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Unreleased games bit (3/12 show)

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Unreleased games bit (3/12 show)

Postby TheIchibanCrush » Mon Mar 20, 2006 3:29 am

(I hope I'm posting this in the right section, if not I'm sorry ;___;)

This is a little late, as I work during the live broadcasts and listen to rerun podcasts during the week on my 30-minute commute to/from school/work (I'll be listening to tonight's podcast this week). Also, I was busy slashing away through last minute academic hell when I was listening to that show and didn't really have time to comment on it sooner. Anyway, this is really just a minor nitpick/happy FYI stuff...

On the piece about unreleased games, you guys mentioned the Final Fantasy 64 demo. I might have been comprehending it wrong while I was listening to it, and if so, I apologize. But it's interesting stuff to mention at the very least.

There's been misconception regarding "FF 64" for some time, and that's really all in thanks to sloppy journalism from a few gaming mags back in the day. It was assumed that the interactive FF6 CGI demo was the working project for an N64 game. Truth of the matter is, they didn't even have an N64 game in mind and that it was nothing more than a computer graphics demo. No console in mind, simply a CGI demo. Over time, it got snowballed by the intermerwebs that it was 1. a working demo for an N64 version which would be Final Fantasy VII or 2. From the lowest common denomonators on the World Wide Internetwebs, an actual full game that was planned and got scrapped because "Square snubbed Nintendo".

I'm not completely sure if they had plans for the PS1 version at that time, but given the time when pieces of the FFVII we all know and love today started to pop up in the gaming mags, I'm willing to bet the transition away from Nintendo was probably somewhere on the drawing board. But basically, when press got word of Square's SIGGRAPH demo, they were quick to jump the gun.

Frankly, it was a pretty good educated speculation, as back then, Square was known for being only two degrees off from being an inhouse Nintendo developer. Most people know of the history between Nintendo and Square; long story short, Nintendo had basically saved Square's keister on a number of occaisions from the flames of bankruptcy and gave them a ton of financial backing. Nonetheless it was speculation, and had no reason to be printed as fact. At the very least, they could have stated these "facts" as speculation, but meh... this is just me being ranty.

Anyhoo, a lot of the rumors were debunked by the LostLevels boys a little while back. You can find more details on it here:
http://www.lostlevels.org/200510/ (Fun Fact: This article took about two years to piece together)
One thing Sutherland didn't mention to back up the fact that it was a huge mess that halfassed game journalists of the time were getting into was something that in a similair "speculation = fact" piece that ran in EGM at the time when they were showing off planned "Ultra 64" titles. Ironically, one title listed right next to "Final Fantasy VII" (with the CGI Demo's pics in place no doubt) was that of Street Fighter III (well before the original arcade version was ever announced). Those boys even slapped together a faux title screen together, which was nothing more than the original SF II logo with and extra roman numeral I slapped on to it. This was also emphasized as "fact". It's understandable why he might have left that out as it is kind of irrelevant, but I thought it helped to illustrate the point as to how bad the press was pushing the assumptions as news at that time. Something I'm trying never to do, as I myself am trying to get into the gaming journalism gig.

DarkSakura (I think) mentioned that she had been looking for the FF6 demo online for some time. Good luck in that. I'm a newbie "staff" member at LL.org. I really just got recruited to write for the site, in fact, my first article hasn't even been put up yet, so I don't feel I'm the best person to really speak on behalf of the site (and I'm not about to mention any behind the scenes stuff either. Sorry ;~;). About all I can tell you is that the head boys running the site spend a lot of time and hard work scrounging up as many lost prototypes and material as possible, and when it's safe, to leak to the public. The torrent for the Penn & Teller Sega CD game that was mentioned? Yeah, LL.org's head honcho was responsible for that (I believe he even got the "okay" to do so from one of the game's programmers), although for whatever reason, he never posted it on LL.org's main site and only plugged the torrent on a couple of public forums before news got widespread and Penn mentioned it on his website. Penn seems cool with it, so I'm not too worried about mentioning that one here.

Anyways, the FF6 CGI Demo is something a LOT of people have been looking for. We know it's out there somewhere in a physical form, but as to weither or not whoever's holding it (I'm not sure if anyone on our end even knows who has it) will eventually leak it to the public has yet to be seen. Our fingers are crossed for the best here. If it ever falls into any of the LL.org boys' hands, I'm willing to bet it would somehow get a leak of some sort. Only problems I would see with that are 1. I'm not sure how it would be emulated if that's even possible; the sucker was programmed for Onyx's CGI computers. and 2. Squeenix is awfully protective of it's cashcow. But then again, anything's possible, LL did manage to find an unfinished translation of FF2 intended for NES (NOT a romhack). Check the archives as lostlevels.org, you'll see what I mean

Anyways, I love you fellers' show, and thought I'd throw in some info instead of the typical kissassery.
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Postby skie » Mon Mar 20, 2006 8:24 am

Hey there, hope you don't mind me re-directing this post to the podcast feedback forum since it is a bit specific to one show...

Very thorough and insightful reply. You know I do recall reading an article a while back sort of "debunking" a lot of the FF6 on 64 rumors and basically stating it was only, and only ever will be a tech demo. Can't remember if that came from the website you mentioned, I want to say it made the rounds on a few of the popular blogs so that's probably where I had seen it.

