World Scariest Police Chases, Test Drive Cycles, TTB and Max Payne for Dreamcast

Model 2 or Panasonic M2?

Also, about Core, I tought that Tomb Raider II was in development for saturn til' they got cancelled because of the deal. And about trying to play the tech demo, There was some sorta of inputs for steering vehicles in the Katana Dreamcast discs files (Such as DreamON).

 

Sorry, I should have been more specific before - I meant the Panasonic M2. This was reported by quite a few magazines around mid-to-late 1996, particularly in some of the bigger US publications. From what I can tell, the conversion didn't get far at all, and may not even have gone into production, as by November '96 Yu Suzuki had officially confirmed that AM2 would be taking responsibility of bringing this game to the Saturn with immediate effect, having spent months studying whether it was even technically possible to a standard he could be personally satisfied with.

Also, Tomb Raider II was supposedly in development for Sega's 32-bit system, only then Core signed a console exclusivity agreement with Sony and was then forced to say it abandoned the Saturn version due to hardware difficulties (which couldn't be further from the truth). What did change between the original and its follow-up is that Core was no longer regarding the Saturn as its lead platform, and I suspect this was the case long before even the PlayStation deal. Although it was briefly considered a Streets of Rage sequel, I reckon Fighting Force was a victim of this, too.

 

Panasonic M2 Arcades I presume?

 

I don't have any of the magazine articles at hand right now, but the plan was for "Sega" (probably not AM2, though) to convert Virtua Fighter 3 to be a launch title for the M2 console. My guess is this never got much further than a concept in planning, either due to hardware limitations or those involved not wanting to hold out much longer for Panasonic, as the system's release was delayed then eventually cancelled altogether. As I mentioned before, what I can be sure of is that Yu Suzuki was already looking to make this a Saturn exclusive by November '96, so it's safe to conclude this whole idea didn't progress far. Indeed, of those I've spoken to at length on the subject of VF3, nobody can ever remember there being anything even remotely playable of this, suggesting it didn't even reach the programming stage. At best, it was probably a way of building bridges between Sega and Panasonic, which led to another one of its key titles - D2 - later showing up for the Dreamcast.

 

Weird, why Sega would release a game in an competitor? Far as I know the first title to do this was an Sonic game for Game.com Neo Geo Pocket, but Sega wasn't in portable console business anymore, and NeoGeo didn't make SNK games exclusive to it, and both consoles were pretty much failure at arrival.

 

I think VF3 on M2 could have made a pretty good go at it. I mean look at Battle Tryst, it shows off the M2 hardware pretty good I guess:

 

I had read that the original Unreal FPS was ported to the Dreamcast to show what it was capable of performing without the intent to actually release it. I would love to see it in action...

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AH-T_yAz3ds

 

Regarding Core Design.....

Whilst i've been lucky enough to of contacted various ex-coders/artists etc over the past few months, the 1 man who could of answered a lot of Q's on missing games on 32X, Jaguar etc, Jeremy Heath-Smith, i sadly hit a break wall with :-(

When i interviewed his buisness partner, Dan Clapson, for ST Gamer Volume II, i was given Jeremy's personal email and Dan himself 'vouched' for me, examples of my previous interviews forwarded along with emails, to show i was'nt a scammer....but i never heard a thing back.


Crying shame as he could of cleared up so much i feel.

As it is, i've had to piece things together from interviews with various staff.