FEATURE - Amazon Web Services...A dull puzzle game in which Mario has to close all the doors in the Mushroom Kingdom’s seven Koopa hotels. He must really hate draughts. The game

FEATURE

ONM LIFTS THE LID ON

THE PROTOTYPE NINTENDO

CONSOLES THAT YOU

NEVER GOT TO PLAY

THIS SIDE UP

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Systemshock

System

“Learn about the Nintendo consoles that never were, from the bizarre pre-console wars Nintendo PlayStation, to the handheld Nitro unit”

FEATURE

036 THE OFFICIAL NINTENDO MAGAZINE

ONM57.feat_system 36 28/5/10 7:24:36 am

When it comes to designing consoles, it’s very rare for the initial design to stay the same throughout its

development. In fact, almost every Nintendo system has undergone some sort of change, be it small or big, before it was released. Why should you be bothered? Because if Nintendo had drawn a line under development a bit earlier than it did, the consoles and games that have been cluttering up your house all these years could have looked very different.

Over the next six pages you’ll learn about the Nintendo consoles that never were, from the bizarre pre-console wars Nintendo Playstation, to the handheld Nitro unit. Prepare to be amazed.

THIS SIDE UP

“Learn about the Nintendo consoles that never were, from the bizarre pre-console wars Nintendo PlayStation, to the handheld Nitro unit”

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THE OFFICIAL NINTENDO MAGAZINE 037


FEATUREFEATURE

What happened to it?The AVS was shown off at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in 1984 but despite its fancy space-age look, buyers weren’t convinced and the AVS didn’t attract any potential partners for Nintendo. Heading back to the drawing board, Nintendo decided that it still didn’t want to advertise the Famicom as a videogames console because the US would be even less interested, so instead it decided to present it as an entertainment system, complete with a light gun and a robotic helper (ROB).

By cleverly selling it to people as a toy instead of a games console, Nintendo was fi nally able to win interest from consumers and released the NES in the West. They quickly ditched the Trojan horse that was ROB and the rest is history. You can still see the original AVS in the Nintendo World Store in New York.

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The what?After the success of arcade games like Donkey Kong and Mario Bros, Nintendo released the Famicom in Japan to huge success. Bringing it to the West was a tougher proposition though, because the Atari 2600 had just completely killed off the videogame market and Americans were now turning their attention to home computers.

So Nintendo redesigned the Famicom as the AVS, a computer system with a keyboard, a joystick, a cassette tape deck (sorry, “data storage unit”), a light gun and two controllers. Most interestingly, the AVS didn’t have wires, as everything connected using infrared technology (like a TV remote). While a good idea in theory, this would have meant that pointing the joypad away from the main AVS module would have cut the signal and stopped your character from moving.

Donkey Kong’s Fun With MusicNintendo had planned a series of educational NES games. The fi rst was Popeye’s English Game, released in Japan, and this was quickly followed by Donkey Kong Jr Math. The third was going to teach kids about music but was scrapped. Shame, because Donkey Kong Jr looks awesome on drums.

Mii CreatorObviously they weren’t going to be called Miis at the time, but as far back as the NES days Shigeru Miyamoto was toying with the idea of being able to create your own characters in games. He tried it on the NES but eventually ditched the idea because he wasn’t sure how to properly incorporate it in Nintendo’s games.

Sim CityThe grandfather of Google Maps was hugely popular on computers, so Nintendo sorted out a deal with its creator Maxis for the rights to make console versions of the game. The NES game was more or less 100% complete but was ditched in favour of a 16-bit version to boost the SNES’s launch line-up.

Three NES games you never got to play

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Three SNES games you never got to play

Kid KirbyMuppet Babies? Ha. Baby Mario? Pfft. Kid Kirby was the ultimate young version of a popular character and was set to feature in a game that was controlled with the SNES Mouse. It was to be developed by DMA Design (of Lemmings fame) but the mouse didn’t catch on and it was chucked.

Dragonfl yWhen the SNES was fi rst revealed to the press, Nintendo also showed off a fl ight sim called Dragonfl y. Ultimately it ended up becoming Pilotwings but this prototype offered completely different levels and a weird, much less impressive camera angle. It never saw the light of day again in this form.

