Showing posts with label PlayStation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label PlayStation. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 15, 2016

The PSone controller had different shoulder buttons; Genso Suikoden prototype footage from 1994!

So I hear Konami has been quite an asshole lately. The way they mistreatment their workforce, withdrawing from console game production, and the complete, sensational mess that has been the Hideo Kojima divorce. Yuck, a cesspool to be sure.

Let's escape from that to about two decades ago when they were at the twilight years of their dignity. Here's a game that I've hear good things over the years on and off, but have never played. This is Gensou Suikoden.

As an RPG game centered around political struggles in a fictional, fantasy empire, Suikoden was made out of a labor of love from the get-go, starting out as a launch title for an unannounced Konami home console. Very little immediate information about that exists on the internet, but the game, under the imaginatively clever name of "RPG," was in development for a brief time but was moved over to the PlayStation, otherwise codenamed the PSX. A relatively more creative acronym than "RPG," I think. In addition, the script for its sequel was originally used for this game but its creator felt he needed more experience to give it the proper treatment it deserved and instead created a "prequel script" for this game instead. 

In July of 1994 𑁋 about a year and a half before the game's domestic release 𑁋 Suikoden was formally unveiled to players at the V-Jump Festival '94 exhibition in Japan. That's not the only feature in the following clip that was preliminary, though.


We also see a preliminary version of the standard PlayStation controller featuring odd symbols on the shoulder buttons that would later become the numbered R and L buttons.

What buttons are those suppose to say, do you think?
It's rather interesting to see this game unveiled to the gaming public about a year and a half before either the game and console came out. It's thanks to this fact however that we can actually see the early designs for the PlayStation controller. As it is known, the original PlayStation controller went through several dozen iterations before the company settled on its finalized design. The most striking detail seen in are the shoulder button designs on the top of the controller. There are no L or R labeled buttons but instead are some triangle-shaped symbols that I can't make out what they're supposed to be.

Obviously, the controller wasn't finalized at this point in time but it makes clear that Sony Computer Entertainment had provided a 3D console that enabled third-party developers like Konami the confidence they needed to jump onto polygons so soon. Sony lured them into their boat quite well.

Friday, September 30, 2016

Here's some (old) new footage of the unreleased PlayStation version of Superman

Oh, just months since the last update and an hour 'til October starts. I have a bad work ethic for blogs and videos. Tonight, let's talk about a Superman game. One that was made for PlayStation.

After the complete bomb that was the abysmal Superman on the Nintendo 64 in 1999, another attempt by the same developer was made for the PlayStation just a year later.

Long story short, publisher Titus lost the video game license to Superman and thus the game could not be sold without renewing the expensive license. The game was subsequently cancelled afterwards. Since then, it's become a legend among some game prototype enthusiasts for being a completely different game than the original N64 game. The following is screen-recorded footage of the unreleased PlayStation version running on ePSXe, 
retrieved from an anonymous source (intentionally withheld for the time being), and I've been privileged to upload it all on YouTube with his/her blessing. 



An embedded playlist of the footage divided in three short parts. Let the player play all three or use the links in this paragraph to see them one-by-one.

Unfortunately the footage contained absolutely no sound, therefore the audio heard in the first part plays the opening intro theme repeatedly, while later parts just use music from some of the PlayStation Mega Man games. =P

Friday, January 1, 2016

Makoto Tomozawa: Exclusive Interview w/ Former Capcom Music Composer (Mega Man, Resident Evil (1996) + RE1.5)

(Originally published at the now-defunct DASH Republic in March 2012. Re-edited and expanded for Tumblr in 2013. Finalized for January 2016 on The Game Informant.)
Makoto "V. Tomozo" Tomozawa adjusts
audio equipment during the 
production of
Street Fighter IV, circa January 2010.
Under the pseudonym V. Tomozo, as it was Capcom's policy to obscure talents' names back then, Makoto Tomozawa became well-known for composing music for several of the more popular early titles in the Mega Man franchise, including Mega Man X and Mega Man 7 for Super Nintendo (while also supposedly lending a hand in Dr. Wily's Revenge for Game Boy). He would later be best known for his work in the two main Mega Man Legends entries years later.

