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Prove things exist

Discussion in 'General Sega Discussion' started by Black Squirrel, Jul 6, 2021.

  1. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    The internet (and gaming press) like to make up facts, and some occasionally find their way onto our wikis. So as not to clog up the general questions topic: prove these things exist:


    I've been going through the List of unreleased Dreamcast games - there are a lot, because people like to assume anything made between 1999 and 2002 was once Dreamcast-bound. According to us, their existence is supposedly confirmed by various eastern European magazines, but I fear it might be mistranslations from Western media, which in turn were making assumptions. That might be worth documenting in itself, but I dunno, doesn't seem right to group misconceptions with facts, which is what we're essentially doing here.

    (I haven't checked absolutely everything yet)
    - Anachronox (this seems to be more "we're thinking about it" than doing actual development)
    - Blood II: The Chosen
    - Conflict: Desert Storm
    - Daikatana (press speculation?)
    - Earthworm Jim 3D
    - Experience
    - Flying Heroes
    - Freelancer (prequel, StarLancer was Dreamcast bound)
    - Hello Kitty's Cube Frenzy - (speculation?)
    - Hoyle Casino 5 (is this just Hoyle Casino?)
    - Invictus: In the Shadow of Olympus
    - Manxx 2
    - MechWarrior 4: Vengeance
    - Nascar Heat
    - Oni
    - Panorama Cotton 2
    - Rune
    - Seed
    - Sega GT 2002
    - Septerra Core
    - Severance: Blade of Darkness
    - Shinobi (2002) (I already made a "no" judgement on this one, but I could be wrong!)
    - Sudden Strike
    - Tonic Adventure
    - Tonic Trouble
    - Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 (released for literally everything but Dreamcast (including N64 in 2002!) but no mention in press releases)
    - Toy Fighter (getting confused with the NAOMI version?)
    - Warzone 2100

    Wikipedia (among others) claim some of these were unreleased Dreamcast games (without sources)
     
  2. Pirate Dragon

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    Maybe we need some kind of standard of source to qualify as an unreleased game? Such as just using primary sources (not vague and at best secondary sources from magazines which had no access to primary sources). Clearly very few magazines outside of Japan, US, UK, France, and Germany actually did original reporting back then instead of just translating (or inventing) news from a primary source. If the news was real then it should be possible to trace it back to the primary source, or if they independently obtained that info (such as an interview), then it should be clearly noted as such. For example, Hong Kong magazine Game Players DC seems to largely base it's news off of Japanese magazines, but it also has some original content such as an interview with Yuji Naka. So if Yuji Naka mentioned an unreleased game in that interview, then that seems like a good source, however, if they just randomly mention a game as coming to Dreamcast in the news section, without naming a primary source, then I wouldn't consider that reliable enough to create a game page (but maybe there could be a "rumoured unreleased" general page we could mention it on.)
     
  3. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    This is kind-of what I was thinking, though perhaps an "unconfirmed" flag to separate the pages would do the job more elegantly. Not sure.

    Though either way I need to know which games need flagging.
     
  4. Billy

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  5. Xilla

    Xilla

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    Grand Prix 3's planned Dreamcast port was covered in an Italian Dreamcast magazine, they seemingly just used PC screenshots though:

    https://www.unracedf1.com/grand-prix-3-on-the-sega-dreamcast/

    There was a 2000 Season expansion pack released in August 2001, apparently this might have been the version planned for the DC. Geoff Crammond is a bit of an elusive figure these days so asking him for clarity is probably a non-starter.

    (On a sidenote, the sequel Grand Prix 4 also got announced for the XBox but was also never released on the console. I recall reading a while back that there were issues getting the game running at full-spec - the PC version was infamous for its high system requirements. Hasbro then closed down Microprose UK and that was that).
     
  6. doc eggfan

    doc eggfan

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    Just had a quick look through the final issues of Dreamcast Magazine (UK).

    In issue 24, page 10. Sega lays out their strategic plans and which studios are doing what - no mention of Shinobi (2002)

    In issue 22, page 8, it seems to me as if Sega GT 2002 was announced as an Xbox exclusive

    In issue 19, page 16, the magazine is speculating that Freelancer might be heading to Dreamcast, but it's clear that it's just wishful thinking.

    Note to self: Issue 17, page 16 has details about Headhunter's use of the VMU as a virtual beeper outside of the game, which I was looking for a while back
     
  7. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    Thanks Mr. Tom Hall. Also for Commander Keen.

