Body Harvest - What Happened?

let's see [Music] [Applause] [Music] welcome once again to another alien blasting vehicle jacking episode of what happened the show that regularly reaches back into the realm of hallowed Antiquity and pulls out the stuff that had a rough time getting there this week's episode is squarely targeted on a 1998 release that some of you might not even remember it was a pretty good year for video games after all but those of you that do are probably nodding wistfully right now body Harvest may seem like your average N64 action title weird name massive insect Overlord dude in awkward orange armor Etc but the story behind its creation is what's really extraordinary it's one that left endless ripples in The Well of Eternity ripples that are still felt Across the Universe to this day or just actually just the video game industry it's a tale of lofty Ambitions Globe spanning voyages ignoring leadership decisions and very near cancer installations so put on your dorky helmet and hop into the nearest vehicle because it's time to find out what happened to body Harvest Harvest Time Again Our Story begins with dma design you know this inconspicuous logo right here it was founded in the late 80s by what happened All-Star David Jones who last popped up in our episode about the massive confusing disaster that was a PB which I'm honestly still recovering from anyway if you are playing video games in or around 1991 you would have most likely seen this logo in front of the many many ports sequels and spin-offs of lemmings the seminal puzzle platformer that unarguably put dma design on the map this Dundee scotland-based Studio had been growing rapidly through the sustained success of these Dopey rodents or whatever the hell they're supposed to be they then staffed up alongside all the projects that had begun to come their way all this big noise about dma design then eventually caught Nintendo's eye who then contracted them to create uniracers an underappreciated SNES classic where you controlled bloodthirsty sentient unicycles aside from uniracers crashing into a legal battle of Pixar that resulted in Nintendo having to stop production of the game a story for another time perhaps the partnership went so well that Nintendo drafted dma design to be a part of their dream team a stable of Studios composed entirely of Western developers to provide games for their upcoming Nintendo Power pulled back the curtain on this stable in their April 1995 issue walking readers through the upcoming Ultra 64 hardware and a list of all the developers who were on board which would surely hype up even the most jaded Nintendo fan the dream team was a fascinating but odd move for the company as it very clearly placed emphasis on International Partners rather than The Usual Suspects perhaps Nintendo had took for granted those Usual Suspects like Capcom Konami and square and just assume they would provide headliner launch titles which they didn't so Nintendo did what they could which was to attract foreign companies like LucasArts Acclaim game Tech and Time Warner Interactive which was certainly a Killer's row no wait the the opposite of a of a Killer's route a victim's column regardless Nintendo was hopeful that this dream team could really Elevate and diversify their N64 for output and dma design were hyped to be a part of it as they had been big fans of Nintendo's franchises and design philosophies they were probably even more stoked when the two pitches they proposed to the publisher were almost immediately greenlit in addition to a third N64 project under another company Deb this additional third game isn't really all that important to the story but screw it big UPS to the always Fantastical space station Silicon Valley anyways body Harvest started life as something quite tonally different from what we eventually got in a Eurogamer interview with designer Brian baglow he spoke about some of the game's original Inspirations it was the B movies of the 50s that really gave body Harvest its heart The Blob them even Plan 9 from Outer Space the notion of evil aliens showing up at various points in Earth's history to harvest humans for food and resources was so cheesy that it fit into Nintendo's family-friendly ethos all given the game a real differentiator in terms of look and feel with the inspiration in place the body Harvest team then plugged away on the game's Core Concepts which were according to the same interview regularly hampered by the n64's architecture as I recall the development tools were never quite up to scratch there was a constant struggle to get the dev kid to do what was needed and what was claimed in the specification and because it was proprietary Tech we couldn't even engineer our own solutions to the problems even after two solid years of development there were still issues the gameplay Loop just wasn't working and what Nintendo was seeing also differed from the design documents that had been okayed with them in the first place to help get the project on track Nintendo flew out a few employees to pitch in and while the body Harvest team appreciated this as it showed Nintendo's dedication to the project