Jest (N64, 1997)

neat! thanks for posting

 

"Prohibition Beer: Drinking Al Capone's Best Home Brew gives improved running ability loss of control and facial distortion"

Getting drunk in video games done right.

 

Hey guys. Great stuff from the U.K. Magazine Gilgamesh. I also started doing research on Jest in early December, oddly at the same time as this thread and another one on the lost media forum went up. I don't know why everybody all at once started wondering about Jest but it's pretty great it's getting attention.

Anyway RLJA, Jest wasn't cancelled necessarily because of Starshot, though that may have been a part of it. They were in production at the same time after all. Infogrames didn't cancel Jest until after Starshot was out, they didn't have to wait until mid 1999 to pull the plug. I have spoken to Starshot creator Xavier Schon, and actually have a full interview coming up with him, but 1 thing he already told me was that Starshot had low sales. This couldn't have given Infogrames any confidence in their other N64 3D platformer projects, though Starshot had a very shoddy and rushed to Christmas N64 port, and is admittedly a below average game even on PC, which even Xavier agrees with.

Having done tons of previous research on Infogrames I can tell you with an educated guess that Jest was canned because they were very weary of publishing N64 games after 1998. Infogrames also cancelled 40 Winks which they owned after purchasing the publisher GT Interactive, and it was a 100% complete game. Shows how little faith they had it would sell by late 1999 when 40 Winks was expected to release, though that game also had low Ps1 sales to judge.

The only 2 platformers Infogrames had were their Looney Tunes licensed games Taz Express and Duck Dodgers. Taz was PAL only and Duck Dodgers was rental only for 2 months in the U.S, again showing how weary they were of overproducing the games and subsequently wasting money. The reason they weren't cancelled was because Infogrames had a relationship with Warner Brothers they wanted to protect, so those games got special care.

As much as I would love to play Jest, just watching the footage makes me see how average it was. Linear areas and bland combat. It would have mostly been judged on its atmosphere, music, personality etc., but in 1999 with Nintendo, Rare, and Ubisoft publishing great 3D platformers, and all the competition from Gex and Glover and so forth, I can see why Infogrames may have pulled the plug. They actually moved Looney Tunes Space Race from N64 to Dreamcast because they said the N64 had too much Kart Racing competition, so by this point maybe they thought the 3D platform space was too crowded for Jest. Duck Dodgers was at least being handled by the very talented Paradigm studios, so I think Infogrames showed much more faith in it.

Of course this is just a simple guess based on other things I know. It could have been an entirely different reason. Maybe somebody at Curved Logic went crazy and burned all the data. Who knows, but I do plan on asking Xavier if he knew anyone on the project since he worked there at the same time. If he does maybe I could get some new contacts to interview. Anyway, I do hope the rom surfaces someday. It was in development for over 2 years and the footage make sure it seem like lots of work was done. I wouldn't be surprised if it was around 90% complete. There were supposed to be 64 levels and 35 are already listed on that magazine page

 

Thank you kindly for all the insights into what happened at Infogrames surrounding this game. Your theory that it was canceled due to expected low sales makes a great deal of sense. It's a shame. The N64 truly was a platformer machine, so I can see why they might have feared competition. That said, I will disagree with your take on the game.

I don't find it to be generic. They planned for a diverse line-up of combat techniques as you can see further up the page. Not an incredible number, but a fair number all-the-same. And that's with the game only being as far-along as it was. Who knows what the final number of attacks could have been? Some of the platforming itself was linear but I get the distinct impression that many of the worlds had a decently-sized area to explore. Mars certainly seems that way. Let's say it was linear; that would've set it apart from games like Banjo Kazooie and made it more akin to Croc and Croc 2, a style of which was not seen on the N64.

Regardless, I appreciate the information you shared and here's to hoping that a playable version of the game is found somewhere. Please let us know if your lead brings you more insights into what happened with Jest. Thank you, again.