lehah on 22/9/2016 at 16:14
Howdy all, long time stalker, first time poster
My name is Justin. I've been an immense fan of the System Shock series since the mid-90s, when EA put out its CD Classics. I distinctly remember the afternoon I went to Toy Works (now long gone) and found a bin of PC games. I went home with System Shock, Wing Commander Armada and (I think) Strike Commander. Great times.
However, I came here today on a mission of mercy. Way back in 1995 at Origin Systems in Austin, they were working on a port of Wing Commander 2: Vengeance Of The Kilrathi to the SNES. Despite it being finished, the game was shelved because 1.) It was at the tail end of the development cycle of the console and 2.) the game required more robust memory than the average SNES cart, meaning it required different/more memory thus making it more expensive to produce.
It's CERTAIN that a finished prototype was sent from Origin to Pony Canyon in Japan for duplication. It's LIKELY that copies were sent to reviewers.
So why am I here?
As we gather more information, we came in contact with a person who had been working on it and said that Looking Glass in Boston was the sub contractor on this. We're hoping that this forum might have some people from LG or someone here might know someone from LG before it was shutdown (in 2000, I believe?)
Many thanks in advance to you all!
Justin "LeHah" Bielawa
WCNews.com
icemann on 22/9/2016 at 18:16
Interesting.
Anything's possible as to a prototypes existence. There was the Star Fox 2 prototype (of which there is 2 versions: a unfinished one and a finished off one). Beyond that I've not seen any others get released for the snes. Not counting the countless games that never saw a release outside of Japan/Asia, but a decade or more later received english translation patches by the rom hacking communities.
I remember playing the snes port of the first game back in the 90s. Wasn't too bad overall. It is a bit of dice roll to whether or not a port ended up good or not. On the odd occasion the console ports were better than their PC originals back then (the ports of both Might and Magic 1 & 2 were wayyyyyyyy better than the PC versions).
Others were more different content entirely (Syndicate on the snes if I remember right had completely different missions to the PC and Amiga versions).
Back then you really got your moneys worth, getting the various ports. Compare that to present day where a game might come out across all platforms, but it's essentially the same game just different controls.
If you do find a source for the prototype be sure to update this thread with a link to it :).
lehah on 22/9/2016 at 19:46
Hey icemann
Personally, I've been involved in my local retrogaming community, so I've seen some weird things appear. Aside from the usual stuff like ROM dumps or fanhacks like Chrono Trigger: Crimson Echoes, theres been a time or two where something new pops up. Recently, someone the next town over from where I grew up actually found a physical demo cart for an unfinished Genesis game: (
http://lostmediawiki.com/Interplanetary_Lizards_of_the_Texas_Plains_(Cancelled_Sega_Genesis_Game;_1993-1994))
From what we can tell and from previous experiences with WC ports, WC2 SNES probably had to have pretty big changes in it, which is why we're really interested in archiving it. In fact, we have a number of photos from gaming review magazines that show color differences and some pallet swaps.
Chances are good that the game is sitting in a closet and someone doesn't know what they have. How often does THAT happen in history?
icemann on 23/9/2016 at 08:20
Quote Posted by lehah
Hey icemann
Chances are good that the game is sitting in a closet and someone doesn't know what they have. How often does THAT happen in history?
If you look into the old black and white TV shows side of things - due to TV stations regularly getting rid of all of their film recordings, the recovery of lost episodes here and there has been going on for a few decades now. For many shows from the 1960s, whole seasons / a significant amount of the episodes of a season of shows are currently missing and so it's a BIG DEAL whenever anything is recovered.
I've only been following the Doctor Who end of that, it's really damn fascinating stuff. Once every few years an episode or 2 tends to show up. Often their found in garage sales, attics from old collections, found in the hands of collectors etc.
Shadowcat on 23/9/2016 at 12:48
Or closer to home, a second hand Dreamcast dev kit which turns out to have the Dark Engine source code with it...
icemann on 23/9/2016 at 15:41
Too true :).
Those are the best kind.
The source code for the original Prince of Persia was found only a few years ago also.
Red_Breast on 24/9/2016 at 17:49
Quote Posted by icemann
Often their found in garage sales, attics from old collections, found in the hands of collectors etc.
and old Nigerian TV stations.
icemann on 25/9/2016 at 08:55
That too. The last discovery was from there if I remember right. Enemy of World and Web of Fear recovered.
