Atari Karts is a Mario Kart-style racing game for Atari Jaguar published by Atari Games and developed by Miracle Designs Ltd. The game music was composed in 1994 by Fabrice Gillet in Protracker on an Amiga. Both he and the people who created the in-game artwork are not listed in the game’s credits at the [...]
The post Atari Karts [Jaguar - Beta] appeared first on Unseen 64: Beta, Cancelled & Unseen Videogames!.
Clockwork Aquario (Tokeijikake no Aquario in Japanese) is an arcade game developed by Escape / WestOne Bit Entertainment, the same guys behind the Wonderboy series, that was cancelled in 1994 after about two years of development.
In 2011 Johnny Undaunted, a lostlevels forum user, translated an interview with the game’s music composer
Sakamoto: It was going to be similar to Wonder Boy 3: Monster Lair. It was going to be a forced side-scrolling game, but with a bit of a cooperative multiplayer mode. It was originally going to be a 2-players game, but then we decided to add a third player as well. The three characters consisted of a boy (named Hack Rondo), a girl (Elle Moon), and a robot (Gash). The method of attack was by stomping on enemies and then grabbing them to throw them out. Oh, I think you could even catch enemies thrown by other players as well or something like that. You could even head butt thrown enemies thrown at you.
and some notes wrote by a japanese gamer who played Aquario in 1993 in a location testing
Aquario was a Super Mario Bros.-type side-scrolling action game. The controls originally consisted of three action buttons (“throw”, “jump” and “invincibility”).
Enemies are attacked first by jumping over them, rendering them unconscious. When the player moves towards an unconscious enemy, he automatically picks it up. At this point the player can throw the enemy by pressing the throw button. Enemies that are thrown flies off in a single horizontal line and are defeated by flying off-screen or being bashed to a wall. Thrown enemies can be used to knock other enemies unconscious as well. Moreover, by holding the joystick upwards, enemies can be thrown to the top of the screen as well.
Pressing the invincibility button makes the player invincible to enemies for a brief period. In the upper portion of the screen, there’s an invincibility gauge underneath the score display and when it reaches zero, the player’s invincibility will wear off. The gauge can be replenished by picking up items.
The key to the exit of each stage is kept by a sub-boss. By defeating the sub-boss, the player can obtain the key and use it to enter the boss’ lair. Each boss can be defeated by jumping over him repeatedly or by throwing his henchmen to him. The boss of the first stage in this version was a crab.
The game featured a 2-hit points per life system similar to Ghosts ‘n Goblins and Midnight Wanderers, in which getting hit once would make the player’s clothes look tattered, and then getting hit a second time would make him lose a life. The player’s clothes can be restored by picking up a health power-up.
* Impressions of the June 14 version.
This version was really difficult. I couldn’t defeat the crab boss after several plays. It was a pretty difficult experience for novice players, since enemies move quickly and a lot of fake-outs are used by them. The invincibility button was difficult to use as well. Because it was difficulty to predict what kind of dangers would face in these kinds of action games, getting through them was simply a matter of “pressing the button on time”. There were also unfair trap placement as well, such as the snapping trap in Stage 1. The game was still unfinished at the time, as there were bugs such as glitched text display during the playing instructions at the start of the game. However, the colorful graphics really caught my attention.*August 15, 1993
Another location test for Aquario was held, this time in the comic book shop near the Spo-Lan in Shinjuku Nishiguchi. The content of the game were greatly altered since the last location test, to the point that the game was almost completed.Impressions of the August 15 revision.
The number of action buttons was reduced to only two (punch and jump). This time, invincibility is only provided by a power-up item for a limited period (similar to the Starman in Super Mario Bros.). The invincibility gauge was replaced with a 1UP gauge that gives player an extra life when filled and it seems enemies are now defeated by knocking them unconscious with a punch, moving onto the unconscious enemy, and then throwing them. It was also possible to defeat enemies by simply punching an unconscious enemy further until he disappears . Since players were irritated that they were unable to defeat enemies quickly in the June 14 version, the resulting changes in this version made the game easier to play in longer periods. Perhaps because of this, the game was still deemed unsafe to release to the market yet.*August 29, 1993
Once again location testing was held in the Spo-Land store in Shinjuku Nishiguchi. I was wondering at this point why it wasn’t already released yet (how unfortunate).Changes made in the August 29 revision.
The differences are very minor this time. However, there seems to be a 2-Players competitive mode this time (there wasn’t one in the August 15 version). I have no idea how it worked because I never saw it in action. From what I remember, a few graphical details were changed, but I didn’t have much difficulty. Even though I wanted the game to come out already, I had a bad premonition at the time.
It was the last day I ever saw the game. I heard stories that another location test was conducted in the Spring of ’94, but I’m not sure what changes were done at that point. Because of this, I now associated location tests with the process of a game company coming up with the decision of having to cancel a game. I thought to myself I shouldn’t get too involved with location tests. However, I must consider myself fortunate to have the chance to had played this game due to my fascination with the company’s Monster World series.
Thanks to an hardcoregaming 101 interview with Ryuichi Nishizawa, director of Aquario and of almost all the Wonderboy games, we also know that the source code survived and the reasons behind the game’s cancellation:
“Aquario of the Clockwork” was the last arcade game developed by my company. I had been working and suffering for a long time to complete it, but the location test results were poor. It was an eccentric action game with three player simultaneous play. The graphics were quite excellent, but it was not released, unfortunately. The program is located in the archives of my company, so I do not have any screenshots.
The soundtrack of Aquario is available to buy here. For more informations check this hardcore gaming 101 blog post. Thanks to Youloute for the contribution!
Images:
The post Clockwork Aquario [Arcade - Cancelled] appeared first on Unseen 64: Beta, Cancelled & Unseen Videogames!.
F1 Racing Championship 2 is a cancelled racing developed by Video System and supossed to be published by Ubisoft. In the background Players can recreate historical races whereby they must meet various racing targets in conditions and situations that actually occurred in the 2000 FIA Formula One World Championship season. New special effects include motion blur, camera vibrations and different contrast levels.
It was scheduled to be released in the four quarter of 2001 for Playstation 2 and PC, but it was cancelled for unknown reasons.
Information & Images are obtained of Neoseeker.com
Thanks to Jesus Enrique Sanches for the contribution!
Images:
The post F1 Racing Championship 2 [Cancelled - PS2 PC] appeared first on Unseen 64: Beta, Cancelled & Unseen Videogames!.
Do you miss the U64 Forum? We are trying to find the best way to create a new forum, but we need your feedback!
As the old U64 forums were on the same server as the main site, they used a lot of resources and to moderate them was time-consuming.. also, as the U64 forums had to be removed from the U64 server, they are not accessible anymore.
So we are thinking about to use a Facebook Group as the new U64 Forum: that will not take any resource from the main U64 server and even if U64 will go down again, at least Facebook will stay online and the “forum” will be accessible (almost) forever.. what do you think?
We will collect all your feedbacks and decide what to do! Leave your comment below and tell us what you think about to use a Facebook Group as the new U64 Forum :)
The post The new U64 Forum? appeared first on Unseen 64: Beta, Cancelled & Unseen Videogames!.
Contra Spirits 64 is a cancelled shooter / action game in the contra series that was in development by Konami Computer Entertainment Osaka for the Nintendo 64. There are just a few info about this unreleased project as Konami never shown any official screenshot or concept art, but the title was in many list of games to be released for the N64 and the hopes went up for many Nintendo gamers that wanted a new and fun game for their 64bit console. Unfortunatly it seems that as the Nintendo 64 sold poorly in Japan, Konami decided to stop the development of the project and disbanded its team.
As we can read on IGN64:
Contra was planned, but the original team was disbanded and all team members now work on different projects,” said a company spokesperson. [Contra] has pretty much been shelved. [...] There is concern over the poor N64 console sales in Japan [...]
Contra 64 would have been a sidescrolling 3D game, with some sessions in which the camera would have switched angles or move behind the characters, possible for boss battles. There are some rumors that say that the Contra Spirits 64 concept was resurrected and became Contra: Shattered Soldier for PS2, but as Contra N64 was in development in 1998 and Contra PS2 was announced and released in 2002, it’s hard to say if the 2 project have anything in common.
Below you can see some scans from old magazines that wrote about Contra Spirits 64 (if you have Next Generation Issue 29, Volume 3 May 1997 and can make a bigger scan of their N64 article, please let us know!).
Thanks to Celine and Contrapedia for the contributions!
Images:
The post Contra Spirits 64 [N64 - Cancelled] appeared first on Unseen 64: Beta, Cancelled & Unseen Videogames!.
Pinkie is a 2D platform game developed by Data Design Systems and published for Amiga in 1995. It seems that a port of this game was in development for the Super Nintendo but never completed for various reasons. Thanks to an anonymous contributor a playable version of Pinkie SNES was leaked and can be preserved, you can download it from here.
This is a developer build and has various debugging features turned on, such as the controller Select button will allow you teleport the character anywhere in a level and the map screen automatically unlocks the next level without you needing to complete the previous level. There’s lots of other bits in there as well – along with various parts that are completely broken such as the level exit effect which will cause the game to lose frames and never properly recover.
It works on the current batch of SNES emulators if you want to take a look.
Images:
Video:
The post Pinkie [SNES - Cancelled] appeared first on Unseen 64: Beta, Cancelled & Unseen Videogames!.
Space Jelly, also known as Moon Jelly (and originally called “A Fist Full of Credits”), is a cancelled game that was in development for the Nintendo 64 by Software Creations. The game’s world and settings were created by the Pickford Brothers as an original game concept, with concept arts by Steve Hanson. Initially Space Jelly / Moon Jelly wasn’t really a platform-specific game, it was more about designing a main character, their world, backstory and art style, with the intention of creating a franchise which would lead to a series of games. Ste and John Pickford put together a reference book of characters, art, locations, while Richard Kay (Software Creations managing director) was trying to sell the concept to various publishers, before any actual game development began.
In 1995/1996 the Pickford Brothers left Software Creations and were no longer involved in Space Jelly, but Software Creations continued to work on the game, with Steve Hanson taking over as game designer. With only some concept arts and a design doc, it seems that Software Creations was not able to find a publisher for Space Jelly yet. In 1995 Nintendo of America announced that Software Creations entered in their “Dream Team” and as SC’s knowledge of the N64 hardware became more and more deep (SC also created the sound tools for the N64), they started to work on a Nintendo 64 prototype using the Space Jelly concept, with 3D models done by Deborah Graham. In the gallery below you can see one Space Jelly character, Johnny Forbidden, modeled by Francis O’Brien in his spare time inbetween other Software Creations projects.
