I’ve been hard at work at getting old press kits out to the world. Funny thing is, Atheerios at Resetera pointed out to me that Internet Archive already has a massive, well, archive of a huge bunch of them! So I did some digging on the site and I came across some HQ screens of some lost games you may remember.
Here’s the RAR file with the following games shown:
GameCube:
- Kameo
- Meowth’s Party
- Metroid Prime
- Raven Blade
- Super Mario 128
- The Legend of Zelda
Game Boy Advance:
- Diddy Kong Pilot
- Donkey Kong Coconut Crackers
- Pokémon Card e-Reader Hardware
These were from both Spaceworld 2000 and later E3 2001.
Sadly I could not find Donkey Kong Racing assets no matter how hard I looked. However I not long ago uploaded a 480p trailer that IGN helped to retrieve, you can view it by clicking here!
A bit of history for each for those unaware:
Kameo was being made by Rare for the GC, but then they got bought by Microsoft with the game eventually being remade into a launch title for the Xbox 360 as Kameo: Elements of Power.
Meowth’s Party was apparently by the Pokémon Stadium team and was more of a tech demo. The concept became a credits video for the Pokémon anime in Japan, and most notably was a pre-rendered scene in Pokémon Channel.
The Metroid Prime pics you’ll see are from a very early stage where most the game was mostly shown via the old CG trailer clips. Samus also looks much different here.
Raven Blade was famously a big RPG IIRC of sorts developed by Retro Studios, alongside a number of other projects, before all were shelved in favor of 100% focusing on Metroid Prime.
Super Mario 128 was merely a tech demo featuring literally 128 Marios on a circle platform, showing off various warping techniques folks could do on GameCube. Apparently bits of this lived on in both Pikmin and later Super Mario Galaxy.
The Legend of Zelda as shown here was that famous tech demo of Link fighting Ganondorf, clearly taking after The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. This wouldn’t become a game itself. We instead would get The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker and later The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.
Diddy Kong Pilot was a flight racing game by Rare for the GBA. After Microsoft bought them, the game was remade into Banjo-Pilot for the GBA instead.
Donkey Kong Coconut Crackers, a block puzzle game, similarly was remade into It’s Mr. Pants for the GBA after Microsoft bought Rare.
And finally the e-Reader was originally a Pokémon-branded accessory before a slight tweak into becoming a more general GBA accessory. Still a neat look though!
And that’s it! I definitely plan on sharing other things, from further findings at Internet Archive, to sharing what stuff I have on me that’s not already on the website which I think is the case for some things. Anything among these that you were looking forward to? Any tips or suggestions? Let me know in the comments section below!
