Showing posts with label 1998. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1998. Show all posts

Friday, February 26, 2016

Mega Man 64 Transition Prototype

Software porting has always been a thing in digital entertainment. Seeing a game originally released in one, single system would oftentimes be on another in a year's time. That was especially true in the 32-bit era and before it. These days, nobody wants to deal with old stuff from a year before and publishers, who hold the keys to the game's IP, are particularly privy to that and so you see console ports of the same game across different platforms on the same day. 

Mega Man Legends was absolutely no exception to the former, but I'm guessing it was more Capcom wanting to recuperate some of the costs of the original game, since it wasn't the huge commercial success that they wanted. The effort put forth onto this port wasn't stellar either. Last month, me and a couple friends of mine released an early prototype of Mega Man 64 online to some fanfare for Legends enthusiasts like myself.



What you see above is actually an abridged version of the three and a half hour surprise livestream that I did before we released the ROM online. Not having satisfied with how it turned out, I went trimmed it to about 25 20 minutes, making it more entertaining and watchable. Also included are some gags you might want to check out. There are also annotations captions that deliver context behind certain prototypical happenings in the video (turn on [CC]).


Okay so, Mega Man 64. It was sloppily ported. It's a messy, compressed recreation of the original experience. Certain visual effects are nerfed, frame-rate suffers in places that should never/didn't happen on PS1, vaselined textures that undermine the sharp, visual charm of the game, and my personal favorite flub (see 4:50). Having grown up with the original PlayStation version, I see how this port undermines all that was great about Legends. You could also see why I wasn't initially thrilled about this prototype.



A few months ago, me and friend Pixelbuttz and Protodude were tipped off of a prototype build of Mega Man 64 that was in the hands of a collector. The gentleman acquired it from a friend of his and decided to share the knowledge of its existence to AssemblerGames, a now-defunct video game enthusiast forum.

In addition to the reasons I've explained earlier, I wasn't that particularly interested in this build because this would have represented the point in time Legends was being ported to the N64. Having realized that exact sentence I've just said, I figured this might be interesting after all. It wasn't until this collector had posted a video of the prototype in action on YouTube that it finally piqued my interest.

"KANTAN" is suppose to mean easy in Japanese.
The prototype included a menu on the title screen to access a scenario flag switch, a stage select of sorts and the ability to enable or disable certain scenarios in the game. Following this revelation, Pixelbuttz scrambled to gather as much funds as we can to beat out any competition interested in the prototype.

When I say "scramble," what I really mean to say that PB had just frantically made a GoFundMe page not realizing what hurdles it would take to overcome the complications that came about and what a royal pain-in-the-ass lesson it would be to learn not to repeat again (never resort to GoFundMe, stick with PayPal only). PB contacted 100,000 Strong to spread the word of this effort to bring more people to contribute. We just wanted the ROM of this thing, because we knew logistics would complicate things with the physical goods (and, boy, will we get into that in a minute).

Within a day or so, we acquired $400+ until the dude offered us to pay him that amount and he would compensate for the rest of the cost. Cool guy.

We thought we were over that mountain -- until the package arrived at customs. Some asshole basically told the bloke that he not only had to pay a certain expensive fee to get it delivered to his residence, but that they were essentially taking the package hostage until that amount was paid for. He actually had to drive to there and explain what the hell it was. Thankfully, it was all resolved and soon after that he dumped the ROM. Now it's all preserved for eternity.

I'd like to thank everyone who contributed to the recovery of this prototype. We now have another piece of Mega Man Legends history preserved and we can also see what a complete mess the port already was in its transition from PlayStation to N64. If you'd like to see what is being found so far, go hit up the prototype's page at The Cutting Room Floor.

Saturday, October 31, 2015

I've held this sales video of Resident Evil 2 from 1997 for one year, until now.

Because either I kept forgetting or I just stopped caring, but tonight I'll just shut up and provide you with a 30-minute loop sales video for Resident Evil 2, recorded in 60 frames per second and upscaled to 1080p HD.


Dated November 16, 1997 (so it says on the front label), the footage seen here presumably comes from the fan-called "BETA 2" build that was burned around the time this sales video was sent out to retailers. The familiar, iconic Resident Evil 1.5 trailer theme plays throughout the loop, and it contains some differences from the final version (one thing comes in mind is the unused bear taxidermy in Chief Irons' creepy torture dungeon).


As I had mentioned earlier this year on my Capcom 2000 VHS video article, this is the second of three tapes I purchased last year in an eBay auction. The remaining tape I have would be Fighter's Edge.

I'll say nothing else till a question gets asked. Enjoy.

Friday, October 30, 2015

Here's something about an unused track in Resident Evil 2

Update: Holy crap, today is my blog's one year anniversary too. Happy Birthday to The Game Informant!

You can already tell by previous posts, but I'm a big fan of Resident Evil. Classic Resident Evil if you may and Resident Evil 2 is among one of my favorite Capcom games and probably one of the very few in the franchise that actually leaves a good, thrilling impression on me as a player today. Its infamous first draft and highly publicized revisions have also earned itself the reputation of being one of the most high-profile games in the subject of prototype and unreleased video game content today. 