He continued to be credited under the pseudonym until Resident Evil in 1996, when 3D polygonal games were becoming the norm and the talent it took being more valued and recognized. Tomozawa would work briefly on the first draft of Resident Evil 2 (Resident Evil 1.5) right until it was scrapped. As soon as that game entered redevelopment in 1997, Tomozawa would be reassigned to compose music for Mega Man Legends, the first major 3D Mega Man game for PlayStation.

His other work consisted of titles from other well-known Capcom properties, including the Dino Crisis series on PlayStation. Tomozawa returned to the Resident Evil franchise one last time as a co-composer for the remake in 2002. One year later, after the release of P. N. 03, he left the company to join the Dimps Corporation and work on the highly-celebrated Street Fighter IV. In 2010 he would reunite with the Blue Bomber in Mega Man 10, composing Strike Man's stage theme.

Around the time of the Mega Man Legends 3 cancellation catastrophe in summer of 2011, I had a chat with Makoto Tomozawa on Twitter. Being the huge fan of the Legends series and some of the Resident Evil games in particular, I wanted the opportunity to speak with him about his past years at Capcom. He gladly accepted and over a period of months, he and I replied back and forth in an on-and-off manner to the point where he unfortunately dropped out on the middle of Legends 1 portion of our chat.

But from what I did gather, he didn't hesitate to admit that the Mega Man Legends projects were among the higher points of his time at Capcom.
Arron - OKeijiDragon: Hello, are you Makoto Tomozawa (友澤 眞) who worked at Capcom Co. Ltd (カプコン)?
Makoto Tomozawa: Yes, I once worked at Capcom, but I retired from the company.
Arron: Oh hello, Mr. Tomozawa! Pleased to finally meet you. I am a big fan of your work in Mega Man Legends. =)
Tomozawa: Thank you very much!!! It was one of my favorite works.
You can catch how the interview unfolded by clicking the jump!


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.

Sunday, August 30, 2015

Here's a random proto track and an newly-ripped E3 trailer (@60FPS) from Mega Man X5

Three months!? Gosh, I've been out for a while.

I've been in the mood for prototype/unreleased games again lately. This time, I've taken a listening to a track I've ripped and uploaded on YouTube a year ago, from a prototype version of Mega Man X5 dated May 1, 2000.



The biggest difference to note about this track is in the middle. The first fifty seconds are consistent to the final version, but after that the main verse (or bridge, whatever's the right term for it) becomes different. If you ask me, this version emits the vastness of space much more than the final one (though the stage actually takes place in a planetarium, surprise suprise). Out of all the tracks in the proto, this one is my favorite.

The prototype itself contains a large number of rudimentary elements indicative of its progression into it's final form, all of which you can find them documented at the Cutting Room FloorThe US preview trailer, unveiled at E3 2000 convention in Los Angeles, CA that year, appears to be from this build of the game.



If you want to see the whole VHS rip in it's entirety, you can find it here and reminisce about the old days when Mega Man (and Capcom) was a bigger brand than it is today. 

Saturday, April 18, 2015

Let's take a look at the V-Jump build of BIOHAZARD (Resident Evil)


In a time when Street Fighter and Mega Man where the biggest names in Capcom's arsenal of video games in the early 1990s, 3D polygonal games had just begun to be a thing and polygons consisted mostly of origami figures that resembled moving pyramids and stationary chunks of sausage blocks, figuratively speaking. BIO HAZARD, or as commoners call it Resident Evil, would become the company's first bold experiment working with 3D polygons that would pay off in a major way.

Let's set the clock back to late summer of 1995. The PlayStation was already less than a year old in Japan, while BIO HAZARD had been in development for some time already. At this point in time, the game had just moved on from its "co-op" experimentation period (which not much is known about, and if I can even say it was co-op, actually) and into the period where survival was mandatory and isolation horror would shape up the final form it would assume.

On stage, director Shinji Mikami and supervisor Masahiko Kurokawa would present this direction to the silent audience of hundreds at the V-Jump Festival '95 in Japan.


This footage has been around for a long time now and in fact some of you might even recall seeing it on Inflames' website or other familiar locale. For the purpose of preservation (and because I can't stand the quality of the original rip anyways), I've once again taken upon myself to purchase the original VHS source to bring to you remastered footage of the segment in 1080p60.

