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simulation

In 1997 Maxis announced Simcity 3000 and had a full trailer. The trailer was rendered full in game using the game engine. The trailer was not well received due to fan concerns that the game would be too powerful for then current gen hardware. Maxis later announced that the spring 1998 release would be pushed to Spring 1999. In under a course of 1 year, Maxis redeveloped the game from scratch, which turned out to be the game we got today. The full 3D aspect Maxis wanted for the simcity series finally returned 10 years later in the 2007 game, Simcity Societies.

The video below is the exact trailer shown at E3 1997:

The official reason for the delay and redevelopment was:

Originally, Maxis planned to make SimCity 3000 a full 3D game. Although employees thought the idea was impractical, the management pushed the idea. After a year of development, the game was graphically on par with SimCopterand Streets of SimCity. The game was displayed at the 1997 E3; the experience is still considered an embarrassment and the game was expected to fail at the time.
Later, in 1997, EA acquired Maxis. Luc Barthelet was assigned as general producer to Maxis. He decided that 3D graphics weren’t viable and brought Lucy Bradshaw to lead the project. The 3D graphics were scrapped in favor of sprite-based graphics. Instead of focusing on 3D, they expanded the core gameplay. This version of the game did better at the 1998 E3 and was well-received upon release.

The game that was scrapped would of featured a sim mode and drive mode, which were not present in the final build. However, they were restored in Simcity 4. The full 3D aspect returned in the 2007 game, Simcity Societies.

More photos of the scrapped build can be seen below:

Thanks to the Simcity Wiki for the information.

Others, PC / MAC, Playstation, Saturn, Sega, Sony

F-Tank [Tech Demo – Saturn / PSX / PC]

Celine

22-03-2013

No Comments

In development by Titus Software, F-Tank was a 3D futuristic tank simulation planned for PC, Saturn and Playstation. The game main attraction was the compatibility with a Virtual Reality headset to enhance the player immersion. The VR-project was never released for these platforms, but it seems that the game evolved into “Metal Rage: Defender of the Earth“, released in 1996 for PC-Dos.

Scans from Mega Force issue 36, CD Consoles 4 – february 1995 + CD Consoles 8 – june 1995.

Thanks to Youloute for the contribution!

Image:

Microsoft, Xbox

Mafioso [XBOX – Cancelled]

monokoma

13-02-2013

1 Comment

Mafioso is a cancelled strategy / simulation game for the original Xbox, in which the player was going to be an italian gangster, on his way to became the boss of the city. The project was created by Teleplan Development Studio, but probably they never found a publisher interested in the game. Teleplan was closed and Mafioso was never released. As we can read from the official press release:

Mafioso features advanced AI, incredibly detailed characters and vehicles, a complex reputation and diplomatic system, a feature-rich economical structure with legal businesses, money laundering operations and illicit activities, all set up in a huge 3D urban environment.

Images:

M2 / 3DO, Others

World Builders Inc. [3DO – Cancelled]

Celine

10-01-2011

5 Comments

When 3DO was first revealed in mid 1993 among the games presented by Electronic Arts to support the system there was a nice sci-fi simulation called World Builders Inc. Not much is known about it however in September 1994 the game was already on hold for unknown reasons and in the end it was never released. If you know something else about World Builders Inc, please let us know!

Images from Edge issue 1, EGM issue 48, GameFan issue 1-9 and 1-11, Player One issue 33.

Images:

Nintendo, Nintendo 64 & 64DD

Jack and the Beanstalk [N64 DD – Cancelled]

U64 Staff & Contributors

29-10-2010

5 Comments

Jack and the Beanstalk was a game being developed for the Nintendo 64 Disk Drive. It was originally advertised in February 1995, but was not heard of again until February 1998, when more details of the game’s development emerged. However, the game was never released, and very little is known about its specific operation.

Presumably this intriguing game was similar in plot or gameplay to the traditional fairy tale of Jack and the Beanstalk. Unfortunately, we will probably never know for sure.

As Jack slept, the beans germinated in the soil, and by morning a gigantic beanstalk grew in their place. When Jack saw the huge beanstalk, he immediately decided to climb it. He arrived in a land high up in the clouds that happened to be the home of a giant.

Jack and the Beanstalk was being developed on the second floor of the Nintendo Kanda building, under the supervision of HAL Laboratories, by a team of ten or more employees, lead by Youichi (Yoichi) Yamamoto. Yamamoto, originally a construction designer, was one of several non-video game-industry personnel selected to work on the project by a panel of four important Nintendo figures: Shigesato Itoi, Satoshi Iwata, Kouichi Nakamura and Shigeru Miyamoto himself. It is not clear why Nintendo specifically sought out professionals from other fields to work on Jack and the Beanstalk.

The game was slated as being a brand new type of video game, and one that utilised the features of the N64DD to their full extent. Although the game was never completed, many of its flagship features eventually found their way into different games, such as Pokémon Snap and EarthBound 64.

As we can read on Kotaku:

“Originally, Pokémon Snap for the Nintendo 64 system wasn’t a Pokémon game,” recalls Nintendo president Satoru Iwata, “but rather a normal game in which you took photos, but the motivation for playing the game wasn’t clear.” […] Game designer Masanobu Yamamoto was working on Pokémon Snap, and he initially had a negative reaction to the addition of Pokémon, because the characters replaced what he was working on. “That time, adopting the Pokémon world clarified what we should do and the direction we should head,” Yamamoto adds, “and I came to like Pokémon, so I felt like that had saved us.”

As noted by Andy, in the intro of Pokemon Snap, along with the “HAL”, “Nintendo” logos, we can see the text “Jack and Beans”:

From the credit list on Mobygames, JACK and BEANS seems to have been the name of the main team behind the game, which director was the same Yamamoto that lead the Jack and Beanstalk project:

JACK and BEANS
Director: Yoichi Yamamoto, Koji Inokuchi, Akira Takeshima
Designer: Shigezo Kawase, Takeyuki Machida, Masanobu Yamamoto, Shizu Higashiyama

Other possible features that were taken from Jack and the Beanstalk, could have been evolved in EarthBound 64 (a game that was also cancelled), as the N64DD’s internal clock was to be used to allow the real-time growth of planted in-game seeds. This mechanic seems to stem (excuse the pun) from Jack and the Beanstalk. It is also likely that the 3-day system system used in The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask is similar to how time would have been used in Jack and the Beanstalk. It is listed under “Simulation” in various N64 unreleased listings, which supports the idea of the player growing his or her own seed or seeds.

Thanks to Redstar and Celine for the contributions!

Sadly there are no images of Jack and the Beanstalk preserved for now.

Video documentario (in Italian):