Ask 411 Games 01.25.10: Level 2 – Donkey Kong 64, Fear Effect Inferno, Publishing Rights and Missing Tights!

Posted by Mathew Sforcina on 01.25.2010

Where's Project H.A.M.M.E.R? And Fear Effect Inferno? And Donkey Kong 64 on VC? These, plus do I know the game someone's thinking of? And some history, all in the one column!

Well, unlike the Wrestling version, this actually worked out well last week. Even if most of the positive feedback was from the rest of the 411 Games staff. I guess they heard that I'm a big fat pro wrestler and didn't want to risk me getting upset, hunting them down, then beating them up like I was the computer playing Hayabusa on Hard or something.

But that said, you should read everyone else on 411. I don't tend to plug people because I'm an egocentric git, but believe me, everyone who writes for 411 is awesome and you should hook up on Twitter and Facebook and everything, because everyone on this site rocks.

Except that one guy who does that column. He sucks. But everyone else rocks, and they liked me, so that's good.

Of course, the first week had the novelty going for it. It's the second week that really counts. And I intend on making this work well. Or at least not suck totally.

Banner!



Joe gets to go first since it gives me consistency.

I must applaud you for your talk about Target Terror. I get a kick out of Mark creaming himself over it week after week.

So I have two questions,

One, why does Mark love Target Terror so much?

2, can you tell whoever made the game to put out a sequel? I'd love to see the meltdown that would occur if there was a sequel out.

As those who wandered in from Wrestling know, I'm always happy to defer to those who have more knowledge on specialist subjects since I'm lazy I want the very best possible answers to your questions. So, in this case, I asked Mark who he loves Target Terror so much. This is his response:

Well, before I state why I love Target Terror, I must make something clear. One does not play Target Terror, they simply experience it. Target Terror has changed the way I think about the world. I look at real world situations, and think of ways to apply the knowledge that I've learned from Target Terror. It's made me an all-around better person. Hell I think Target Terror even whitens my teeth and checks for cavities. There are plenty of games where you can kill people using over-the-top weapons. But only one of them allows you to do it as a patriot, and do it knowing that you're giving 12 year-old Asian girls who reside in a dumpster a chance at being something more. I for one look forward to this future. Also the rocket launcher is automatic meaning it fires a constant stream of rockets. That is a win as far as I'm concerned. For further reading you can check out my Games Only a Mother Could Love edition on Target Terror.

So, in order words, he rips off my comments from last week first off and then fails to notice that I linked to that last week. Bravo Mark, Bravo.

As for the sequel question, I emailed Raw Thrills, and I actually got a response! Andy, their webmaster, gave me this quote:

Target Terror 2 has been bouncing in and out of development. We still very much want to make a sequel, we just have to find the right chemistry to make it happen!

After I recovered from the shock of getting a response (really, me and Randle and Uber-Boss Lansdell still have to get used to how, as Randle put it, "now the industry we cover doesn't openly mock us all the time or pretend we don't exist. I never knew such a world existed."), I read between the lines.

And thus, it's clear to me that they WANT to make the game, but they just need someone to finance/publish it.

So Mark? I'd start saving your pennies now, and/or start pestering the publisher of your choice to pick it up.

SHADE wants to know about a Wii game that does sound kinda cool.

I remember a while ago, maybe 3 or 4 years ago that a Wii game called Project H.A.M.M.E.R. was in the works. It looked really cool using the Wiimote to simply destroy anything in your path with a hammer. To my dismay, it was eventually put on hold and then canceled. But then I read after this that the game was officially put on hold. It's 2010 and I've heard nothing else about the game. Has it been officially canceled or have I just been oblivious to updates for the game?

Yes, Project H.A.M.M.E.R was put on hold in 2007, after being announced at E3, 2006. Here's the video that was released at the time.



Seems fun enough. You get a big hammer, and you hit things with it. Certainly the Wii has games with far less story and indentiy than that on it.

It was being developed by Nintendo Software Technology, an in-house first party Nintendo Game Developer tasked with making games mainly for the North American market. They've made several games that did well, their first game being Bionic Commando: Elite Forces for the Game Boy Color, through to their most recent games, the Mario V Donkey Kong series and Crosswords DS (most of their games are puzzle based). Project H.A.M.M.E.R… Damn that's annoying to type.