I'm still OK with having mentioned it during the unreleased games piece because I think even with the demo, many of us dream over "what could have been" if that demo had actually been the first steps to something more. Perhaps by putting it in that context though, I made the same mistake many of those game journalism magazines did ;)

Thanks for the feedback~!
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Postby TheIchibanCrush » Mon Mar 20, 2006 10:43 am

Thanks for moving this, I don't know no better ('¬' )

skie wrote:I'm still OK with having mentioned it during the unreleased games piece because I think even with the demo, many of us dream over "what could have been" if that demo had actually been the first steps to something more.


Yeah, I actually figured that was sort of the direction 'yoos guys were going. And believe me, I know exactly what you mean as I tend to dream the same dreams. For example, some time ago, an article from a Japanese mag was uncovered for FFIV for the NES, which was actually planned but never even made it as far as alpha stages. The screencaps taken were moch-ups, much to my dismay (I had seen the untranslated piece before LL revealed the results of their investigatin'). I always really liked FFIII(Famicom), so seeing something on the same platform that could actually expand on that would have been a dream.

Kind of relating to the original topic, another gaming rag in Japan also released similar moch-ups for FFVII for SNES, probably shortly after FFVI launched. Unlike the FFIV-Famicom piece, they were very obviously mochups; it had taken heavily altered either FFV or FFIII(Famicom) sprites, and slapped 'em against FFVI backgrounds and monsters. But even then, yeah, given FFVI's glory and what Square/Nintendo was able to do with Super Mario RPG, ya can't help but to wonder if Cloud and company actually ended up on 16-bit grounds. Granted, this is one I'm glad to see made the transition that happened, but STILL.

A few months back, a couple a nutcases tried to pass off the discovery of a prototype for a lost Zelda III for the NES that was apparently in development sometime before the final SNES product. Of course, it smelled of BS from day one (with certain signs like a photoshopped alteration of the Link's Awakening titlescreen). Even though it was total screaming poppycock, it still dances in my imagination on the sheer basis of how far Nintendo went with the transition that SMB made to SMB3.

Okay I'm gonna stop nerding out here :X
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Postby DarkSakura » Mon Mar 20, 2006 11:56 am

Just to clarify, while I'd love to have the demo itself, what I'm hunting is a movie file of it in action. I remember the images of it back in the day and really wanted to just see the demo.

Honestly as of late I've been very interested in getting back into prototype collecting. My husband and I have a few of the Atari 5200 prototypes, but personally I want some of the Sega CD protos/betas like the old Sonic CD US formatted with the Japanese music or PC-Engine/Duo ones.

Back to FF, I remember a lot of those you mentioned. I don't remember the Zelda III one, though. I'd love to see that, fake or not.
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Postby TheIchibanCrush » Mon Mar 20, 2006 6:39 pm

Oh, my mistake! Jeez, I must have been really out of it the one and a half times I listened to that show. X_x

A movie file of the demo? Hmm, that's less difficult obviously. Trouble is, LL was trying to look for that as well with results inconclusive. I had a Playstation Underground disc when I had preordered FFVII back in the day that covered FFVII's development. It showed some renders that I think were used in the SIGGRAPH demo (as it was of course mentioned), but I don't think any of the actual FF6 interactive demo itself was ever shown in that piece.

I don't know if I have that disc anymore, sadly enough. ;~;

Prototype collecting is something I'd love to get into, but being a broke college student working a part time job, that's not happening anytime soon. Shoot, I'd be happy contributing to LL's funding, but don't have the funds for even that right now. To be honest, I'm not really what you would call a hardcore collector (I don't own a single prototype, the rarest games in my collection are probably either Cosmic Fantasy 2 (US) or Ufouria for the PAL-region NES), other than seeking out bad anime franchise titles. Since video gaming history is something I'm into, I probably would be if finances weren't an issue. If I were to get into it, it'd probably be for the sheer purpose of releasing it to the public in some shape or form, but the novelty side of owning the real McCoy would be nift. I can think of a lot of stuff I'd like to uncover...

Here's some info on the Zelda III NES hoax. I'm surprised (though I shouldn't be) that Wiki even had an entry on it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legend ... force_Saga
They left out the second lying nutcase though: http://www.ratedo.com/articles/z3proto.html
Honestly, if you're gonna lie about something, do it right. Fake more than just a title screen, and don't do it a molasses pace.
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Postby DarkTetsuya » Tue Mar 21, 2006 12:52 am

Hey, fancy seeing you here :P anyways, yeah I read about that whole Zelda III on NES story... definetly reeks of BS.

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Postby TheIchibanCrush » Tue Mar 21, 2006 9:08 am

Hey deude! :D

Yeah, the whole Zelda III fiasco was the butt of our jokes in several of my little circles for a bit. Moreso the RatedO guy, since the other guy pretty much did it to himself with the Silicon Knights namedropping bit. One of the LL/FEFEA boys even contacted him offering to dump the cart, but he kinda BSed stating that he "knew of someone else" who would do it.

Riiiight...
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