Mini Racers, N64

I just stumbled upon this: http://www.console-central.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=262

Cart:



Screenshot:


Hubba hubba?

 

Dammit... he;'s not gonna sell eh...

I want to see this dumped.

I was really looking forward to this game at one point.

 

can anyone say 'micromachines' ?;D

 

"I still haven't found anyone local to do the deed. I would be willing to bring the cart to wherever within MA by that person's terms, so no one needs to worry about a kidnapping."

Sounds like the owner wants it dumped. Hmm, I live in Mass

 

Well, its definitely worth seeing a dump of this.

Anyone who lives near by and has some time should try and get it dumped.

This may be the only cart of the game out there and who knows how long the opportunity will last?

E.g. something happens to the cart and so forth

It would be a shame to miss this opportunity.

 

Looks as if other people have already tried to get in contact and failed.

 

Hi,

I made a scan of “Nintendo Spaceworld '99 Official Guide Bookâ€￾ :

 

Well it can't hurt to try firing off an email to him.

If I'm not mistaken Mini Racers was basically complete

 

alot of people on another forum (which i can't remember right now) were so dissappointed with this game not being released. with it dumped i'm sure they'd be very happy.

 

To know it exsists and that this guy made an offer to get it released and were still nowhere realyl disappoints as this was a complete game if I'm not mistaken.

Anyone found any other infomation about this whole thing?

 

Wait, wasnt a miniracer game released? On the SNES?

 

shame if he dumps it...

nice looking cart btw, very creative devs over there

 

How would it be a shame? Sure the value would decrease, but at least people could play a fun game.

 

The cart did indeed come from Looking Glass Studios, but this cart was from the Redmond WA office where I worked, not the Cambridge MA office. This most likely made it's way back to MA after the Redmond office closed it's doors.

I was the Lead Character Designer for Looking Glass Studio's Redmond devision, and I can safely say, yes, I remember this cart in the office, and yes, it is authentic. The picture was not drawn by the lead designer, as that person was not in the Redmond office, but I do believe it looks like it was drawn by one of the level/vehicle artists, as the style looks familiar.

In order to decrypt this, you're going to need a piece of hardware called the N64Partner. Unfortunately, all of these were turned over either to Ubisoft, or back to Nintendo after the company went under. Also, I can tell you from experience that the N64 development tools were lees than user-friendly, so be prepared for some headaches along the way.

I came on to the Miniracers project after most of the inital design work had already been completed. I was assigned the task to create ten characters for the game, which I did so.
This I did, surprisingly, whicle I was still working at Nintendo, and through these character designs, I got hired on full time to Looking Glass.
Unfortunately, none of the completed character artwork made it into any of the builds, and all of the character artwork have "flags" as stand-in graphics to where the character artwork was supposed to appear.

Although I don't have my N64Partner anymore, I can contribute some not-before-seen pre production artwork that I did produce for the game. Since this was going to be released in Japan as well as the US, Nintendo was wanting an anime look to the character designs, which I was more than happy to oblidge.

This is a pre production illustration of Allie Kat, the first of the ten characters that was to appear in the Miniracers game:

*edit* I saw the wonderful promo graphic that someone posted earlier, and since I have loooong lost the files for the original Mini Racers title, I went ahead and "retooled" the original graphic here using elements of that graphic. Feels funny to edit a picture that's near a decade old!"

 

Wow dude that's awesome!! I'd love to see more. As anything giving insight into this game would be great.

I really do wish someone could get in contact with that guy though. Its a real shame we'll never see much from this game

And as for the N64 Partner... suprisingly their not that hard to come by.

And I've seen them on ebay plenty and a good chunk of the members of this board seem to have them.

 

Hello,

Do you have other drawings of this game to show us?

I would like to know if you took part in the development of Wild Waters for N64.