Project was officially put on hold in 2007, and is their only cancelled game, although at the time they "shifted our focus. Some games have shifted development resources."

But I'm getting in touch with NST, so watch this space next week, when, hopefully, I'll have an official comment on the game. But

Fuckwhiners gets to ask a question despite having a somewhat questionable name. You can use the spacebar, clearly, so why not use it in your name?

Why isn't Donkey Kong 64 on the Virtual Console?

Well, for starters, you can't release EVERY game right away. You flood the market and you'll lose out on sales that you could get from gradual releases.

Plus it's not like you can just cut and paste the code and voila, the game's ready. It takes time and money to transfer the game's code into a useable form. Not a huge amount, sure, but there is a cost and time factor.

But they are just general issues, that apply to any N64 game you care to mention. But the real issue is… The Rare/Nintendo Split.

Rare, the makers of Donkey Kong 64, are now owned by Microsoft, in one of those deals that changed the Gaming world, but didn't work out great for everyone (Sure, Viva Pinata is cool, but they've hardly lived up to their reputation when Microsoft bought them).

Now, this doesn't raise logistical problems, as such, as opposed to Goldeneye (you will NEVER see that on VC or Xbox Live, short of a series of unlikely mergers and/or buy outs), while Rare did make DK64, Nintendo own it. Rare have been asked this, and said, via their mailbag guy:

I have no idea why DK64 hasn't shown up yet, and whether Jetpac would still be in there or they'd replace it with Mario's Cement Factory (which ate about three years of my life as a child) or something. Or maybe a single-screen 2D shooty version of Jet Race would be more appropriate. Who knows? Not us, obviously, or we wouldn't be sitting here pitching clueless alternatives.

The DK Country series has been released, so it seems to just be a case that Nintendo don't want to release the game yet. Why advertise their opposition?

Of course, if I was Nintendo, I'd be waiting for 2011, and release it as part of a huge Donkey Kong turns 30 celebration, release a new DK Wii game, release DK64 on VC, discount DK original, the works. So maybe next year you'll get it.

Jason Douglas is up next.

Is there any indication that the Fear Effect franchise could be brought back to life? Those two games were among my PS1 favorites. I understood a third installment was in the works for PS2 at one point, but it never saw the light of day. The art style and death cutscenes gave it a unique vibe I really liked. Does Eidos own the rights or what?

Every thing's about rights and stuff, isn't it? But hey, that's cool.

Fear Effect is a game that, I must admit, I've never played, despite some degree of hype around it, if only because the main characters were hot and stuff, and the whole "THEY'RE LESBIANS! HOT!!!!11eleventy!" aspect.

Given the success of the first two games (they did sell well, and were praised as Survival Horror gems at the time), a third installment, Fear Effect Inferno was announced for the PS2 in 2001, with a trailed in 2002.



… Is it just me, or is the woman in red at 20 not wearing any pants? Like, at all?

Regardless, during 2002, production stalled for some reason, and Eidos, the publishers, began to pull back on it. The game wasn't officially cancelled until 2004, and even then, Kronos Digital Entertainment, the developers, tried to ship it around and no-one bit.

Now, there is hope for another Fear Effect game, but it rested, at one point, with Uwe Boll. See, Uwe wanted the movie rights to the Hitman series, and Edios would only sell him that if he also bought the rights to make a Fear Effect game.

Yes, a video game company wanted Uwe to make films on TWO of their franchises. But then again, they do make money, so I guess it makes sense on some level.

That deal fell through, and Fear Effect's rights were picked up in 2008, but with no news on the movie since, it seems that the movie had the same problem as the game, it just got stuck and never kept going.

Edios do still hold the rights, so Fear Effect Inferno, or more probably a game following the movie and/or a reboot is technically possible at any point, but given the length of time, it's unlikely. Not impossible, more obscure games have been rebooted, but Fear Effect Inferno is almost certainly dead.

Odds are, you've seen this already. If you have, relive the funny. If not, I present to you, Mario Frustration.


And David asks about a game he half-remembers.

Okay, this might be tricky, so bear with me.

When I was younger, I played this game on the Master System where you control a car, which could transform into a motorbike, plane, and possibly a boat, although I'm not 100% sure on the last one. It was played in a birds eye view style, and you had to shoot a load of stuff.