Space Jelly became a self-funded Nintendo 64 project, a 3D platformer / action game, with ingame graphics tailored to the strengths / weaknesses of the N64 hardware. As we can read from the comments by journalists that saw a video of Space Jelly when Software Creations was showing it at gaming expos, the graphics were great, like a colorful Tim Burton game, with animations done by ex Cosgrove Hall staff.
Sadly Space Jelly was later cancelled, along with many others Software Creations projects for the N64, as Forever Dragonz, Dead Ahead, Blade & Barrel and Creator. Even with various teams full of talented people, probably Software Creations at that time had too many original prototypes in development and they had to cut some of them to switch resources to those project that had more chances to be profitable. In the end, the only games developed by Software Creations that were released on the Nintendo 64 were Carmageddon, FIFA 99, Hexen, World Cup 98 and a couple of Wayne Gretzky’s 3D Hockey: all their more interesting and original games were never released.
Thanks to Francis O’Brien and Ste Pickford for their contributions! Thanks to Celine for some of the scans!
Images:
The post Space Jelly [N64 - Cancelled] appeared first on Unseen 64: Beta, Cancelled & Unseen Videogames!.
As we wrote a couple of weeks ago, we are trying to find the best way to have a new U64 Forum without the main problems that the old forum had, especially to have it on the same server as the main website and the risk to lose all the discussions (as it happened when we had to delete the old forums) . We collected all your feedback and even if there are some concerns about using Facebook Groups as a community forum, there are some nice features that are super useful for us and we’d like to do a test to see how it will goes.
So we created the Unseen 64 Community Forum with FB Group group, to work together to search for beta and cancelled videogames, to discuss about them and to get in contact with other unseen games fans. You are free to join and post new discussions, ask for help to other unseen games fans to find and share more info, screens and videos.. what we’ll be able to achieve? If this test will be successful, this group could be the new official U64 Forum! We are waiting for you :)
The post Unseen 64 Community Forum Test! appeared first on Unseen 64: Beta, Cancelled & Unseen Videogames!.
Spellsinger is a cancelled arcade brawler which was in development in 1992 at Art & Magic, a belgian software house. As we can see from the video below, the game was clearly inspired by beat’em up titles such as Golden Axe. Sadly, according to one of the programmers that worked on the coin-op, Franck Sauer, the project was shelved because after 3 years of delay it became technically obsolete:
Unfortunately, as the game was progessing slowly because of a series of unanticipated difficulties, we had to pause the development several times to work on alternative, commercial-friendly games to keep cash flowing into the company. Ultimately, the project was canned because all of our resources were canibalized by those smaller ‘side’ projects. In the end the game had so much delay that it was rendered obsolete after about three years in the making.
From what we know the game’s source code is also lost forever:
Spellsinger is the only project we’ve worked on for which (to this day) almost every source asset has been lost. There are a couple of backup tapes and floppies here and there, but for now I have not been able to restore the majority of the data. The full prototype Roms and Board seem to have disapeared when the remains of Art & Magic moved along with Deltatec to a new building around 1996.
For more info check Franck Sauer’s Website.
Images:
Videos:
The post Spellsinger [Arcade - Cancelled] appeared first on Unseen 64: Beta, Cancelled & Unseen Videogames!.
Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Blacklist is an action / stealth game developed by Ubisoft Toronto, Ubisoft Montreal and Ubisoft Shanghai, published for PlayStation 3, Wii U, Xbox 360 and PC in 2013. As we can read on Wikipedia, in November 2010 Jade Raymond from Ubisoft Toronto announced that the studio was developing a new Splinter Cell game. During the Microsoft’s press conference at E3 2012, Splinter Cell: Blacklist was officially revealed with a beta video that you can see below and Jeff Wheaton noticed a number of notable differences (in chronological order of the video):
Very interesting nonetheless! Thanks a lot to Jeff for the contribution
Beta Video:
The post Splinter Cell: Blacklist [Beta - Xbox 360, PS3, PC] appeared first on Unseen 64: Beta, Cancelled & Unseen Videogames!.
Super Mario Strikers Charged (also known as Mario Strikers Charged Football in European and Australian territories) was released on the Nintendo Wii in 2007 and created by Next Level Games in partnership with Nintendo. It is the sequel to Super Mario Strikers on the Gamecube.
Before it gained the subtitle ‘Charged’ later in development (a reference to the game’s ‘skillshot’ charging mechanic), the game was initially going under the simple title of ‘Super Mario Strikers 2‘. The original title was scrapped before its first public showing at the “Wii Prove Our Promise” keynote in August 2006.
The original name and logo, before it became Mario Strikers Charged.
More art from early on in development on the game has been found by Unseen64, which offers insight into some of the smaller concepts played around with towards the start of the project.
At one stage, ‘ball launchers‘ were considered as an aesthetic addition to levels. These were machines that would have propelled multiple balls up towards characters during mega strikes. In the final game, these were dropped and only one ball model is shown when a player is able to activate one. Any additional balls earned during the attack’s initiation aren’t shown to the player (up to 6 can be gained at a time); this is a process which happens off screen. These small mechanisms weren’t implemented into the game, as they were viewed as an unnecessary detail that would have needlessly extended the animation sequence.
One of the concepts for the proposed ‘ball launcher’.
Another visual idea that the artists at Next Level experimented with towards the start of development were mechs and other vehicles, which would have decorated the perimeter of certain stages during gameplay. In most of the concept art, these are commonly seen operated by Toads. They would have been dotted around the sides of pitches, acting as security guards and performing other miscellaneous tasks. One concept, for instance, sees one of the Toads operating a crane-like contraption and another in a large digger.
One of the machines that did make it into the final product was a design featuring a Toad, riding a captive Blooper monster. These can be seen in the Wastelands stadium towards the side of the field, acting as security guards. However, some small revisions were made to it from its first iteration. The final model is marginally less detailed (likely due to the technical limitations of the Wii) and doesn’t feature all of the band aids and bandages seen in the concept. The reason for this was attributed to a desire to make the Blooper look less as though it was being used against its will. It is positioned noticeably more upright as well. An alternative, darker blooper design was created too, but this was not used.
A unused, darker coloured Blooper mech design.
The iconic metal football featured in the game was also subject to changes; many, in fact, according to the concept artist who designed it. It went through a total of 12 reiterations and grew much simpler over time. Originally, it was envisioned as an elaborate, high-tech sphere, made up of many different exhausts. More and more of them would gradually illuminate as it charged up, each one glowing a different colour. This would culminate with a bright, multicoloured glow effect on the pitch when at full power. The final version features comparatively few exhaust ports and radiates only one colour at a time. It begins a shade of purple and as it charges up, cycles through increasingly bright colours until it emits a gleaming white light upon reaching its capacity.
The first version of the metal ball.
In Mario Strikers Charged, all of the players are outfitted in armour, including chest plates and shoulder pads. This aesthetic choice debuted in Charged and was made partway through early beta development, after some experimentation by its concept artists. Initially, character models were drawn much in the style of the game’s predecessor, Super Mario Strikers, in which the characters are seen wearing fairly standard football kits.
Shy Guy’s early uniform design.
At one point, the artists toyed around with the level of armour each character would have equipped, as well as certain other details. A good example of this is seen in how the Kremling goalkeeper‘s character model evolved over the course of its creation. The concept artist responsible for it tried a variety of different armour/outfit configurations on the road to deciding upon the finished model. Shin guards, 4 different types of gloves and even alternative footwear with large metal claws were among some of the considerations. Ultimately, the artists went with a barefooted model featuring metallic gloves and a heavily armoured torso, including a wire frame mask.
Just some of the many revisions to characters made during conceptualisation.
It is possible that that the game had some alterations made to its initial stage selection. One unused piece illustrates a scrapped concept for an unnamed stadium set inside a futuristic city. Surrounding a relatively standard, green five-a-side pitch was a darkened seating arrangement held together by metallic structures and a myriad of exposed wiring. In the immediate distance, a white dome is visible with satellites peering out of it. The level idea was scrapped for unknown reasons, but similarly themed sci-fi locations were made available in Charged, such as ‘Galactic Stadium’.
Scrapped futuristic stadium concept.
One other deleted concept was the idea of a playing field set on top of an enormous aircraft. The untitled ship sports four horizontal propellers to keep it aloft and a large front-facing cockpit design somewhat reminiscent of a stealth bomber. Whereabouts this ship would have travelled to or been stationed at in the Mushroom Kingdom throughout the level was never decided. The motivation for abandoning this stage design is unknown.
Another cut level, set on a large airship.
It’s worth noting that some minor adjustments were made to the final stadiums over their first visualisations, too. The Sand Tomb level in Charged is situated in the middle of a remote, scorching desert. Whereas in its concept art form, it seemingly takes place in a canyon surrounded by a distant jungle vista. Also visible are some grey temples with ancient Egyptian-esque architecture. We can only speculate as to why this change was made, but it would seem likely that this was another decision influenced by the Wii’s restricted hardware capabilities. The baron surroundings of the pitch in the final version are comparatively less intricate. It’s possible this was done to preserve the performance and consistency of the graphics.
A previous incarnation of The Sand Tomb.
Images:
The post Super Mario Strikers 2 [Beta / Concept - Wii] appeared first on Unseen 64: Beta, Cancelled & Unseen Videogames!.
Mario Takes America is a cancelled action platformer game that was in development from 1992 to 1994 at the Toronto-based Cigam Entertainment for the ill-fated Philips CD-I console. This was intended to be the third Mario game planned for the CDI, following Hotel Mario and the unreleased Mario Wacky Worlds. It would have formed a trilogy of Nintendo-licensed Mario games published by Philips, just like the infamous Zelda CDI trilogy: Zelda’s Adventure (by Viridis), Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon and Link: The Faces of Evil (by Animation Magic).
Mysteriously, while even the unfinished Wacky Worlds gained some exposure from savvy prototype hunters online, Mario Takes America was since forgotten by the wider world, fading into obscurity, and until recently, next to zero information has been available on it. However, thanks to an anonymous contributor, research by Interactive Dreams, LiamR and a former Cigam employee on the AssemblerGames Forum, we are able to preserve some more memories about this unreleased Mario project.
