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Nitrosoxide
04-23-2007, 03:54 PM
Anyways, we've been treated to some new info and a concept image on this great looking unreleased n64 game. So I figured I'd make a new topic.

Interesting that it was 80% plus, complete.... Lol someone bump david to get this rom out there.


For Miniracers, Allie Kat was the only character that I had taken the time to color. The other nine were done in pencil only, and out of those nine, I think only four or five were even accepted at the time. I've had a hard drive or two crash since then, and at the time, I was pretty lousy about backing up my files. (loosing a portfolio or two will remedy that real quick, let me tell you! ^_~

I'll see if I can dig some more up in hard copy (paper) format.

About WildWaters:

I didn't think anyone remembered that game! I was involved in WildWaters design, yes. The final character designs were done by me. I was fairly fortunate on this, too, as the Art Director decided to quit abruptly two weeks after I came on full time. That left the Art Department rather screwed, as WildWaters was still in the design phase at the time. The game didn't even have a title yet, much less any characters outside of basic mesh and poly models.

The characters in Wildwaters were the product of myself being allowed to be as diverse as I wanted, within reason, without any restrictions from an Art Director, since, well...., we didn't have one. Funny thing is, that they never replaced him after he left either.

I remember looking at a lot of Miyamoto reference when I did the characters for WildWaters, especialy in terms of colors. Colors I thought would be the most important aspect to the game because, well..., the N64 wasn't the best system for displaying nice, crisp, graphics at the time, and even back then, I knew that.

Luckily, I did manage to keep just about all of the files I had at the time for the WildWaters characters, although, I did lose a lot of the screenshots that I had due to poor hard drive backup practices.

In the pics that you can find online, the character seen is Katana (I didn't make up any of the names ^_^) A Japanese girl with black and orange hair.

I do know that David Sears did manage to squeek a copy of the what-was-finished-at-the-time game out of the office on one of the N64 flash ROMs after the doors to the Redmond site closed. I myself was tempted, as it would have been easy to do, and it was somewhat chaotic in those final months, but the fear of legal retribution kept me from doing so, and the fact that each one of those flash ROM carts cost the company somewhere between $300.00 to $500.00 to RENT from Nintendo.
I'd say all in all, the game was about 75% to 85% complete, and had juuuuust started to be bug tested at a base level by QA.

I do remember E3 '99, when Looking Glass presented a playable demo of the game. They printed out these enormous posters of Katana in her kayak, (seen here)

http://www.freewebs.com/motorfish/pics/Katana%20%20final.jpg

and hung them around the Looking Glass booth. I would have liked to have gotten one of those after the show, but man, were they huge. I'd say over 12' x 12' easy, bigger than my wall....

I have a lot of WildWaters character reference on my DeviantArt site here at this address, in case any of you were interested in taking a look. Also are some character designs I did for other games that were pitched from Looking Glass, but never made.

http://motorfish.deviantart.com/

Gilgamesh
04-23-2007, 06:45 PM
Devil's Elbow river (E3 1999) :

RyanGamerGoneGrazy
04-26-2007, 11:26 PM
wowzers, didnt know about this game, looks kinda neat



and the character model is pretty nice too lol

black sheep
02-18-2012, 02:07 PM
Man there is a lot of dust on this topic!!

Time to get it off.
I just played the prototype for a few minutes and im impressed.
Had a lot of trouble getting it to work,i even thought it was broken.
Then i got a bright moment and got it to work.

Gues what? You need a expansion pack to play it.

Cyantist
02-18-2012, 03:58 PM
Man there is a lot of dust on this topic!!

Time to get it off.
I just played the prototype for a few minutes and im impressed.
Had a lot of trouble getting it to work,i even thought it was broken.
Then i got a bright moment and got it to work.

Gues what? You need a expansion pack to play it.

What was the draw distance like? In the screenshot above it seemed kinda poor, maybe your prototype was different?

black sheep
02-18-2012, 05:26 PM
What was the draw distance like? In the screenshot above it seemed kinda poor, maybe your prototype was different?

Its a lot closer ill ad some pictures later.

black sheep
02-19-2012, 03:50 PM
Just a fast picture of the game. if i got time ill add a youtube later this week.

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/40/wildwaterz001.jpg/

APE
02-19-2012, 07:39 PM
I can't help but stare every time I see your avatar.

Shinebi
02-20-2012, 03:39 AM
Looks pretty decent. I couldn't help thinking of this one when I read the title:
Rapid River (http://www.primetimeamusements.com/arcadegame.php?id=52)

black sheep
02-20-2012, 05:44 PM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6pLxugfrKY

Short and crappy movie.
Damn i forgot to put my avatar in there,sorry ape my bad. :-)

Zoinkity
02-21-2012, 10:36 PM
Roundabout how complete is the build you have? ie: #courses, characters, etc.

arnoldlayne
02-22-2012, 03:14 AM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6pLxugfrKY

Short and crappy movie.
Damn i forgot to put my avatar in there,sorry ape my bad. :-)

Thanks for the video - the game looks like fun! What are your thoughts on it?

black sheep
02-22-2012, 03:00 PM
Roundabout how complete is the build you have? ie: #courses, characters, etc.

I would say its about 45% complete.

- There are 2 of the 5 play modes
- There are 2 of the 6 courses ( devil's elbow and woodchuck ridge)
- There are 3 of the 6 characters (katana,tokomo and tamara)

- The cartridge has the following information written on it.

- x-stream 6/15/99
- india (the country or a womans name:shrug:
- test module

- The game engine

I would say the game engine is 100%
What all the previews in old game magazines say is true. The water is the best aspect of the game and way better then in wave race.
The water has different colors from dark to very light and its not random but the colors change when water is deeper for exsample.
The water flow is also great you can feel difference near waterfalls or multiple streams.
The characters feel great in controls and can rotate 360 degrees. They won't get stuck and no buggy camera etc.
The controls are funny btw you really have to paddle by moving left and right.
But the game won't play without a expansion pack.

black sheep
02-22-2012, 03:13 PM
Thanks for the video - the game looks like fun! What are your thoughts on it?

Great game and the multi player is fun. What pops in my mind now is that there are even short cuts.Near a waterfall you can get grapped by or go with the flow down directly.Or paddle hard away from the flow go after a rock path and take another route that is a little shorter .Not much but it shows they had great ideas.

Hacc
02-22-2012, 04:29 PM
Pretty cool. Thanks for sharing! This game reminds me of Rush Down (http://www.gamespot.com/rushdown/images/platform/ps/) for the PlayStation.

Zoinkity
02-26-2012, 10:34 PM
Thanks for the reply!
Sounds rather innovative, and it seems they had the good sense for bottom-up design in all their games. The water dynamics are very impressive even in the videos, and its good to know you feel the difference more than anything. The pull of the current is one of those gaming-experience kind of things you just can't notice from a video.
Does it have rumble support by any chance? It would be hard to imagine it didn't.