I can't remember what it was called for the life of me, and I'd like to track it down and play it again. Any ideas?

Further questioning of David stated that the transformations just occurred every so often.

I'm tempted to just say David is thinking of Spy Hunter, which I actually talked about last week, but dammit, he deserves better, so let's go hunting.

There are 318 games that were released on the Master System. I'm about to go through all of them. Wish me luck.

*sounds of digging*

Well, it helps when the game starts very early in the alphabet.

David, I believe the game you remember is Action Fighter, a Spyhunter clone released by Sega in 1986. In the game, you drive along on a superbike, a sports car, a jetski, a helicopter and even a F1 Racer. Here's some video of the game, which I think may be a little sped up.



It got released on several platforms, starting as an arcade game, then to the MS, and then to the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum etc. Sadly, it is yet to be released on VC, so you'll need to track down an actual hard copy. Good luck with that.

From Big Daddy Patty comes a history lesson.

Did Sony first develop the Playstation for Nintendo? I heard that Nintendo wanted to make a CD ad don to the Super Nintendo and that Sony was the developer, and then it became the Playstation.

Ah, another in those ‘Moments That Shaped The Gaming World'.

OK, so let's start at the very beginning. Back when Sony just made electronics, they worked with Nintendo, providing Sony processors for use in the SNES. So, when Sony and Phillips both began work improving CD-ROMS, developing CDROM/XA, Extended Architecture (a system where sound, images and computer data can be combined and thus accessed at the same time), Nintendo expressed interest. They had thought about using Discs before, but had been held off for various reasons. But with this new tech, they saw the possibilities, and since they had worked with Sony before, they signed a deal and Sony began work on the SNES-CD, both as an add-on to the SNES (ala the Sega CD attachment for the Genesis/Mega Drive), and as a stand alone Sony built Home Entertainment system that would be both in one.

Thing is, right before this attachment deal was to be announced in 1991, Nintendo Head Hiroshi Yamauchi read the 1988 contract they signed, and realised that Sony, either by design or by mistake, would have pretty much complete control over any and all games written for the format. So, literally hours before the announcement, Nintendo suits flew to Phillips, and cut a new deal. So, at 9am, May 1991, at the Consumer Electronics Show, when Hiroshi was supposed to announce the Sony/Nintendo tag team, he instead shocked a hell of a lot of people by announced that Nintendo had come to terms with Phillips, and that all work on the Sony/Nintendo crossover was dead. Nintedno felt good, the Phillips deal would give them control over the games, they had narrowly avoided diaster, they thought.

This is, Sony was left with no deal… And a hell of a lot of work into a new Game system. So, they shrugged, and used the work to develop a new console, the Playstation. Nintendo tried to stop this in the courts, and an agreement was reached after Nintendo lost to still have the Playstation play SNES games, but Sony decided to drop that fully (seeing Nintendo's work with the CD-I fail probably helped this decision along), and the Playstation was born. And damm near killed everyone else.

Conor asks for my opinion to finish us off this week, since that worked so well in Wrestling this week…

Q.1 I just purchased a nintendo 64 (ano,im catching up with the times!) but what games do you recommand is worth purchasing for the console?I know of all the big games like Mario Kart 64,Goldeneye,Perfect Dark,Zelda,Banjo Kanzooie (sp?) WCW/NWO revenage and Wrestlemania 2000. But im open to try all type of games.any suggestion?Also,games i should NOT get?!

Thanks and keep up the great work!

Well, WWF No Mercy is a no-brainer, it's the peak of the AKI wrestling games. Paper Mario rocks the house that rocks the party. Super Smash Bros if you have more than one controller and some friends, also the Mario Party games. Conker if you don't mind crude humor and outdated references (OOOH, a Matrix parody, how hip!). Donkey Kong 64, as mentioned above. Wave Race is kinda cool, as is Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire (most SW nerds just play Hoth over and over again though). The Mario Sports titles are cool (Golf is the best, Tennis is good). Blast Corps is a forgotten classic.

Avoid the Pokemon games, unless you also have a GB and the older games, but avoid Hey You Pikachu at all costs. Star Wars Episode 1 Racer sucks balls. Apart from that, I don't really know any truly horrible games off hand.

What would you readers suggest for Conor? I give you the floor, as this Level is over.