this visit wound up rubbing some dma staff the wrong way special specifically when Nintendo made the tiny suggestion that body Harvest should completely switch genres after they had already been working on it for at least 24 months yeah Nintendo strongly felt that the premise of a lone Warrior fighting against an alien invasion would work better as an RPG which was a genre that the N64 was kinda always lacking as you'd expect this suggestion uh ruffled some feathers in volume 121 of edge magazine the girl issue another designer by the name of Richard Ralph shared his perspective on the visit Nintendo's input was greatly appreciated but provided massive headaches for us its focus for the game was very different from the original concept we had problems with their reasoning initially but after sitting down discussing the possibilities we came on board ultimately since dma agreed to this new Direction the ninti staff flew back to Japan with the hope that body Harvest was on the right track the n64's launch had already long been missed but they still understandably wanted to get a product out of this whole ordeal to ensure that nothing more would go awry Nintendo kept closer tabs on the game's progress holding regular meetings with dma producers with a translator as a go-between these meetings however didn't go smoothly with plenty of things gain loss in Translation which led to even more delays Not only was the gameplay Loop constantly in flux body harvest's tone was also starting to change as dma design had begun shifting away from the original B-movie Inspirations and into a more serious sci-fi epic something that Nintendo of America and Japan began having differing opinions over dma design staffer Steve Hammond wrote a column on body Harvest back in 2012 for the Scottish game network where he explained the issue Nintendo of America thought the time travel plot was fine but would rather it was more detailed and complex well that was okay there had been a lot of detail left out of the game for reasons of space Nintendo of Japan wanted it simplified later in in the article he rephrased the situation with a devastating Elegance Nintendo knew what they wanted and knew when they weren't getting it the trouble was Nintendo often didn't know what they wanted and they definitely knew when they weren't getting that certainly some harsh words but it's clear that Nintendo weren't exactly providing the Silver Bullets the project desperately needed to fix its problems despite them still trying with conventional methods Nintendo of Japan once again tried to take matters into their own hands but the opposite approach from what they attempted last time inviting several members of the body Harvest team to work alongside them in Japan for two weeks at their Tokyo headquarters dma staffers felt very much out of their element during their time there and were Shell Shocked by the reveal that Nintendo's HQ wasn't filled with question blocks and rainbow roads but a drab series of cubicles nonetheless they were at least inspired by what they saw which was specifically the methods of the team that was working on Star Fox 64. producer programmer John White explained we got to see their whole design approach and it just amazed us they had a large room with Post-it notes covering practically every inch of wall space once the two weeks were up the team then flew back to Scotland but they had an unwelcome surprise waiting for them while they were in Japan a decision had been made by the higher ups their other Nintendo contracted game publicly known as climber but internally as Zenith was being canceled apparently done purely to staff up body Harvest and get it where it needed to be Zenith was described as a wacky racing game where players raced humanoid characters up vertical tracks via 3D platforming and the usage of various power-ups and many on the team were quite proud of how it was coming along unfortunately we don't really have a clear answer whether it was Nintendo or dma design managers who canned Zenith but we do know that the team behind it were given a choice if false Choice really join the body Harvest team or seek employment elsewhere which unfortunately resulted in 10 people walking away from the studio John White for his part tried his best to motivate the remaining staff to get them across that finish line but given that he described the situation as trying to motivate people who didn't want to be motivated it sounds like it was a rough time something that the team found solaceon though was making the choice to double down on what they had wanted to make from the start an open world action shooter with a heavy emphasis on controllable Vehicles the orange suited hero Adam Drake could be able to commandeer a variety of cars trucks helicopters and boats and could even fire weapons while driving bringing 3D Gangland style Warfare to the invading alien hordes this is just me theorizing but this sudden switch back to the original Vision might have been inspired by The Runaway success of another little dma design game called Grand Theft Auto which had just been released in November of 1997 under another publisher with their confidence