One Hour of LOST Video Games

[Music] foreign [Music] dozens of unreleased games throughout history that have since been recovered and preserved online there are thousands of unreleased games out there and sometimes a nearly finished prototype emerges or if we're lucky the actual source code of a game gets found on an old surviving disc in this video we'll be looking at several canned games looking at why they were never released and how they got discovered and where they are now look out for some exclusive information in this video as there will be plenty of it from our talks with game developers collectors and fellow historians to give you a prime example of a lost and found game let's take a look at Super Mario 64 DD the plan to Nintendo 64 disk drive Port of the Revolutionary 3D platformer the Nintendo 64 disk drive was a peripheral add-on with a higher 64 megabyte capacity and rewritable storage although it first got unveiled at Nintendo's 1995 shoshenkai trade show the 64 DD would not see store shelves until December 1999 due to Long delays caused by poor in 64 sales this resulted in dozens of games either getting canned or moving back to the regular N64 format some titles include early versions of Mother 3 and Pokemon Snap and a new release of you guessed it Super Mario 64. Super Mario 64 DD was shown off at shoshinkai in 1996 and featured a different title screen sound engine and curiously no face stretching model at the beginning don't be fooled this is not some lost sequel or expansion to Mario 64. it is a slightly different build of the original game it's actually not all that easy to make a Mario 64 expansion on the 64 DD as the base game's code doesn't support the 64 DD's functions while visiting Japan in December 2013 French N64 collector Jimmy 130 found a copy of Mario 64 DD hiding in plain sighted a secondhand shop the disc was priced at 22 900 Yen about 250 US dollars in today's money with a build date of November 22nd 1996. it was colored the standard gray unlike the usual 64 DD Dev discs which are blue jimmy-130 was well aware of what it was he'd been researching it on his blog since 2008 back when only a few photos were known to exist 64 DD discs are notoriously fragile and can easily corrupt but Jim me 130 and other game preservationists were able to get it dumped and documented online thankfully this was one title that was saved for the ages and a simple tale of a game that became lost media but was fortunately found our next story is not only about a lost game but also a lost piece of hardware for one of the most iconic consoles of the 1990s in 1993 when virtual reality was a hot new thing Sega unveiled a home VR product for the Genesis the aptly named Sega VR the add-on was shown at the summer Consumer Electronics Show with two LED screens a high functioning IMU and a ludicrously low price for the time of 200 for comparison a basic VR kit in 1991 would typically cost over a quarter million dollars when considering stuff like the graphics supercomputer and positional tracking equipment the low recommended retail price was made possible due to sega's partnership with Silicon Valley startup Ono Sendai Ono Sendai was founded by entrepreneur Mark pesky in July 1991 in Cambridge Massachusetts with the company starting in Earnest in San Francisco November 1991. pesky had worked in virtual reality since the late 80s and was well aware of the potential it had and their patented tracking solution used in the Sega VR could be manufactured for only a dollar when the Sega VR debuted at sces 1993 four compatible games were shown with it there was iron Hammer a tank combat game by Nova logic Outlaw racing a simple racing title Matrix Runner a snatcher-inspired murder mystery and nuclear Rush a high-speed cyberspace Adventure intended as a pack in game nuclear Rush was the brainchild of futurescape Productions a small California company founded in October 1992 by x-ea programmers Kenneth Hurley and Kevin McGrath Sega of America producer Jesse Taylor who'd worked with Hurley and McGrath at EA recommended their new startup to the then president and CEO Tom kalinski Kolinski was impressed with the team's resume and featurescape got picked as the first of four developers on the Sega VR as stated in a 1993 press release nuclear Rush is a cataclysmic track into a post-nuclear gold rush where low-level nuclear waste is Bartered as an energy source you are posing as a nuclear pirate piloting a hovercraft or radio active wastelands guarded by heavily armed robots and drones Kevin McGrath would serve as lead programmer alongside Matthew Hubbard a veteran game developer behind Atari VCS titles such as dolphin and double dunk Tom Cauley and Rick Lucy would Supply the artwork and Tara Packard would do minor uncredited work on the backgrounds futurescape worked closely with Sego of America and Sega Japan and was given a prototype headset to work with other Sega VR developers did not nuclear Rush was completed and even got a box art painted for it but due to glitches in the hardware it had to be put on hold preliminary work began on a possible sequel codenamed chameleon but it didn't go very far even worse members of Stanford Research Institute were warning Sega of the hazards of Sega VR headaches and dizziness would occur if the graphics were out of sync with the actual movement of the player's head and young users could get hurt according to Mark pesky in a 2010 interview with audioholics Sega took the test results from Stanford and buried them in fear of lawsuits and consumer backlash the Sega VR never made it to Market and neither did the truth about its cancellation Sega claimed in the press that the headset was so powerful so immersive and realistic that it could not be shipped suffice to say that wasn't true after the death of nuclear Rush future skate Productions would continue making games for the Genesis including a canceled title for the Sega menacer peripheral and a film Noir inspired platformer for EA that was never finished futurescape's only credit on a published game was a special thanks on balls 3D released by Accolade in 1994. the company would cease operations later that year fast forward to July 2020 and co-founder Kenneth Hurley now a manager at Google was approached by a researcher from the preservation group gaming Alexandria in operation since 2015 gaming Alexandria primarily focuses on scanning gaming magazines and dumping rare and unreleased games the Sega VR games are somewhat of a white whale for staff member Dylan Mansfield and Hurley was happy to talk to him about his work on the headset Hurley had kept a vast collection of source code from his 40 years as a game developer and after a few weeks of chatting he dug up an old CD-ROM dated August 6 1994 containing most of the futurescape library although the nearly complete source code for nuclear Rush was available on Hurley's disk a compiled binary and executable build could not be found searching for someone who could put it all together again Mansfield reached out to Rich Whitehouse head of digital conservation at the video game history Foundation the vghf is a non-profit organization founded by Frank zefaldi dedicated to preserving celebrating and teaching the history of games in October 2020 the vghf started the video game source project which is focused on preserving source code arguably the best resource for researching A Game's development source code helps us know when every asset got made why some content was cut and how certain elements changed over time for example if we convert the old lbm files in the nuclearush source code to dot PNG we can see dozens of scrap Graphics as well as the evolution of the game's HUD while looking