MSR beta pics

There're lots of Metropolis Street Racer pics at IGN, but some are very nice and early:





Galery: http://media.dreamcast.ign.com/articles/068/068128/imgs_1.html

Did someone ever saw this beta demo with his own eyes?

 

wow cool! this is REALLY early. Just look on how empty those roads are!

 

I saw something even earlier when it was still being called Project Gothem :nod: This was in the days when the Saturn was still being sold. Bizarre Creations had a number of projects then including one that later became Fur balls.

Yakumo

 

Similar to this one?

http://oldengineer.com/gallery/v/sega/msr/

 

Nope, the name MSR wasn't though of by then or if it was I never saw that title. The version was much earlier than that. Still looked mighty impressive though since at the time all the DC had was that crappy Indiecar game.

Yakumo

 

Yakumo, have you been to Bizzare studios in Liverpool?

 

This E3 version came later than the one in my first post.

Bizarre's website has a nice diary about the development of MSR:
http://www.bizarrecreations.com/msr_devdiary1.php

Too bad it's too short

Maybe one day we gonna find the beta/demo/proto land and be able to play all those rare gems



PD

 

I have a few pictures from when the "Metropolis" title was first announced, but since these were plastered all over the 'net (at places such as the sadly now defunct SegaNet, if memory serves me correctly) are they worth sharing, or should I just wait and cross my fingers to see if Yakumo can find anything from when the "Project Gotham" tag was still in use? Now that would be one hell of a find, and if anybody here can do it I have absolute faith in him - never has he let the community down when it comes to shedding light on games in their prototype stages...

 

Well, go ahead and share them with us more is better!

 

Yes, long time ago. I used to chat with Martin and Sahara regular. I did a bit of testing for them back on Formula 1 for the PlayStation. My name is even on the end credits of the PAL version as Mark "First Time" Smith.

I remember they sat me down once asking for opinions about an upcoming project (Turned out to be Furballs) that they were working on. The described the game as a first person shooter with teddy bears :lol: Turned out not to be far from that. Back then they called it something else which I don't remember now.

Yakumo

 

Sorry mate but I was forbidden to take pictures, videos etc. Of course being given the honour of seeing games in production I wouldn't dare of going against their wishes. Oh, they had (probably still have it) a Last Bronx arcade cabinet as a present from Sega !!

Yakumo

 

Bizzare were doing F1 on the Playstation? I thought that was Psygnosis/SCEE liverpool over at Wavetree

 

Well, you learn something everyday. Psygnosis published it but Bizzare made it. Bizzare made the first 3 F1 games for PlayStation with the later being produced by Psygnosis/SCEE. That's when Bizzare moved to Sega with MSR and Fur Fighters. The main guy behind Bizzare also wrote Bubble 'n' Sticks and Killing Game Show. His name is also printed in my Japanese PC Engine CD version of Shadow of the beast !

Yakumo

 

wow, nice info !

 

God this game was in development forever.

 

Well there was an artical they did in an old issue of edge where they actually did the making of msr( basicly a reflection piece on a old game a dev makes).

Anyway the F1 games you mention caught the attention of someone at sega, who basicly told them straight to there face "you just put us out of the f1 game buisness."

Long story short, they were hired to do msr as sega felt they were best people to develop racing games. Sorta how microsoft bought rare out to do there other franchise games.

 

The hiring of Bizarre Creations as a "1.5" party Dreamcast developer was partly down to the humiliation Sega faced after the release of Formula One for the PlayStation compared to its own poor attempt at a Saturn licensed racer - F-1 Live Information, or F1 Challenge as it was known overseas. Heading briefly off topic, a conversion of Formula One was in the works as Probe's follow-up to Die Hard Trilogy (and was in production simulaneously along with another cancelled PS-to-Saturn title - Destruction Derby 2) during the first few months of 1996, but sadly we'll probably never get to see this...

 

You may or may not know but Bizarre looked in to making a port of the PSX Formula 1 to the Saturn but decided against it. They studied many Saturn driving games with Sega Rally being their most important game to learn from.

Yakumo

 

Bizarre did indeed decide against converting Formula One to the Saturn, but whether this was for technical reasons or the original PlayStation edition's annual license expiring has never been revealed. Some claim that Sony bought out the series to its own advantage, and regardless of the truth behind this title's disappearance on a Sega platform in the end Probe managed to somehow acquire the game, which - as I said before - they started working on simultaneously with the similarly ill-fated Destruction Derby 2 in early 1996. So, that throws the possibility of a license expiry out of the window, and judging from the leaked prototype of DD2 it seems as if the Saturn was more than technically capable of handling F1. Therefore, it's hard not to conclude that perhaps the reason for this game's Saturn disappearance was some kind of exclusivity deal with Sony after all, much like the real excuse for Tomb Raider II's ultimate absence from the console?

For the record, F1 was by no means the first game to be passed up for Saturn development by its original creator, only to later be worked on (and in some cases released) through a totally independent company. Id had stated in the past that its own efforts to recreate Quake on the Saturn were unplayable, only for Lobotomy to prove everyone wrong. Also, more curiously, did you know that both Virtua Striker and Indy 500 were cancelled on the Saturn by Sega's own AM teams because they felt the system didn't have enough power to do these games justice? While nobody ever offered to disprove this theory with the former, Indy 500 was farmed out to Interplay before publisher Virgin Interactive brought the whole idea to a grinding halt, preferring to finance more well-known titles such as those it was releasing from Capcom!

 

Oh Indy 500 :crying: