Fact Behind The Fiction

[nakamura]

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.

But the western versions of Tekken Tag were anti aliased. Just the Japanese version that wasn't.

[TL]

A couple more recent fact finds:

FICTION: The Atari Lynx was a failure

FACT: It sold around 2.5 million meaning it was far from a failure and sold especially well in Europe


FICTION: The Atari XEGS was released as a way to clear existing 8-bit inventory

FACT: In actual fact it was released in response to retailers requests for a console that could be converted into a computer after the cancellation of the 7800 computer add-on and the NES keyboard/computer add-on.

[DreamcastRIP]

FICTION: The Atari Lynx was a failure

FACT: It sold 2.5 million meaning it was far from a failure and sold especially well in Europe

Except that's not a fact at all.

From your interview with Darryl Still:

Q. I always guessed at about 2.5 million...
A. Yes, something like that...

Him saying "something like that" does not therefore mean that it is a fact that Lynx sold "about 2.5 million" units.

[TL]

My god what is wrong with you today? 

The fact is it was not a failure, the exact sales figure is not the issue here. Edited due to extreme pedantry.

[DreamcastRIP]

My god what is wrong with you today? 

The fact is it was not a failure, the exact sales figure is not the issue here. Edited due to extreme pedantry.

Nothing's wrong with me today, thank you. You presented a sales figure as though it were fact and I merely pointed out that that it was not. I'm sorry that you seem to find being factually correct to equate with "extreme pedantry".

Anyways... I've been reading teh internets and have discovered that Jaguar isn't 64-bit because it has a 16-bit CPU. Some folk seem to think the SNES was 16-bit while maintaining the PC Engine/Turbo-Grafx 16 was 8-bit. Fascinating!

EDIT: Okay, I'm feeling grouchy due to lack of sleep!!

[Rogue Trooper]

As thread creator here, i'm not getting into a pissing contest over who said what, but  as far as i'm aware actual detailed sales figures for The Lynx are hard to come by, as Atari like many after it, could be a bit selective over just how those figures broke down, if Darryl did'nt know....not much hope for the rest of us.

Laird:In fairness your original post did have a ruddy great FACT at start of your statement...so an edit has now cleared up any confusion.

Great to see the thread bumped, but perhaps we can move forward on future posts, not sideways....


Love 'n' hugs X X X

[DreamcastRIP]

FICTION: One could input a code when playing the original Tomb Raider to see Lara Croft naked.

FACT: If such a prospect once titillated you then you really needed to get a life!

[Rogue Trooper]

Fiction:Tomb Raider was originally going to star a male character.

Fact:

It's true.Toby Gard's original design for the game consisted of 4 drawings and these were of a male, Indiania Jones type person in a 3D world, this evolved into having a choice of male or female characters, but he then realised that as he was going for a movie-directed style game, lot of story telling etc, that'd mean double  the amount of cinematics the game would require, so it had to come down to chap or the lass.

He liked Lara more than the chap, so she stayed he went!


But the sex-symbol image core turned her into, was exact opposite of what toby wanted, he also 'blames' Core for turning the series stagnant, each new T.R game basically the same, but with different graphics, new costume or vehicle etc.


Where did game get it's influences from? well the twin pistol shooting game from his love of the film Hard Boiled and also Aeon Flux.


Main inspiration for the game:Ultima Underworld (a game that really blew his mind and hinted at where industry was headed) and it was this that drove Toby to produce a 3D game.when he arrived at Core they were doing Pre-Saturn stuff (32X etc), no 3D games as programmers there had no exp.with them.

Virtua Fighter was also a huge influence (on the Saturn, not arcade) as after seeing it running, Toby realised what you could achieve by putting 3D characters like those into an Ultima Underworld style game.

Game was originally planned to take 8 months to develop, then crept up to 12 months, finally 18 months and it was this prolonged development period that stopped it being a Saturn exclusive, as they were developing PS1+Saturn versions side by side, so progress was slowed and Saturn version lost the exclusive status it could of had, with Saturn version being released 1st, in a buggy form, Core then fixed bugs on PS1 version and polished it up a little and released that shortly after Saturn version.

[DreamcastRIP]

... and the game's main protagonist, the since iconic Lara Croft, was at one point to be named Laura Cruz. FACT!

[SnakeEyes]

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!

I thought that was a little strange. I have never ever heard anyone claim this.

[TL]

It's one of the common Nintendo misconceptions you see like first handheld, first analogue stick, first joypad, first platformer, first motion controls etc.

[SnakeEyes]

It's one of the common Nintendo misconceptions you see like first handheld, first analogue stick, first joypad, first platformer, first motion controls etc.

I knew about the rest and have seen them, but who would ever claim mariokart is the first Kart game. Not once have I ever heard that claim.

[TL]

I have, many times. But there we go. 

[TL]

Of course then there are the people who talk of games/systems having Mode 7 effects when they were around before SNES Mode 7 even existed.

For example I saw Blue Lightning on the Lynx described as having Mode 7 effects even though it came out in 1989. Not to mention the fact the SNES could never replicate the effects seen in Blue Lightning anyway as it can't do sprite scaling.

But this goes back to the Mode 7 thread on here!

[Rogue Trooper]

It's one of the common Nintendo misconceptions you see like first handheld, first analogue stick, first joypad, first platformer, first motion controls etc.

I knew about the rest and have seen them, but who would ever claim mariokart is the first Kart game. Not once have I ever heard that claim.

You visit enough sites, you'll see a lot of claims that folks like Nintendo invented this piece of hardware or produced 1st gamein a now widespread genre, when in reality they just took something others were doing years ago and put a new slant on it.On here we try and seperate the wheat from the chaff as it were when it comes to internet 'wisdom', use wide range of resources, quotes from coders, marketing etc.Give people the 'facts', let them decide for themselves.

Entire reason i created this thread was to dispell some of the internet wisdom.