over nuclear Russia's code Rich White House quickly discovered problems with the Sega VR the refresh rate for its stereoscopic images was only 15 Hertz almost five times lower than the 72 Hertz minimum for Oculus Quest some of Rich's research was especially challenging important files like vr.doc and VR dot text we're completely missing in the nuclear Rush source so we had to figure out how the headset worked without them on his first attempt running the ROM White House was met with a blank screen checking for a head tracker he found out that all interaction with the headset happens through the second controller presumably this is where the headset would be plugged in simulating the movements White House used the right joystick of an Xbox 360 controller hooked up to his PC the final steps consisted of building open VR support into a working Genesis emulator which meant repositioning the panels and fixing any peculiarities from 1994. White House was able to play the Sega VR on his HTC Vive VR headset and nuclear Rush got to run in virtual reality for the first time in over 25 years the openvr emulator alongside two compiled versions of nuclear Rush would be released on the vghf website on November 20th 2020 as part of their source project it was the first game for the Sega VR in the first game by the luckless future Escape Productions this was an unreleased game for an unreleased piece of Hardware which was recreated without even touching it a feat that could couldn't have happened without Kenneth Hurley generously donating his old work to researchers before founding the video game history Foundation Frank zefaldi ran Lost Levels a website primarily committed to finding unreleased Nintendo Entertainment System titles when Lost Levels began in 2003 only four unreleased NES games had been preserved online today there's nearly 70 including some fascinating relics like a scrapped 8-bit Port of SimCity and a lost license platformer from Capcom the California Raisins for those unaware the California Raisins was created by the California Raisins Advisory Board in the mid-80s as a marketing Ploy for you guessed it California Raisins for anthropomorphic claymation raisins animated by Will Vinton Studios would debut in a 1986 commercial singing rhythm and blues to a crowd of fruit the ad became widely popular and turned the raisins into a merchandising Powerhouse there were toys comic books Halloween costumes four studio albums a 13 episode cartoon series and of course video games in 1988 the raisins appeared in an original title for Commodore 60 4 Apple 2 and dos computers in which of the Jazzy dried grapes ran around a cereal factory in search of their lost band members in December 1989 applesauce licensing who did most of the licensing for the raisins announced their collaboration with Capcom on an action-packed Mega Man style game for the Nintendo Entertainment System called the California Raisins the grape escape the grape Escape was commissioned by Capcom USA because they wanted to escape the development Stranglehold of Japan and become more independent Radiance software a california-based studio operated by Capcom product development director Christopher Riggs was tasked with creating the game Radiance would handle the design while interactive designs ironically did the software interactive designs was founded around 1986 by Rod and Nancy Nakamoto in Torrance California and had previously worked on Arcade versions for both the Commodore 64 and PC California Raisins was their first foray into console development in addition to Christopher Riggs doing design the game's small staff and interactive designs consisted of Robert Morgan on programming Scott Etherton on music and Nancy Nakamoto on Graphics as Robert Morgan told Los levels if memory serves I programmed the grape Escape in the summer of 1990. I was in college at the time part way through the computer science program at Cal Poly Pomona after class I would drive up the hill to Diamond Bar to the home of Rod and Nancy Nakamoto I remember development being slow since the tools felt particularly Arcane even for 1990. I also only had about four pages of documentation on the whole machine so there was quite a guessing game being so far down the chain of relationships made it difficult to get questions answered development was pretty fun on this project we didn't get too bogged down in anything and the game came together fairly smoothly one interesting anecdote about the game is that when you press select the raise and start moonwalking considering the California Raisins previously collaborated with Michael Jackson for commercials it seemed perfectly on brand according to Robert Morgan it was nothing more than a simple glitch I got some direction wrong and the reason was moving backward it looked like he was moonwalking we all looked at it and said hey in the end California Raisins the grape Escape was finished and ready to go after a development of roughly five months according to Rod Nakamoto the game's cancel Nation had to do with its prominent coverage in gaming magazines in late 1990 interactive design sent a review copy to game players magazine for preview it would make the front cover of their January 1991 issue alongside a six-page preview Capcom USA did not tell interactive designs that the game was being made in secret so when it graced the front of game players that was when Capcom Japan became aware of its existence they were Furious and had Capcom USA cancel the project they refused to publish a game that wasn't developed in Japan thankfully the developers still got paid interactive designs continued doing console work eventually getting purchased by Sega in 1992 and becoming Sega interactive Development Division Rod Nakamoto remained with the company as general manager until its closure in September 1996. radiant software continued making small NES games for other companies including rollerblade eraser for High-Tech expressions and the great Waldo search for THQ they shut their doors sometime in 1993. as for the California Raisins their advertising campaign declined because it became too costly for raising Farmers to keep up the California Raisins Advisory Board ceased operations and July 1994 following the controversy but the raisins are still remembered as one of the strangest pop culture icons of the late 1980s cut to the early 2000s and the grape Escape is considered a Holy Grail among NES collectors the promise of a lost Capcom platformer similar to their 8-bit Mega Man and Disney games enticed to many gamers in late 2002 Brandon Murphy a 21 year old man from Jacksonville Florida sat at a local retailer with his friends when a woman walked in she had a stack of NES cartridges with homemade labels Mega Man 2 platoon and a mysterious game labeled raisins the woman had got them from a friend who worked for some gaming company they were originally a gift for her son but the child didn't want them anymore as he had recently purchased an Xbox Murphy was quick to tell the woman that what she brought in were prototypes and offered to take the raisins game from her she agreed and gave it to him for free for his advice at the time Murphy did not know this game was unreleased and just wanted it for the Capcom label on the front after posting about it online Sirius collectors began messaging him for the cartridge sending offers as high as three thousand dollars rather than take the cash Murphy decided to make the ROM available to everyone and donated the binary file to loss levels many collectors dropped out after this and the most he could get for his exceptional prototype was 600 from Lionel Huts a staff member at Lost Levels and proprietor of the website Sega