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Long live Mario!
CAUTION: Another history lesson from Angler. If you have a nostalgic soft spot for Mario 64 (like me) you might want to ignore this post. It's quite disheartening.
As most of us know, Mario 64 wasn't the first 3D platformer (Alpha Waves, Jumping Flash etc.), but it did set the standard and get all the fame. However, Nintendo didn't create it out of thin air, as most enthusiasts like to believe. The game that really deserved the fame was Croc: Legend of the Gobbos. Remember this little guy?
Before Mario 64 existed, Croc started life as a prototype for a 3D platformer starring Yoshi (notice the similarities between Croc/Yoshi). This prototype was made by Argonaut, a small British software house with extremely talented engineers. These young men were wizards, creating 3D effects on extremely limited technology.
Nintendo was stuck with 2D sprites. They had no idea how to create 3D software, let alone for their limited hardware. So when these young British guys presented them with an experimental 3D demo on their GameBoy (the early GB game "X"), Nintendo hired them to develop and teach them how to make 3D games.
The SNES was far too weak for 3D, so Argonaut built the Super FX chip and created several games for it, like Starfox/Starwing (Nintendo's only role with Starfox was making the story, characters etc.) Anyway, Starfox became a huge hit.
Unfortunately, now that Nintendo had what they wanted, Argonaut were becoming expendable. They were being underpaid and underappreciated compared to Nintendo's other partnerships. Nintendo would soon terminate their contract, but not before squeezing a few more drops from their talent.
After finishing Starfox, Argonaut created Starfox 2. They finished the game, and as many know, they poured countless more ideas and improvements into it over the first game. Unfortunately, Nintendo decided to cancel its release, and used its advanced assets later to make Starfox 64 without giving credit nor paying Argonaut.
The rest of this cruel story has been recounted by the original founder, Jez San, in recent years. Sadly, it's not the only time Nintendo mistreated western partnerships...
"The end came when we pitched to do a 3D platform game, the likes of which had never been done before. We mocked up a prototype using Yoshi. It was essentially the world's first 3D platform game and was obviously a big risk - Nintendo had never let an outside company use their characters before, and weren't about to, either. This is the moment the deal fell apart. We later made that game into Croc: Legend of the Gobbos for the PlayStation, Saturn and PC
Miyamoto-san went on to make Mario 64, which had the look and feel of our Yoshi game - but with the Mario character, of course - and it beat Croc to the market by around a year," San says. "Miyamoto-san came up to me at a show afterwards and apologised for not doing the Yoshi game with us and thanked us for the idea to do a 3D platform game. He also said that we would make enough royalties from our existing deal to make up for it. That felt hollow to me, as I'm of the opinion that Nintendo ended our agreement without fully realising it. They canned Star Fox 2 even though it was finished and used much of our code in Star Fox 64 without paying us a penny.
They also poached some of our best programmers. We had taught Nintendo 3D games and left them a permanent legacy of being able to make such games. I'm not bitter, but I do feel that Argonaut was used and then spat out by Nintendo. I also feel they undervalued us; we could have done so much more. We had built a Virtual Reality gaming system for them called Super Visor that would've been awesome - which was full colour, had head tracking and 3D texture mapping - but instead they canned our project and released the ill-fated Virtual Boy in its place."
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CAUTION: Another history lesson from Angler. If you have a nostalgic soft spot for Mario 64 (like me) you might want to ignore this post. It's quite disheartening.
As most of us know, Mario 64 wasn't the first 3D platformer (Alpha Waves, Jumping Flash etc.), but it did set the standard and get all the fame. However, Nintendo didn't create it out of thin air, as most enthusiasts like to believe. The game that really deserved the fame was Croc: Legend of the Gobbos. Remember this little guy?
Oh man I remember playing both Croc 1 and 2 for the PSX, whatever happen to this series and for that matter the developer too. Seems like they fell into obscurity after the PSX era which is a shame apparently there is another Croc game for the GBA.
That's a manly nickname kind of want to call you Blackmore now do to it.
Sadly, Argonaut went out of business in 2004. The company was liquidated, and I have no idea who owns the rights to Croc now. Poor little guy.
I remember seeing commercials for Croc back in the 90's and I really wanted to play it. I finally got to at my best friend's house, and I loved its style.
@MonaWare Yeah, you should give it a chance. It had a really pleasant atmosphere and soundtrack. Like transporting you back to simpler times.
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It's a shame Nintendo never let Argonaut create a Yoshi game.
Because everything about Croc seems like it'd have been a perfect way to expand upon the Yoshi series and make it more unique. If it'd happened, Yoshi would have his own world, his own villain, his own characters and his own series divorced from the Mario one.
This would have made his representation in Smash Bros a lot better and let the Yoshi series find its own identity like Wario and Donkey Kong did.
But alas, it never happened.
Because everything about Croc seems like it'd have been a perfect way to expand upon the Yoshi series and make it more unique. If it'd happened, Yoshi would have his own world, his own villain, his own characters and his own series divorced from the Mario one.
This would have made his representation in Smash Bros a lot better and let the Yoshi series find its own identity like Wario and Donkey Kong did.
But alas, it never happened.
Hahaha, I really miss the days when things like "run" "jump" "swim" "climb" and "push" were what made a video game exciting : p
Makes me wish that I was in the advertisement business, Id like to make an ad like that for a modern game, just to see how people respond to it : p
Makes me wish that I was in the advertisement business, Id like to make an ad like that for a modern game, just to see how people respond to it : p
But then @Metal might not have had Yoshi's Story.
Atleast we have multiple yoshi's island games, even if the 3DS one was underwhelming. Perhaps sometime within the next decade Yoshi may or may not have the DKC treatment. But then again theres wolly world to consider.
