. Mario’s creator revealed that Catroots was being developed at Marigul but an official announcement had yet to be made. Marigul (now known as Noise)was a second party created in 1996 to make games for the Nintendo 64 . In all these years, Marigul worked on very interesting projects, including Hey You! Pikachu, Doshin The Giant, Echo Delta (unreleased), Cubivore (Animal Leader) and Custom Robo. With such a curriculum, isn’t hard to image that Catroots was going to be very original, but after E3 the game got quietly cancelled.
From the video it seems that Marigul tried to recreate an episode of Tom & Jerry or Itchy & Scratchy: we see a rat that is trying in every possible way to eliminate a cat using hammers, ninja stars and a flamethrower. We do not know exactly what kind of game Catroots was supposed to be, although we can make some quick hypothesis.The eternal struggle between cats and mice might have led Marigul to develop an action game with strange weapons like Custom Robo, or an innovative simulation (see Cubivore) where the player,impersonating the cat, had to escape from a completely mad mouse.Unfortunately we can only guess. It is likely that Catroots will remain a mystery forever. The game was at end cancelled probably because of the forthcoming release of the Gamecube.
64 Wars is the cancelled “Wars” sequel that was planned for the Nintendo 64. The “Advance Wars” series became famous in USA and Europe thanks to the GBA games, but it was know to the Japanese audience since the NES, with the name of FAMICOM Wars, originally published on the Famicom back in 1988. The game is a strategic turn based RPG, where you’ll be fighting with your army against the enemy’s one, planning carefully your strategy moves.
Hudson started working on the Nintendo 64 version even if the rights of the “wars” series were always been a property of Intelligent System, but Nintendo decided to let Hudson to work on the game for this particular occasion. Unfortunately, little is known about the project: the images in the gallery below are taken from various japanese magazines and the game was shown in non-playable form at the Nintendo Spaceworld 1999.
The style of 64 Wars seems to have been a lot like the previous episodes: a 2D map was used for the troop movement, while the battles were shown with a 3d engine. The most interesting part of the 64 version would have been the possibility to connect the N64 game to the GameBoy game.
GameBoy Wars 2 was developed by Hudson’s team too and it was published only in Japan. The GB title was able to connect to the N64 version with the GB Transfer Pack (a peripheral originally used with Pokemon Stadium) that could attach a GC cart to the N64 pad memory card port. With this expedient, people could have been able to begin a match of Wars on the N64, then continuing it on the GB and finish it back on the home console.
In the end 64 Wars has been cancelled without any official explanation, but it’s intriguing to think that inside the GB cartridge is still possible to access to the N64 Linking options, which was never used. Maybe the passage of rights between Intelligent System and Hudson caused some kind of problems, or maybe the N64 game didn’t match Nintendo’s quality standards.
Thanks to Linkx111 for the contribution!
[spoiler /Clicca qui per la versione in Italiano/ /Nascondi la versione in Italiano/]La serie Advanced Wars, divenuta famosa in occidente grazie alle versioni per GBA e DS, è invece nota al pubblico giapponese fin dai tempi del NES, con il nome di Famicom Wars, uscito nel 1988. Il gioco è un classico rpg strategico a turni, in cui far combattere le proprie armate contro numerosi nemici, studiando attentamente le mosse da compiere. Con l’uscita del Nintendo 64, Hudson ha cominciato i lavori su di una versione a 64 bit di Wars, chiamata con molta originalità “64 Wars”. La saga è sempre stata sviluppata dagli Intelligent Systems, ma in quel periodo Nintendo passò i diritti ad Hudson. Purtroppo non si hanno molte notizie a riguardo: le foto che trovate qui sotto sono state recuperate da alcune riviste Giapponesi dell’epoca ed il gioco è stato presentato in video allo Space World 1999.
Lo stile di 64 Wars sembra molto simile agli altri capitoli: una mappa in 2D per lo spostamento delle truppe, con l’unica differenza dei modelli 3D per i filmati degli scontri. La caratteristica più interessante della versione Nintendo 64, sarebbe stata la possibilità di collegare il gioco con l’episodio per GameBoy.
GameBoy Wars 2 è stato sviluppato anchesso da Hudson, ma al contrario di 64 Wars, è uscito realmente nel 1998. Il titolo per GB poteva essere collegato con i salvataggi della versione N64, grazie all’utilizzo del Transfer Pack (un aggeggio che si collega alla porta Memory Card dei Pad N64). Sarebbe stato così possibile iniziare una partita sul Nintendo 64, trasferirla su GameBoy per giocarla in giro ed in seguito finirla di nuovo sulla console da casa.
64 Wars è stato però cancellato senza dare spiegazioni, ma è affascinante pensare che nella cartuccia di GB Wars 2 esistano ancora le opzioni per il collegamento al Nintendo 64, ormai impossibile. Forse il passaggio dello sviluppo da Intelligent Systems a Hudson è stato la causa di qualche problema di organizzazione, oppure i lavori svolti dal team non raggiungevano lo standard sperato da Nintendo. [/spoiler]
Wave race is one of the most interesting beta for the nintendo 64, because they changed completely the original concept. In fact,The Shoshinkai 95 build, that we can see in the screenshots in this page, featured motor boats instead of jet skies, unlike the original wave race for the gameboy. The track design is very early, even though we can see some resemblances with the final versions, such as the stage with the houses that looks like a beta of the secret track of Venice.
The number of competitors was greater, perhaps because the advanced physics of the sea had not yet been implemented in its entirety and thus the engine allowed more polygonal models on the screen at the same time. Of course, the main gameplay (pass on the side of the buoys) wasn’t created yet, but the motorbots were capable of real-time morphing, as you can see in the video linked in this page. At E3 1996 Nintendo finally presented the version of the game that we all played all these years
[English translation by yota]
[spoiler /Clicca qui per la versione in Italiano/ /Nascondi la versione in Italiano/]
>Wave race 64 è una della beta più interessanti per gli appassionati, visto che si tratta uno dei titoli per Nintendo 64 che hanno subito più cambiamenti rispetto al concept originale. La versione presentata allo Shoshinkai 95, infatti, come potete vedere dagli screenshots presenti in questa pagina, utlizzava motoscafi piuttosto che jet-sky, a differenza dell’originale Wave Race per Game Boy. Il track design era inevitabilmente diverso, sebbene si possano notare elementi riutilizzati nel titolo definitivo, come il percorso con le case che sembra una beta del track segreto di Venezia.
Anche il numero di concorrenti era superiore, forse perchè l’avanzata fisica del mare non era ancora stata implementata nella sua totalità e permetteva un quantitativo di modelli poligonali maggiore. Non sono poi ovviamente ancora presenti le caratteristiche più interessanti di Wave race, come le boe da seguire, le varie evoluzioni con i personaggi, o anche solo l’intensa sponsorizzazione di diversi brand, che rappresenta qualcosa di decisamente inusuale per Nintendo 64. All’e3 1996, a poche settimane dal lancio del Nintendo 64, venne comunque presentata la versione definitiva, quella che abbiamo giocato e apprezzato in tutti questi anni[/spoiler]
Early beta screenshots of Paper Mario / Super Mario RPG 2 showed that Poochy was going to play some sort of role in the game. Another screenshot showed that Nep-Enuts were going to be in this game also. Also the early version of Forever Forest showed that it would be much smaller, with all the forest’s trees having sinister faces. Paper Mario was also originally going to be named Super Mario RPG 2, though due to complications involving Square Enix, the makers of Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars, the name was changed to Super Mario Adventure and later Paper Mario. Also, it was originally in development for the failed Nintendo 64DD. However, it was released in cartridge. A screenshot had also shown a strange, beta Whale. [Info from Mariowiki]
Also, in an Iwata Asks interview, they shared a super early Mario RPG 64 concept:
Yeah, we really did. And most of all it was a Mario game! We couldn’t determine the route to take with visuals. At first, we broke into teams and worked in parallel on making about three sample models.
Oh, it’s from 15 years ago on March 5, 1997.
It’s made of 3D polygons, but I drew it to have an atmosphere like that of a picture book transplanted into a video game—with paper-thin 2D background and characters.
[Thanks to Henrique Resende for the contribute with some images!]
The beta version of Yoshi’s Island 64 (later called Yoshi’s Story) has some graphic differences, various minor changes in the level design and a removed “underground” level. This beta level had a black background, water and giant mushrooms, as well as some enemies that are bigger than the ones in the final game. The soil was covered with moss and we can notice huge flying bubbles that Yoshi was able to move.
Jose Felipe Riveros Navarro noticed that in the second beta video there are early Shy Guys that are smaller than the final ones, a beta version of the jungle hut stage at 0:06 – 0:07 and at 0.11 a “?” block is moving in a different way than the final version. In some images from the Yoshi’s Story japanese commercial there are some differences too: changed background, the colors of the “tall tower” and the sun, the heart is a little different from the final one.
Also in and old Japanese commercial about Yoshi’s Story, you’ll notice Yoshi had a different, more girlish voice (behind the 0:15 mark:). Of course, since this was the first game where Yoshi had an actual voice, he might have sounded a whole lot differently today. Thanks to Yosher for the contribution!
[spoiler /Clicca qui per la versione in Italiano/ /Nascondi la versione in Italiano/]La versione beta del secondo gioco di piattaforme dedicato a yoshi (yoshi’s island 64) rispetto alla versione finale (yoshi’s story) presenta alcune differenze soprattutto a livello grafico, niente di speciale, le immagini difatti si commentano da sole, oltre naturalmente ai due loghi ben diversi tra loro alcuni elementi grafici sono cambiati leggermente nella versione definitiva.
A livello strutturale, tralasciando piccoli cambiamenti nel design dei livelli inutili da menzionare, è ben più importante notare come un livello di gioco sia stato completamente cancellato, dai video e dalle immagini beta notiamo che il look di questo sia molto “underworld”, dando quindi un senso di irrealità e di fatato, lo sfondo è nero, a terra vi è dell’ acqua, vi sono funghi giganti, e anche alcuni nemici sono più grandi del normale, il terreno è composto da composizioni di terra dalla forma sferica ricoperte da muschio, sospese per aria troviamo delle bolle enormi, che yoshi può spostare.
Rilasciato nel ’98, yoshi’s story è stato ed è un gioco indimenticabile, irripetibile, purtroppo molti ai tempi lo snobbarono, forse aspettandosi un vero e proprio seguito di yoshi’s island per snes o un gioco più longevo e meno facile.[/spoiler]
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