saturn.org they would sell it sometime after on December 18 2004 Brandon Murphy would pass away at the age of 22 following a dispute with one of his roommates as reported by the Florida Times Union 27 year old Angus Wallen and Cara wind shot Murphy took his car debit card and remaining Nintendo games and then lit the apartment on fire they were convicted of first-degree murder robbery and arson Brandon Murphy will be remembered for his generosity and contributions to video game preservation his original California Raisins prototype is now in the safe hands of collector Jeremy Smith who has amassed dozens of materials related to unreleased Nintendo Entertainment System games digital gaming was able to get in touch with Smith who sent us some exclusive photos of Murphy's cartridge alongside the original box art for the game painted by artist Greg Winters Smith tells us he bought the game from an unidentified collector who reportedly owned over 300 NES prototypes at 1 Smith found the grape Escape hiding in one of the collector's photos and offered to buy the game along with two other prototypes for an undisclosed price note that the original file released on Lost Levels was not in fact the Murphy cartridge but rather a slightly later Gold version of the game sent by Robert Morgan halfway through their research Murphy's would be released a little bit later another unreleased NES game uncovered by Lost Levels is Bio Force ape bioforce ape is without a doubt the most infamous title on today's list the story of this game and how it got found is a story of mystery hoaxes and monkeys and diapers it's so Bonkers we even briefly considered doing a video on just this story so get comfy for this one bioforce ape is believed to be developed by SATA a Japanese arcade company known for shooter games like twin eagle metaphox and arbolester Sato was started by Jun Fujimoto in August 1982 as seita kikaku it was reorganized as SATA Corporation in October 1985 and found its home in Tokyo making titles for both the arcade and famicom a North American Branch say the USA was incorporated in Nevada In December 1989 in in addition to doing video games SATA also designed and produced gambling machines medical equipment and interactive television products at its start most have set as famicom Games took a safer route in that they were ports of existing arcade titles like 1988's thunder and lightning but as they became more comfortable with the console their work got weirder with original games like the tuanian platformer The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and of course bioforce ape bioforce ape made its North American debut at the summer Consumer Electronics Show in June 1991 and start a genetically altered superhuman monkey in a diaper searching for his lost human family in massive warehouses and labyrinths it was an action game made special by a super speed scrolling technique and buttery smooth character animations two incredibly impressive things to see on a standard Nintendo entertainment system while researching this video we got exclusive information about the game from the game developer Research Institute a website focused on documenting the companies and people behind classic video games in 2010 gdri briefly spoke to Chuck vowel director of engineering and product development at SATA USA while was one of six members of SATA USA during bioforce Apes production and had this to say about the game bioforce ape was a very interesting property when we showed at the summer CES in Chicago our booth was packed with other developers trying to figure out how we produced those types of scroll rates without supporting Hardware in Japan SATA played a key role in the overall function of the industry developing the software and Hardware used by most of the major players even the Nintendo software development system used and sold by Nintendo to other Japanese licensees was a SATA product as I understand it these were dropped shipped directly from SATA more information on the game was uncovered when the 2020 Nintendo Giga league on 4chan gave access to the Nintendo lot check for those unaware the lot check is a process that ensures a Nintendo game's quality before it gets manufactured when the title gets approved with the Nintendo seal of quality it can make it onto store shelves using this data we know that SATA submitted bioforce a for a famicom release in May 1991. what this means is that bioforce ape was most likely completed there's no definitive answer to why it was never released But Chuck Val recalls many Publishers viewing in the game as unprofitable he stated after CES I don't think anyone was really sure if it would be more profitable to release it or accept an offer on it and possibly never see its release I do recall that while the Innovation was impressive the game didn't have a lot else going for it as always to build in enough to flesh out the game would mean going to larger ROMs and driving the sales price too high to be successful the April 1992 issue of Nintendo Power claimed the game would be sidelined for the foreseeable future saying apparently Seda does not want any Monkey Business right now for years bioforce ape eluded collectors the lack of information combined with the bananas plot of raging wrestling diaper monkey made it somewhat of a beast in the early days of the internet on October 26 2005 a man named Paul Brown would make a post on the classic gaming Forum Digital Press while visiting his relatives in cars in California Brown found a mysterious white labeled NES cartridge hiding in a box at a yard sale to the shock of everyone it was the final build of bioforce ape who dated June of 1991 and addressed to SATA USA Brown began posting photos of the game in action and and it was more insane than people could have imagined the monkey would fight against sumo wrestlers and four armed mutants running around an infinite hallway searching for his husband wife and kids if the player pushed the eight and down buttons the monkey would unleash a fart attack so powerful that it caused the game to violently corrupt after seeing the screenshots the forums broke out into a fight some members wanted Brown to dump the game for Prosperity others told him not to so he could maintain a higher market value of roughly two thousand dollars several private collectors offered to buy bioforce ape one person offered to trade it for an NES prototype of The Three Stooges as the squabble continued Brown would post two surprisingly relevant screenshots we see some sort of butter monster teasing the monkey it says jaw I am made of durb butter and you are worth 2K monies the monkey correctly responds by punching the monster in the face screaming The Immortal line eat communism by this point most of digital press realized what was going on some users however still believed Brown and continued fighting for a few more days having seen the anger bioforce ape caused on the Forum Brown decided to put things to an end on October 30th at 8 32 pm he would post a photo of the broken cartridge saying that it was too powerful and needed to be destroyed bioforce ape was no more in case it wasn't clear the whole thread was an elaborate hoax Paul Brown of Carson California never existed he was an alias by Digital Press regular bratwurst the cartridge was just a copy of Super Mario Bros with the original sticker removed the label was an aged envelope run through a printer and faded out in Photoshop bratwurst had been a part of digital press since the early odds and was familiar with fake prototypes coming up on the Forum weeks before the creation of Paul Brown two pranksters claimed to have an unreleased NES prototype for the Legend of Zelda 