“The idea behind Mario Takes America was to educate younger audiences about American culture, under the guise of a fun 3D platformer. It was to feature Mario traveling all over the country, running around in levels based off real life locations, such as New York.“
A video from the development of the game was reported to have been shown at the New York CDi 3 conference in October 1993 and at the 1994 Winter CES, according to Interactive Dreams, but unfortunately, this footage is still missing. We know from the cancelled Mario’s Wacky Worlds that unfinished CDI games are not particularly that great to look at or play, but we hope to be able to see some screenshots and footage from Mario Takes America one day.
In the beginning, a key part of the initially outlined concept of Mario Takes America involved levels made up of real life photography, overlaid by 2D sprites to illustrate characters. Describing the game’s intended visual style, one of the artist who worked it likened to the movie, “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?“. The photos and videos that made up the title’s locales were filmed on location and Cigam travelled all around the US to capture them.
Here are some preserved photos from the Mario Takes America team while they were filming the backgrounds:
“The film crew even used a helicopter to shoot some of the more tricky sequences. [...] We compensated by filming strictly defined POV areas like the Niagara River, open channels in the Louisiana Bayou and highways in Monument Valley. That was the best part – filming the background assets all over the US in camera cars, speedboats and helicopters.“
“Mario was rendered as he was in the cartoons. It was 2D Animation but we added shading to match wherever the light source was in the background film footage. [...] All the footage gathered in each sequence would be put into a Movie Premiere at Graumanns Theathre in Los Angeles – all about Mario’s travels.“
Here are some quick mockups made by us to show how Mario Takes America would have looked on the Philips CDI:
The former Cigam employee told us:
“Your mockups of the game are in theory correct, but the Marios were much smaller (except in the cinematic scenes) and of lower resolution.“
According to UK CD-i magazine issue 3 from 1993:
“Software company CIGAM has had to shoot original footage on location for much of the title, including scenes where Super Mario flies over the Manhattan skyline, falls over a waterfall and skims across a lake by boat.
The film crew used a helicopter to shoot some of the more tricky sequences, and it is believed this will be the first CDi game to use such dramatic footage.
The storyline involves Super Mario arriving in New York, traveling across the US and eventually arriving in Hollywood where he stars in his own interactive film. He travels by truck, train, car, aeroplane, helicopter and even a motorbike!
No release date has yet been given for the title, but early clips were on show at the CDi 3 Conference in New York in October. The film footage looks quite stunning and will bring a new degree of realism to the game.“
In Mario Takes America there were “first person view” (with Mario shown from front or behind) on-rail levels / sequences that used those filmed backgrounds, including:
All of these were coded and playable, but as the Philips CD-I was not enough powerful, the team had to degrade a lot of the animation to get the collision detection to work.
“We did manage to get Mario to work on several different levels in perspective. He could drive into the scene a bit and then back out to avoid obstacles, but it was a nightmare for the Tech Boys to code and keep him exactly on the highway or river sometimes.“
There were also 2D Platform sequences with images of real-world places as the backgrounds including:
Some more places that were recorded are:
As we can read from the memories of a former Cigam employee:
“As far as the gameplay went, the style of game was driven by the footage that was shot. The New York Skyline was a 2D side scrolling game shot out the left side of a helicopter. Most of the footage was shot moving towards the action, behind Mario. This was true for the Niagara Falls scenes, The Bayou, the Monument Valley Highway and the LA Freeway scenes. There was a fight on the top of a train with the camera pointed forward on one of the passenger cars where you could see the Koopas climbing up the side of the car in front of you. They would reach your position and fight with Mario. Each enemy had a different fighting style. “
“The Space Shuttle game had Mario using the Canadarm to both pull coins into the shuttle bay and to punch enemies and asteroids which could contain more coins. In the Hollywood Sign game you would chase electrical charges around the letters.”
The team behind Mario Takes America, Cigam Entertainment and their Cinevillage office, was founded by a Canadian investor named Howard Greenspan, that sadly died some years ago. It seems that there were only a couple of developers at Cigam and the very first programmer that was hired, quit the job after only 3 weeks, when he read the specs on the CDI. He said: “Our whole foundation is built on sand“.
The project was too ambitious and the CDI was a huge failure. Even Philips that were once interested in the game, after seeing that Cigam would have not be able to fulfill the original concept, decided to cut their funds. Cigam had to stop their work on Mario Takes America, but Howard was still hopeful to find another publisher with new funds and asked to the art department to replace all the Mario sprites with their own character called “Metal“.
“Metal was a Rock & Roll Star who looked like Dee Snider from Twisted Sister. He had a big Roadie Assistant named “Heavy” (I kid you not) who would help out from time to time. As I said we simply renamed all the sprites and had the programming dept plug the new sprites into the code. MRIONY04 became HEVYNY04 and so on.”
As crazy as it could sounds, even with this change the project was doomed: soon Cigam Entertainment closed for bankruptcy, and the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce had to proceeded to mortgage all the property of the company.
“In November of 1994, Cigam relied on those new policies to obtain a line of credit from CIBC to finance its operations. However, during the past summer, CIBC managed to mishandle the account and the claims and policies made previously no longer applied. As a consequence, the bank demanded additional security — a collateral mortgage on Mr. Greenspan’s personal property. Cigam’s banking arrangements deteriorated rapidly, causing immediate negative affects to the operations of the company.
During these events, Mr. Greenspan attempted to have CIBC value his company’s assets in accordance to the new policies it had claimed in April of 1994. He brought his concerns to senior executives and the CIBC ombudsman, but they claimed to have no knowledge of the new lending policies the president had declared. Eventually, this led to the bankruptcy of Cigam Entertainment Inc.”
This is how all the Mario Takes America assets could still be lost somewhere in the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce archives. Maybe one day some nice CIBC employee could rediscover them and decide to share this piece of gaming history with the world, but until then, we’ll still have to dream about the last, obscure Mario game that was never released for the CDI.
The post Mario Takes America [CDI - Cancelled] appeared first on Unseen 64: Beta, Cancelled & Unseen Videogames!.
Conscripts is a cancelled game that was in development by Software Creations for the Nintendo 64. There are not much info on the project and no images are left, as it was canned in early development, but we know that it was going to be an action / strategy game in which we had to guide to safety some soldiers, with helicopters and tanks, through various battlefield.
The idea was to have many little soldier characters on the screens (swarms of them) in a huge world, but they never got as far as creating the main 3D landscape. The gameplay could have been like a 3D Lemmings, but with a war theme. The Conscripts 64 team was composed by Marc Dawson (director), Weston Samuels (concept arts), Allan Findlay (3D engine) and Francis O’Brien (3D Artist).
The game was cancelled along with many others Software Creations projects for the N64, as Space Jelly, Forever Dragonz, Dead Ahead, Blade & Barrel and Creator, as they moved their resources onto other projects that were paid for by publishers. Even with various teams full of talented developers, probably Software Creations at that time had too many original prototypes in development and they had to cut some of them to switch resources to those project that had more chances to be profitable.
In the end, the only games developed by Software Creations that were released on the Nintendo 64 were Carmageddon, FIFA 99, Hexen, World Cup 98 and a couple of Wayne Gretzky’s 3D Hockey: all their more interesting and original games (like Conscripts 64) were never released.
Thanks to Francis and Allan for their help in preserving some info about this lost game!
The post Conscripts [N64 - Cancelled] appeared first on Unseen 64: Beta, Cancelled & Unseen Videogames!.
E-Ticket was a prototype pitch for a cancelled interactive tour game developed by Los Angeles-based Heavy Iron Studios Inc., which was commissioned by The Walt Disney Company in 2010. The corporation was looking to create a new game using Microsoft’s Kinect peripheral for the Xbox 360 that would allow players to explore a virtual interpretation of Disney World in Orlando, Florida. Although a completed version of this concept would later be developed by Frontier Developments and released under the name of ‘Kinect Disneyland Adventures‘ in late 2011, E-Ticket represents an early, alternative iteration of the project that took different creative liberties with the setting.
According to three former Heavy Iron Studios employees we spoke with, E-Ticket was conceived when Disney funded the development of a number of prototypes for a Disney World Kinect game at several different studios. Each team was assigned to work on a separate section of the Disney World park. The project, as a whole, was both a technical experiment, as well as a test to see which developer would perform best and be rewarded with a contract to work on the full game.
“The original premise was to build a virtual Disneyland that kids could walk through from the comfort of their own living room.“
E-Ticket took place in the ‘Adventureland’ segment of the resort. Players could create their own avatar and freely explore the environment through a Kinect interface, interacting with various famous Disney characters, like Winnie The Pooh. The main bulk of the prototype was a mini-game called ‘Safari Cruise’ (loosely based on Disney World’s Jungle Cruise), in which the player accompanies Donald Duck, clad in safari gear, on a boat trip through the middle of a jungle.
Donald Duck’s cut safari ride game.
A reworked Safari Cruise ride made it into the released Kinect: Disneyland Land Adventures, although it is very unlike the one seen here. E-Ticket’s version saw the player at the helm of the boat, steering it with physical kinect gestures as Donald. Whereas in the final build, a nameless, generic captain is in control of the ship and the player commands a water cannon, tasked with shooting various barrels and enemy wildlife.
The DLA (Disney Land Adventures) version is almost completely linear, fixed on a set course with no variants to it at all; as opposed to Heavy Iron’s game, which included a variety of hidden paths and shortcuts. E-Ticket’s offering was comparatively more detailed and substantial, as evidenced by this top-down concept art render of the ride’s map:
Graphically speaking, the prototype was objectively superior to the finished Disneyland Adventures game by a noticeable margin. It ran in Unreal Engine 3 and sported environments with more detailed textures, as well as more sophisticated lighting features. One of the developers who we spoke to speculated this change was the result of “time and budget constraints”. We can also speculate that it was an off-shoot of the direction of DLA, which included much bigger crowds of park-goers roaming the hub world. It’s very possible that the team sacrificed some potential visual flair in order to allow themselves the processing power needed to render these models without compromising the game’s performance.
E-Ticket’s greater graphical fidelity.
The E-Ticket prototype was never picked up by Disney, who instead chose Frontier Developments to create the full game; the developer behind such titles as LostWinds and Kinectimals. The specific reasoning behind this decision was never given, but a former Heavy Iron employee suggested to us that the company may have been discounted due to a lack of manpower in comparison with Frontier:
“A lot of people at Heavy Iron were pretty excited to work on it, but it was too big of a project for that studio to handle on its own.”
