They are alive! Cursed heritage of the video game industry (Part 1)

You recently created your studio, gained a team and are ready to create a revolutionary or at least high -quality products. You managed to find a publisher who became interested in your project and is ready to finance it. And as soon as you sit down at the desktop, several things begin around you: a financial crisis has come;Production hell began, and your publisher recognized himself bankrupt and sold all his assets, including your studio and the right to play. The final point in your work is put by the new publisher, who, for the sake of optimizing expenses, closes the studio and deprives you of all intellectual rights. Congratulations, you have just become unemployed in one week.

It’s a shame, yes? And there are thousands ..

This is a classic and very exaggerated example from the life of the gaming industry, I took it for a reason. From the second half of the 80s of the XX century, in my opinion, there was a birth of a modern gaming industry, in which there were not only platform holders as a publisher, but also individual companies engaged only in the release of video games.

The nineties became a real Klondike and a wild West in one person. Everyone wanted to snatch a piece of wealth and did this with all kinds of means: viral advertising, game hymics, strange solutions to create iron and much more. And by the beginning of the zero, the console hierarchy will finally change, many companies will collapse or change under the weight of their mistakes, and the standards of genres will begin to emerge in the games themselves.

Over these two decades, the world of video games has completely changed and has become the way we see it now.

But today I want to talk about the projects that fell under the era of change. They could not go out in due time, but now they can be safely found on the Internet and play . But it is worth saying that not everything has entered this selection for several reasons. For example, there will be no “adventures of Captain Blade” and Duke Nukem Forever sample 2001, t. To. Quite words were said about the “blade”, and I openly did not understand Duke how to launch at all (or did not find a simple working version). If you have something to tell more on this topic – comments are waiting.

And now important blocks of the text that I divided this blog into:

Committed with preludes, so we can start our journey through Cursed heritage of the gaming industry.

The plate in the tape recorder. Cursed console ports.

Now porting games for different platforms is a common thing, although here you can ruin everything . However, in the same nineties architecture of consoles and PCs were so different that it was the norm to create a game for only one platform. But when it still came to the port, oh gods, this must be seen. Some will recall the DMC 3 on PC, others – Dark Souls with a course on the screen, but for me it was Toy Story 2 with a curve translation and management. The tower was that some companies made completely different versions of games for different platforms (the first games about Harry Potter, for example).

Well, these ports were just unlucky. Having got into production or bureaucratic blood pressure, companies simply closed projects for the impossibility of implementation, poor quality, or simply because of, by the time the exit, the platform had already managed to become obsolete and the port would be irrelevant.

Half-Life for Sega Dreamcast. Death date – 15.06.2001

The port was declared Sierra on February 14, 2000 at an exhibition in France. Two studios worked on the transfer of the game: Unknown CapTivation and Gearbox Software. There were enough promises: two plot additions, improved graphics, special versions of Counter Strike and Team Fortress with built -in modifications. Real delight for cantile?

The answer to this question came on June 15, 2001, when Sierra announced the closure of the project. And from 2003 to this day, one of the early buildings of the game is walking on the Internet, whose files were able to mount the main game through a special modification. The conclusion of the history of the port is quite obvious here – do not delay, otherwise it will be too late.

The main reasons for the closure of the project:

But what about gameplay? To answer this question, I want to make a small but extremely important retreat ..

* The sounds of the microphone* https://playhub-casino.uk/ So .. Have you ever played first-person shooters on psp? Well, you know: walking with a steak, action on the cross, overview through buttons, trigger shooting and auto pruning. I played them and now these are not the best games.

I want to say that HL at DreamCast gave me a very specific management experience even compared to PSP shooters. To begin with, you need to control through the stick and move on on the YBAX buttons, the cross is responsible for actions, you shoot the right trigger, and with your left you change part of the layout of the gamepad. At first, this is very unusual and inconvenient, but perhaps after some time you can get used to. Otherwise, this is the same HL, although worse than the senior version in technical terms: there are more downloads and you need to wait 10-15 seconds, the textures here are lower quality and in some places small brakes appear.

The result is easier to play the original with a mod on content. Blue Shift, which was supposed to be an exclusive console, and the Opposing Force can now play PC. Captivation closed after the development of the development, and Gearbox ported all the additions to the platforms that were relevant at that time and soon took up other games on other franchises.

Baldur`s Gate for PS One. Death date – Spring 2000

Instead of a thousand words about this cult nry, I will say only three.

D&D is a base. Now let’s move on to the games ..

In 1997, Tactical Studies Rules (Sokr. TSR), Gary Gaygax, was bought by Wizard of the Coast. From this moment, support for the second edition of D&D, which has already developed several games, including the most important project in the history of BioWare – Baldur`s Gate, has stopped . We will not delve into the history of development, because it is now particularly not important for us now. I will only say that the game was released on December 21, 1998 and has already become a classic of party RPG.