3 a game that never existed in a spring 2006 interview with video game collector magazine brotworth said the Zelda 3 prototype looked amateurish and I wondered if I could come up with something that was actually convincing I felt compelled to give people a reason to be wary in the future instead of confidently dismissing something as a fake or declaring it real at the drop of a hat everything was done from scratch while carefully scrutinizing magazine scans with screens from the real file Force ape I worked within the native resolution of the NES and kept in mind how televisions distort the graphics then I piped the images through a TV out card on my laptop onto a 36 inch television and took pictures with a digital camera the charade was planned to end in a couple of ways whoever was going to dump the cart's data would receive an empty NES cartridge with an orange Rubber Monkey inside one of the Proto collectors would receive an unannounced package with the bioforce ape cart and a Super Mario Bros board I heard from a few sources that some of the Prototype collectors were starting to make deals based on the idea that one of them was going to get my car and share the ROM there wasn't any intent on my part to scam any one of their money and that was a potentially hot situation that needed to be cooled off I ultimately went with the smashed cart picture because it was so immediate and guaranteed drama would ensue the threat exploded into 13 pages of people going nuts in the following years bioforce 8 became somewhat of a meme in 2009 there were plans to turn Brown's game into a real Homebrew but it petered out after the programmer had issues with their computer a competition cart would eventually be released in 2010 and included two levels one boss fight and a secret volleyball minigame with the butter monster the same year however another bioforce a prototype surfaced in a Yahoo Japan auction it wasn't a hoax this time it was real it was in a famicom disc system Ram adapter shell which can hold up to four eproms a standard cartridge can only hold two notified by none of them bratwurst himself Frank zefaldi and the rest of Lost Levels had an emergency meeting to discuss the listing getting donations from kind-hearted collectors and Forum members the team placed a bid the auction ended at 250 000 Yen on April 2nd 2010 amusingly one day after April fools Lost Levels managed to get the cartridge but when it arrived at the home of dumper Chris Koval a photo emerged of the Prototype smashed up in the mail thankfully in the grand tradition of bioforce ape the photo was a fake the game arrived safe and sound and got dumped immediately the Prototype is now in storage at the video game history Foundation a safe home for the weirdest NES game that we never got on January 1st 2022 the vghf and fellow preservation website hidden Palace would release a new US prototype from a private collector it was identical to the Japanese build but with a slight copyright change the story of bioforce ape has become the stuff of Legend going from a tiny blurb and Nintendo power to a crazy hoax to an even crazier real game if it weren't for the hard-working historians archivists and collectors in The Gaming Community all of these games would have been lost to time this video would not be possible without them the sixth generation of Home consoles played host to a multitude of licensed games with new leaps forward in technology and a wider base of players than ever before dunks in part to the explosive popularity of the PS2 tie-ins to movies TV shows and more were in great abundance as the gaming press endeavored to sort through them all a trend of mixed to negative reviews set in time restricted development Cycles often to meet movie release dates led to many of these titles receiving a critical mauling unsatisfied fans and critics fueled a stigma around licensed games throughout the 2000s but occasionally some games managed to defy the norm games such as The Simpsons hit and run the press responded well to this driving Centric open World adventure and it would go on to be one of the highest selling license games of the generation with an enduring cult following regardless of its astronomical success the title would Mark developer radical entertainment's final game to use the IP a sequel to hit and run never surfaced despite an unrelenting outcry from fans spawning well over a decade it was an acknowledgment of the continued reverence for the game that I went in search of the developers behind it I spoke at length with numerous former employees from radical to learn more about the history of their Simpsons games and why a Hit and Run 2 never materialized in the year 2000 a new generation of consoles was beckoning and The Simpsons license holders were in talks for their characters to star in a video game for this new hardware pictures were heard from Studios all over the world but it was vancouver-based Radical entertainments that managed to stand out from the crowd their proposal came about partly by coincidence a small group at the company had been experimenting with an original driving game Prototype around this time when the studio learned that Gracie Films and fox were looking to create a new Simpsons Game the realization came that the property would be a natural fit for what they had already been working on former employees say this open-ended driving game of theirs came to life when mixed with the personality of The Simpsons the player would provide a taxi service for the residents of Springfield picking them up and taking them to a destination of their choosing as quickly as possible are that Crazy Taxi radicals saw this as a fresh angle for Simpsons video games with a premise that enabled them to Showcase a variety of different character interactions crazy films agreed and the game was soon put into production it would become known as The Simpsons road Rage according to former radical producer Vlad siraldi however initial outlines for the game were far more ambitious than the final product for much of its development road rage had been set to portray a fully open world Springfield outside of 1997's virtual Springfield this was the first game to attempt to realize the whole town in 3D space and undertaking which were warranted constant back and forth with the right told us players would have zipped all over the landscape seamlessly without loading screens as they ferried citizens from one side to another alas this plan was held back by the technical limitations of one system in particular the PlayStation 2. for the majority of development radical had experienced no such issues they found that the ps2's development Hardware could handle the large World they were aiming for which had been almost entirely mapped out but as the game's technical director Vlad siraldi explains problems arose when the retail PS2 units arrived was unexpectedly revised specs the speed of the drives and the retail events were not as efficient or as reliable as the dev units so we could not get the data fast enough off the disks in order to populate the worlds the way we designed everything so a little really screw up on our life part probably at the last minute we're going to go publish the game we've got dates and everything else we've had to redesign the levels uh like crazy these complications forced the developers to abruptly redesign the whole game in a short time frame chopping it up into smaller levels to salvage its performance the last minute changes left visible scars on the game's world as the developers tried to account for why players could not continue driving along certain roads obstacles like vehicle pileups inexplicably block the player's path