So the narrative is set in the near-future (for the time of the game's release) of 1998 at the northwest side of the United States where S.T.A.R.S, a police force stationed at Raccoon City, is called in to investigate a series of bizarre murders committed in the outskirts of their city. Upon receiving no word from Bravo team, the team that was initially dispatched the previous evening to find any clues to intercept the supposed killers at the Arklay Mountains, Alpha team arrives swiftly to locate their missing members.

I have an A.A degree in Journalism and I can tell you that that's a
really terrible newspaper headline for a news story.
Not that mine for this blog post is much better.
To their horror, they discover the grisly remains of their compatriots. The vicious dogs responsible for the deaths appear abnormal, and set their eyes and noses on the remaining Alpha members, killing one of them by the neck, and chasing the rest to a nearby abandoned mansion full of zombies and other horrific monstrosities. Now taking desperate refuge inside the establishment are three (six?) remaining S.T.A.R.S members: Chris Redfield, Jill Valentine, and Albert Wesker. They don't know where Barry Burton is or that Rebecca Chambers, who had one hell of an horror fest with an escaped convict the previous night, is somewhere inside. Thanks for leaving them behind, go to hell Brad Vickers.

OK, whatever. Cool story.

*Until REmake came and destroyed every single RE game that
came before it (Electronic Gaming Monthly #80, March 1996).
Upon the unveiling, comparisons were already being made between Resident Evil and the preceding Alone In The Dark, released four years prior. The two share similar horror and gameplay philosophies, but the key difference being that Resident Evil's graphics kicked ass* according to Mikami. He wouldn't be wrong though, it did prove itself as an immersive horror game with an intricate level of graphical detail into the polygon character models and CGI backgrounds even during the advent of the pre-rendered computer graphics craze in video games at the time.
The V-Jump prototype is dated
August 4, 1995.
So onto the prototypical context of the footage itself. First off, only a handful of areas of the first floor mansion are actually playable and the camera positions in some of these areas are drastically different. For example, in one angle, the camera appropriated to the first floor door leading to the first zombie is positioned behind the banister from the second floor (which I find the angle itself interesting, actually). 

Jill Valentine is stands at the front stairs on the first floor of the mansion. She doesn't say much other than "I'll stand watch here." Nothing else. Interestingly, despite her presence in this prototype, Jill isn't actually seen in the embedded footage above. My guess is that in between the aforementioned previous prototype version and the leaked August 4th prototype, her model had just been redone from her previous, implemented design. But that would mean that there had to have been a build of that that existed at some point.

One of the elements I find more interesting is the lack of a finalized set of voice samples for Chris, possibly in Japanese. Presumably, this build was created at a time when the game was still planned to feature Japanese language performances. There's even a set for Jill as well. Take a sample (for more, check out the prototype's page that I sometimes update at The Cutting Room Floor):

Chris:      |     Jill: 

Aside of that, and a snake that shows up from almost out of nowhere at the exit to the garden, there's not much else in the build that provides more of the game than the later protos exhibit. Beyond this prototype, there are at least two more other prototypes (three if you include the Trial Edition) that proceed the progress of the game's development. For now however, the focus is just for this build only. Sometime in the future, I'd like to explore those other builds. If there is a prototype of this game that you'd like for me to explore and document in detail, I'd be happy to.

I'm more motivated to start and complete projects based on the level of demand for their release, and in fact I've invited YouTube users to like this comment I've made about remaking a video about the Japanese dialogue that never materialized in the final game. You can too. Otherwise, hit me up at Google+ or Twitter if you want me to talk about it more.

Thursday, April 2, 2015

Rockman Neo [Mega Man Legends demo] Analysis Video (With Annotations)

(Originally published at the now-defunct DASH Republic and Tumblr in 2013. Now I'm posting this again, refined, on my own blog because goddamn it I can, that's what.)



At a time when the third dimension was taking over the gaming landscape in the mid-1990s with 3D polygonal-based consoles, 2D-native characters of previous generations were making the leap to 3D, often to mixed results. Franchises like Super Mario, Zelda, Final Fantasy made the jump to 3D and closely followed their 2D gameplay concepts. Mega Man's transition wasn't familiar. 