Let’s talk about the port. The gameplay has not changed: create a character;Travel and study everything that is in the isometric world;Folding with monsters in real time with a tactical pause and perform tasks;gain experience for new levels and find or buy new weapons. Of course, all this lies many micromechanics and, most importantly, random shots from the good old D20. If you played the original, then there will be no problems with adaptation.

They tried to make the interface similar to the older version, but the management is not very intuitive and you have to deal with this for a long time. Graphics because of weak iron looks much worse. Well, the most important minus of this version is endless downloads when crossing the menu or location.

Do you know what madness is?

Fight and battle, what to mutter?

Dialogs here also require loading

I load the next picture while you look at another picture

And here is the inventory. There is nothing new for those who know here, but he also needs to load

The result is easier to install Enhanced Edition. Runecraft did a huge, but frankly useless work. Even if this miracle came out officially, then critics would destroy the port for low performance and weak graphics. Now you can play this only for the sake of scientific interest, because for two hours it is to be killed to get out of Kendlkip – this is despondency and pain in the flesh.

Goldeneye 007 for Xbox 360. Death date – 2007

Probably the most famous of all damned ports in this collection. Remaster and Port of a cult console shooter for N64 according to the most famous film franchise about the worst spy of Great Britain, which was killed by two things: buying Rare in 2002 Microsoft and legal problems with Metro Goldwyn Mayer. The project was covered, but the build remained in the studio.

Rumors about the working version have gone somewhere since 2008. Even after several plums, people did not believe in the existence of the port, but in January 2021 a streamer under the nickname Goldeneye did not show the very mass of the same build, and since February 3 of the same year, the working ROM can be safely found on the Internet.

For Rare, this was not the first experience working with old franchises on the new console. Back in 2005, they release Perfect Dark: Zero, the prequel of the original Perfect Dark, which, incidentally, will also receive Remaster in 2010.

The game was not particularly touched: they changed control and rolled more beautiful textures. But it was all the same vigorous shooter with a bunch of espionage devices, excellent animations of enemies and with a very uncomfortable aiming system.

As an example

But it is worth saying that Remaster is visually outdated. This was not surprising, since the game was immediately created for Live Arcade – the division of the Xbox store with a huge number of small games of varying degrees of lousy. However, one feature was implemented in this remaster, which will later be in Halo: The Master Chief Collection . I’m talking about instant switching between two versions of games. But here the original version looks just terrible: the low drawing range and reduced contrast simply do not allow it to play normally.

The result is a strict recommendation to try. If you have a stitched Xbox 360 or a working emulator, feel free to try. This is the very case of a high-quality product that fell due to legal delays in two large companies.

By pieces. Console games that could not finish

In my text about Secret Agent Clank (kh), I already talked about the inconstancy of such things as spin-offs. For publishers, this is another way to earn money in a new territory, and for developers – a field of experiments. Unfortunately, these things do not always converge, because it is difficult to engage in creativity without normal financing.

As a result, most publishers follow the path of the least resistance: they hire small studios without experience, give stiff development time and issue minimal resources for execution. An example is exaggerated, but these are realities ..

Castlevania Resurrection. Death date – March 2000

On E3 1999, the Demo of the New Castlevania was shown behind closed doors. Journalists were delighted with what they saw, and Konami oil into the fire with loud words about the most sophisticated game for Sega Dreamcast. According to producer Ken Ogasavar, Resessurement was developed jointly with the American team for the American market and the rate was made on action, graphics and animation.

You already feel it, yes? A bunch of promises and advertising disappeared by the end of 1999, and already in March 2000 the project was canceled, because at the same time Sony began to sell PS2. How later it turns out the game was ready only 25%. And as in the case of Goldeneye, the build was preserved … but not in the studio ..

In 2021, the collector of old and non -passing games of the combi Larante was able to redeem the disk with the same version for E3. Without thinking twice, he made a worker ROM demki and posted on the Internet for public viewing. If you have a desire to try, the link is here.

Let’s talk a little about the synopsis. The main characters (yes, there were several of them) were Sonya, who could feel and feel the spirits, and Victor Belmont, one of the earliest representatives of the hunter clan. The plot took place in 1666 and was supposed to mean travel travel, and during the game it was possible to switch between the characters during the passage.

There are only 5 sections in demo: Contryard, Stairs, Hall, Corridor and Chapel. They are small in size and in all of them, Sonya simply destroys enemies with a whip or sword (and then). The hunter jumps and walks quite sluggishly and slowly, and the opponents are also not quick: slowly soaring priests, perfumes, magicians and skeletons who do not walk at all. There are no consumables here, but there are hearts, candelabra and meat that does not restore health. The most interesting of all Corridor sections, in which you need to run away from a giant hydra.

It is worth noting the excellent visual component at that time. Dreamcast has a lot of games with good graphics, and Castlevania is no exception. However, the sections have a huge number of bugs, because of which it is impossible to play normally.