if they attempt to access a different region of Springfield it was pretty compelling for that Euro device pretty disappointing at the very last minute to realize it wasn't going to work as we designed this wasn't the only considerable change to sweep the game mid-development according to game historian Andrew Bowman its textures and color palettes were noticeably revised following feedback from Simpsons Creator Matt Groening all the builds of the game had a brighter more cartoony look that was more in line with the show but this was apparently not a greening's liking he wanted road rage to stand apart from the show and look more like a video game these suggestions are further supported by the claims of some of the developers I spoke to myself in earlier meetings with the license holders it said that radical had initially proposed basing the visuals of road rage around the Treehouse of Horror short Homer cubed the story depicted Homer entering a portal into another world where everything is rendered in 3D this idea was soon shot down by Gracie Films who wanted it to adopt a more original art Direction similarly some attempts to expand Springfield Beyond What was seen in the show were also held back by licenser demands and time constraints according to multiple former employees the setting was once intended to be much larger and include more original gags from the developers an example of this provided by Vlad saraldi was a shop named gnome Depot upon on Home Depot which was eventually cut The Simpsons road Rage released in 2001 on PS2 GameCube and Xbox to moderate success enough for a follow-up to be commissioned the working title for this project was simply The Simpsons road Rage 2. the team was set on creating a direct sequel that would more closely follow the open world setup originally intended for the first game as well as adding on foot exploration players could now exit their vehicles allowing them to enter iconic Simpsons locales like the Kwik-E-Mart and Homer's workstation at the power plant as the scope of the game continued to balloon it was decided that it would no longer be a numbered Sequel and would instead become another original title named The Simpsons Hit and Run by all accounts the developers were aiming for new heights of fan service coming in as many references to the source material as possible according to Vlad siraldi one of its producers they attempted to establish what he describes as a Cadence to the environments in that players would regularly encounter a recognizable Landmark or reference to the show as they drove about they wanted to reward exploration by always having something familiar and amusing be right around the corner many of the developers I spoke to in the making of this video cited the Studio's genuine love of The Simpsons for its success their reverence for the series was palpable enough that the hit and run team even named itself after a fairly obscure reference from its fish bulb this was a nod to the episode in March We Trust wherein homos startled to discover a mascot for a Japanese cleaning product named Mr Sparkle seemingly using his likeness he later finds that it is actually a blending of two other existing corporate logos a fish and a light bulb as radical up their Ambitions for this considerably larger game they looked to other landmark video games for inspiration their platforming was influenced by Super Mario 60 4 that driving mechanics by Gran Turismo and blast the Grand Theft Auto was looked at for exploration the latter of those was such a key inspiration that implies with sometimes jokingly refer to the project as Grand Theft Auto internally the development of hit and run in general proceeded with fewer hiccups than road rage a more experienced staff meant a greater understanding of the hardware which emboldened them to try new things however some developers say that large parts of the game's story were reiterated over leading to many hours of work being scrapped without warning Gracie Films decided to revise the script part way into development diverging from the initial storyboards radical had prepared according to Vlad saraldi the changes were substantial and led to a story that was completely different from their original plan it wasn't just the rights holders who were second guessing the project either some of radical's own workers were voicing doubts about its quality there was a time when we we weren't sure how it was going to turn out that was probably about two-thirds of the way through development we had taken on such an ambitious ideas that we weren't sure that what we were building was literally one of the guys said we're polishing a turd medical staff began to realize that more time would be required in order for them to deliver on their vision for the game with deadlines looming they met with publisher of eventi games to request an extension they sought to delay the game and to their surprise for vendi was receptive to their request agreeing to push it back us to not compromise on quality a further three months were granted on top of the already agreed 18 months for context road rage was developed in only 11 months the additional time allowed them to further polish their mechanics and pile on more detail to the environments adding new Interiors to buildings you know they were game to spend more money and more time which was rare you'll have to get those opportunities uh we had very little time but the team was pretty enthusiastic about the additional time and how he could use it I'm probably a bit freaked out too if I remember because it was pretty ambitious to add on to what was already pretty ambitious one Mantra that the developers of Hit and Run employed during its creation was that they wanted fans to get access to all of its content and minimize barriers to forward progression as such a hidden Adaptive Difficulty system was implemented into the game according to ceraldi if a player fails a mission a certain amount of times the game will dynamically alter its difficulty in order for players to more easily complete it they can also opt to skip missions if they fail them five times in a row radical's Devotion to the project paid off for them favorable reviews and strong word of mouth among fans propelled the game to financial success when it was released in 2003 over time sales snowballed while exceeding the expectations of both radical and preventi according to sources linked to the two companies there had been some consideration for a portable version of the game on PSP although these will ultimately shelved to focus on other projects in the air since its release the game survived through its Avid cult following an active speedrunning community and petitions for sequels in remasters continue to thrive in 2019. given its popularity the lack of a follow-up has raised plenty of questions among fans multiple former staff from both radical and vivendi asserted that a sequel was indeed once being planned a small number of developers at radical were a part of these discussions which began during the tail end of hit-and-run's production initially these plans were seen as very tentative amid uncertainty over whether or not the first game would actually sell as x-radical designer Darren Everson explained we all knew that hit and run was fun but we didn't know how sales were going to go needless to say in the months after we shipped we were pleasantly surprised at how well the public was responding to the game and it really fed into our enthusiasm for some of us making a sequel was a no-brainer because that's what successful games usually did recognize when there's something hot and keep providing it until people don't want it anymore but people