In what could be called one of the boldest transitions to 3D gaming ever, Capcom completely re-imagined the very core of Mega Man for his first major entry in the world of triangular-shaped polygons and textures. No longer did you select your level on a menu. No longer did you jump and shoot across side-scrolling stages and fight eight robot masters and anthropomorphic robot animals, or fighting evil scientists and rogue reploids. It wasn't gonna be the same Mega Man we knew. Not anymore.
Pictures by GodDamnProtoman.

Ah, hell nah. This was Mega Man Legends. You explored inside abandoned ancient dungeons. You shot at creepy bloodthirsty robots that live in said dungeons. You talked to goddamn talking monkeys and legomen. You live in an airship that crash lands on an island that becomes invaded by pirates who gave you psuedo-Team Rocket vibes. You fought a vaguely effeminate, psychopathic cyborg that wants to invoke a skynet-like apocalypse on humans that aren't even humans but "Carbons." You can kick cans over to a bakery and get free money. You could kick animals if you wanted to. In 3D.

So you have these awesome concepts that don't fit into the traditional Mega Man formula and yet it identifies itself as such. How do you market this game to your core fanbase, and the mainstream at large? Well, you create a demo and you include it in the same demo disc of a highly-anticipated sequel to your biggest-selling PlayStation game, with the director's cut release of that game in Japan. Enter Rockman Neo.



Capcom included this demo in the second disc of first edition copies of the Japanese version of Resident Evil: Director's Cut in 1997. The video above demonstrates the several major differences in gameplay, audio and visual content in this pre-release that the annotations in the video will elaborate over.

Mega Man Legends went through many name changes in its development. First, Rockman Neo in Japan, whereas the English name would officially be known as Mega Man Neo when it was showcased at E3 1997 in Atlanta, Georgia; followed by the final Japanese name Rockman DASHMega Man Nova (really?) was a likely candidate before someone at Capcom USA or Japan recalled a boring lecture from their astronomy classes in school and figured how lame the name sounded, and finally settled upon... you should know by now.

Yes I know its 35 minutes long (!) but it's full of information, tons of beta facts, and fun stuff that supplements background to this demo. Plus, there's references to TauVertex's Mega Man Legends Abridged series. So take a seat and enjoy all the juicy details this demo has!

If you're even more interested in Rockman Neo, you should check out the Rockman Neo page give at The Cutting Room Floor! Lots of fascinating material found inside the games you thought gave you everything it offered!

Monday, March 30, 2015

Prototype Time! | Mega Man Legends 2 (English Debug Prototype)

Last March, Protodude approached me with a few Mega Man prototypes he had on his possession. The first was a proto of Mega Man X5, the third being a "late"-English localization build of The Misadventures of Tron Bonne circa months before it's North American release, and the second in-between...

...an English debug prototype of Mega Man Legends 2, dated July 12, 2000. This was by far, surprisingly, the most interesting of the three Mega Man prototypes that Protodude shared to me behind closed doors. I held onto this for a while before it was leaked onto the net, mostly due to video production reasons and to start writing a page for this at the The Cutting Room Floor.

So wait, wait, wait. What exactly does "debug" mean? What is it for and why should we care about this, aside of serving as a view of the game's development?

So (to my understanding) debugging basically means to look for bugs, meaning any defects, in the whole game's programing and fixing them all of them as much as possible. This particular debugging prototype was used to assess the programming of the game during Rockman DASH 2's localization process into Mega Man Legends 2.

Saturday, February 7, 2015

Late 1995 V-Jump Footage of the cancelled TwinBee Miracle [PS1]

I've never played a TwinBee game before nor do I even know how any of the games play. In fact, I've only actually just watched the footage below after rendering this clip, as it was a recent request and I had only just decided upon rendering and uploading it yesterday. And with that out of the way, here it is:


Unseen64 has an brief article this particular entry of the series that was planned for PlayStation but was unfortunately canceled in early 1996. Not a whole lot is known about it, let alone why it was canceled, but judging from the V-Jump 1995 footage, TwinBee Miracle was to be an quirky 2D RPG by Konami based on its top-scrolling shooter roots with colorful characters to meet and some cartoony worlds to explore. It does look like an RPG I would have played.

Its always too bad to see games that seem to have great potential get canceled. Not to be too off-topic but the greatest gaming tragedy I can think of off the top of my head is Star Fox 2, the sequel to the SNES Super FX megahit of the same name. Thankfully, there are prototypes of that game out in the wild internet for everyone to play and see for themselves the marvel that game is. I'm glad to have made some videos out of it too. Hopefully, we'll see a build of Miracle in the future.

Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Buried Game Treasure: Next Generation Magazine CDs

(Originally published on 1UP.com and Tumblr. Now I'm posting this again, refined, on my own blog because I don't give a damn anymore.)

The front disc envelope of
Next Generation (Sept. 1997)
featuring Cupid probably praying
for a giant meteorite to drop on
to Mother Earth anytime now.
Remember those times when you bought a shrink-wrapped magazine from a supermarket or a bookstore, and you got a free disc of cool stuff inside them? Back then, the internet was this underdeveloped, yet still awesome tool to find the latest news on anything in general at the time, especially gaming news. Yet, anything through a crappy dial-up connection (remember that too?) would take forever for things — like videos — to finish downloading onto our PCs, so for a lot of us we resorted to these discs that came with image and video previews of upcoming games.

A few years years ago, I discovered an ISO on my hard drive called the Next Generation - September 1997, an example of disc containing such cool content. These were discs that were distributed in copies of Next Generation Magazine when you bought the magazine at the time. Included in this particular disc were lots of low-quality 320x240 MOV videos of PlayStation, Sega Saturn, & Nintendo 64 games that were featured at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) at Atlantic, Georgia in mid-June of 1997.

I've found many clips of many different games in their prototype forms, including Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back, Mega Man Neo (Mega Man Legends), and Sonic R, all in their pre-release glory. The following videos have been edited to correct the contrast issues the videos had when it was first produced. They looked terrible (view this comparison: twitpic.com/9d1v6q).


This old early prototype footage of Crash Bandicoot 2 features several differences that indicate how early into production this game was when it was first announced at this convention. The video above features brief annotations that go over said differences, including the original HUD font used from Crash 1, different object placements, etc. There's more footage where that came from too (give it a watch too).



This footage of Sonic R features what appears to be a slightly (don't quote me on that, watch and decide for yourself) stage layout at the end of the stage. Different HUD (this was a common beta trait from those days, wasn't it?), and character icons, camera angles, etc. There might be a better quality version on YouTube somewhere, but I didn't find it until after this video was uploaded then.


Next up, sp,e old prototype footage of one of my closest-to-heart games ever, Mega Man Legendswhich was known at the time as Mega Man Neo. Just like the first two, this video includes annotations that accentuates the various rudimentary differences that indicate just how early into production this 3D Mega Man title was when it was first quietly announced at the time. It's amazing seeing how much content and concepts were experimented on this game, it doesn't even strongly resemble the final game know today.


Last but not least, another valuable video I found was an video interview of former CEO of Nintendo of America, Howard Lincoln. Topics discussed in this interview include the Nintendo 64's early performance in the west of that year and their strong relationship with Rareware, the developers of Donkey Kong CountryKiller InstinctBanjo-Kazooie, and GoldenEye 007. You know, really great games.

Backside.
As the internet grew to become the multimedia world it is today, the necessity of CDs packed with videos shrank as sites like YouTube and Google Video took over to allow users, fan communities, and media and game companies to upload videos without worrying about their own bandwidth and file sizes. I remember Nintendo Power coming packed with DVDs of trailers and such, but that was like in 2006 just as YT got around. YouTube and the internet has really made our lives easier.

Before I forget, I can't remember where I found the ISO in the internet originally, but in case the download source is no longer available, here's an ISO of the disc that's now readily available at the Internet Archive. I hope you guys get something neat out of this.


Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Reminisce Capcom's awesomeness with this old collection of E3 2000 trailers. Complete & 60fps.

Capcom E3 Sales Presentation (Long Version)
No, I don't have the short version.
So I got a seasonal job last month. It ate up most of my time but it was worth it for the moolah. Now I'm back, and I'm starting the new year off with a nice and hella late Christmas gift to my tiny readership.

