For our series of interviews with people from various websites related to the unseen development of videogames, this time we got in contact with CRV, founder of the Game Developer Research Institute, an organization dedicated to researching gaming companies and their employee. With over 100 company entries and over 25 interviews, the GDRI archive is one of the best place to learn more about obscure studios and their works. In this unseen interview we talk about the GDRI site, contacts with developers and games preservation.
U64: Thanks for your time Smsgenny, would you like to introduce your site to our readers?
CRV: GDRI (Game Developer Research Institute) is a website/organization started back in 2006 that is dedicated to researching the companies and people involved in game development. We try to figure out who did what
U64: Why did you decide to open an archive about popular and obscure developers?
The Ace of Spade is a cancelled action game that was in development by Ubisoft in 2004, for the Playstation 2. The team created an early playable prototype that was probably used for an internal pitch, but in the end the project was never finished for unknown reasons. The game had a cover/fire system similar to the one used in Namco’s Kill Switch and later in Gear of Wars.
WWF War Zone was the first 3D WWF title to be released, developed by Acclaim Studios Salt Lake and published by Acclaim Entertainment in 1998 for the PlayStation and Nintendo 64. As Andrew has noticed, there were some beta screenshots in an issue of Game Informer (?) with Star Wars: Masters of Teräs Käsi on the cover. At the time, the game was simply referred to as WWF ’98. This beta version has no health bars yet, the ropes are red, white, and blue instead of just red, and the arena has American flags. There was a beta video on Youtube but it seems to have disappeared.
Kaboom: The Mad Bomber Returns (also know as Kaboom! 2) is a cancelled action game that was in development in 1993 / 1994 by High Voltage Software / Activision (?) for the Super Nintendo. The game was based on the original Kaboom! for the Atari 2006. Gameplay in the original Kaboom! consists of using a paddle controller controller to catch bombs dropped by the “Mad Bomber”, so we can assume that the SNES version was going to be similar.
A prototype of Kaboom SNES was found in 2001 by an user of the Atari Age forum:
It look’s to pretty much to be a “Technology Demo”. Good at best. Very repetetive. There’s some-sort of mad doctor on a flying carpet, throwing down bombs to a kid who runs back ‘n’ forth trying to catch them. Not very impressive and very slow. […] This version look’s as though it was done by High Voltage Software.
Celine was able to find a couple of screens in Game Power (an italian magazine) issue 20, while some other info were found by Zwackery from the Atari Age Forum, in VideoGames magazine (vol. V, no. 11, Nov 1993). As we can read from the VGM article, Kaboom: The Mad Bomber Returns was shown at the summer CES 1991 in Chicago, along with the cancelled “River Raid: The Mission of No Return” remake.
It seems that “both got killed because the developers couldn’t push the SNES boundaires with either one” as noted by Klove in the Atari Age Forum.
Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time is a platform / shooter game developed by Insomniac Games and published by Sony in october / november 2009. As in other R&C games, to learn more about A Crack in Time’s development and its beta differences the team added a nice bonus to unlock in the form of the “Insomniac Moon” (unlocked after collecting all the Zoni and fighting a secret boss). As we can read from an article at Press the Buttons:
[…] a 3D recreation of the Insomniac offices in the form of a museum that serves as a tribute to and exhibit of all kinds of interesting objects, enemies, levels, and basic design features that did not actually make it into the main game.
[…] From the moment players guide Ratchet into the museum, it’s apparent that something special is going on here. While the area sports a minimalistic design, the real stars are the deleted and unfinished materials. Wander around the place and it’s not long before you’ll stumble on a guided missile weapon that uses flaming birds as ammo. Then there’s a set of crates that pay out special bonuses depending on how Ratchet whacks them with his Omniwrench. Want to have a look at a flying space monster that involved animation too complex to work into the environment in which he was meant to patrol? The museum can offer that.
[…] The best surprise inside the museum is that several of the cut level elements are playable. There’s a hoverboot race that was originally planned for the Agorian Battleplex, and checking out its exhibit space leads to being able to race through the semi-completed environment. There’s also an additional Great Clock platforming puzzle originally meant for Clank and another dropped Battleplex element that involved a procedurally generated obstacle course.
Huge props to Insomniac! If more studios could share this kind of bonus in their games, it would be easier to preserve the cuts and the changes in the development.
A couple of videos of the Insomniac Moon can be found on Youtube, but if someone could be able to record more footage of the area and take some direct-feed screens of all that beta-stuff, it would be nice!
Thanks to Robert Seddon and Bowserenemy for the contributions!
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