wanted it so we were fully planning on giving them what they wanted and to be frank it's what we wanted as well we understood the license we learned how to work with Gracie and if we spent up to two years making it we could have had an absolutely wonderful experience to give to people so we started planning and working under the assumption that something like this was going to happen if these early considerations are any indication hit and run 2's plan Direction was simply to go bigger and better the developers wanted to provide players with an even richer level of detail in its environments and an increased level of freedom for my role I spent it researching branching Mission structures and Mission variety explained Evanston I spent some time playing through GTA Vice City to learn how they set up their mission structure and was planning for Hit and Run 2 to have a similar structure it was going to be a bigger game but it was going to be less linear and really let people explore a virtual Springfield it felt like this was going to be the game that was going to be the biggest hit we'd ever worked on one developers cited plans to add more unique interactivity to each playable character allowing certain characters to be able to access areas that were off limits to others another former designer likened their ideas to that of the Lego games developed by Travelers tales in the 2000s in that kid characters such as Bart would have been able to perform actions that the adults like Homer would have not and vice versa for instance the children might have been able to fill in a smaller spaces that were too big for the grown-ups according to a former producer with ties to Fox Hit and Run 2 was under consideration as part of a potential multi-game deal between the licenses and vivendi the success of radicals 2 Simpsons projects had excited Fox leading to this ambitious role out being suggested the multi-project partnership would have employed not only radical but could have also involved other external Partners such as Stormfront Studios they had been in talks with the vendi to deliver an alternate take on The Simpsons as part of the aforementioned deal referred to by the developers as The Simpsons Adventure this proposal transformed the town of Springfield into a medieval fantasy setting many of its iconic characters and settings would have been represented through the lens of this new twist such as Moe's Tavern which became Ye Olde modes neither this or Hit and Run 2 moved forward as talks came to a close Don daglow the former CEO of Stormfront commented on the failure of that proposal it was a pitch where the end result of Licensing and Publishing decisions prevented the game from ever being made it was like pitching a wedding service to a couple who decide not to get married everyone loves your plan but the ceremony will go elsewhere according to a producer involved in these licensing negotiations Asians the issue had proven contentious among the higher-ups of evandy on one hand their Simpsons titles were hugely successful on the other the costs of renewing the license and making these games were considerable some people at vivendi viewed it as potentially risky to continue revisiting the same well and felt that it wasn't necessary for them to add more Simpsons games to their portfolio the first hit run was already forecast to continue providing a steady stream of revenue for some time to come meanwhile they already had access to other popular franchises from entities like Marvel Comics that their Partners could leverage allowing them to diversify despite some internal division over the subject the Fendi eventually declined to renew their contract with the Simpsons owners the proposed deal that once could have brought four more vivendi produced Simpsons games fell through two years after the release of Hit and Run EA signed a contract with Fox to develop their own Simpsons title they released this Simpsons game in 2007 although it failed to reach the critical success of hit and run and plans for a sequel were subsequently scrapped for some radical entertainment members like Darren Evanson the demise of Hit and Run 2 was a source of deep regret for me that will always be one of the best times in the industry we were working with friends on a game we felt was fun and seeing it succeed it's really too bad it ended there Evington claims there were brief talks to instead develop an open world game in the mold of Hit and Run for the Family Guy license but these suggestions were turned down by radicals management and they began to work on other projects such as the Incredible Hulk Ultimate Destruction for other employees such as Vlad siraldi this presented a welcome change from The Simpsons following five years of working with the IP we had a lot of energy left I think if they had wanted to make another census game right away I think we would have had a lot of excitement I was excited to explore some other IPS that were part of the Bendy I was a Crash Bandicoot fan from the original PlayStation and they had that property and it had been not necessarily front and center in the public mind in a way that I thought it could be so I myself was was wanting to work with that and subsequently we did in March 2005 following multiple successful Partnerships the Fendi bought radical entertainment out two years later vivendi games merged with Activision to become Activision Blizzard radical was able to release several more games in the as that followed such as the open world action game Prototype a sequel to prototype arrived in 2012 but was unable to meet sales targets set by Activision the publisher responded by dissolving radical entertainment and laying off the vast majority of their workers The Simpsons rights are now owned by Disney following its acquisition of 20th Century Fox for hit and runs developers the continued calls for the game's Revival stand as a testament to the team's passion and the quality of their work it was wildly successful from our perspective at that time and so yeah people put their body and soul into trying to do everything to it in those three months to maximize our opportunity to create a great special product and you know we're still talking about it so obviously the team did a good job of touching a nerve with fans as far as what they're hoping to see in fitting one the original Banjo-Kazooie was released in 1998 on Nintendo 64. the eventual results of an arduous string of ill-fated projects are rare the game was nonetheless a critical darling and a hit among N64 owners as such ideas for banjo to grow into a major franchise was soon stirring a sequel made in the mold of the original banjo Tui was put into development around the launch of the first game in June 98. just one year later another banjo game was already brewing in the background at rare with banjo fans while catered to on the N64 the company turned its attention towards Nintendo's portable system the Game Boy Color during the summer of 1999 a small group at rare began drawing plans to take the bird in bed duo in a New Direction with their first adventure for handhelds the project first existed under the title Banjo-Kazooie GBC and was point to reinvent the series for this less powerful platform their original concept as detailed in this project plan shared by a former red developer was for a 2d platformer game through various twists the project would ultimately evolve into a top-down platforming adventure for Game Boy Advance it was released in 2003 named Banjo-Kazooie grunty's revenge in an effort to understand more about the original vision for the game I tracked down the architects of the now 20 year old design documents the first section of