Last July, I purchased three VHS cassettes from eBay containing promotional videos of various Capcom games from the late 1990s. One of them simply says Fighter's Edge, but the other two held greater interest to me. For this post, I'm only going to post only one of the tapes as it may be of value to a broader range of Capcom fans, especially to those who loved their games in the early-2000s. The other I'll be unveiling on the 29th of this month. The fan-base might just like it. ;) Actually no, that didn't came until Halloween of this year. Yikes, long delay.

The E3 Sales Presentation (Long Version) tape includes several trailers for games that were announced in 2000 including Mega Man Legends 2, Mega Man X5, Onimusha, Marvel Vs. Capcom 2, Power Stone 2, etc. Not only does it contain a trailer for RE: Gun Survivor, but a trailer for Resident Evil Zero on the Nintendo 64. Quite the heavy hitters there.

Monday, November 3, 2014

Re-ripped and remastered Mega Man Legends 2 trailer from E3 2000 (@60FPS)

Man, whatever happened to Mega Man in 3D gaming? Scratch that, whatever happened to Mega Man period?



I remember back in the day when I saw some shots of Mega Man Legends 2 on an issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly and getting super stoked about it. Aside going online at Capcom's USA website and staring at weird screenshots, I got onto GameSpot and watched that particular E3 2000 trailer you see above on a shitty-ass Real Player or something similar. This was when Mega Man was still relevant in gaming. Now he's stuck to merchandise, and he hasn't had a game since 2010. Bummer.

Oh well, so what existed before as a low-ASSolution mess of pixels is now remastered -- from the same promotional VHS source as the Resident Evil Zero trailer I posted having in my possession several days ago -- as an 1080p60 HD quality trailer. 

That's right, 60FPS. We have YouTube to thank for enabling 60FPS video playback for everyone to experience. Be sure to watch it on Google Chrome, for now. Stay tuned for more videos of this source from me. =)

Monday, October 27, 2014

Scans: Resident Evil: Gun Survivor (PlayStation) + Review Score | Famitsu PS Issue #76 (JP) | 2/11/2000

Front Cover of Famitsu PS Issue #76
I'm a fairly big fan of old-school Resident Evil. Anyone remember that spin-off that came out for PlayStation in 2000, where you're actually controlling your character in a first-person viewpoint without any pre-rendered backgrounds? I didn't. I never cared about the spin-offs but some fans do, and its those fans I have a treat for tonight.

Issue #76 of Famitsu PS contains both a six-page strategy guide and a scored review of the critically-panned light gun shooter Resident Evil: Gun Survivor. Along with a reprinted review of Resident Evil 3 from an earlier issue of Famitsu PS, there are also other articles of Resident Evil: Code Veronica and the Nintendo 64 port of Resident Evil 2.

Tonight's focus will be Gun Survivor however and once again I do not provide translations.

So let's go over this quick. Pages 32 to 37, starting from the left at the top row to the right and following that same orientation on the middle and bottom, are just strategy guides with supplemental maps and enemies of the game.


Review Scores
(Click to enlarge)


The common format for Famitsu reviews are presented in a four-score column with four reviewers in a row providing their scores, individually. On page 39, Gun Survivor scored a 8, 6, 6, and 5, totaling 25 out of 40.

The average-level scores given by Famitsu PS' reviewers do reflect the same overall attitude toward the game at the time of it's release. It actually got a lot of venom from many publications, particularly from Game Informer who called the game one of the worst horror games ever made. Interestingly, Weekly Famitsu scored the game six points more than its PlayStation-specialized publication. How interesting indeed.

Page 39
I've never played so I didn't care much for scanning these articles at first. But I figured, I should just archive and scan all Resident Evil content from this magazine for the sake of archiving (I'd be happy to look into other games that I haven't scanned and released on my blog too).

Having just sampled a video of the game in action though, it does have that consistently dark, industrial atmosphere of Resident Evil 2 that I adore so much. Maybe I'll give it a try myself sometime.

Coming up next are scans of magazine coverage for Code Veronica, the Nintendo 64 version of Resident Evil 2, and a review of Resident Evil 3.