swelling that they are now on the right track body Harvest really started to come together while a lot of their ideas and open world design would come in the sacrifice of graphical Fidelity and having to implement a lot of fog the ability to let players tackle missions in whatever way they wanted was profoundly liberating so the team felt they had finally nailed what they had set out to do however the company funding the whole entire project would strongly disagree Nintendo was not pleased that dma design had basically gone against everything they had previously agreed on in regards to body Harvest gameplay and after too long Globe spanning trips and several years worth of work and wads of money spent drastic measures were coming as far as we know Nintendo simply chose to walk away from body Harvest they canceled their publishing contract with dma design in the back half of 1997 which fortunately wasn't really the disaster you'd think it'd be GTA had been an overnight success and the title's controversial violence and content made headlines which is almost never a Bad Thing dma design had already been snapped up by Gremlin interactive who would eventually themselves be bought by infograms and what happened favorite Midway would pick up the North American publishing rights to body Harvest without much convincing from dma design in the late 90s Midway were attempting to diversify their gaming catalog the more console games and less arcade ones so the timing worked out pretty nicely although it really didn't work out pretty nicely for Midway long term as uh well just check out this video here although with midway's financial backing dma design were able to put the finishing touches on this harvesting of bodies although the ending to the story isn't quite as rosy as one would hope despite persevering through the technological issues the conflicting and ever-changing design philosophies a staff walk out and a four-year long development period buddy Harvest didn't exactly hit like dma was hoping it would the critical reception was decidedly mixed with a number of reviewers admiring its scope and charm but not being able to look past the dated visuals and performance issues even more damning body Harvest found itself smack dab in the middle of the white hot gaming Trend that was professional wrestling games with WWF war zone and WCW NWO revenge on either side of it just a few short weeks away from dma's own space station Silicon Valley and a small experimental little Adventure title called this something that the Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time it doesn't matter I couldn't find any hard data on body Harvest sales and while midway's report for the period reported increased home video game Revenue that quarter body Harvest featured no specific citation and was excluded from the list of their five best sellers for that period which you know is is somewhat telling now even if body Harvest had been a Smash Hit make no mistake Grand Theft Auto was still going to envelop the company and go 3D and body harvests really wouldn't have factored into that equation much still though I can't help but think about a timeline where Nintendo and dma design really gelled during body Harvest resulting in a high quality launch game that would have moved consoles if they had somehow managed that impossible task there's no telling what could have happened to dma design and the game industry a large Nintendo had already heavily invested in rare around that same time frame so you could easily see them doing the same here if that had come to pass then there's a real chance Nintendo could have had a serious aversion to GTA subject matter causing it to never exist or having its content changed to fit Nintendo's more family friendly image or hey maybe eventually they might have given them carte blanche to make you know whatever they wanted like they sometimes did with their other second parties I am the Great Mighty fool geez the the Mind overheats with the possibilities of it all fortunately the people that worked on it directly still have great memories of it with Brian baglow saying I love body Harvest it's one of the games that I still get asked about to this day and that many players remember very fondly it had many problems and it faced many challenges but I'm still very proud of it so while it's now a regularly forgotten chapter of dma design I mean Rockstar Norse history hey at least CJ remembers all the bodies that were harvested along the way if you know of any other Intergalactic gaming incidents do let me know in the comments below or take a truck or boat or a helicopter or whatever over to my Twitter see you next time and thanks for watching what about now it's time to rock with the biggest what about now it's time to rock with the biggest [Music] to the bumper

Channel: Matt McMuscles

Views: 238,465

Keywords: matt mcmuscles, Body Harvest, The History of Body Harvest, The Making of Body Harvest, What Happened?, wha happun, DMA Design, Rockstar North, Grand Theft Auto 3, Grand Theft Auto, Rockstar Games

Id: yguxX7XJ5yc

Length: 16min 38sec (998 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 18 2023