Super Mario 64 Beta Vids

Yes, a great game, but definitley too short with not enough content to keep you playing. Granted, it was one of the N64's first titles, so I suppose I can forgive it for being so barbones. The game did get suprisingley hard though, when you played the courses in reverse on the higher difficulties.

 

i think hydrothunder would still kick its ass

 

Hydrothunder's arcade cab kicks ass. Variable control with flashing boost button beats single buttons any day.

 

Great videos. That beta Waverace looks like a lot of fun.
Having just managed to pick up Edge's File: 3 collection, it's interesting that this thread has come up. In one of the Mario 64 features in the collection, Edge has an interview with Miyamoto where he mentions that Mario 64 was originally started as a Super-FX chip based game for the SNES. I wonder if any pics or documents of that development time has surfaced.

 

Could you possibly post a pic of that interview?

 

that possibly began as a concept and no work started on it. The creation of a super FX chip made them think "lets make 3D mario" and then that idea laid out the ground work for super mario 64.

 

Yeah I'll get it scanned and up tomorrow.

 

Well actually the SFX began its design on the NES.

It was called the Mario Chip and it was designed by Argonaut.

It made the NES create solid polys

 

I remember when Argonaut came by back in the early days and showed a video they weren't supposed to show - a prototype of their version of Mario 64. It was a very different game, looked really cool. It was like the traditional titles that have linear paths, but the world was 3D, the camera moved to change perspective, it was quite cool. I remember seeing the camera almost behind Mario as he ran across a path floating in lava with hovering coin boxes above him.

 

Jet-X, on that note, I d like to comment on Super Paper Mario's wasted opportunity to make use of its 3d portion properly.

Although Super Paper Mario offers vivid and imaginative levels in the 2D field, pressing the A button faces the player with the empty void of nothingness while the 3d parts of the level span just accross an even 'box'.

In my view, nintendo should have taken the chance in order to fuse 3D mario games with 2D, and link the puzzles on their way to do so. They could offer true 3D levels, that are 'hidden' in the 2D view (just as it is now), but make the 3D part as vivid and varied as the 2d, with much more action on the X axis , not just the Z.

I really think whoever designed the game was being overly restrictive on the approach of the game, or perhaps feared getting into the waters of Shigeru.

 

Ok, scans of the article are up:

http://johan.playoldgames.net/media/article-1.png
http://johan.playoldgames.net/media/article-2.png

(about 2MB each)

 

Interesting article, cheers.

 

I would like to see this video...

 

Very interesting indeed. When asked about "Zelda 64", Miyamoto explains that he's very excited about the prospect of writable storage devices to enhance Zelda's gameplay, which proves that Miyamoto's original vision for a more elaborate version of Zelda 64 (OOT) was planned from the very beginning.

 

Zelda 64 was planned to have dynamically 'growing' animals and plants/trees that would be in-sync with the Real time clock of the 64DD. Day/night cycles were originally intended to follow the RTC too. Lots of other stuff too

 

I'm not convinced.

"During this time, Pete (Warnes) had been working on solid 3D on the NES, (no mean feat), it worked but it was clear that it would need some help in the CPU department so we started talking about doing a DSP type processor called the Mario Chip. Nintendo had just released the SNES and Jez had somehow persuaded them to use the "Mario Chip" for future SNES 3D games"

They say they had solid 3d on the nes & they would need a dsp, then they pursuaded nintendo to use the dsp. I don't believe that the Mario Chip actually existed before the deal was made.

smf

 

there was an old 1080 (n64) interview where the guys were speaking about the mario chip and how it existed on the NES as a prototype.

At any rate, in the world of business, you usually *want* to present a working prototype to ensure funding and a solid contract.