Star Fox 2Yes, we mentioned this one last month, amnesia fans, but it’s worth noting again. This SNES sequel to the classic polygonal shooter was going to feature split-screen dogfi ghts, but was cancelled when it was 95% complete so Lylat Wars could be released on the N64 instead.

The what?The success of the NES brought the fl atlining games industry back to life again thanks to games like Super Mario Bros and The Legend Of Zelda. Nintendo knew it was onto a winner and so got to work on a successor to the NES, offering a 16-bit processor compared to the NES’s 8-bit one. Once again it was decided that the Western design would be different to the Japanese one, so while the Super Famicom was being developed in Japan, Nintendo got its designer Lance Barr to work on the design for the North American version: the Nintendo Entertainment System 2. Lance came up with many weird and wonderful designs, many of which were later shown in our American sister magazine Nintendo Power.

What happened to it?The NES 2 name was eventually scrapped and Lance fi nally settled on a design for the renamed Super NES. His purple colour scheme stayed put in North American versions of the SNES, with the console featuring chunky purple Power and Reset buttons and the controller sporting purple and lilac A, B, X and Y buttons. Meanwhile, over in Europe we got the same design as the Japanese Super Famicom with its lovely multicoloured buttons. The NES 2 name wasn’t completely scrapped, as it would eventually become the nickname for the redesigned NES that appeared near the end of the console’s lifespan in the US.

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FEATURE

ThE NINTENDo PLAYSTATIoN

The what?In the mid ’90s CD-ROM technology started to kick off and Nintendo wanted a piece of it. There were two companies pioneering CD-ROM technology at the time, Sony and Philips, so Nintendo had discussions with Sony about creating a CD-ROM system that was to be available in two fl avours. The fi rst would be the SNES CD – a Nintendo-branded CD-ROM drive that fi tted underneath the SNES and would play CD-ROM games. If you have a SNES, look underneath it. See that expansion port? It would have plugged in there. The second was the PlayStation, a brand new entertainment system console that could play SNES cartridges, SNES CD games and music CDs. The PlayStation would use SNES controllers and the CD-ROM format would be designed and developed by Sony.

Hotel MarioA dull puzzle game in which Mario has to close all the doors in the Mushroom Kingdom’s seven Koopa hotels. He must really hate draughts. The game was a nightmare to control and the cutscenes are famous for being some of the most cringeworthy works ever created by man. YouTube it!

Link: The Faces Of EvilA hellish side-scrolling platformer starring Link. Our hero has to travel through Koridai and defeat Ganon by generally battering people with his sword. Not only was this a bad game in general, it suffered greatly from the CDi’s clunky controller which was essentially a TV remote.

Zelda’s AdventureThis one’s actually very rare and could cost you over £100 if you were buying it on eBay. We’re not sure why you would though, unless you had a rare tropical illness that could only be cured by rubbing atrocious live-action adventure games on your wounds. And we don’t think that illness exists.

What happened to it?Nintendo was due to announce the PlayStation at the 1991 Consumer Electronics Show but shortly before the announcement, Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi realised that the contract with Sony meant that not only would they be in control of the design of the CD-ROMs but they’d also be in full control of any SNES CD games released. He announced a secret last-minute deal with Philips, allowing them to use Nintendo’s licenses on its upcoming CDi system and that, unbeknownst to Sony, Nintendo was scrapping the PlayStation project. This turned out to be a mistake because not only did the CDi games end up being atrocious, but Sony decided to make use of what it had developed so far and go on to release the PlayStation itself, which... well, you know what happened next.

“Nintendo was due to announce the PlayStation at the 1991 CES event”

Three cDi games you unfortunately did get to play

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ThE ULTRA 64

Three N64 games you never got to play

Final Fantasy VIIHaving made its previous six Final Fantasy games on Nintendo systems, Square pledged to create its seventh game on the Ultra 64, and even produced a video showing how it could look. Annoyed by Nintendo’s decision not to use CD technology though, Square jumped to PlayStation instead.

