Friday, April 03, 2009

What a Difference a Generation Makes...

Dinosaur Planet was originally planned to be one of the last big-budget releases on Nintendo's aging Nintendo 64 back in the first half of 2001. Produced by Rare Ware while they were still owned by Nintendo, Dinosaur Planet was posed to push the Nintendo 64 to its graphical and size limits.

Rare planned for this to be a brand new, original IP full of fresh characters and massive level designs (well, for the Nintendo 64, anyway - this was in the age before The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion).

However, later in the year it was discovered that Dinosaur Planet would be altered to Star Fox Adventures: Dinosaur Planet. The main character would be replaced by the legendary Fox McCloud and this project would no longer be seeing an N64 release. This title was moved up to Nintendo's Gamecube due to the N64's limited and expensive development costs (which we could blame on the big N's wonderful decision to use cartridges instead of compact discs) and drying-up fanbase. It would simply make no sense to release such a high-profile title this late into the console's lifespan, so Nintendo was determined to make Star Fox Adventures: Dinosaur Planet a showpiece for their next-gen console.

Nintendo eventually shaved the Dinosaur Planet sub-title off the game entirely and released it as Starfox Adventures in September 2002. Although it was essentially a Rare adventure title with Starfox tacked on, Starfox Adventures would go on to receive generally favorable reviews (as the 80% from GameRankings proves) and become a high-selling Player's Choice title.

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4 Comments:

At 2:36 PM, Blogger The Sports Satirist said...

Rare sounds familiar. Is that the creators of Banjo Kazoo?

 
At 4:34 PM, Blogger Ice Koobs said...

Yep they are.
I enjoyed this game but I felt that they try to borrow to much from Zelda.
The main part I'm talking about is every time Fox found something he would hold above his head. Ok we get the point. "Doo Dee Doooo"
Koobs

 
At 5:26 AM, Blogger gnome said...

A most interesting story indeed. But what everyone should know is that Rare was really famous when its older name was still in use: "Ultimate Play the Game".

 
At 7:23 AM, Blogger Linford Butler said...

Ross,

Nice post. This looks cool, if a little... unorthodox. Will have to see if I can get my hands on a copy sometime to see if it's any good.

Cool site, by the way.

Yours,

Linford Butler
PlayStation3 Editor
Gamer's Guide to Life
http://ggtl.blogspot.com/

 

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