Good surprise with a NPDP Cart.

Hello Guys,

Recently, I have bought a NPDP cart (from N-Space Studio) who wasn't working when I received it. The harddrive was acting like the head was blocked. After having opened the NPDP cart (bye bye Warranty Sticker), and handling the harddrive a bit, the cart was working again.

There is only two N-Space gamecube games. One is Geist, a pretty cool game, and the other is a Mary Kate and Ashley game. No need to say that if the cart contains a game featuring these twin sisters, I will be a bit disappointed.

So the cart is now readable with my NPDP Reader.

I knew that there is 4 slots on each NPDP carts, but wasn't sure of the way to select them. Thanks to Trimesh, I was able to start all of the slots.

Slot 1 : The first one was booting on a classic Nintendo warning, followed by a N-Space logo start screen. But then, an "Out of Memory - Datastream.cpp 731" Error occurs. I was unable to go further with this slot.

Slot 2 and 3 : Empty. No boot.

Slot 4 : A Geist build ! No Mary Kate and Ashley ! Just a simple and great build of Geist.

So a quick look at it shown differences with the retail version. The main menu is looking similar to the retail one but there is only 2 stages available (named 1A and 1B). I haven't looked further into this build. As I was looking to understand the error that was occuring when booting the first Slot. But I will do a thread about this Geist build later.

I have then decided to dig up my NPDP-GDEV unit, in order to see if the error was still present when using this unit with advanced debug features. After dealing with the switches to select the correct NTSC region (can we run PAL NPDP cart with all the GDEV units ?)

Here is the result of the Slot 1 Boot (better pictures will comes later) :




An unreleased and unknown game called "Sphear, A Riqa Adventure", simple as this. So if someone has heard of this game, please give us more informations about it. I will try to contact ex N-space employees to know more about that game.

Several demo level are playable, including a shooting area to try different guns on poor little ennemies (with a very bad ragdoll behavior haha).

Finding an unknown game is great. But there is something more interesting :



The game is actually a Wii game....

A Wii game on a NPDP cart, but fully playable with a Gamecube pad ?

I can see some reasons to put a Wii game on a NPDP cart :

- The game was supposed to be developped for NGC and Wii. The Wii team was maybe deeper in the game development and the NGC team used some of the Wii team assets.

- The game was first supposed to be NGC only but then move to Wii. In this case, this cart may have been used for some debugging purposes. But as it involve to compile for both NGC and Wii, I don't really see the reason to do so. I am not very familiar with NGC and Wii development but does both program architecture look similar enough to allows easy compiling with the same source code ?

More pictures and video coming later (unless someone from N-Space ask me to remove these pictures).

Developping a game take a huge part of developpers lifes (As an independant developper, I know it). This is why I (and many other people here) want to pay tribute to this amazing job by digging up all these video games oddities, in order to give these games (and the developpers who made them) the place they deserve. But if someone who owns the right of this game ask me to remove this thread, I will do it.

 

Wow, that's a nice find man ! I believe that Sphear is related to Riqa, a cancelled N64 game, I remember watching some promotional VHS in 1999 (a VHS that contained some DK64 footage, Perfect Dark, 40 Winks (with an hided "PSX" mention ha ha), etc...)



And it seems that it evolved into Rogue Ops later.

 

Thanks for this video. I forgot about it. Pretty hard to tell if the two games are related. But the girl in Sphear really looks like the one in Rogue Ops (well, a blond girl haha).

 

Well, the Sphear subtitle is "A Riqa Adventure" and the girl has the same type of outfit so I wouldn't be surprised if both games are related

 

Maybe. I haven't found any relations between both development studios yet. But maybe a developper has worked on both studios (which means moving from USA to UK) and he kept some of his job with him, as long as a caracter he has created.

I have contacted some people from N-Space. I am waiting for their answer.

 

Reallycool discovery you did there @kennypecheur! It actually makes sense for an early Wii game to be running on GameCube hardware, the first wave of titles being showcase on the E3 back on the day were also running on Cube's

 

Does it mean that program structures are pretty identical ? (except from the libraries).

Will capture video later (looking for the better way to do it).

 

Yeah, you can compile GC sdk samples for the Wii with very minor changes.
There was also a Wii controller library for the GC sdk.

 

Thanks a lot for your answer. Then it makes more sense now.

The game isn't optimized for the GC controller. This can be seen during the gunfights. Bad that I can't test with a Wiimote !

 

There was actually a Wiimote prototype specifically for the GC sdk and for use with a GDEV.

I created a thread about it here: http://assemblergames.com/l/threads/revolution-proto-dev-controllers.61854/
Maybe N-Space were using one of those controller when they were developing this game.

 

I remember this thread now. I was pretty amazed to see it !

Getting a such controller could be great ! But I suppose that they are really rare.

 

Yeah they do seem to be very rare. I have never personally seen one.

But I think this does make sense because the images that you have taken of the controller screen show the Wiimote with start/select buttons instead of +/- and A/B buttons instead of 1/2, just like the early controllers had.

 

Exactly ! Thanks a lot for reminding me this controller !

Here is the controller, for the most lazy of us

 

And here's a size comparison between the prototype and retail controllers.

 

Thanks a lot for this picture ! Was it the controller you had in your hands ?

 

Yep!

 

, sad that you don't have it anymore.

Anyway, the game is still playable with the gamecube controller, put it is a pain to aim an ennemy. And there is not way to use the "Sphear" (at least, I haven't found how to do it with the Gamecube controller).

I wonder if a modded Wii controller can do the job as well.

 

Also, do you know where the Nunchuk was connected ?

 

The Nunchuk was connected to the bottom of the remote just like the final retail Wiimote, except it uses a different connector.
The remote itself connects to the GDEV via a GC controller port and the sensor bar connected via the GC memory card slot.

It would be cool to see if a retail Wiimote or a dev wired Wiimote could be modified and used with the GDEV/GC sdk.

 

Using a dev wired Wiimote can indeed be a good idea. It will be interesting to see how the wire is connected inside the controller. I saw a bunch of wired controller on ebay few monthes ago for a cheap price. But I suppose that someone bought them and his currently selling them at a high price.