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RS Links: Miyamoto talks about the removed Mario 64 coop

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Robert Seddon has linked us to an interview with Shigeru Miyamoto that was published on Wired. In one of his answers, Miyamoto talks about the removed coop mode that was supposed to be included in Mario 64:

Wired.com: You said you had the idea to do a four-player Mario game for a long time. Had you ever actually done any prototypes of such a game on other hardware?

Miyamoto: With each (Mario) project, we do different experiments. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do. We’ve done games in the past where we’ve had the idea and worked on it. But with side-scrolling games, the challenge was that the screen continues to scroll forward, and what happens when the other player falls off the screen? With Mario 64, we had an experiment that took advantage of the idea of the screen growing larger and smaller depending on how far apart the characters were. So we had Mario and Luigi running around in that 3-D world, but we ended up not using it. […]

Wired.com: Why did you decide not to use that Nintendo 64 game with Mario and Luigi?

Miyamoto: Ultimately, it’s the idea of processing speed and working within the constraints of the hardware. The DS Mario 64 had a mode with something similar to that, where you were playing with four characters.

I wonder if he really meant the original “Mario 64” when he was talking about Mario & Luigi in the prototype, as he could have got confused with “Mario 64 II”. Infact, his phrase is similar to an old comment about M64II (as we can read on Super Mario 128 Central):

Well, for over a year now at my desk, a prototype program of Luigi and Mario has been running on my monitor. We’ve been thinking about the game, and it may be something that could work on a completely new game system. – Shigeru Miyamoto on Mario 64 II, November 1998

Thanks to Robert Seddon for the link! 

Milo and the Rainbow Nasties [XBOX/PS2/GC – Cancelled]

Milo and the Rainbow Nasties was going to be an action  game / platform in which the player would had to bring the colors back to the world after some weird bugs consumed it all. Originally the game was in development by Warthog Games for the XBOX, Playstation 2 and GameCube, but then it became a Gizmondo exclusive (as it happened with Johnny Whatever), untill its final cancellation. In February 2006, the owners of Warthog, Tiger Telematics, went bankrupt and therefore all their games were cancelled.

The concept of this game was never detailed considering it had a short lifespan, the gist of the plot was the world in which the player was in is overcome with darkness / bug creatures. The player was to clean this world using color, the concept was very similar to Super Mario Sunshine.

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Mirror’s Edge [PS3/X360 – Proto / Beta]

Mirror’s Edge is a first person platformer video game developed by DICE (EA Digital Illusions CE) and published by Electronic Arts. The game was released on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in November 2008. [Info from Wikipedia] Before working on the real game, DICE tested the first person movement with a target render / prototype video, using canned animation as a target of how it would feel in the final game.

At this stage Faith was a male and it still had a gun. DICE held a presentation of the game at GDC09 and shared a proof of concept video with the fans as a “documentary” of the  development of the project. Also, in the beta version we can notice some minor differences in the level layout. You can find some more info on X-Cult!

As mentioned in the bonus section of the game, a prison level was cut from Mirrors Edge for unknown reasons. Some early concept arts of the characters can also be unlocked in the bonus section.

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Mirror’s Edge [Wii – Concept / Prototype]

In autumn 2008, DICE’s Mirror’s Edge was released on the Xbox 360, PC and PS3. However, EA wanted to expand on this concept and asked Backbone Entertainment to produce a small demo of the game for the Wii. A portable version of the game was pitched for the PSP and DS too.

Currently it’s still unknown whether a Mirror’s Edge game will ever be released on platforms other than PC, Xbox 360 and PS3.

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