So for the night before this year's Halloween, we'll briefly go over a video I published nearly four years ago that details two unique similar music pieces hidden in the sound code for Resident Evil 2 that can't be heard normally in the game. The music pieces sound as though they are actually variations (which I decided to call them) of one another, which you can listen to below on the embedded link.



As we hear in the video, the first variation sounds as though it's a rough mix, as it contains the least instrumentation. The second variation sounds much more refined, containing at least one more instrument playing in the track. Presumably, this would have been the final draft before it would be disused in the game's sound code.

Sometimes, music pieces are composed for specific moments before scenes in a movie, TV show, or game is completed. When a scene is sent to the cutting room floor, usually everything is cut along with the scene. In this case, these particular music tracks were left behind as the scenes had been ditched in favor of the form we got in the final form. How these would have fit in the game remains unknown.

Seeking for answers, I spoke to lead Resident Evil 2 music composer Masami Ueda on Twitter in which he gave the following response:
Ueda-san vaguely recalls composing these two tracks for the game, but was able to recall their purpose. They were meant to be a theme for Sherry Birkin, the young girl who accompanies lead female Claire Redfield in their escape from Raccoon City. 


The pieces were originally discovered in a PSF zipped folder at Zophar.com, a game emulator and hacking resource website. A PSF. (PlayStation Sound Format) is a sound file that often holds the synthesized sound data in various PlayStation games. Cracking the format required computer hacking and disassembly skills. The individual who originally ripped the tracks from the game's sound directory and uploaded them on to Zopher in the first place is currently unknown. I'd like to thank that individual for finding these bits.

Wanna know what my Halloween treat this year is for you guys? If you're a Resident Evil fan like me, I think you'll like it a lot. Stay tuned.

Tuesday, December 2, 2014

Old prototype footage of Sonic Adventure (Dreamcast) running at 60FPS looks totally unbelievable

As the Sega Saturn console was in its twilight years, players were bummed-out that they didn't get a major Sonic game for the ill-fated console until the next-generation. Then in August of 1998, Sega dropped the bombshell and announced Sonic Adventure, the long-awaited 3D installment of the then-dignified Sonic franchise, as a launch-window killer app title for their upcoming Dreamcast console to be released at the end of 1998 in Japan. Enticing gamers worldwide, the game offered impressive graphics with high-resolution graphics and a fluid sense of speed that was almost uncontested for the time. And at 60fps, too.

"Hold up, 60fps?," you might be asking. Yes, Sonic Adventure was originally rendered at a higher frame-rate than it ended up being. The earliest footage of the game, shown at the Tokyo International Forum public unveiling in August of 1998, had shown the game to run at that frame-rate. As we can see from the footage of the unveiling seen in the one-off VHS magazine Fuse, we can clearly see how unbelievably fluid the game's motion is at this game's prototypical stage. Or was, I should say. If you guys would see it in action, I think you’ll get a kick out of it.



This early prototype footage exhibits the game originally ran at 60FPS, the level highlighting the game, we see, is Speed Highway. It looks particularly impressive given the time 
this game was unveiled. Its really a shame they had to had the drop the frame-rate down to 30 for the final Dreamcast version. 

What's interesting to note is that the AutoDemo isn't necessarily running at a much higher frame-rate than the final or the Forum build. So by that point, the frame-rate had already been dropped by the time the demo was made. Another interesting tidbit, if you noticed even Sonic's jump momentum seems different when he bounces on those enemies on Speed Highway.

Honestly, I wondered if this was a whole other game altogether. The game's original frame-rate at this stage of development makes it look more polished compared the final version. While the rest of the footage around the Speed Highway stage is less than 60FPS, I believe that that footage was actually edited deliberately to reduce the fluidity of the motion. Why that's the case, who knows.

But yeah, Sonic Adventure. What a time to be nine years old and seeing a 3D Sonic game in action on then-powerful hardware. Good times. 

Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Scans: Sonic 3D Blast (Saturn) | Dreamcast Magazine (Japanese), Volume 6 | 12/25/1998

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Image Hosted by ImageShack.usSo shortly after the Sonic Adventure AutoDemo was released early last summer by Orengefox at Sonic Retro, I bought this magazine on eBay. It's got lots of info on that game, plus coverage of Shenmue's Nov. 1998 unveiling in Japan, and other awesome games, but this article concerning the former is what motivated me to write about this.

The article covers the Saturn version of Sonic 3D Blast that was released much earlier in North America and Europe than it arrived overseas. Interestingly, this game wouldn't be released in Japan until October 1999, alongside the International version of Sonic Adventure. As we can see, the release date is given as "'99 (to be decided)." Since that Saturn port was already released internationally years prior, there isn't anything prototypical seen in the screens of this article.

What is interesting though, is apparently in the last page of the article is a sort of mini-interview with a Japanese developer of 3D Blast, or someone of significance to the game. 


I hope by posting this on my blog that someone would be willing to translate this article and enlighten us on the development of this game, from the Japanese perspective.

Coming up tomorrow, I have an overdue proposition that I've yet to fulfill. It's related to scans of a Resident Evil Zero (Nintendo 64) article that I've promised on Tumblr but haven't delivered on. Stay Tuned!