this literature was written on the 10th of August 1999 by Rare designer Desmond Hinkson it focused not on how the game would play but the narrative it would follow and how it would continue on from the events of the first Banjo-Kazooie in fact it was planned to be a more direct sequel than banjo Tui was taking place between the two games at this early stage the plot was noticeably different from how it would eventually end up in Grundy's revenge on the Game Boy Advance months that game was set two months after grunty's first defeat at the hands of Banjo and Kazooie unable to shift the rock she was imprisoned beneath at the climax of the first game grunty's Minion Congo creates a mechanical body for his mistress and transfers her soul into it grunty then seeks revenge on the two titular characters by first kidnapping Kazooie from banjo's house she then traveled back in time intent on preventing the bird and bear from ever meeting in order to undo her defeat and restore her original body Mumbo uses his magic to send banjo back in time to pursue her as a side effect of the time travel spell banjo forgets his platforming moves from the first game and must relearn them from an old mole named bozai throughout the game the original synopsis on the other hand did not feature time travel and included different characters and settings it opened a few years after Banjo-Kazooie as opposed to just two months Banjo Kazooie and Mumbo are holidaying on a farm bottles is also there a character who doesn't appear in the final game at all furthermore the documents do offer some context as to why Tutti banjo's sister is no longer around stating that she's away having an adventure of her own somewhere else this idea was later dispensed with the character was not mentioned in future games saved for a cameo in Banjo Tui where she can be spotted in a missing poster on the side of a milk carton this version of the plot 2 would have featured Congo creating a mechanized vessel for Grundy's Spirit although her evil schemes were somewhat different she travels to the farm where the other characters are relaxing and unleashes a series of spells upon them bottles is transformed into a creature with full eyes and Mumbo is cursed with excessively bad luck she then warps Kazooie into an evil Blue version of herself before kidnapping her Mumbo runs after her but his bad luck intervenes and the comedic set piece follows in which a black cat scratches out his face he runs under a ladder and a mirror smashes on top of him the blow leaves him with amnesia unable to remember his spells to make malice worse banjo has forgotten his moves in the peaceful years since the first game and must now relearn them with his usual source for tutorials bottles indisposed in his new form bancho seeks the council of Grandpa mole the father of bottles he may be blind as a bat but the old curmudgeon taught him everything he knew the document reads as development went on Grandpa mole was changed to Bonsai and of a mole from the past whose relation to bottles was never specified one key detail separating Grandpa mole from Boz eye was that he would have relayed his lessons to Banjo by playing a crappy song as the docs described it on a gramophone if the player collected enough musical notes he would have also been able to use his music to open bonus levels whereinbanjo could collect honeycomb pieces to extend his life bar in grunty's Revenge no such bonus levels exist and the honeycomb Collectibles are instead scattered around the various worlds according to former rare designer Gavin HUD who was a part of the project from its Inception a major part of the game's early premise involved when tilde using Kazooie to enhance her maneuverability with the evil Bluebird stored in a backpack she would have used Kazooie similar to how banjo did in the previous game pulling off various tag team platforming moves at some point not too far into the game banjo would fight the Witch and ultimately reclaimed Kazooie restoring her to normal the majority of the adventure would have played out with their move set expanded from then on by October of 1999 this early form of the project came to be known as Banjo-Kazooie Grundy's curse the person responsible for giving it that subtitle was Desmond Hinkson who disclosed to me it supposed dual meaning it apparently referred to both the curse grunty was personally Afflicted with being bound in her spirit form as well as the curse she had Unleashed upon banjo's friends evidently a decent amount of time was spent developing these tentative plot and design details banjo's movesets levels enemy types and more are described in meticulous detail art was made for the documents including Sprites and menu Concepts demonstrating how it would fit within the constraints of the Game Boy Color screen these included early renders of Banjo-Kazooie and gruntilda in their re-imagined 2D forms with all of this laid out the question remains why wasn't this game made and why did the final release deviate so much from this original plan a large part of it former developers say was down to Resource restrictions and timing while the design documents were being drafted there was no team available at rare to make the game according to Gavin HUD he and other staff members were already busy on projects like Mickey's Speedway USA for Nintendo 64. this would remain the case into the year 2000 there was an expectation that grunt East Coast would enter development as if a Project's crossed the finish line and more staff were freed up however another project took precedence in 2000 Nintendo commissioned rare to bring their SNES platformer Donkey Kong Country to its next handheld the Game Boy Advance Desmond Hinkson who had written the plan for banjo on Game Boy Color was moved onto that project instead with its lead designer of Hawaii's engaged grunty's curse was put into a state of limbo for some time to come once the Paul of Donkey Kong Country was sufficiently far along Hinkson and other staff were finally at Liberty to move forward with banjo the Game Boy Advance by this point had not long since released and rare was Keen to capitalize upon it according to Hinkson it was rare's management that decided to put his portable banjo into production with a few provisos it would now be made for Game Boy Advance as opposed to color and would undergo a shift in perspective it would no longer be a 2d game and would utilize a pseudo 3D isometric style to make it more in line with the other banjo titles it would continue to morph as their plans were adapted for this new hardware there were many elements lost in this transition including whole areas that had originally been set to appear the largest cut was a world named mohendra banjo described as a temple set deep in the jungles of the East rare imagined it as being populated with ancient traps like moving walls and spikes as well as hazardous creatures spiders and Scorpions No Such enemies appeared in the final game they'd also envisioned using giant snakes as ladders and having tribal wall art of banjo references decorating the Ruins In The Finnish game there exists a world named freezing furnace an ice level which contains a sub-area with a steel works the init banjo has to avoid some high temperature hazards such as pools of bubbling lava originally this area was intended to be its own separate World dubbed fiery furnace lastly there was supposed to be a more substantial section leading up to the final boss grunty's Lair was once supposed to be its own distinct World a horror themed environment that combined elements from previous worlds like the spiders of Mahendra banjo and the Lava Pits from fiery furnace it would have served as