“I get the impression that Disney had hired several studios as a sort of test giving each one, one level. I thought we did a really good job but unfortunately we didn’t get the project.” – Two former Heavy Iron artists on the E-Ticket project.
The assets used to create E-Ticket were never released or re-used in Frontier’s title, but we were able to obtain a plethora of concept art and in-game images, thanks to an anonymous contributor with close ties to the project. Heavy Iron Studios’ work with Disney didn’t end with the prototype and the company went on to develop the Wii versions of Epic Mickey 2 and Disney Infinity.
Special thanks to Refurs for his contribution towards this article.
Images:
The post Disney’s E-Ticket [Xbox 360 - Prototype] appeared first on Unseen 64: Beta, Cancelled & Unseen Videogames!.
Stormbringer: Elric of Melniboné, is a cancelled Action RPG videogame which was in development on Windows PC and Dreamcast by the Russian team Snowball Interactive, and it was going to be published by US-based Octagon Entertainment.
Stormbringer was the second attempt in creating a videogame based on the character of Elric of Melniboné, the protagonist of several fantasy stories created by the English writer Michael Moorcock. The first attempt (that was also cancelled) was made by Psygnosis for the Playstation and it was simply titled Elric.
We have many info about this project, from various interviews with Sergei Klimov, Managing Director of Snowball Interactive. Here are some quotes from the interview on IGN RPG Vault Network, you can read the full text on the archived version of IGN RPG Vault, part one and part two.
Jonric: Please describe Stormbringer overall. What kind of game will it be? Are there other games you can compare it to?
Sergei Klimov: It will be a strong single-player experience based around the storyline and the lead characters. In terms of the genres, there’s the adventure part that’s essentially the storyline and dialogues and all kinds of biographies and mini-stories within the game, and then there’s the RPG heart of it all where you have all characters defined in a set of clear parameters and the realistic inventory system, and then there’s the part where you actually fight as Elric (tactics) and command your legion (strategy), go around the world and see places (exploration), make choices (quest) and it’s all linked together by the Elric character and his story. A true mix of genres since we’re creating whatever experiences are necessary for a particular chapter. And it’s going to be real-time, but not like a fighting game such as Revenant or Diablo – rather like Outcast where you have the initiative to engage or stand by.
Jonric: In your opinion, what will the game’s most important and strongest features be?
Sergei Klimov: I would say that by far we are trying to break away from the traditional “list of features” that would have a lot of big numbers and tech words and summ up the quantative side of the game rather than the actual quality. :) We’re trying to build a game around the figure of Elric, his character, his philosophy, relationships, strengths and weaknesses, the choices he has to make, and get a player to live through the part of the Stormbringer saga as Elric himself, which means having feelings and emotions and being passionate about the choices you will make along the way.
The most important quality of our game for me would be the fact that it must be played as one total experience with no genre limitations. The things you do as a player would change as you progress, handling the Melnobonean Court or talking to Doctor Jest is way different from taking a ship to the Wild Kingdoms or making an abmush on barbarian fleet. But the major point is that at the essence of the game we have Elric and his personality, around which we create such experiences as necessary to show the diversity and complexity. At the heart of the game we have the empathy of you and Elric the Damned Emperor. Yeah, make it the “empathy” — this would be a good definition of the main feature of the game!
[...]
Jonric: Which leads right into the major RPG elements in the game. What can you reveal about them this time?
Sergei Klimov: Well, in the first place you can interact with every character in the game, which means that they are a part of the real ingame world, which means they have their stats, skills, special abilities, etc., a complex of which defines their behaviour and interaction, so we are talking about a character-based universe where all things are developing as time goes by.
Every RPG is also about being able to change the world around, to take or drop things, and it can be tracked down to a proper inventory system that would be both logical and interesting to participate in. So expect to see a good amount of balanced items, each with a story of its own. In part that’s something we developed working on the historically-accurate Warlord. We would create a sword and go to our consultant and he would put us to shame by explaining why it won’t work, so we’re at the point where we’re putting as much thought in the design of all material things in the game as we’re putting into Dyvim Tvar and Elric. And obviously there’s more than a simple connection between Dragon Princes and their black armour, or the whole Melnibonean atmosphere and the colours of their clothing and fashions of Emperor’s Court.
The game will be based on the RPG system we developed for our Chronicles of Time set and which we’re using in Warlord right now. It’s not enough to have a character like a unit from Warcraft or Starcraft. I want to see his strengths, I want to know what makes him his unique self, I want to know his background story, want to see him developing, changing, reacting to my actions and the experiences he lives through. At the end of the day, every RPG is about the characters interacting with their world and bearing the marks of such adventure, and Elric is such at the very heart of the game.
Other interviews are available on GamesWeb (archived), GA-RPG (archived) and Gameland (archived, the interview is in Russian).
According to a press release by Snowball Interactive, the game was put on hold because it was impossible to find a global publishing partner willing to publish the game:
To cut a long story short, the original business plan between Snowball and Octagon called for us to develop a prototype and for Octagon to find us a publishing partner. Then, having secured such partnership, we were to continue the development towards release.
When it didn’t happen during the originally expected time, we’ve injected some internal funding, then some more and then some more again, but in the end there was still no global publishing partner willing to take on the project, and so we are putting the game on ice now until such time when our own resources will allow us to develop it without external funding or whenever we will be able to count on a publisher’s support from day one.
Sergei Klimov confirmed us that the game was canned in early stage of development, he also reported that Michael Moorcock didn’t like the outcome of the game. The Dreamcast version was going to be developed by a different team in Japan, but development never started.
Thanks to Sergei Klimov for the help!
Images:
Magazine Scans:
The post Stormbringer: Elric of Melniboné [Cancelled - PC Dreamcast] appeared first on Unseen 64: Beta, Cancelled & Unseen Videogames!.
Lately Patreon (thanks to Farel for the suggestion!) is becoming more and more used by small, independent gaming websites to rise support and monthly donations to be able to pay the site server and to create better content. Some good examples are HG101 and Tiny Cartridge.
Patreon lets readers support their favorite websites by becoming patrons, giving a small donation every month, automatically through paypal / credit card. Unlike other fundraising services (for example Kickstarter), which raise lots of money for a single big event, Patreon is for creators who publish online a stream of smaller works, like website updates, articles, researches, and need just little money every month. Empowering a new generation of creators, Patreon is bringing patronage back to the 21st century.
The new server that hosts Unseen64 costs about 300$ a year. U64 is an independent site. No money is generated from our work so we must pay each and every server bill ourselves, with the help of a few awesome supporters. Some years ago we had Google Adsense banners that helped a bit to get money to pay the server, but then Google banned us because we write about prototypes and rom-hacks, even if we don’t host those files on our server.
If you want to help Unseen 64 to survive and if you can donate some of your love every month, we would like to try to rise monthly contributions through Patreon. You can just donate how much or little you want, and you can cancel your pledge at any point if you’re low on cash or have a change of heart. Every cent is really appreciated and sent towards the U64 Archive. Patreon takes 5% and the creators cover the credit card transaction fees which are generally 4%, so we would see around $0.90 of every dollar.
We’d like to open different Milestone Goals, so for example if we are able to get 25 patrons to donate 1$ a month, we can pay the U64 server for another year and write weekly updates, if we are able to rise 100$ a month we could publish an Unseen64 Book with articles and insights about cancelled videogames (something like HCG101’s “The Untold History of Japanese Game Developers”, but with more engrish), if we are able to rise 2.000$ a month (LOL), we could pay our best contributors for more good articles and work on Unseen64 24/7 for daily updates on the site, deeper researches on lost videogames, create videos, interviews with forgotten developers, etc.
We also would like to offer special gifts for people that donate more than 1$ a month, for example we could share exclusive / early access videos with people that donate 10$ a month, to send a physical copy of our (potential) U64 book to who donate 25$ a month, to work on dedicated articles and special requests for who donates 50$ a month, and so on.
Before to organize a Patreon account, we’d like to do a poll to see if this idea could be useful to support Unseen 64. What do you think? Would you support U64 trough Patreon with 1$ or more a month? What would like to see as “special gift” and “Milestone Goals”? Give your vote and comment below!
The post Would you support Unseen64 with Patreon for 1$ a month? appeared first on Unseen 64: Beta, Cancelled & Unseen Videogames!.
Saints Row: The Cooler is a cancelled fighting game, which was in development for the Xbox 360 and PS3. It was being created by Heavy Iron Studios in Los Angeles and was funded by THQ.
“It was a brawler game. Go to a bar, pick a fight, smash a bottle over someone’s head” – Former Heavy Iron Studios artist
Work began on the title in March 2010 at developer, Heavy Iron. In partnership with THQ, the company sought to create the first Saints Row game controlled entirely by motion; a ploy to capitalise on the rising industry trend at the time.
Two versions of the game were planned initially: an Xbox 360 game using Microsoft’s Kinect peripheral and a PS3 port with Playstation Move support. The Xbox 360 was the lead development platform for The Cooler, as the team’s creative focus was very much on Kinect.
A team of around 40 people were put on the project, while the rest of the studio was occupied with another Kinect-centric project for Disney called ‘E-Ticket’.
We were able to get in touch with several people, a mix of both former and current employees at the developer, who shared some details with us on the game’s lifecycle. According to these sources, the title was a brawler set in the Saint’s Row universe and was, in contrast with the rest of the series, not an open world game.
“It was a ton of fun to work on because we got to use the original Saint’s Row locales as concept art, basically, and give them a redesign and a highly upgraded art treatment (since Saint’s Row was open world and our game was not, we could afford to devote more time and engine resources to artwork)”
One of the gritty environments of Saints Row: The Cooler
Despite it ditching the free roaming traditions of the previous games, The Cooler apparently offered a myriad of activities to experience. Its main premise was of motion-controlled fighting in various parts of the Saints Row universe, but players would have also been able to compete in poker tournaments and other miscellaneous mini-games.
Examples of its gritty settings include a number of run-down bars and a slaugherhouse. The majority of these were based off places from the first two entries in the Sants Row series, in addition to some original environments of Heavy Iron’s own invention.