    Category:Unreleased Dreamcast game myths

    I've made it so adding "| myth=yes" to an UnreleasedBob template shoves pages into categories like these. It's a bit strange documenting what is essentially just poor journalism but I guess it'll stop pages being re-added.

    p.s. it's early in the morning and I haven't woken up yet - if there's a better naming scheme let me know.
     
  8. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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  9. Black Squirrel

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    I'd hazard a guess that it was Dreamcast Monthly perpetuating a good chunk of these myths. I guess without an official license or a big publisher behind its back, it was forced to go hunting for stories, and printed any fun-looking rumour it could find. On the plus side, this means interviews with small-time developers which nobody else bothered with, but it does mean they're not a bastion of reliability.
     
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  10. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    I'd forgotten I made this topic, and now if you search for any of the Dreamcast games above... this comes up as one of the top results. So the answer to my questions is my younger self asking the same questions.

    Anyway this was annoying me, so introducing: Category:Games which might not have existed


    You'll be glad to know that since July of last year... nothing has changed. Although I have slightly more faith in Time Crisis II having existed on the Dreamcast at one point... although best not to think about it, since Sega consciously chose not to release the official Dreamcast Gun in North America. Did you know they took The House of the Dead 2 to E3 1999 without any guns - you had to play with standard controllers. That's pretty much a death knell to light gun games before the console was even released.


    And not to worry - there are still plenty of genuine unreleased Dreamcast games. It's pretty tragic.
     
  11. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    I'm not good at this


    Yesterday I heard a story:

    [​IMG]

    Apparently Sims spin-off, The Urbz, was once Dreamcast bound. Can you guess why this set off alarm bells?

    I suspect the source was this dead wiki - there are no citations, but given there's a fair amount of detail, it didn't seem like something to instantly write off. EA never supported the Dreamcast publicly, but it was confirmed that SSX had a Dreamcast iteration at some point, and if development on the Urbz began in late 2000 as claimed, I can imagine EA possibly warming to the Dreamcast after two years of relative success (noting that their PS1/N64 sales were in decline by 1999/2000).


    But hey, didn't The Urbz come out in 2004, and kind-of suck? Well apparently it had a rough ride - it was the very first Sims spin-off to be started (The Sims itself being a spin-off of SimCity), but development was put on hold, with EA, Maxis and friends managing to put out two console Sims games before development was restarted. It's meant to explain why The Urbz is a bit of a weird video game from a gameplay point of view.

    Of course, this is a game where the objective is to make yourself popular by changing your looks and mannerisms to appeal to different groups of clowns. And it's all because will.i.am from The Black Eyed Peas says it's a good idea.
     
  12. Chimes

    Chimes

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    Starting with the Dreamcast version, Ubisoft's Japanese Rayman 2 localization was... a interesting process. Throughout the entire game, several characters had their textures altered to be more brighter and garish, with Rayman noticeably donning a bold blue.

    For years, it was consistently claimed that the reason these were done was because in Japan, purple was "the colour of death"... despite the fact that Ly the Fairy has purple in her clothes and literally the entire existence of Waluigi from the Wario series.

    Gradually, with nothing to support it, it was dismissed as a early 2000s kayfabe playground rumor (think Brutus, Webkins killer, Toad in Melee, etc) with this interesting period being looked back with confusion. Not helping was the Rayman series reverting back to purple for future games.

    It seemed to be fake... until now.

    Thanks to RibShark for finding this, the origin of the "purple death" factoid comes from a French blog post Ubi Soft published in the early 2000s.

    Here, Ubi Soft's team goes in great detail about how Rayman 2's darker tone and European design wasn't recieved well by gamers and testers, mainly for being so different from the first game which DID come out in Japan.

    It was also found that in certain prefectures, purple did have a connotation of being dangerous or deadly. To play it safe and to make it palatable for Japanese fans and gamers, Rayman 2 had a gorillion internal and external changes made to its Japanese version.

    One change that wasn't made to the game was Rayman's fingers. The hand models were originally going to have 5 fingers instead of 4, but this was later vetoed. This DID make it to the Japanese export of the Game Boy Color's Rayman.

    This link was unfortunately buried beneath the clearnet thanks to its link dying and no one from the dedicated Rayman fandom taking note to publish it elsewhere. As a result, it became buried in the list of rumors until evidence was finally rediscovered.

    Once again, big thanks to RibShark and the dedicated Rayman community. Their RayWiki is more or less Sonic Retro on crack, they go to insane lengths to maintain sources and archives.
     
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