Heart of Darkness

Sorry, i just got excited for the find ^_^'

 

Oh, no it's alright. I meant nothing bad by it. I'm just a bit frustrated that this find has been brought up before but I still haven't gotten a chance to go through the files myself yet. It's nice to finally see a little bit of footage for it though.

 

AMurderOfCrows is on this very forum. I guess he was the original owner that lent the discs to Steve Lin? If he has them again that must mean Frank and Steve never got it working themselves. I wonder what was done differently that the disc semi-works now?

On first look it seems to essentially be the same as the PSX game in terms of the FMV. Hopefully it gets fixed up and released sometime.

Edit: damn typos

 

Ohhhh! Maybe I should ask then. Steve was the guy I know who was messing around with it on twitter.

There are key differences in the intro credits of the opening FMV. Depending on from what time period this disc is from I know for a fact there would be differences (small, but noticeable) within the game itself such as differing sound effects and enemy AI, again depending on from what year it was from.

 

The original owner was Don Russell, who bought a number of protos (including some unreleased) from the family member of an old Sega employee. I bought my Shining Force 3 proto from him (has a number of differences from final), which he sold in the same batch as Heart of Darkness, Armed, and a bunch more.

 

Love the japanese symbols in the title already...but didnt an earlier thread/post claimed it was (nearly) identical to the PSX version ?
So, someone of this forum just uplaoded this video last week ?

He was/is the original owner of the original disc ? He lent it ? It wasnt running on original hardware ? Spectacular :O

 

I doubt this disc would be the full game. Assuming the Saturn version would take up about as much space as on Playstation, the final psx version took two discs. If it had all levels it'd be impossible to have the full cinematics as well. They'd also have been more likely to show more cinematics as these were more crucial a selling point at the time. They didn't seem to have video footage let alone playable previews of anything past the third level at this point. I don't think press release screenshots even went past the third level in '96

The game at first glance would likely be very similar, but playable teaser footage from 1996 shows variation in enemy AI, sound effects, a couple missing screens not in final release, and a removed enemy type. Not anything seriously different that we know of, but still noticeable differences. There were likely more things cut or changed from the game of course, but I can neither confirm nor deny it at present.

Here is the video I shared in the other thread. The actual gameplay shown at the very end doesn't look much different from the final release to most people, but those who are really familiar will notice the different sound effects and how the spectres behave differently on that screen than they do in the final release. It was rumored back then the game was even harder.

 

Where can I download these?

 

They were never made public.

So did someone buy Heart of Darkness? eBay listing went away a month back. Anyone here that bought it?

 

:3 yes

 

Nice! So tell us, figured out how to actually get in-game at all? Plans for release or just holding onto it for awhile?

 

I'll be waiting a long time as we agreed on a payment plan that fit my budget but I've been told it won't be made public until it's fully paid off anyways. I haven't even seen the directory yet.
My main plan for the prototype is to see just how much of the game is within the files, and what the engine at that time looked and ran like. It's been said that the game was remade from scratch in 96/97 (after this prototype) and there have been things cut.
I know next to nothing about the Sega Saturn, its emulation, or how to code games for it, so I'm largely banking on them still using the same system for media they had in the final release but if not I have some other avenues available.
I'll be making a copy of the disc and freely distributing it through archive.org, and my blog.
I hope to get the prototype versions of the levels working by trying to "splice" it with the final PC release as I have had success doing this between versions.

 

Sounds good, I honestly wasn't even expecting a release being planned. Looking forward to any future updates on this one.

 

Can you make a download minus using the PC build?

 

I'm pretty sure he's going to be sharing the Saturn ISO, he's just saying he's going to take the internal files and use it for the PC build if there's no way to get the Saturn ISO to go in-game.

 

Yep. You guys are right. I release the original disc image completely unmodified, and I also try to get the game working without the need for Saturn hardware. I really hope it will be easy but I'm also prepared for it to be extremely difficult.
Either way the disc is made public.

 

Many of us would love to hexedit this release and mess with some files and fileheaders...myself included.

 

Share a link!!!

 

You don't seem to understand, he doesn't even own it yet. Make an effort to read his post above. Specifically this quote.

Gotta be patient.