Thank you

:thumbsup:

 

For Miniracers, Allie Kat was the only character that I had taken the time to color. The other nine were done in pencil only, and out of those nine, I think only four or five were even accepted at the time. I've had a hard drive or two crash since then, and at the time, I was pretty lousy about backing up my files. (loosing a portfolio or two will remedy that real quick, let me tell you! ^_~

I'll see if I can dig some more up in hard copy (paper) format.

About WildWaters:

I didn't think anyone remembered that game! I was involved in WildWaters design, yes. The final character designs were done by me. I was fairly fortunate on this, too, as the Art Director decided to quit abruptly two weeks after I came on full time. That left the Art Department rather screwed, as WildWaters was still in the design phase at the time. The game didn't even have a title yet, much less any characters outside of basic mesh and poly models.

The characters in Wildwaters were the product of myself being allowed to be as diverse as I wanted, within reason, without any restrictions from an Art Director, since, well...., we didn't have one. Funny thing is, that they never replaced him after he left either.

I remember looking at a lot of Miyamoto reference when I did the characters for WildWaters, especialy in terms of colors. Colors I thought would be the most important aspect to the game because, well..., the N64 wasn't the best system for displaying nice, crisp, graphics at the time, and even back then, I knew that.

Luckily, I did manage to keep just about all of the files I had at the time for the WildWaters characters, although, I did lose a lot of the screenshots that I had due to poor hard drive backup practices.

In the pics that you can find online, the character seen is Katana (I didn't make up any of the names ^_^) A Japanese girl with black and orange hair.

I do know that David Sears did manage to squeek a copy of the what-was-finished-at-the-time game out of the office on one of the N64 flash ROMs after the doors to the Redmond site closed. I myself was tempted, as it would have been easy to do, and it was somewhat chaotic in those final months, but the fear of legal retribution kept me from doing so, and the fact that each one of those flash ROM carts cost the company somewhere between $300.00 to $500.00 to RENT from Nintendo.
I'd say all in all, the game was about 75% to 85% complete, and had juuuuust started to be bug tested at a base level by QA.

I do remember E3 '99, when Looking Glass presented a playable demo of the game. They printed out these enormous posters of Katana in her kayak, (seen here)



and hung them around the Looking Glass booth. I would have liked to have gotten one of those after the show, but man, were they huge. I'd say over 12' x 12' easy, bigger than my wall....

I have a lot of WildWaters character reference on my DeviantArt site here at this address, in case any of you were interested in taking a look. Also are some character designs I did for other games that were pitched from Looking Glass, but never made.

http://motorfish.deviantart.com/

 

Anyways, I made a new topic for wild waters. So, back to mini racers

YOu mentioned on your site that

"Sadly, while completed, the game was never released, although I have seen an N64 burnable ROM online which supposedly has the data for the playable game on it. I'd like a copy of that ROM someday..."

Where may I ask did you see this rom?

and are you still in contact with any of the team members that still might have it?

Are in contact with any member of the team what-so-ever ??

 

Hello again,

According to IGN64, Looking Glass developed 4 games:

Command & Conquer
Destruction Derby 64
Mini Racers
Wildwaters

I would like to know if other games for Nintendo 64 were envisaged?

Thank you

 

The website I referenced was this one, the first post of this page. ^_^

I'm still in contact with Jeff Betterley, who was one of the designers for WildWaters, although I can't remembver what his responsibilities on Mini Racers were, if he had any. The actual person who I THINK drew that picture on the flash ROM was Steve Lange, on of the level and vehicle artists for Mini Racers.

The only person whom I know has ROMs of both Mini Racers and WildWaters is David Sears, but I haven't heard from him in a couple of years. We used to work together at Zipper Interactive a couple of years back, but he's since moved on to working at Sony, last I heard. I'm not even sure he's still there anymore.
I remember I had approached him several years back about getting a copy of the WildWaters ROM, but he had it in storage, and was unable to retrieve it at the time.

I might be able to get his info from people at Zipper and ask him about the Mini Racers ROM. I'm sure he's have no problem with it being released, as he himself spent a lot of time on the production of the game.