In summer 2004, SCE London studio gave the finishing touches to EyeToy: Play 2. But what did happen after that? The team began working on “The Getaway Online” for PS2 which evolved into different concepts and which is known as Home for PS3 nowadays. Sadly, not much is known about the original project.
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PS0 is the new chapter in the Phantasy Star Online series of games, that was released for the Nintendo DS the 25 december 2008 (Japanese version). When SEGA started to work on the game, various prototypes and different character designs were tried before to choose the final one. In the earliest stage of development, they recreated the Forest area from the original PSO Dreamcast on the DS, with Boomas and the famous Dragon. It seems that initially items / mesetas were dropped on the field when an enemy was killed, instead of coming out from the final-box that appears only after all the enemies are died, as it is in the final version of the game. Probably SEGA decided to remove the single-enemy drops because of the limited graphic capabilities of the portable console (with too many 3D objects on the screen, the game could have slow down too much). In other concept arts and screens, we can see a “more stylish” design for the characters, that looked more like the one from the original PSO. In one of the artworks there are even some “flamed-head” enemies with guns, but there are no enemies like that in the final game. All these images were show at the Phantasy Star Zero Christmas Party that Sega organized to promote the game on the 25 December 2008.
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The first Fighting Force was developed by Core Design and published by Eidos Interactive for PlayStation and PC in 1997, the same year in which they released Tomb Raider 2. Core Design was at the vertex of their popularity, becoming one of the most recognized teams in the gaming market, their Tomb Raider franchise was a money-making machine.
Fighting Force was nothing compared to the caliber of Tomb Raider, it was conceived as a simple 3D incarnation of the classic beat ‘em up formula. Players had to fight their way through different levels punching and kicking enemies, either in single player or coop multiplayer, choosing between 4 different characters: Hawk Manson, Ben “Smasher” Jackson, Mace Daniels and Alana McKendricks. Being one of the first quite-fun-to-play beat ‘em ups in 3D, the game had a good number of fans, and Eidos probably spent quite a lot of money at the time to promote it in gaming magazines.
It’s interesting to notice that initially Core Design tried to pitch their Fighting Force concept to Sega, to make it a new 3D chapter in the Streets of Rage series, as an exclusive game for their Saturn console. In the end Sega and Core had different views and expectations for Streets of Rage 3D and broke their collaboration: Core continued to work on their game with a new IP and the Saturn version was never officially published. In November 2008 a prototype of Fighting Force for Saturn was found and preserved online: the game still had its early title “Judgement Force” and some differences from the final version.
Fighting Force was popular enough to get a sequel in late 1999 for PlayStation and Dreamcast. Fighting Force 2 was kind of different from the original game, as Core Design decided to change it from a linear beat ‘em up to a more action adventure, mission based type of gameplay, coop multiplayer was removed and there was only 1 playable character, Hawk Manson. Fighting Force 2 was not a great success, with low scores and sales. This was the sad end of the Fighting Force series, but a third, unreleased chapter was planned, even if never officially announced.
Fighting Force 3 was in development by Core Design between 2002 and 2003, to be released for PlayStation 2, Xbox and maybe even on Gamecube. This time the team went back to their roots with classic beat ‘em up gameplay, fully playable coop mode and 4 different characters to choose from: Hawk, Mace and Smasher, returning from the first game, and a new one, Jill. Gamers would have been able to fight their way through many different levels, using punch-kick combos, weapons and interacting with the environment. The environment could be used in many ways, such as, breaking down a water tube to use it as a mace, impaling enemies on iron bars, throwing them under moving trains or against barrels on fire to burn them.
The team was able to create a good number of fully playable stages, available in single player and coop, but the project would have still needed about 1 year of development before it would be finished. Unfortunately Fighting Force 3’s development was halted in late 2003 / early 2004, mostly because of complex issues between Core Design and Eidos Interactive (its parent company at the time).
In mid-2003 Core released Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness for PS2 and it received low ratings from magazines reviews and fans. Eidos decided then to move the Tomb Raider series from Core Design to Crystal Dynamics. Unsure of their future and seeing their most popular franchise being taken away, at the end of 2003 many key members from Core decided to leave to find a new job, and some of them formed a new studio together (Circle Studio).
The remaining Fighting Force 3 team lost most of their will to continue working on the game for Eidos, development slowed down and Core found themselves with lack of people to finish the game. After a year of re-organization, in 2005 Core Design was able to release a new game for PSP (Smart Bomb) that unfortunately was also a big failure for the company. While they were working on a new project, Free Running, Core Design was sold from Eidos to Rebellion Developments Ltd.
After a few years working as an internal team for Rebellion, the studio was officially closed down by them in 2010. Eidos was not immune to the economic crisis either and after many years of losses in early 2009 all of their properties, assets and IPs were sold to Square Enix. It’s currently unknown if we’ll ever see another Fighting Force game in the future, but it’s possible that S-E have quietly forgotten about this long-lost series.
A little tech demo from the project was found at fairlyfanatic.com and a single screenshot was found on polygonworlds.wordpress.com. More memories and footage from Fighting Force 3 were saved thanks to former developers. Thanks a lot to Hey Hey and Gh0stblade for the contributions!
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The Unseen 64 Podcast is only in Italian, sorry!
U64 Podcast: Episodio 1.5 – Bull 64: Blast Corps [59:03] Dopo quasi 6 mesi di assenza e promesse mai mantenute, finalmente lo staff italiano di Unseen 64 si è riunito durante un nevoso pomeriggio invernale, per regalare al nostro fan numero 1 la podcast dei suoi sogni: un ora di discussione sullo sviluppo di Blast Corps, dedicata con amore al nostro caro Rosalex! Durante questo episodio bonus i nostri eroi cercheranno di argomentare le poche informazioni disponibili sulla beta del gioco, con i feedback sul nuovo server, richieste di aiuto, la voce sexy di Reno, fenomenologie sulla direzione retta dei camion nucleari, teorie assurde sul prototipo, le analogie con RC Pro-AM, i veicoli rimossi, i collegamenti con Jet Force Gemini, rivelazioni su Donkey Kong Racing ed altre piccanti rumors sulle beta di casa RAREware, le tecniche per avvicinare gli sviluppatori, il mistero della scomparsa di Tim Spampers e le preoccupazioni sul camionista nucleare. Come perdere un’altra ora della vostra vita? Ecco la risposta più nerd. >> U64 Episodio 1.5 – Download Versione in MP3
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In the last few months it was an hard time for U64, with lots of server problems and the high cost of traffic, we had to search for more donations and for a cheaper server. At last we were able to find a good server for cheap, but it had a monthly bandwidth limit.. so in December 2008 we had to “close” the site to not going down and only U64-members were able to login.
Later we had some talk with our server provider: they are really a lovely group of geeks, they made us a great offert so we should be able to re-open the site for everyone soon and this time we should have more bandwidth.
Thanks to all the people that have donated for the cause (Gilgalegrouik, Stereo, Miccha, Shoyz, Annah & Bamper), we were able to pay most of of the bill for 2009! We should be able to pay the rest with the various banners / ads, so there are hopes to see Unseen 64 everyday without too many problems :) Thanks again to all the donators! We really appreciate your love. If more people want to help too, all the exceeding funds will be used for the next year server bill and emergency costs.