Zelda 64When Nintendo offi cially announced the N64 at its Space World show in 1995, it ran a video showing off some of the upcoming games due to hit the system. Among it were cancelled titles like Kirby Bowl, Buggy Boogie and this odd 3D Legend of Zelda game which looked completely different to Ocarina Of Time.

64 WarsThe Advance Wars series may have made its debut on the GBA over this neck of the woods, but in Japan it’s been going since the days of the NES. 64 Wars would have been an N64 version that allowed you to transfer your mid-game progress to your Game Boy and keep battling on the move. It never saw the light of day.

What happened to it?Like the GameCube (previously known as the Dolphin) after it, the Ultra 64 didn’t actually change much between its initial design and its fi nal reveal a year later as the N64. The controller retained its basic shape but had its various components revamped. The analogue stick was made much smaller and given an edged base so it was easy to ‘lock’ the stick into eight different directions, and the buttons went from their dull grey colour scheme to a more SNES-like colourful one. The motion-sensing never surfaced... until the Wii, of course.

The what?In 1993, only a couple of years after the SNES had been released, Nintendo announced that it was partnering with Silicon Graphics (a California-based computer graphics company) and working on something they were calling Project Reality. The claim was made that the graphics produced by Project Reality would be incredibly lifelike. A year later Project Reality was fi nally revealed as the Ultra 64 and Nintendo, as they would do with the Wii more than a decade later, showed off an early version of the hardware without the controller.

This was because the fi nal controller was still undergoing development. Nintendo had a rough idea of how it would look: rather than the traditional rectangular controllers familiar from the NES and SNES days, the Ultra 64 would have an unusual black M-shaped controller with grey buttons to make it look all moody and powerful – the exact opposite of its cheery, brightly-coloured SNES. The controller was rumoured to have all sorts of innovative new features including, curiously, motion sensing capabilities. Nintendo actually released two ‘Ultra 64’ games in the arcades before the hardware’s release. Killer Instinct and Cruis’n USA both claimed to use the unreleased console’s gameplay engine.

“The controller was rumoured to have all sorts of innovative new features, including motion-sensing”

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ThE ULTRA , only a couple of years after the SNES had been

released, Nintendo announced that it was partnering with Silicon Graphics (a California-based computer graphics company) and working on something they were calling Project Reality. The claim was made that the graphics produced by Project Reality would be incredibly lifelike. A year later Project Reality was fi nally

and Nintendo, as

rectangular controllers familiar from 64

would have an unusual black M-shaped controller with grey buttons to make it look all moody and powerful – the exact opposite of its design and its fi nal reveal a year later as the Nlook all moody and powerful – the exact opposite of its

ThE ULTRA 64

What happened to it?Like the GameCube (previously known as the Dolphin) after it, the Ultra 64 didn’t actually change much between its initial design and its fi nal reveal a year later as the N64. The controller

, only a couple of years after the SNES had been released, Nintendo announced that it was partnering with Silicon Graphics (a California-based computer graphics company) and working on something they were calling Project Reality. The claim was made that the graphics produced by Project Reality would be incredibly lifelike. A year later Project Reality was fi nally

and Nintendo, as

rectangular controllers familiar from 64

would have an unusual black M-shaped controller with grey buttons to make it look all moody and powerful – the exact opposite of its

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FEATURE

What happened to it?Iwata offi cially revealed the Nitro at E3 2004, telling everyone that its name was being changed again, back to the original Nintendo DS moniker. The DS he showed was still the Nitro prototype design which, as you can see here, looked a bit weird. The D-pad was oddly rounded and that big black section in the middle was ugly. This is probably why, two months later, Nintendo revealed the new-look DS, which is the one that was released. The remnants of the Nitro name still remain: if you have an original chunky DS have a look underneath it and you’ll see the codename NTR-001 next to the serial number. As for the GBA? Despite Nintendo’s claims that it wouldn’t be abandoned, the DS became so successful that the GBA quickly died out.