banjo's last trial before his Showdown with Mecca gruntilda in grunty's Revenge no such area exists once the player has collected enough Jiggies they can enter Grundy's castle and begin fighting her after a short cutscene on the other hand a number of different enemies were dropped too documents from October 99 considered bringing back more bodies from the original banjo game like the big butts from mumbo's Mountain and the meaty Snippets from clunker's coven some original enemies met the same fate including magpies that would steal banjo's items and rolling gluttonous gruntlings that would challenge banjo to a race stroke piety in conest overall a considerable portion of content was scaled back as rare iterated upon hinkson's original plan he explained why these parts in particular were curtailed with the change to GBA came a condition the pseudo 3D isometric view this was really problematic the GBA is not 3D Hardware so to handle the new environment I had to control my plans it was a simple trade-off between the environments and the character interactions and story I wanted to explore I had no choice but to prioritize the pseudo 3D world everything became more complicated and we really pushed the GBA to its limits in terms of Concepts that didn't make it to the final game every element in the game had to be weighed in terms of scope versus play value I decided to go of the elements that our small team could do best and that players would enjoy most another element sacrificed in the project Shaker were certain Transformations banjo could undergo a bumblebee form that would allow him to shoot stingers and Traverse large gaps with scrapped as was the idea for a gag transformation the specifics of which had yet to be decided a toaster with eyes or a milking machine had been entertained as possibilities the nature of the Project's Evolution which Hinkson discussed helps us to understand why the story changed over time as well but he ascribes another reason as for why the game's title was altered from grunty's curse to Revenge the name change was a simple marketing decision he said it was felt that American parents would be less inclined to buy a game with curse in the title as for the game it once could have been on Game Boy Color Kingston says that he imagined it as a 2d action platformer somewhere between Donkey Kong Country and Kid Icarus Banjo-Kazooie grunty's revenge released to positive buzz from critics in 2003. its past would remain an obscure Open Secret from rare history for years to come although that didn't stop the developers from referencing their original plans in the final game when a relieved banjo rescues Kazooie in the Regal Beach level he exclaims Kazooie am I glad to see you I thought grunty would have made you into a monster by now a nod to the Blue Monster form of Kazooie that was ultimately scrapped hello and welcome to did you know gaming extra Skylanders Spyro's Adventure released in 2011 and was met with positive reviews and strong sales the game introduced many changes to Activision's Spyro series fundamentally changing Spyro's place in gaming and bringing him into the toys to life Market however before spyra's Adventure was released to the public the game changed in many ways during early development of the project work was being carried out by Helios entertainment for PC and Nintendo Wii under the name Spyro's Kingdom the game involved the player taking on Quests for a fully grown Spyro while he ruled over his kingdom Helios proposed the title as an MMORPG and an early version of the game was even available as a playable demo on the company's website however it was later deleted and is no longer available after the concept was dismissed Activision decided against full production of helios's concept and the project was passed over over to Toys for Bob where the game slowly became the product it is today ideas for the original pitch included giving the game more mature themes such as the use of blood in order to appeal to young adults over the age of 16 but eventually this gritty take on the series was dropped with Paul Reich toys for Bob's Studio president stating that wasn't Spyro one popular franchise which had a canceled MMO was Lord of the Rings while there is in fact an MMO called Lord of the Rings Online plans were made by Sierra online to develop a title called Middle Earth online differing from Lord of the Rings Online Middle Earth looked to develop a more true to life simulation of living within the Tolkien Universe the player would have been able to select one of four races including Orcs the concept began in 1998 with a release date set for two years later the title started as a 2d project similar to Ultima Online but quickly shifted into a full 3d game from a top-down perspective the project saw problems after Sierra began to fall into a state of financial worry and in 1999 the company was sold off to vivendi the game also had a number of management issues and several project leads felt the game wasn't headed in the right direction key design points were met with contention such as monsters being able to capture players forcing them to be rescued by others as well as Perma death Joe Ludwig a programmer for Sierra online at the time even called some of the proposals such as permadeath crazy an MMO that made it a little closer to release But ultimately met its end was Stargate Worlds the game was announced in 2006 and was developed by Cheyenne Mountain entertainment using the unreal 3 engine developers work closely with co-creator of Stargate sg1 Brad Wright and planned to take elements of FPS titles however it would have put more of a focus on tactical gameplay to defeat enemies and incorporate our RPG elements like character classes and customization in 2008 the game even received its first and only closed beta following that in 2009 despite Brad Wright casting doubt to gateworld.net as to whether the game would ever be completed Fire Sky senior marketing manager Kevin Ballentine insisted to IGN that the game was still very much in development and that the team were working hard to get it finished however in 2010 Cheyenne Mountain entertainment filed for bankruptcy and the project was canceled shortly after the release of Stargate resistance a game which was met with a predominantly negative response two years after this Gary Whiting former chairman and CEO of Cheyenne Mountain entertainment was the focus of a lawsuit from numerous investors alleging negligent misrepresentation common law fraud and securities fraud they claimed that Whiting was not only the chief executive of CME but also created a number of limited liability come companies which he used to promote and sell shares within Cheyenne Mountain it is also claimed that CME and its Affiliates misled investors as to how many shares of stock they were selling in total over 500 million shares were sold leaving investors holding less than one percent of the company did you also know that the Japanese version of Super Mario RPG has a ton of references to anime or that there's a hidden secret within Earthbound that took decades to find for a whole bunch of SNES facts check out the video on screen

Channel: DYKG Clips

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Keywords: lost games, lost video games, lost media, cancelled games, canceled games, super mario 64dd, super mario, mario 64dd, the simpsons hit and run, simpsons hit and run, the simpsons hit and run 2, banjo-kazooie, banjo kazooie, bio force ape, california raisins, spyro the dragon, spyro, cancelled mario game, canceled mario game, nintendo, sega vr

Id: 4rX3eIG0FZg

Length: 58min 12sec (3492 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 14 2022