“Basically, the Cooler was meant to be a Kinect-based fighting game, similar to The Fight: Lights Out (PS3), but in the Saint’s Row universe with lots of fighting matches in about 8 of the Saint’s Row locales, plus a few new locations we crafted, and a bar ecosystem where the player could order drinks, get lap dances, gamble, etc.” – Heavy Iron Studios developer
The combat mechanics of the game seem to have been relatively straightforward – a combination of well-timed blocks, kicks and punches performed by the player via the Kinect’s camera. During fights, the camera would have switched to a first person view, displaying the enemy head on.
A fight about to break out in one of the game’s earlier venues.
According to one animator, formerly of Heavy Iron’s Saints Row team, the subtitle of ‘The Cooler’ was the alias of the game’s central protagonist. The player would have assumed the role of a bouncer, “working their way up from the slums to higher class joints.”. He was given this label because “he was called in to COOL off problem situations”.
It is unknown whether or not players would have been able to choose the personality of the character, as they can with the avatar in other Saints Row games. However, one developer did tell us that there was option to customise his appearance and clothing.
The group responsible for The Cooler worked on the project for a total of six months, before THQ abruptly stepped in and cancelled it. As verified by a key member of the dev team, it was approximately 60% complete at the time of termination in September 2010. One member of the development crew cited “quality concerns” as the reason for its cancellation. It was originally being targeted for a release in mid 2011.
To the public, the game never received an official announcement and fell into complete obscurity. It was not ever shown to members of the press privately either. Strict non-disclosure agreements installed by the companies involved prevented the game’s existence from being discovered.
One of Heavy Iron’s former animators claimed to us that the developer retained some of the project’s assets for another production – UFC Personal Trainer: The Ultimate Fitness System. Released in 2011, this game began development approximately around the same time as The Cooler’s collapse. It apparently repurposed and reworked some of the motion control framework developed during work on the Saints Row title.
Given the fact that UFC Personal Trainer’s gameplay is made up of punch/kick/block mechanics in a first person perspective, very similar to the ones described as being a part of The Cooler; this certainly at least appears to have been the case. Another commonality of each game was that they both required Kinect and Playstation Move on their respective platforms.
Images:
The post Saints Row: The Cooler [Cancelled - Xbox 360, PS3] appeared first on Unseen 64: Beta, Cancelled & Unseen Videogames!.
Before to fully work on The Last of Us, Naughty Dog was planning to create a new, even more grittier Jak and Daxter game for the Playstation 3, but after the concept art team drawn some Jak and Daxter artworks to use in this “reboot” of the series, they thought that they would have more freedom to just create a new IP for the mature audience, and thus the project evolved to became The Last of Us. After Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy, Jak 2 and Jak 3, this project could have been the 4° title in the main Jak series (or even the 5th one if you consider Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier). In the end, Naughty Dog never released any new Jak & Daxter game for the PS3, only an HD collection with their first 3 PS2 games.
At the IGDA Toronto 2013 Keynote, Neil Druckmann (Creative Director & Writer from Naughty Dog) talked about this cancelled Jak & Daxter concept:
Our task was to reboot Jak & Daxter. We spent a lot of time exploring the world of Jak and Daxter and how we would reboot it; how we would bring these characters back, some story ideas that we were getting excited about.
As much as we like these concepts and exploring these fantastical worlds, we found the ideas that we were getting passionate about were getting away from Jak & Daxter. We were questioning ourselves, were we doing this for marketing reasons and naming something Jak & Daxter when it really isn’t Jak & Daxter, or were we really passionate about it?
As we can read at GameInformer:
Shelving the Jak and Daxter ideas meant the team could begin work on a fresh idea. Shedding the restrictions of an existing IP allowed directors Druckmann and Straley to let their creative juices flow and explore whatever they wished.
Some concept arts from this cancelled “Jak & Daxter 4″ project were shown by Neil Druckmann at the IGDA Toronto, in the “A Tribute to Naughty Dog: 30th Anniversary” exhibition in september / october 2014 and in the “Naughty Dog’s 30th Anniversary” art book, as posted by Junkie Monkeys!
Thanks to Loïc Caria for the contribution!
Images:
Video:
The post Jak & Daxter 4 [PS3 - Cancelled / Concept] appeared first on Unseen 64: Beta, Cancelled & Unseen Videogames!.
Before going bankrupt, Appeal, the same software house behind the unreleased Outcast II, developed a prototype for a new action game based on the Tintin comic books:
After the Outcast II debacle (see the related article here), we were offered a share buy-back option by our publisher (Infogrames) in exchange of a new pre-production contract around a Tintin game. As we had to keep our studio alive, we bought back the shares at a nominal price and got the contract started.
The budget was tight and the timing was short, so we tried to reuse a number of ressources from the Outcast II prototype and build on top of that. The game was to be fully 3D exploration with some action scenes and mini-games.
Unfortunately the publisher, Infogrames, couldn’t reach a deal with Moulinsart, the french foundation that manages the TinTin franchise, thus destroying Appeal’s last chance to recover.
For more informations check Franck Sauer’s Website.
Images:
Videos:
The post Tintin [PS2 - Cancelled Prototype] appeared first on Unseen 64: Beta, Cancelled & Unseen Videogames!.
The Wonderful 101 is an action game for the Wii U, developed by Platinum Games in partnership with Nintendo and was directed by famed Japanese designer, Hideki Kamiya, of Okami and Devil May Cry notoriety. It was released in 2013 and has since developed a small cult following among Wii U owners.
The game follows the adventures of The Wonderful 100, a team of superheroes, as they fight to defend Earth from an alien menace known as the ‘GEATHJERK Federation‘. Despite being released almost a full year into the Wii U’s lifespan, the project had in fact been in the works for a few years prior. As revealed by the staff who worked on it over the course of its development, its direction underwent some considerable shifts along the way.
As disclosed by Hideki Kamiya at Gamescom 2013, The Wonderful 101 began life as an entirely different entity. Kamiya’s involvement with the project started a few years earlier, when the President and CEO of Platinum Games, Tatsuya Minami, tasked him with creating an action game with a cast of some of gaming’s biggest icons. It was set to feature Nintendo characters primarily, as well as guest stars from third party companies.
The project in this form dates all the way back to 2011 and was planned to be developed not on Wii U, but on the Wii.
“At that time it wasn’t necessarily based on any specific platform. But when we took it to Nintendo, the discussions went from there, and we decided to put it on Wii.” – Hideki Kamiya, on the first iteration of The Wonderful 101 project.
Although it has been never stated which characters from companies outside of Nintendo were planned, Kamiya did elaborate on the main cast of this original vision at 2013’s Penny Arcade Expo. During an interview with Siliconera, he mentioned that Link and Mario were among those featured. This suggests that the two might have been the basis for the ‘Unite Hand’ and ‘Unite Sword’ moves, based upon the traits of either character.
“Initially, the idea was proposed by Mr. Minami, to create a game featuring Nintendo characters or other popular characters together in one game. With the idea of putting characters like Mario and Link into the same game, you end up with a situation where fans of Mario are forced to play as Link.“
Moreover, during Platinum’s panel at the event, Kamiya described one piece of concept art for the project, involving other Mario characters. He gave the example of a portion where Peach, Luigi and Yoshi attempt to grab hold of one another to form a bridge, with Mario hopping across the top of them, allowing him to traverse a large bottomless pit. One artist, Kibbles, has put together sketch for us to illustrate what this roughly might have looked like.
It appears that this idea might well have been the straw that broke the camel’s back. The director went on to to say that the people at Nintendo viewing this concept in particular was the point at which they decided the project could not be realised.
In October 2013, Nintendo released an Iwata Asks interview on The Wonderful 101, discussing the game with some of the team’s key members and the director described how Platinum’s Nintendo all star concept informed the direction of the overall project. He explained that The Wonderful 101’s ‘Unite Morph‘ ability was born out of a desire to balance out the amount of screen time each of the characters would have, in order to please the fans of each respective series. Just as they did in the final product, the characters would have joined together to form large structures, such as a sword or a hand.
Two examples of ‘Unite Morph’ from the final game.
Kamiya’s inspiration for this ‘Unite Morph’ mechanic came from two books he had read as a child. One of these was a story called ‘We Turned Into Monsters‘ (Kaibutsu Ni Nacchata) by Japanese author, Yasuko Kimura. The short novel was about a group of forest critters, who huddle together to form the shape of a giant monster, in order to fend off an actual monster, inhabiting a mansion.
On the other hand, he also recalled ‘Swimmy‘ by Leo Lionni. Similarly, this children’s tale focuses on a black fish called Swimmy, whose friends, a group of little red fish, are eaten by a large tuna. Swimmy, lonely, explores the ocean until he finds another group of small red fish. He teaches them to swim together, mimicking the appearance of a bigger fish, and eventually scaring away the malevolent tuna.
Swimmy – one of Kamiya’s inspirations for the game.
“As a kid, the idea that small, separate things could join together and become strong was really exciting for me. I feel like that’s where the core of this whole project came from.” – Hideki Kamiya.
Platinum’s vision for this video game all star title was never put into full development and not even a test prototype for it was produced, JP Kellams told us. According to him, conceptual documents were all that was ever created. When the developer presented their plan to Nintendo, Hitoshi Yamagami almost immediately declined the proposal, describing it as “impossible”, under the belief such a game would be overambitious; among other reasons.
“Setting the contents of the game aside, I’ve learned from experience that trying to squeeze in so many characters into one game to the point where they practically change shape, was impossible.” – Hitoshi Yamagami on Platinum’s Nintendo all star pitch.
As a result of not being able to get permission to use Nintendo’s characters, the project was shelved.
“As far as PlatinumGames was concerned, the project was all about the characters, so we stopped the whole project for a while, because we knew it would be difficult if we couldn’t get permission there” – Atsushi Inaba
Given Nintendo and Platinum’s continued reluctance to show any of the concept images for the game at this stage, even in their Iwata Asks segment; it is possible that the aforementioned third party guests were a part of the main team of characters and that there were pictures of them created strictly for internal purposes, without the permission of the license holders. When asked if he thought these images would ever be released publicly, JP Kellams replied simply with “nope“.
We also got in touch with Kamiya via his Twitter, where he revealed that the main character of this planned game would not have been Mario or another established all star, as you might expect. In actuality, the designer had in mind a brand new character created by Platinum. Upon being asked whether or not this enigmatic hero evolved into Wonder Red, the central protagonist of The Wonderful 101, he clarified that this was not the case and that the character was “lost forever“.
