Interesting Gaming History

[The Geek Lord]

Should be pretty self-explanatory. Explain some history in games or game development that you find interesting or that you didn't see coming.

For me, I'd have to say the fact that Halo was essentially a prequel to a trilogy of Mac games. From what I've heard (I don't have a source to confirm this, I guess you can google it yourself or maybe the answer would be obvious if I actually played through the god damn games[footnote]Though the protagonist of Marathon seems to be wearing the Spartan armor, so I guess that also answers the question. In fact a lot of stuff in Marathon looks vaguely similar to what little I've seen out of Halo.[/footnote]) Halo and Marathon are based in the same universe.

The best part? Before Bungie was bought out by Microsoft--yep, even the same developer--decided it would be pretty cool if they made the Marathon trilogy open-source. [http://marathon.sourceforge.net/] People have even made ports for OSX, Windows, and Linux. There's also some fans who made some really complicated remake of the game using the original Unreal Tournament.[footnote]Couldn't run that if I wanted to though, what with the fact that I can't run OS9 and all, even though I have a Mac.[/footnote]

And now I feel like a living advertisement. Wonderful.

 

[Daystar Clarion]

One of the greatest things about Okami, is its art style, the cell shaded, Japanese watercolour works really well.


Hard to believe that it was originally going to be a realistically styled game. [http://gamevideos.1up.com/video/id/5015]

 

[Jazoni89]

Sonic 2's development was pretty fascinating.

Mainly because their was tons, and tons of content that never made into the final game. One of the most notable level's that never made into the final game was Hidden Palace zone. The level is still in fact accessible with a cheat cartridge in the final build of the game despite it's data being erased from the Rom (it is only however a garbled mess of unknown sprites).


(Yes, that piece of unused music is in fact the Hidden Palace music)

The reason for the deletion of this level from the final game remains a mystery to this day (it could of been due to time restraints, or lack of space). However it has been rumoured to have once been the level that you could get access to after getting all seven of the chaos emeralds, and then granting you the powers of super sonic when you have completed the two acts of the stage.

Now, the story behind this mysterious level thickens, when at a trade show Preview back in 1992, a Prototype of Sonic 2 was stolen. The prototype, and it's content was unknown to many, until in 1998, when Simon Wai found a dump of the stolen prototype on a chinese geocities website. He then proceeded to form the sonic retro community in preserving this ROM, and it's content. This prototype was dubbed the Simon Wai beta, and is rumoured to be nearly a year older than the final build.

It contained a playable version of Hidden palace (however very incomplete). It also contained various other things such as a level called wood zone. The strangest thing about the prototype though is that one of the levels on the rom was strangely dubbed Genocide city Zone (which was a empty level).


Their has also been other prototypes of sonic 2 bubbling out of the internet soup as well. DRX (a well known prototype dumper) dumped a version of sonic 2 which was in fact earlier than that of Simon Wai's. However the differences between the two are not incredibly different. For example no other unused levels were found (like the fabled Dust hill, or rock zone), and hidden palace itself wasn't at all different to the one found in the beta. This prototype dates back to late 91, and it is identical to that of the same one used on a nick arcade episode. This prototype is dubbed the DRX alpha.

He has also released a lot of near finish proto's of sonic 2 in it's near final state with minimal differences between them, and the final version.

Hopefully someday, someone will find the prototype with the legendary dust hill on it.

 

[AetherWolf]

One of the greatest things about Okami, is its art style, the cell shaded, Japanese watercolour works really well.


Hard to believe that it was originally going to be a realistically styled game. [http://gamevideos.1up.com/video/id/5015]

If they had made it for PS3 using that style, it would've been drop-dead gorgeous.

 

[jacobythehedgehog]

Shenmue was the game that got me hard core into gaming. It was amazing, the "FREE" interactive Susuki wanted to create he did. The game was far ahead of its time. And it was amazing. If you havent played this game play it. It was also the highest budgeted game for a while

[youtube]BNDChSl42Xw[/youtube]

 

[Daystar Clarion]

One of the greatest things about Okami, is its art style, the cell shaded, Japanese watercolour works really well.


Hard to believe that it was originally going to be a realistically styled game. [http://gamevideos.1up.com/video/id/5015]

If they had made it for PS3 using that style, it would've been drop-dead gorgeous.

Well, one of the reason they went with the style they did was because the PS2's hardware simply couldn't handle the original version. So yeah, a PS3 version of the original would look stunning.