The Halo 3 Beta was an intermediate build of the multiplayer functionality of Halo 3. It was first released to selected members of the public on May 11, 2007, and its purpose was to collect information and feedback from the millions of play test games played through the multiplayer beta to refine Bungie Studio’s final multiplayer product and to advertise Halo 3
Over the four weeks of the Beta, 820,000 unique users clocked up over 12 million hours of play – the equivalent of a single person playing Halo 3 for 1,400 years (Xbox 360 world magazine).
The original Perfect Dark for the Nintendo 64 was loved by many because of it’s action and stealth. It was also one of the few First Person Shooters for the N64. Development of Perfect Dark Zero, the sequel of Perfect Dark, began on the Nintendo Gamecube but as it was almost completed, RARE was bought by Microsoft so all development had to be ported to the original Xbox. Around the same time, RARE released some screen shots that revealed a “cartoony” or cel-shaded Joanna Dark.
A couple of years later and then another console switch occurred… this time to the Xbox 360. The Xbox version was about 12 months away from shipping before the switch and this caused many problems as to updating the engine, graphics, etc. The scenes and characters that you can see in the screenshots below (as those soldiers), were not used in the final game. Joanna Dark’s design was changed many times before the final one.
Finally, after many ports and switches, Perfect Dark Zero was released as a launch title for the Xbox 360 by December 2, 2005. If you notice some interesting differences in the concept arts from the videos below, please let us know!
Also, as wrote on Wikipedia, Rare had announced plans to make the multiplayer feature matches of up to 50 people, an upgrade from the current 32 player limit. As of March 2010, this update has not been released and Rare has stated that they will not be releasing any more downloadable content. A new Counter-Operative mode, much like the one found in the original Perfect Dark, was also promised to eventually become available as a new game mode for Perfect Dark Zero. However, this update is not available and Rare has no intention on bringing it out. Counter-Operative is a mode where one player plays as Joanna whilst the other player takes on the role of Joanna’s enemies, in the original title this took place in the same setting as the Single Player Levels.
There is currently a degree of ambiguity as to the status of Coded Arms: Assault, after a report from Japanese magazine Famitsu claimed that the game was canceled. A list of canceled Konami games was released, but oddly enough Coded Arms Assault was not on the list. Famitsu later stated that the report was false, and that the games on the list will indeed be released. Konami has not shed any light on the issue nor gave an official announcement. The game was supposed to be released in 2007, but the latest info about it are from the 2006. The official website from Konami Japan does not exist anymore. – [Info from Wikipedia]
Published in 1997, Turok has been one of the first Ultra 64 titles to be developed for the console. The game is based on the homonymous comic series, about a native american and his fights between evil cyborgs and dinosaurs. Thanks to its famous fog effect, which covered almost every part of the immense game levels, the game became an icon of the “fog problem” but it surely marked the hearts of many Nintendo 64 owners for its fun gameplay.
Proto / beta:
Final Version:
Before the release, the game has been shown in magazines with some pics taken from the early prototype. One of the images show a very raw 3D model of a T-REX: this enemy should be the “alpha” version of Thunder, a genetically modified dinosaur, which later has been used as a boss. The proto differs from the final version by the absence of the metallic parts covering the head and the foot of the dinosaur. Also, the polygonal model was less detailed. At any rate is difficult to note any other details, due to the blurryness of the image. The prototype colors are less shiny and “realistic” than the final version. It’s interesting to note how the fog effect was allready present: this makes us to wonder if Acclaim really intended to use that effect in the game and not just to cover eventual pop-up problems.
Surely the images in the gallery below represent an early beta stage of development, in wich they were still creating the 3D models and the scenario with not much gameplay finished. Do you know if some of these models were not in the final game? Acclaim begun to work on Turok in 1995, initially thinking to make a third person shooter, but later they chosed a first person view, in order to make it more involving.
Turok 2: Seeds of Evil is a FPS developed by Acclaim for the Nintendo 64, released in 1998. It was one of the first Nintendo 64 games to allow use with the RAM Expansion Pak. The game was announced even before Dinosaur Hunter was released, under the title Turok: Dinosaur Hunter 2. The game was completed in 21 months with a team comprising of roughly the same size as that who worked on Dinosaur Hunter, which was composed of 18 people. During development, more staff were brought onboard to assist in completing the game. Reportedly, over 10,000 hours of game testing was conducted during its creation. The game was originally designed with a 12MB cartridge in mind. When cartridges prices fell, the storage was increased to 16MB allowing the team to add a multiplayer mode. Eventually, the cartridge size was increased again, and was finalised at 32MB.
The base idea for the Cerebral Bore weapon was created during a brainstorming session concerning weapon design. The original concept had the weapon “being slow and agonizing”. An artist suggested a Leech gun, which was rejected by project manager, David Dienstbier: however, a “Vampire Gun” was eventually added to the sequel, Turok 3. Iguana, having received Nintendo 64DD development kits which included the 4MB Expansion Pak, added a high-resolution mode to the game early on in the development timeline. This was demonstrated to Nintendo at E3 98, running at a resolution of 640 x 480, a technical accomplishment for the Nintendo 64 at the time.
In the gallery below we can notice some early screens of the game, with some removed areas and beta versions of some levels. The graphic in the first screens released was much more definite than the one in the final game. Some of these images could have been taken from early tech demos and target renders. It seems that there were many concepts for Turok 2 that were scrapped before the final one was chose, but sadly there are not many info about these lost versions, but a single pic of an unknown enemy that was never used anywhere in the game.
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