As we can read on MobyGames, Gregg Tavares has worked on many of our favourite games, as Wild 9 and Crash Team Racing for the PSX, Gex for 3DO, Locoroco for the PSP, Zombie Revenge for the Arcade, Afro Samurai for the PlayStation 3 & Xbox 360, along with some more obscure (and unseen) ones, as Disruptor for the M2, Terminator vs Robocop for the NES and Project Y for the PS2. We had the chance to have a short interview with him, to talk about his time in the gaming world and asking for some unseen tales on the projects that he worked on.
[Interview by EWJ]
U64: Thanks for your time Gregg, would you like to introduce yourself to our readers?
Gregg: My name is Gregg Tavares, I’ve been making games for over 25 years starting on the Atari 800 all the way up to the 360 and PS3. I’m currently at Google working on adding technology to web browsers to make it easier to play games in them though both the WebGL and Pepper projects.
U64: You’ve been in the Games Industry for a while now, in all of your time working with games, out of all the games you’ve helped develop which games development stands out the very most to you?
Resistance 2 is a FPS developed for the PlayStation 3 by Insomniac Games and published by Sony in 2008. Metin has noticed a lot of differences between the old footage and the retail release (and even the private/public beta). The differences are mostly found in the multiplayer mode, as they didn’t change a whole lot in Single Player (or we did not see much from the early development so can’t accurately measure the changes). In Chicago, Hawthorne, Capelli and Warner run with you from the beginning through the alleys. These were previously Black Ops soldiers running with you and it was also a Black Ops soldier who throws a can to the other side of the street to determine where the Hellfire is.
The beta multiplayer mode:
* Objectives had a real names (go take over the gorge, go take over the lumber mill) instead of “capture the beacon” on every single beacon.
* Augers had the RFOM shield (a plate shaped shield in front of you instead of half a circle in front of you).
* Wrath was called the Minigun early on, it didn’t spin up so fast as it does now and it was less powerfull.
* Marksman was called the Sharpshooter early on, and it didn’t have the 3 bullet burst, it had a regular 1 shot with 10 bullets in a clip instead of 33.
* When you killed someone you’d see ammo boxes pop out of there bodies (might sound weird but it actually looks good).
* Grenade boxes looked like the grenade boxes in Co-op.
* Carbine had alot of recoil and a different aim.
* The water on the ground of Orick was not there in the early footage, it only had a dry ground. Also Orick was called Scotia before the private beta began.
* Also in the lumbermill there is a sort of catwalk going to the top, it’s where a Titan spawns in R2 co-op, they had large iron crates there, and wooden poles ontop of eachother there, these were removed in the final game.
* Secondary fire for the Wrath was supossed to be like this: you press R2, you drop a tripod and you get a shield up in front of you. You can’t move, just turn and aim. You could only be killed by a grenade, someone meele’ing you in the back, or a Sniper shot right where the barrel of the gun comes out. (my guess is they changed this because it would not work in a fast paced game like R2).
* Burning cars looked amazing, there was good looking fire, and thick black smoke coming from burning cars. The smoke would not go straight up in the air but it had a small twist to the right, probably due to wind.
Thanks to Metin and Robert_Kendo for the contributions! Thanks to Jason for the english corrections!
Jet Ski Rage is a cancelled sport / racing game that was in development by Velocity for the Sega 32X add-on. The game was going to be something like Wave Race but in first person view, with detailed water physic and a rumored multiplayer mode. Jet Ski Rage was likely canceled early in development as the failure of the 32X became apparent shortly after launch and then moved to Sega Saturn.
In the process Velocity added a “fighting” component to it (deadly courses, floating spikes, bounty hunters etc.). Even on its Saturn incarnation Jet Ski Rage would never seen the light of the day for unknown reasons.
Celine was able to find some screens of the 32X version (probably target-renders) in CD Consoles magazine issue #7 while the Saturn article was found on Sega Vision issue #25. Thanks to Jason for the english corrections!
Splinter Cell: Conviction is a stealth / action game developed by Ubisoft Montreal, released in April, 2010 for the Xbox 360 and PC. The project was originally announced on May, 2007 when Ubisoft released a trailer for the game. It depicted a more rugged-looking Sam with long hair and a fully-grown beard. He had the ability to blend in with the environment, interact with tables and chairs and engage in hand-to-hand combat with enemies.
The game was due for release in November, 2007. However, it missed its initial launch date and on May, 2008 Xbox World 360 magazine reported that Splinter Cell: Conviction was “officially on hold” and that the game had been taken “back to the drawing board.” While Ubisoft never confirmed this, they announced that the game had been pushed back to the 2009-10 fiscal year.
The game resurfaced at E3 2009 with a completely new visual style and a more casual-looking Sam. The developers confirmed that the “new” Conviction had been in development since early 2008, commenting that “the gameplay has evolved a lot” and “the visual direction is simply much better.” [Info from Wikipedia]
We can say that the original Splinter Cell Conviction was cancelled, as the final game and gameplay look very different from what was shown in 2007.
Thanks to Userdante for the contribution! Thanks to Jason for the english corrections!
UPDATE: thanks to an anonymous contributor, we were able to get these PDZ bonus videos! You can see them below:
Do you know anyone who has got the Perfect Dark Zero bonus DVD from the Collector’s Edition? It seems to feature a “Making of ” with some interesting development footage (Mundorare once had beta images and screenshots from it, but they disappeared after their relaunch). As we can read on Wikipedia:
Perfect Dark Zero was released in two forms: the standard version and a “Limited Collector’s Edition”. The collector’s edition features a second disc of content, a black metal game case, images of the staff and most of the in-house testers which gave a glimpse behind the scenes at Rare, a comic booklet set in the Perfect Dark universe, which sets the scene for the game, and one of nine holographic collectible cards.
If someone could be able to find this “Making Of” Video and sharing it online, it would be nice!
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