Fact Behind The Fiction

[Rogue Trooper]

I don't recall Microsoft having acted the way Sony did but then again they were closely tied to Sega at one point (Windows CE as DC's secondary OS) and, as it later came out, were actually considering buying Sega out lock, stock and barrel to theoretically shortcut the process of entering the console hardware business.

I also read that the main designer of the Dreamcast also designed the original Xbox and it was originally planned that the Xbox would be backwards compatible with the DC, one reason why the Xbox had so many Sega games on it (that were possibly planned for DC). I heard Bill Gates was the one who put a stop to it because he felt Xbox should stand up on its own as a brand.

Not Xbox, but PS2 Shinobi, was originally going to appear on Dreamcast.

[Rogue Trooper]

Fiction:Tempest 3000 could have been converted from NUON to Game Cube.

Fact:True.Jeff said on his forum, that he'd love to bring the game to the Game Cube, he just needed a publisher willing to get him to do it.Sadly it, (like Unity on GC), never happened.

[Rogue Trooper]

Few more:

Fiction:At time of PS3 launch, even the US editor of the Official Playstation Magazine, thought it was over-priced and she herself had just bought an Xbox 360!.

Fact:True-Dana Jongewaard: '...Ultimately, i just cannot justify it. $600 is a lot of money, espically when i can get what-for me at least-will be a very similar experience for $400'.

Fiction:Argonaut's Alien Resurrection (PS1) was originally going to be a 2.5D, top down, 'Loaded' like game, but was totally re-written due to concerns over it's quality, to become the FPS game that was released.

Fact:True, original game was well under way, lot of preview material sent to the press etc, but as 1 (now EX-Argonaut) team member put it:

'it was a side-on 3D scrolling shooter, then one day they decided it was just a big pile of shit, scrapped the old game and started making a FPS game instead'.

Pity said policy of scrapping and re-coding game from pretty much scratch because it was shit did'nt apply to:Croc, Malice, Birds Of Prey, Creature Shock, Red Dog.....

:-)

[Rogue Trooper]

Body Harvest (N64) was nearly an RPG. Fiction?

Fact:DMA's original design document to Nintendo consisted of a single picture-An upturned car+a giant bug.2 years later they presented Nintendo an early version of Body Harvest, which they'd made into an action game.

Nintendo took an instant dislike to it and sent a team of their own people over to DMA to redesign the game, from scratch IF needed (in with the team was a Zelda producer).

At that point in time the N64 was lacking a BIG RPG and being outsold by PS1, so Nintendo wanted the game turned into an RPG, something DMA staff were not overly happy with (espically as the re-design meant work on another game, 'Zenith', a mix of platformer+racing, had to be stopped, game canned, staff moved to Body Harvest etc), but they agreed.

Along the way to completiotion, game style changed again, this time to a free-roaming, 3rd person affair, where it stayed.

It was'nt the ONLY redesign though, as a missunderstanding between Nintendo+DMA, thanks to a confused translator, had DMA thinking Nintendo did'nt like the look of the aliens, so they re-designed them, when Nintendo saw the new versions, they commented the aliens had now lost their wonderfully unique look.

[TL]

FICTION: The first system to feature motion control was the Nintendo Wii.

FACT: In actual fact it was the Philips CD-i, the system's light gun makes use of a bar you place on top of your TV (exactly like the Wii) and uses genuine motion control unlike other light guns of the time. In fact Philips are credited with the design in the Wii's patent application.

[Rogue Trooper]

FICTION: The first system to feature motion control was the Nintendo Wii.

FACT: In actual fact it was the Philips CD-i, the system's light gun makes use of a bar you place on top of your TV (exactly like the Wii) and uses genuine motion control unlike other light guns of the time. In fact Philips are credited with the design in the Wii's patent application.

Nice to see the CD-i getting the mention it deserves, system had it's flaws, was released late and over priced, but you cannot fault what they were trying to do with the hardware in many regards.

[TL]

Talk of Atari Karts in another thread reminded me of this one:

FICTION: Super Mario Kart was the very first Karting game.

FACT: I present to you Professional Go-Kart Simulator by Zeppelin on the Spectrum

   

[Rogue Trooper]

And Players had Turbo Kart Racer on C64, took an overhead-view, but had split screen 2-Player mode.