One user pushed him for more details on the concept’s character line-up, to which he had this to say:
Everyone. RT @RosaUrquhart Which Nintendo characters did you want in your pitched All Star game before TW101?
— 神谷英樹 Hideki Kamiya (@PG_kamiya) October 18, 2014
Several months later, Hideki Kamiya had just finished development on another ultimately cancelled concept and Platinum was keen to set him on a new project. After much insistence towards producer, Atsushi Inaba, that he wanted to resurrect the shelved all star game in some form, he was given the green light to work on it once again. Despite Nintendo taking issue with the first proposal, Kamiya was still determined to work on a title using that central conceit of separate, smaller beings unifying themselves to become something stronger.
The director devised the idea of using original superhero characters of Platinum’s own design and drew plans to present a second pitch to Nintendo. He made a special request to employ the help of Mai Ohkura, Bayonetta’s UI designer, to draft concept art for the protagonists of his new game; having been satisfied with their previous work together.
In the beginning, Kamiya’s vision for the superhero title involved a team of only five characters and was reasonably darker in comparison with the finished project from a visual standpoint. Ms. Ohkura and Kamiya were heavily influenced by “US comic book art” when imagining the initial look of the game, according to him at his PAX 2013 presentation.
The first character designs put together were for the game’s main hero, Wonder Red, and were considerably different from his final appearance. One, included a large blade placed on his back and a white helmet with a green visor. Another, featured a machine gun under his right arm and noticeably less hair.
Wonder Red’s weapons were removed soon after and the character’s hair was changed too. According to Kamiya, during his aforementioned panel at PAX, he personally suggested that Red “needed to have more hair” to Ohkura. The artist defended her decision, but Kamiya’s insistence won out and the hero was redesigned with a bigger head of hair. The mock-up which followed was much closer to the final product, though still embodying the darker tone of the project at this early phase.
Wonder Red’s beta look – much closer to his final design.
Concept art of the initially envisioned ‘Wonderful Five’ group is sparsely available, but they can be glimpsed upon in one render, which shows the team gazing out over a dark urban landscape, under siege by the invading alien forces in the distance. Upon closer inspection, they appear to be equipped with different weapons from the finalised Wonderful 100 crew and one of them even appears to be levitating, suspended above the ground.
A silhouetted peek at the original team.
Not long after conceiving of his new squad of heroes, Kamiya increased their numbers drastically, making a change that would impact the direction of development fundamentally. Up from the mere five of before, he imagined a team of one hundred defenders of justice, known as ‘The Wonderful 100’.
In the early conceptual stages of The Wonderful 100, Platinum considered each member of the squad having his or her own completely unique character design and gameplay ideas; many of which, ultimately ended up on the cutting room floor. Furthermore, around this time, the superhero titles of each were stylised as ‘Wonda-ONES’, as opposed to ‘Wonder Ones’, as they would later be referred to.
Kamiya’s early comic book inspirations are evidenced in a number of these concepts. Some of them possessed special abilities, such as ‘Wonda-FIRE’, who, clad in a fire fighter’s helmet, could conjure flames from his hands. ‘Wonda-RIDER’ was a motorcyclist, similar to Marvel’s Ghost Rider and ‘Wonda-STONE’ looked to be a large, muscle-bound warrior, whose body was composed of rock; similar to The Thing from The Fantastic Four.
Many of them border onto more zany territory. There was a centaur hero named ‘Wonda-CENTAURUS’, ‘Wonda-WING’, a pterodactyl-like creature; and even ‘Wonda-SATAN’. ‘Wonda-TIMER’ was a floating hourglass with disembodied, Rayman-esque hands and ‘Wonda-P’ was simply the ‘P’ from Platinum Games’ logo, donning a Wonder Mask.
It appears they also experimented with the possibility of duo characters, such as ‘Wonda-DOG & CAT’, two anthropomorphic animal fighters. Others include ‘Wonda TAMER & TIGER’, as well as ‘Wonda-MAGICIAN & RABBIT’.
During his PAX panel, Kamiya mentioned that out of the long list of rejected designs, ‘Wonda-GIANT’ was his personal favourite. This enormous character can be glimpsed at in the below collage of the concept art renders released, which shows that it would have been so large, that its boots alone were the size of a regular Wonder One.
Between the beta character designs recovered, we can get a look at some of the very earliest drafts of the main characters, as well. In the final game, the core cast of Wonder One heroes number a total of seven, but in these early iterations, it was as high as twelve. Not only were five of them removed, Platinum’s artists completely reworked the majority of the retained characters. Among them, Wonder Red is the only one whose appearance didn’t undergo another big transformation and was more or less untouched from this point onwards.
As you can see, the initial drawings of Wonder Blue, Green, Pink, Yellow, White and Black were vastly different from their finished versions. Blue was later given a longer hair style, a trench coat and, of course, his trademark ‘valiantium sword’. The original Wonder Green was replaced with another character model from pre-production named ‘Wonda-FRENCH’. Although, neither of the two designs included the final Wonder Green’s beloved gun, who he affectionately dubs “Christine Daae”. Likewise, Wonder Black’s earlier sketches portrayed him as a pale-skinned white male with dark hair. This was eventually switched out with another character concept called ‘Wonda-DIGITAL'; a small Indian boy, regularly seen holding a handheld gaming device.
Wonder Pink’s first appearance was completely dissimilar from her look in the released build, too. At this stage, she was represented as a short-haired brunette woman, with a little more tomboyishness about her, by comparison. We can observe some slight changes to White’s model, who was given robes, large claws on his hands and a golden Japanese character on his forehead, which translates to “hundred”. Wonder Yellow, on the other hand, wasn’t altered an awful lot. The team maintained his bulky appearance, only building around it with his timid personality, Russian background and the addition of his hammer weapon.
The cut members of the main Wonderful 100 heroes appear to be very much emblematic of the edgier tone of the project at this phase. Three of them: Brown, Gold and Green all are shown smoking cigarettes; a feature that none of the characters would flaunt in the final game. It is known that the script, from its early prototype beginnings, went through a plethora of revisions, as specified in the Iwata Asks interview. It’s likely that these scrapped heroes were simply dropped as the story became more focussed, and to make room for the other characters to be introduced.
One of the earliest drafts of the complete team of 100.
As Platinum prepared to present their new superhero title to Nintendo, they put together two playable prototype builds. According to Atsushi Inaba, the ideas for the core gameplay of the all star pitch remained fully intact during its revival. Work on the prototypes began initially without Nintendo’s knowledge, and it wasn’t until Inaba was later invited to view it that the publisher’s involvement restarted.
The first beta / prototype was shown to a modest audience at Penny Arcade Expo 2013, during Platinum’s postmortem panel on the Wonderful 101. Filming of the show was reportedly prohibited by Nintendo, but we have been fortunate enough to receive this exclusive footage of it, as captured by the folks over at 1upisland.
Perhaps the most immediately striking aspect of the video is how dark the colour palette used in the environments and enemies is, in comparison with the game we know today. The game had a graphic style that somehow reminds of one of Kamiya’s classic, Viewtiful Joe. The different animations and overall slower pace of the gameplay are noticeable, too.
As described by Kamiya himself, the in-game models in this build for the heroes were very similar to one another, but used a variety of colours for uniforms. The large number of characters on screen each have one of three attacks: punching, firing a gun, or swiping a blade. The player could command the crowd to simultaneously barrage enemies with their individual moves. This would eventually evolve into into the ‘team attack‘, in which the heroes charge forward and cling on to them, attacking repeatedly.
In a quite considerable contrast with the final game, the amount of characters the player can recruit into their party can exceed one hundred in this prototype. In The Wonderful 101, of course, you are able to recruit civilians by fitting them with Wonder Masks. However, there is a maximum capacity of 100 heroes total during standard gameplay. The limit of Wonder Ones present in this version, on the other hand, appears to be indefinite. During this video, the number of team members grows as high as 112, as indicated by the digit in the top-left corner of the HUD.
The Wonderful 112?
At this point in development, Platinum had begun to implement their proposed ‘unite morph’ attacks. Although at this point, only unite hand, gun and sword were playable. The appearance of the morphs is reasonably different from how they would ultimately turn out here. The hand shape is noticeably longer, the transformation animation is slower and the colours are not nearly as bright as they are in The Wonderful 101 either. 3D movement during a unite morph looks to have been noticeably stiffer, as well.
If you look closely at the crowd following Red, you will see that the the previously mentioned ‘Wonda-FRENCH‘ design for Green with purple hair was included, as well as the early version of Wonder Pink. In addition, the Wonderful 100’s robotic assistant, P-Star, had still yet to be created and is therefore absent from this demo.
Towards the top-right corner of the screen, you will see a radar, which tracks the units on-screen. This aspect was something experimented with throughout development and ultimately dropped. A similar feature is available on the Wii U gamepad in The Wonderful 101, although it doesn’t display enemy signals like this one.
According to Kamiya, the enemies seen in this beta demonstration were not ever planned to be part of the final game. You can see the player taking on several mysterious reptilian creatures at various points of the clip. In actuality, these were nothing more than placeholder models taken from Platinum’s archives, which are used for prototype development only.
Platinum, at this preliminary stage of The Wonderful 100’s lifecycle, had not yet conceived of the idea of drawing around civilians to recruit them, as you do in the released game. Instead, players were forced to approach each character separately and push a button on the controller. Kamiya described this early factor of the gameplay as “not fun“, during his explanation for why it was altered.
Around the same time that work on the prototypes began, the director himself began putting together posters for The Wonderful 100 to, in his own words, “cheer on” the developers. One piece, which was created in close collaboration with Platinum’s artists, was posted on the company’s Twitter shortly after the game was released. This movie-style poster was reportedly part of the developer’s proposal to Nintendo, as a means of conveying its style and concept.
The second beta / prototype, also shown at PAX, was created shortly after the first and displays how the project quickly began to evolve and become fleshed out into the game we have today. Special thanks to 1-upisland for the footage, and to Streets for translating the Japanese dialogue.
Crucially, this version of the game, as well as the other prototype, were not running on the Wii U. They were being developed with unspecified HD Nintendo hardware in mind, but were in fact running on PC. The prototypes had entered development towards the very end of the Wii’s lifespan, but the Wii U (then codenamed Project Café) had still yet to be announced, and Platinum was not yet aware of its nature. The team had no knowledge of the planned gamepad controller, and instead created the demos around a more conventional controller; the Xbox 360’s. You will see that towards the start of the footage, the game prompts the player to press “RB” on the controller. Later, the ‘A’ button from the 360’s controller appears to dismiss an on-screen notification, as well.
