Nights: Journey of Dreams for the Wii is the sequel to the 1996 Sega Saturn title Nights into Dreams and the fourth game developed by Sega Studio USA. It seems that “NiGHTS 2” was going to be a game for the Xbox 360 and PS3, before being “cancelled” and “ported” to the Wii. Thanks to this article on TsszNews we can read some rants from a developer that worked on the X360 / PS3 Nights before the change: “In particular, it reveals an internal strife between Sonic Team and Sega of Japan, highlighted by the fact that NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams was originally developed as an Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 title – going so far as to say he played an Xbox 360 build of NiGHTS at one point. Upon witnessing the overnight success of the Wii, Sega of Japan apparently forced Sonic Team to retool the game for Nintendo’s lower-spec platform, something its producer (Takashi Iizuka) was not happy about. Despite the shift in platform, the game’s fast-approaching release date and limited development budget remained firmly unchanged, giving Sonic Team roughly one year to rebuild NiGHTS exclusively for the Wii (when most games typically take two years or more to develop).”
We’ll try to find screens from this version. We wonder how much far in development it was and if it was going to be different from the final game, apart from the obvius graphic differences.
FF: Seven Sons was a prototype for a new Final Fight game that was in development at Capcom Studio 8 before FF: Streetwise. In fact Streetwise was the second attempt for a Ps2 Final Fight. The original FF project for the PS2 was know as “Final Fight: Seven Sons”, but it was never released. The camera in Seven Sons was set on a cambox principle that roughly “imitated” a railcam system and the feel was similar to playing the old 2D games. It felt very much like a traditional Final Fight incarnation that had leaped from 2D to 3D. The game had a cel shaded graphic, with toonish gritty backgrounds.
When told by corporate that, “The game while fun to play, was visually not suited for its core audience”. The message was misinterpreted by the team as saying, “We don’t like it at all, continue with the brawler aspect with a theme American gamers could appreciate”. The original gameplay core that was established with Seven Sons was swept away making way for “Streetwise”, (Mass urban thug appeal in an already over-saturated market) and it was all downhill from there. Even with a fun playable beta, Final Fight: Seven Sons was cancelled because of marketing decisions and the released FF: Streetwise was very different from what the team had originally in mind.
In the 90s the SNES produced some of gaming’s finest RPGS. Great classics such as Final Fantasy 4 and 6 kept American audiences entertained, while Japanese gamers had greats such as the original Star Ocean. Entertaining both audiences was the timeless classic Chrono Trigger. Now years later the rise of the internet has put fans together and given those interested the ability to search for in game beta. Notable finds have been made, such as the music from the fabled “Singing Mountain,” and the demo rom. Now thanks to gamers/fans/translators Glitterberri and Gekkahiro we can read in good ole English a translation of this video that has been floating around the web for some time now.
Play the vid and you can follow along with the following translation.
Is it snowing outside? Are you waiting for xmas presents? Well, the Unseen 64 Staff is going in vacation, too! From the 24th of December this site will be in “Winter Break Mode”, we are going to relax somewhere around the world and dream about beta games while we are playing near the fireplace or skiing down the mountains.
In the last few months it was an hard time for U64, with all our 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 we had to “close” the site to not going down and only U64-members were able to login.
Sadly if we would have not “close” the site, all our monthtly traffic would have been used, and the site would have go down for EVERYONE. No one could have seen the site untille January. With the limited access, at least some people had the possibility to still check our latest updates and such. It was not an easy decision, but it was the less problematic in the end. We are happy to know that our work is appreciated by more and more people, but this was exactly the big problem: we had too many visitors lately (almost 2.000 a day) and they consume lots of bandwidth: with the current straffic-limit, it was only a matter of time before the site would have gone down.
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.
Obviously there is still the 2009 server-bill to pay, but thanks to all the people that have donated for the cause (Gilgalegrouik, Stereo, Miccha & Shoyz), we were able to pay most of it already! We still need to rise about 120 $ but we are hopefull to reach that with your help. If 120 visitors would donate 1$ each, we’ll be done! :) Donate 1$ now to support U64!
After this long explanation, it’s time to enter in the Winter Break Mode: but don’t worry! We’ll be back the 7 of January with all the updates and news from the unseen videogames world. In the meantime, there are still lots of things to do while we are away:
– Contribute: Do you have any info, screens, or videos from a beta or canceled game? Send us a message!
– Talk: Join the U64 Forum to discuss about unseen games and read updates from other users!
– Share: Do you have a website or a blog? Spread the unseen! Add www.unseen64.netto your blogroll or in your links page, write a post about lost games, talk about U64 with your friends, and share your beta-geekness. If more people know about this site, we could have more contributions and the archive could grow with more screens, videos, and informations!
– Play: it’s xmas time, probably you got some new games.. go play them! Then, try to check early screens and videos from those games.. maybe you could find some unseen differences ;) If you plan to play PSO DS in these xmas holidays, probably monokoma is going to play it so you’ll be able to play with him too. Join the U64 Forum to share your friend codes!
– Donate: the best gift for this xmas? Another year full of unseen games! Donate your love to U64, to help us to pay for the server that will keep up the site for the next year.
[donateplus]
Thanks to everyone that supports U64 with love. See you all very soon!
Development on EarthBound took place as a joint effort between Ape, Inc. and HAL Laboratory, Inc. and was designed by Shigesato Itoi. The total development time for the project was five years, much longer than was initially expected. The first design concepts for the HP boxes were to make them like pachinko balls and have them fall off the screen whenever a character was damaged. However, this was later changed to the “rolling counter” HP boxes because the pachinko balls did not work so well when characters had large amounts of HP. [Infos from Wikipedia]
In the video, subtitled by the lovely Starmen crew, we can see a collection of beta scense, in which Ness has no backpack, and we can read some interesting facts about the development of the game. In the image gallery there are some unused sprites, like Everdred’s ghost, a climbing King, a Starmen Capsule, an unknow flag and a red beating heart. You can read more about these unused sprites in here. From the various concept arts that were in the MOTHER 1+2 Art Book, we can notice some nice differences from the same scenes in the final game, like a fortress on top of Dungeon Man’s head, a giant elephant that keeps up the Dalaam city, early design of Dr. Andonuts’s lab and missing snow in some areas. You can read more about these concept arts in here.
Also, some unused animations from the opening were found in the rom.
Thanks to Gabriele for the contribution! (scans from Japanese magazine ‘Game Peer – vol. 4’)
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