The what?In 2003, Nintendo was struggling. The near-dead GameCube and dwindling GBA sales led to it posting a fi nancial loss for the fi rst half of the year – the fi rst time this had ever happened in Nintendo’s history. In a meeting with investors and analysts in November 2003, new Nintendo president Satoru Iwata revealed Nintendo’s fresh strategy: despite the rapidly growing numbers of mature, violent games and online titles, Nintendo was going back to basics and start developing software accessible to gamers of all ages.

He explained that in 2004 Nintendo would reveal a new system codenamed the Nintendo DS, but this name was then changed to the Nitro. It would offer two screens, the bottom of which would be a touch screen, and would enable both new gamers to play games for the fi rst time and experienced gamers to try new experiences. It would be roughly as powerful as a N64. Nintendo stressed that the Nitro was to be considered a completely different system rather than the next member of the Game Boy family.

A Boy And His BlobLong before the Wii update of A Boy And His Blob, publisher Majesco had a DS game all but ready. It was meant to be a sequel to the NES original and would offer the same sort of jellybean-based gameplay but, if we’re being honest, with much uglier graphics. It was eventually abandoned.

Mii ChannelAfter failing to manage it on the NES and again on the N64, Miyamoto was determined to get his avatar system working. He started work on a DS version, but again he couldn’t fi nd ways to implement it in games. The idea carried over to the Wii with very few changes and also formed the basis of Tomodachi Collection.

Super Mario 64x4Along with the prototype DS, Nintendo also showed off Super Mario 64x4. This was a version of Super Mario 64 on the DS which allowed four players to play through the whole game in co-op mode. This feature was eventually ditched and reduced to a battle mode, and the game became Super Mario 64 DS.

ThE NITRo

Three DS games that you never got to play

“The Nitro was to be considered a completely different system, rather than the next member of the Game Boy family”


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What happened to it?Long-time readers of ONM will remember exactly what happened after that, since they were following the drama at the time. The Revolution’s controller was fi nally revealed at the Tokyo Game Show in late 2005 in a variety of lovely colours: black, white, red, green and silver variations were shown. The Revolution was then renamed as the Wii shortly before E3 2006 and despite being mocked mercilessly by the internet for its rather ridiculous name it went on to wow the world with one of the most memorable E3 conferences ever, followed by total world domination upon release. A black Remote eventually turned up last year but will we ever see the other colours again? Only time will tell, but you probably shouldn’t pin your hopes on that bonkers Starman controller ever getting a release.

The what?Nintendo was so sure of the success of the DS and its ability to appeal to new non-gamers that it had already been applying the same strategy to its then-fl atlining GameCube for a few years. At E3 in 2005 Satoru Iwata revealed the fruits of this labour by unveiling the Nintendo Revolution. The controller still had some troubleshooting problems by the time E3 came around, so Nintendo chose to keep it a secret and only unveil the console.

The Revolution concept went through many different design iterations, and because of the nature of the controller these different concepts were more varied than anything Nintendo had ever produced. They ranged from bulky TV remotes to, most bizarrely, a big orange cylinder with a Starman on it that Miyamoto and his team referred to as the ‘cheddar cheese’ controller.

Three Wii games you never got to play

Project HAMMERRevealed during the E3 2006 show, Project HAMMER was a fi rst-party Nintendo game set in a post-apocalyptic future in which the player controlled a big lad with a huge mallet that could be used to smash things to pieces. Nintendo later dropped it from their slate, probably because it looked a bit rubbish and generic.

SadnessAnnounced shortly after the Revolution controller was revealed, developer Nibris promised that Sadness would be a black and white survival horror game with the controller acting as items such as a torch and an umbrella. The teaser trailer seemed too good to be true and no gameplay was ever shown.

WinterDeveloper n-Space created a demo for a dark survival horror called Winter shortly after the Wii was launched, but shelved it due to the lack of publisher interest. Four years later, after an online petition, n-Space have brought it back as Winter 2.0 and it might, just might, fi nd itself a publisher soon.

ThE REVoLUTIoN

“The Revolution concept went through many different design iterations”

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FEATURE - Amazon Web Services...A dull puzzle game in which Mario has to close all the doors in the Mushroom Kingdom’s seven Koopa hotels. He must really hate draughts. The game