This prototype marks the introduction of some of the game’s side characters. The first versions of Alice MacGregor and P-Star, two allies of The Wonderful 100 in the final game, are visible in the video when Platinum demonstrates how the beta’s conversation system worked. It appears similar to how it works in The Wonderful 101, although rarely do these exchanges take place during active gameplay, as they do here. There are some slight differences between the appearances of these characters, such as Alice’s uniforms, larger forehead in the prototype and the design of her communications headset; as well as the fact she wears it on her left here, instead of her right.
Concept art for these designs are unlockable in The Wonderful 101 in the ‘Art Gallery’ menu, allowing us a clearer look at these renders. There is also an early, alternative look for Commander Nelson in the same art style from around the same period of the game’s development.
The stage played through during the demonstration appears to be an early iteration on ‘Operation 001-A’ from the final game, taking place in the urban setting of Blossom City. Gameplay at this point looks to have been steadily nearing the released version, but is still noticeably more sluggish. Wonder Red’s running speed and the pace of his attacks both are visibly slower.
Kamiya explains towards the start of the clip that they still had yet to come up with the idea of “drawing the Unite Morphs”, as you do in The Wonderful 101. Instead, these moves were apparently chosen by “selecting an icon” using a button on the controller. The concept of drawing them wasn’t conceived of until months later, when he was introduced to Wii U’s gamepad and its touch screen.
“In this version, you can kinda pick the punch, the sword or the gun based on an icon and use it, but it wasn’t any fun, so we ditched that and went with the drawing mechanic”
A first look at the ‘Unite Sword’ attack is shown in the clip. In an interesting contrast, it was originally a move initiated by Wonder Red, as opposed to Wonder Blue, as it is in the final game. It appears as though, regardless of the characters in your party, all of the morphs would have emanated from and been controlled by Red instead. This suggests that the idea of each of the core Wonder One heroes having their own unique morph (e.g. Black’s bomb or Pink’s whip) wasn’t realised until later on.
The director also mentions that ‘Unite Gun’ was a part of the beta, despite it not being shown here. ‘Unite guts’ and ‘Unite Spring’, the evasive maneuvers in The Wonderful 101 were not yet added, however.
Wonder Red’s Unite Sword.
By listening carefully, you will be able to hear an alternative version of the song “ST01 Roll Out, Wonderful 100! Battle in the Blossom City Burbs” from the game’s musical score. This track was omitted from the final soundtrack, according to Kamiya. Based upon comments made in his blog post about his work on the game, it looks as though this was created by The Wonderful 101’s lead composer, Hiroshi Yamaguchi.
“I worked on The Wonderful 101 for around two years of its development. When I first joined the team I was the only one in the BGM section. While experimenting with various directions to take the music, rough design documents and in-progress screenshots were my only reference.”
Early incorporations of two of the enemies from the finished title are shown at various points of the video. We can see GEATHJERK infantry units, the ‘Dough-Goo’ foot soldiers, as well as an untextured ‘Diedough-Goo’ robot towards the end. Their designs are more or less entirely consistent with their final looks, disregarding the lack of textures on the latter model.
Midway through the demo, a ‘results screen’ appears in the top-right corner of screen, displaying the points accumulated during that portion of gameplay by the player. However, as specified by Kamiya, these notifications were, in reality, “fake”. They did not yet actually measure player performance or score, and were instead put in for demonstration purposes and as a note for the developers to add them in further down the line.
The first versions of the unite morphs, ladder and chain, are also shown. Given the way the chain is visualised, with a bridge shape briefly flashing as the characters cross it, it appears as though ‘Unite Chain’ was the only traversal morph of this nature and ‘Unite Bridge’ was not a part of the game at this stage. In the final game, the Wonder Ones choose between a chain and a bridge shape to cross large gaps, based upon the situation at hand.
After work on the title had been underway for some time, Platinum Games presented their efforts to Nintendo once again. The publisher came on board with the project this time, on the condition that the game’s visuals be reworked. The Iwata Asks interview on The Wonderful 101 gives us a behind-the-scenes explanation as to why this quite considerable alteration to the art style was made.
Apparently, it was felt by Nintendo that the darker art design being used at the time would limit the potential reach of the game, and alienate children.
“Matsushita-san loves action games, so I showed it to him, and asked, ‘This project will be really interesting. Won’t you work on it with me?’ And right away, he said something like ‘The images are too dark. Elementary and middle school kids won’t go for this.'” – Producer, Hitoshi Yamagami.
Nintendo and Platinum initially had some back and forth on whether or not the beta’s vision should be changed.
“I’d heard that the folks at PlatinumGames were very particular, so we had a lot of discussion within the company about how we could get it across to them, and whether we should just prioritize PlatinumGames’ concept and move forward with it.” – Shingo Matsushita, a Nintendo director who oversaw development.
Ultimately, the developer folded and became more open to changing it after coming up with the idea for an alternative visual style.
“The ‘realistic figure, realistic toys’ concept was born then. The look is both pop and realistic at the same time.” – Hideki Kamiya.
Kamiya was once asked which audiences he was trying to reach with the game in the beginning and he responded with this:
“It was originally aimed at me… [laughs]. When I make games I never really think about who I’m targeting the game for. I just want to create something that’s fun and enjoyed by the audience.”
With Platinum Games’ second pitch accepted and a fresh art style settled upon, The Wonderful 100, as it was still being referred to internally, went into full development around late 2011. Kamiya began to work on the script for the game more intensely, and finally made the decision to have seven main heroes at the centre of the story. The lighter visuals in tact, lead artist, Mai Ohkura was soon at work on assembling new designs for their finalised team. Near completed drafts of the group met the director’s approval and the character modelling staff began implementing them.
The looks of the characters used here are almost identical to their appearances from the released game, but keen eyes will detect a few contrasts, such as Wonder Black being slightly taller here and Green carrying a sniper rifle over his shoulder, instead of his “Christine Daae” weapon.
It was around this time that Platinum came up with the idea of them each having their own unique Unite Morphs, which explains the addition of their individual weapons, like Blue’s sword and White’s claws. It’s possible, albeit unconfirmed, that the concept of having seven main heroes stemmed simply from the necessity for a device to pace out the of the Unite Morphs. By assigning one to each of them and gradually introducing the characters, it allowed them to disperse them throughout the game, without overloading the player.
As the in-game narrative progressed, Kamiya and Inaba began throwing more characters into the mix, including an antagonist for Wonder Red, who was tentatively referred to in draft simply as “Rival”. This would later turn out to be the space pirate leader, Prince Vorkken. When first drawing him, Ms. Ohkura based his design around Red’s, as you can see here.
Unlike most of the other characters brought to life during the project, Vorkken’s look evolved little over the course of development. Some minor details, such as the size of the ridges on his clothes were changed; but this was one character design that stayed roughly the same throughout. Although, the floating cubes revolving around him in this concept were removed from any future images. The nature of these blocks is unknown.
It appears that in some of the first script iterations, the title of the aforementioned antagonistic space pirate band from the final game, the “Guyzoch“, was previously “Gaizork“. This is indicated by a number of other concepts produced by Ohkura, such as one of Vorkken’s right hand man, Chewgi. Chewgi’s name at the time was instead spelled “Chugi“, as well. You can also get a glimpse at early designs for The Meizerr, the Guyzoch’s space vessel, and the Virgin Victory ship.
In early 2012, the game’s main mechanics began to go through an experimental phase, as the team were honing its strengths and figuring out what would make it more enjoyable. Platinum was set to debut their new project at the fast approaching E3 Expo in June, but still quite hadn’t honed in on the direction they wanted it to take.
As Revealed by Shingo Matsushita during the Iwata Asks, elements of strategy were implemented and tested around this time:
“We had a few versions before presenting at E3. The superheroes were fairly scattered around in the version we had then, and there were some strategy1 elements to it as well.
Also, we put a lot of emphasis on having the heroes bump into something to make a shape, and there was a time when their unite attacks weren’t the focus like they are now.”
Kamiya, reflecting on this stage of development, described the early gameplay as “boring” and added:
“It is a game where you bring a large group of characters around with you, so we tried a lot of different things to see what the possibilities were. We would make the game and dismantle it again and again, to try and figure out what pieces to put together to get the right gameplay”.
Fortunately, Platinum was able to resolve some of the game’s problems for its first public showing, but others would still remain for some time to come.
An early form of the game was officially revealed at E3 2012, under the codename of ‘Project P-100‘. It was made up of a mission redone from the first two betas, ‘Operation 001-A’, set in Blossom City. Nintendo unveiled the title on the show floor to journalists, following their press conference. The ‘P-100′ title was a blend of the word “Platinum” and 100, in reference to its true name at the time, The Wonderful 100.
The logo for Project P-100.
During the event, Nintendo released the first official trailer online and by this point in development, both the visuals and general framework of the game had reached their near final form. Although, there are still many changes we can distinguish between this build and the one released in 2013.
To begin with, the general graphical fidelity of ‘Project P-100′ is visibly below the standard of The Wonderful 101. Just about everything, from the character models to the environments, are marginally less detailed. Whether or not these slightly more simplistic visuals were implicit and not just a result of the game still being over a full year from completion is uncertain, but the difference is clear.
In the image above, a comparison between P-100 and The Wonderful 101, we can see a number of the tweaks made. The overall lighting and aesthetics in W101 are darker, for one, and just about every feature of the graphics appear to have been polished up. This is especially evidenced in Wonder Blue’s hair, which was a blurry, pixelated muddle in the E3 demo; later given more defined textures. The amount of polygons on the models was raised noticeably and subtle details, such as the wrinkles on Red’s jacket were added.
The ‘Wonder-Pendants’, the badges embedded on the chests of the heroes, took on a different design in the E3 version. Instead of the ‘W’ logo, it was an image of a Wonder Mask with a white background. For your reference, we have put together some side-by-side comparisons of P-100 concept art, alongside artwork from The Wonderful 101; offering a closer look at these distinctions in the models and more.
In spite of this, the game was always planned to take on these new ‘Wonder-Pendants’. They were changed specially for the E3 demo, purely for the sake of perpetuating the mystery surrounding the title at the time. Its true identity was being kept under wraps by Nintendo as a marketing ploy.
