Here's a bit of late night gaming esoterica for you: a Spanish Sega fansite, Sega Saturno, has unearthed an unreleased copy of a cancelled 32X game called X-Men: Mind Games, a 3D action/maze title. After the jump, you can see some footage and you can download the game here, although it's only playable with actual 32X hardware.
Mind Games made its debut at E3 in 1995, courtesy of a company called Scavenger, Inc. The company went bankrupt three years later, but some of its team members went on to work with more financially solvent studios like IO Interactive and Starbreeze. In any case, it seems that Scavenger made a few Mind Games prototype cartidges to take to tradeshows, most of which were destroyed. Sega Saturno, however, snagged a cartridge from eBay for about $850.
The game was in an early Alpha stage when it was scrapped and, while it features killer music, doesn't look like much fun. The people over at the Sega-16 forums, who must know more about the Sega 32X than I do, seem to think that Mind Game's 3D graphics were incredible for their time, and I'm inclined to agree -- 3D videogames are to 1995 as the lunar landing was to 1969, after all.
For what it's worth, the above screenshot doesn't do the game much justice -- you can see it in motion after the break.
Joseph Leray is a founding Destructoid editor and has better hair than you. He speaks French and needs to send us his updated bio in English, preferably.
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I actually remember seeing a screen shot of an X-Men game for the 32X that look much like this, except Wolverine was the playable character. Don't know if it was the same game or not, but I was always disappointed that it never was released. It looked amazing for the time.
Looks awkward and clunky to control, nevermind the camera.
Funny how it crashes in the second vid and spurts out a memory dump.
Impressive to the time though I guess.
Wait wait wait.... someone on 32X actually was painting textures on Polygons? Technologically, color me impressed. Gameplaywise? Good thing it got canceled. Bug was a much better example of this concept.
For some reason I read article reaplacing the words X-Men with Mega Man. It was not until I hit the jump and watched the video that things clicked. I thought that screenshot looked very un-Mega.
I love my 32x. Collecting the games I don't own though are a pain in the ass; they go for quite a bit on Ebay. Well, a bit more than I'm usually willing to pay.
lol @ "claymation". This is how all digitized CG looked back then. Ever play Donkey Kong Country? They weren't clay, they were CG models digitized into sprites.
This game doesn't look fun at all... the music is pretty awesome though.
god....remember how hard that spiderman/xmen arcades revenge was?
This is what I pictured from this. It is pretty funny watching how the ninjas and bishop react. I'm glad I didn't put any frustrating time into this if it was released.
That looks hideous and tough to play. The graphics are indeed very impressive for the time and hardware though. They just could've gone with some far better sprites. But that sort of prerendered hideousness was very popular at the time, so I'm willing to give it a pass.
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Contest:
3:00 AM on 08.12.2009
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X-Men + Claymation = No-no
Booty-logic indeed. ;)
Must be a combination of music, Graphics, and jumping whatever the hell that is in the second video.
Funny how it crashes in the second vid and spurts out a memory dump.
Impressive to the time though I guess.
I think my brain is broken.
This game doesn't look fun at all... the music is pretty awesome though.
This is what I pictured from this. It is pretty funny watching how the ninjas and bishop react. I'm glad I didn't put any frustrating time into this if it was released.
And uses it to punch people instead of shooting them.
Amazing.
But this looks too much like Claymation rather than 3D.
Mortal Kombat came to my mind too. lol
Looks AT LEAST as good as the last 10 Sonic games.