More of a Super Sprint clone, but Karting was out there.

[TL]

FICTION: The SNK Neo Geo is a 24-bit console.

FACT: There is no such thing. SNK cheekily advertised it as 24-bit because it had 2 CPU's - a 16-bit Motorola 68000 (same as the ST, Amiga and Mega Drive) and a 8-bit Z80 co-processor (same as the Spectrum, Game Boy and Master System). They figured 16+8=24, but as the main CPU is 16-bit then it is 16-bit. The Mega Drive also has a Z80 co-processor too so Sega could have claimed the same thing.

[nakamura]

Talk of Atari Karts in another thread reminded me of this one:

FICTION: Super Mario Kart was the very first Karting game.

FACT: I present to you Professional Go-Kart Simulator by Zeppelin on the Spectrum

   

Is that really a fact? I can't say I have ever heard anyone say that! Loads of go-kart games on 8bits!

[Rogue Trooper]

Bit of a thread bump, but i can shed some 'light' on PS2 Tekken Tag conversion:

Namco 'ordered' the conversion of Tekken Tag from the arcades to PS2 as a Tekken game for PS2 launch was seen as essential, Kimoto-san said 'it takes time to adapt to new hardware' and they were not happy with the amount of time given to handle the conversion and says the team DID try and offer a full-screen A.A solution on Tekken Tag, but were still learning the 'tricks' of the PS2 hardware.In the interview team talked of PS2 Tekken 4 being 640X480 and they would'nt be using any form of A.A as they wanted the visuals to be sharp.Team also talk of refusing to use the blur effect of the PS2's A.A filter, as it sometimes prevents you from seeing all the details correctly.

So far from being 'lazy' Namco gave their coders tight deadlines and they were working on complex hardware and even when they did get to grips with i, the A.A solutions the PS2 offered, were'nt always the right tools for the job.

[Rogue Trooper]

Fiction?

Naughty Dog decided NOt to make a Crash game on PS2, as the character was designed to work within the hardware restrictions of the PSOne.

Fact:

Very true.Crash's head was so big in the PS1 series due to screen resolution issues (and bright orange), he did'nt speak, as it was'nt easy to spool audio at the same time as other data and whilst the 'power' of the PS2 would have resolved these issues, developers thought if you changed the character's 'personality', i.e he's now got a voice, you'd ruin him.

[TL]

Never knew that!

Seems a bit silly though to kill off a successful franchise like that!

[Rogue Trooper]

Naughty Dog say another reason they did'nt want to give Crash a 'personality' by making him speak etc, was that they'd seen what had happened with Sonic, who'd gained a voice in the TV show and all of a sudden, he was'nt the Sonic you once knew, by giving him personality changed Sonic from being pure sonic as it were.

Have to say i wish Sega had'nt voiced Sonic myself, so see where they are coming from.

Things like the Fog in Silent Hill though, that originally was put in to help the PSone hardware render the 3D enviroments in the 1st Silent Hil, it had a wonderful side effect of making the game very atmospheric and since people liked it so much, for the sequel on PS2, Team Silent kept it in, just used the power of PS2 to make the fog much more realistic.

In the piece i'm reading, from Naughty Dog's PS2 era, they make a VERY good point about how whilst more power was great IF you were chasing more Polygons, better lighting effects etc, where was the addt.gameplay coming from and whilst say in Gran Turismo, you could increase the number of cars, the detail etc, it'd still be Gran Turismo, or a Tennis game, you could render photo-realistic characters, based on real life sports stars, it'd still be Tennis, yet new power could really change things like GTA, making more belivable cityscapes, more freedom etc, things like online spoke to them more of 'Next Generation' than how many Polygons per sec your hardware could render.

[TL]

A couple of little ones, often wrongly quoted:

FICTION: Atari's Pong was the first ever arcade video game.

FACT: It wasn't, Dabney and Nolan had first created Space War for Nutting Associates.



FICTION: The Atari 2600 was the very first fully programmable games console.

FACT: It wasn't it was beat by a couple of machine but the first was the Fairchild Channel F released in 1976.