By careful analysis of the P-100 demo, we noticed that in one of the results screens, you can see an image of a Wonder One model that Platinum and Nintendo neglected to change. Assuming this wasn’t an intentional, hidden hint, this appears to have been a mistake. You will, however, notice the E3 badge added to the bronze medal.
At a glance, the core gameplay of ‘Project P-100′ looks almost identical to The Wonderful 101, but this was apparently not the case. Hideki Kamiya himself labelled this early form of the game bluntly as “not fun at all”. Fundamental to the director’s issues was the simplistic nature of how it played. In previous builds, P-100 included, there were only two main attacks the player could perform at a given moment. One, of course, was the ‘unite attack’ and the other was called a ‘lock-on/rush combo’.
Although this ‘rush combo’ mechanic might, on the surface, appear to function no differently from the ‘team attack’ seen in The Wonderful 101, the opposite is true. Mapped to the gamepad’s ‘X’ button, this move would propel a group of the Wonder Ones forward en masse to briefly beat up enemies in the immediate area; leaving the leader to move around freely. They would then return to the commanding hero after a short moment.
The ‘Rush Combo’ in action.
Contrary to the ‘team/climb attack’ from the released game, which causes the Wonder Ones to cling to the enemies and attack them repeatedly, the ‘rush combo’ was a very basic light attack. It also required the player to keep pressing the ‘X’ button to stop them from withdrawing. Using Green’s ‘unite gun’ would not cause the heroes to attach themselves to enemies either. Instead, they’d drop to the floor and be momentarily knocked out after colliding.
P-100’s Unite Gun.
This all meant that, in a title where combat plays a central role, the player had only two relatively straightforward offensive maneuvers at their disposal (other than switching between the other morphs). At this stage, Platinum had yet to include the ‘Multi Unite Morph’ feature either, which lets players perform multiple morphs at once. It wasn’t until almost a year beyond E3 that these issues would find resolution.
Aside from these contrasts, there was a number of features available in the demo that are locked behind special requirements in the final build. Wonder Green, for example, is not a part of 001-A and within the canon of the story, doesn’t join the group until the following mission, 001-B. Likewise, there certain combat abilities, such as the ‘Unite Charge’ custom block, which allows you to automatically increase the size of your Unite Morph by holding the ‘A’ button. In TW101, this particular unlock isn’t introduced until much further on in the story mode.
‘Unite Charge’ in P-100.
On the other hand, there is a variety of art assets used in P-100 that were later altered or removed. For instance, the analysis screens, which appear whenever you face a new enemy were completely different.
As you can see, everything from the fonts used to the colours and the information included on these cards was almost entirely revised. The original screens recorded details of where they were typically found and even the material they were made of, which was in this case iron. These were omitted in favour of adding the name of the area in which they were first encountered. The spelling of this enemy, originally ‘DYDOGUH’ was changed to ‘DIEDOUGH-GOO’, as well.
Examining it further, there are some inconsistencies in the weight and height measurements between the two images. The height of the Diedough-Goo in the P-100 demonstration was 292″ (the equivalent of 7.4168m), which was raised to 13.5m (531.49″). The weight, on the other hand was also upped from 2721 Ibs (1.3605 tons) to 307 tons (614000 lbs). It appears, however, that the figures were totally random in the E3 demo, as every enemy had these exact same numbers.
For reasons unknown, it appears that Platinum went through the trouble of retitling almost all of the GEATHJERK units, like the Diedough-Goo. All of the ones that were a part of P-100, for example, were ammended to match this new naming style.
In one instance, the Dough-Goo and the Chew Dough-Goo (then known as ‘DHOGUU’ and ‘SHUDOGUU’ respectively) were grouped into one card for the sake of the demo. This is because the Dough-Goo are introduced prior to 001-A, the E3 mission, in the prologue, which was not part of the 2012 build.
For reference, here are the remaining enemy analysis screens from the demo, compared to their final appearances. You will see that they are all labelled “GEARTHJERK Invincible Planetary Federation Armada”. This title was later dropped in favour of “GEATHJERK Supreme Federation Armada”.
Assumedly for preview purposes, the layout of the E3 demo’s version of Operation 001-A is very different. It’s not only much shorter, but includes enemies that are not encountered until later on in the first chapter, such as ‘Diedough-Goo’ and ‘Hoedown’, as well as the ‘Gah-Goojin’ mini boss set piece from 001-B.
Diedough-Goo early on in 001-A, later moved.
Aside from this, the HUD in P-100 is in many ways unlike the one in The Wonderful 101. It seems to function relatively the same, but includes a radar in the bottom left corner that displays GEATHJERK signals, in addition to team members. Furthermore, the first section of the battery bar on the left of the screen was blue here, instead of orange, and there are a few changes in fonts, like the mission number text. This typeface was not retracted from the game in its entirety, however, and was repurposed for the title of the in-game upgrade store, the Wonderful Mart, in the finished game.
Intriguingly, some of the terminology used for some of the attacks at the player’s was different here, too. ‘Unite Spring’, a move used in The Wonderful 101 to evade attacks and other threats, was tentatively dubbed ‘Unite Dodge’ here. Similarly, ‘Unite Chain’ was shortened to ‘U-Chain’. This ‘U-Chain’ worked more or less the same, except a red model of a chain would emerge, alongside a speech bubble labelled “Let’s Go!!” to indicate where to initiate it.
One stylistic choice on display in the Project P-100 build is speech bubbles that appear above the heads of the Wonder One in charge. For example, when Wonder Red initiates a ‘Rush Combo’, the words “GO!!” and “RUSH!!” emerge in front of him. This feature was removed from the game completely in May 2013.
Another aesthetic detail that was shown in P-100, but omitted as time went on were manga-esque flames appearing above the lead Wonder One during combat. Upon successfully initiating a rush combo, these would trigger.
Due to the fact the English dubbing cast for the game had not yet been assembled at this point, the dialogue in P-100 is not voiced. You are able to hear the grunts from the Japanese actors during gameplay, but cutscenes went without voiceover. Instead, every time a character speaks, it is accompanied by digital sound effects of gibberish bleeps and bloops.
According to Platinum, The Wonderful 101’s script went through a total of 14 full drafts. The P-100 demo allows us a look at another one of those earlier iterations, where the English dialogue had not yet been finalised. Not many changes of note can be seen, although we can see that Wonder Red’s commonly used phrase of “Team, Unite up!” had not yet been conceived of. Red announces the slightly wordier “Team, prepare for battle!” instead.
Lastly, as shown in the official trailer, P-100’s multiplayer had a slightly different HUD. As you can see, there were icons for each unite morph next to the individual point tally for each player. You can see an early version of the item select in the bottom left corner, too. Keen eyes would have also been able to spot the icon for unite hammer, which discretely revealed Wonder Yellow’s attack months before a formal announcement.
Around August of 2012, Hitoshi Yamagami was determined to change the name of the project, which was still going under the secret title of “The Wonderful 100“. Concerned that the number, “100” was “forgettable”, he sought to alter it in order to make it more memorable. Platinum felt very strongly against changing it, until Yamagami suggested during a board meeting that they call it “The Wonderful 101″ instead.
Kamiya, who had been putting the finishing touches on one of the first full drafts of the script, realised that renaming it “101” would fall in line with an idea he had for the one of the cinematics later in the game. Platinum and Nintendo once again reached an agreement and The Wonderful 101 was officially announced to the public in September, during a Nintendo Direct presentation.
Following E3, Platinum was still hard at work on the game. In the eyes of Kamiya and many of the other staff members, the core gameplay remained troubled and it wasn’t until as late as May 2013 that the developer finished solving its cental problems.
Towards the start of 2013, the team decided to scrap the aforementioned “rush combo” mechanic. As an alternative, they introduced the “climb attack”, also known as the “team attack”. Whereas the rush action made for a very simplistic light offensive maneuver, the climb move caused heroes to cling to enemies and attack them repeatedly.
From Kamiya’s perspective, this brought in an interesting element of strategy to the gameplay. It meant that players would actively have to manage where their heroes were on the battlefield and choose how to divide them between the morph attacks and hurling them to attack independently.
“We should have already had that part done when we entered into production, but we weren’t clear on what to do with it so we kept on working that way.” – Hideki Kamiya
In another risky move for the developers, they also decided to introduce the ‘Multi Unite Morph‘ feature, as seen in the final game. This drastic change to the formula was brought about as late as May 2013 – less than 3 months before it was planned to be released.
“We really put in Multi Unite Morph at the last possible moment.” – Shingo Matsushita
According to producer, Inaba, the team was very skeptical about the technical side of implementing this concept, worried about how well the engine would cope with use of multiple simultaneous unite morphs during the story mode. It was thanks to their work on the multiplayer, which already supported up to 4 morphs one screen at a time, that programming this feature became easier.
The addition of ‘Multi Unite Morph’ occured without the involvement of Nintendo or the higher ups at Platinum, who had been actively overseeing and supervising the project throughtout development. Completely unbeknownst to Matsushita, Kamiya impulsively had the team include it without the approval of his superiors.
“During one of the recurring debug meetings, I heard “We’ve actually gotten a request from Kamiya, and it’s already built in.” And we were like “Huh? What did you just say?” – Shingo Matsushita
The gamble paid off from Kamiya’s point of view, who thought this major adjustment made the game “a lot more fun“. Its issues of slower, repetitive gameplay from before E3 had finally been dealt with.
In the closing act of The Wonderful 101, the team joins forces with a giant mecha, who they dub “Platinum Robo” (in reference to Platinum Games itself). In the final game, the machine assembles itself out of the remnants of Blossom City. However, before Kamiya had come up with this idea, Okura had drawn another, very different concept for the robot.
Here are the two designs, side by side, for comparison: 
On January 16 2014, several months on from the initial release of The Wonderful 101, Kamiya revealed that he had originally planned to make Miis playable in the game. You would have been able to transform your own Miis into Wonder Ones and fight alongside the main team. He added that he hoped to include them in a potential sequel, if ever the opportunity to make one arose.
We tried to make it possible to join your own mii with TW100 as a hero. We hope we can do it in TW102.
— 神谷英樹 Hideki Kamiya (@PG_kamiya) January 16, 2014
We reached out to Kamiya to ask the specific reason as to why Miis never made it in, and he confirmed that it was due to time constraints.
The post The Wonderful 101 [Beta / Concept - Wii U] appeared first on Unseen 64: Beta, Cancelled & Unseen Videogames!.