As you probably know, to research and to archive unseen games is a lot of work to do.. so lot of people are needed to keep it up, if we want to preserve as much screens, videos and info as we can. From today there will be 2 new geeks that will try to help the Unseen 64 archive: we would like to welcome NickNack and Luca PM in our staff!
Final Fantasy 6/4?
[Warning: this article was originally written in italian many years ago, with the help of information from lots of websites, forums and people.. but we don’t know anymore the exact source of some of these info]
According to some magazines in 1995, a new chapter of the Final Fantasy series was already in development for the Nintendo 64 and there were even rumors of a simultaneous release in the U.S. and Japan for the end of 1996. Was it for real? Not really. In order to test the new Silicon Graphics hardware, Squaresoft created a now well-known interactive CGI demo (not running on the real Nintendo 64 hardware, even if the N64 was powered by Silicon Graphics) with characters from Final Fantasy VI, to show it at the SIGGRAPH 95 expo. That was the “Final Fantasy 64” that magazines talked about, but it was not really a game for any console, just a tech demo. The real Final Fantasy 7 would later be released in 1997 as a PlayStation exclusive. But what really happened between Nintendo and Squaresoft, and why was there no Final Fantasy for the N64?
[Original article in italian by monokoma, translation by Yota with the help of FullMetalMC and Nate Edwards]
The Youtube channel of LIVIADRVSILLA is full of video-previews for old games, and in that big archive we can find lots of movies from cancelled and beta games! Some of the most interesting ones are:
X-Women (Sega Genesis – Cancelled)
Trinity: The Shatter Effect (XBOX – Cancelled)
Maximum Surge [Saturn – Cancelled]
Other beta videos for The Lost, Legend of the Blade Masters & Starshot: Space Circus Fever can also be found in there.. can you find more?
Update: it seems that this hack was found by Trekki, Tanks, Sonicandtails and other “NSMB hackers” too, along with the version of LucaPM and other gamers. You can download the Trekki version at http://treeki.googlepages.com.
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LucaPM was working on a “beta-hack” to restore more removed stuff from the game. The beta revival would have had all the secret levels playable plus some more from the early Mario Bros DS tech demo and the E3 beta version, the removed “traditional” 2 Players mode in the levels and mega goombas.
Some info about the “beta-hack”: how you probably know, there are 5 unused levels in the “Final NSMB game code” that come from the beta version of NSMB :
One of the desert levels is probably the oldest level in NSMB because it’s showed in a video of the beta NSMB at the E3 when the old tileset were used (NSMB was still a concept). You can see the video in the NSMB beta page of Unseen64 :) More infos about the beta levels and the tech demo come from Youtube and U64. Some beta-levels are completely shown so the reconstruction should be affidable and accurate, but others will be incomplete because there are not many more informations.
Here’s the download link for the semi-beta of the beta project: http://lucapmspace.blogfree.net/?t=2121216
Yep, that’s right, you can download the various beta builds of Spore at www.spore.com/comm/prototypes . We can only hope that more software houses follow the example of EA and release as many betas as possible!
As they say in their site: “Spore has been a huge undertaking. Along the way we ended up exploring countless design directions in gameplay, simulation and user interface. One of the ways in which we explore possible design directions is by Read more