Toejam & Earl 3 Unreleased Beta Discovered in the Wild

[|darc|]

Toejam & Earl 3, an unreleased Dreamcast game that was in development by Visual Concepts and Sega in 2000, has long been thought to be a lost game. Fortunately for Dreamcast enthusiasts, a beta version was discovered on a recently purchased development box by ASSEMblerGames forum member ZakhooiTM. So far, the beta version is completely playable and seems to be far along in its stages of development. ZakhooiTM intends to release the discovered code to the Dreamcast community sometime in the future, possibly after a fundraiser to cover his costs of purchasing the development box. Check out the thread for more information and screenshots of the game.

[cube_b3]

The X-Box version was a dud, from what I have read.

[DaMadFiddler]

I was never that big on Toejam & Earl, but it's always neat to see unreleased titles and beta versions--particularly when there are significant differences from the final product (e.g., Sonic 2 beta).

Of course, the "holy grail" for me in terms of unreleased games is a playable build of Castlevania: Resurrection.

[cube_b3]

Why?

I assume you are a fan of the Castlevania franchise but from what I have read the game was an outsourced American one, and those games are always shitty. I have rarely seen an American studio do good with an American game, especially in the 90s.

[DaMadFiddler]

Well, gameplay-wise, it CV is a lot more interesting than Toejam and Earl

And from the footage and screens that do exist, as well as the write-ups, it sounds like the main focus was to bring it back to being an action-platformer like in the NES days. The N64 and PS2 Castlevania games both got it wrong for various reasons when they tried to take the series 3D, and it wasn't until Lords of Shadow that we got a decent 3D CV... but it was basically a complete reinvention of the series. I was really interested in what Resurrection was trying to do, and I was very disappointed that it was never finished. It also looked like it had the potential to be one of the more graphically impressive DC games.

The other two games I seem to recall hearing rumors about early-stage ports of are Planet Harriers and Monkey Ball, which were both originally Naomi arcade games.

[cube_b3]

Now that is a totally awesome topic.

How Asshole/Awesome is Nagoshi?

On one hand unlike any Sega 2nd Party studio at the time, Nagoshi dropped the Dreamcast without a second thought. All studios managed to make one final game for the Dreamcast before going 3rd Party where as Nagoshi scrapped all games. He is the only head of studio who ported only 1 game to Dreamcast. Didn't even make an original game!

On the other hand unlike all other studio heads, he is the only one who is still the captain of the studio. He is the only one still employed at Sega (AM3's Hisao Oguchi is still employed as well but is no longer a game developer). Sega had 8 internal Japanese development teams at the time and he is the only one who is standing.

Just for Reference

AM1 = WOW = Rikiya Nakagawa = Now runs an indie studio. Makes games nobody cares about and probably shouldn't. Last big game was a Donkey Kong game on Wii in 2007.
AM2 = Yu Suzuki = In the last 10 years he has managed to add a string of projects that failures that were so bad, Sega didn't even release them. He retired 2 years back and now has his own studio. He has made 3 forgettable games.
AM3 = Hitmaker = Hisao Oguchi = Now head of all studios or something vague like that, he is credited as Executive Producer on almost all games released by Sega of Japan. His studio like Am2 is still around in a diminished capacity ran by Mai Kumagi.
AM4 = Amusement Vision = Nagoshi = Sega SuperStar!
AM5 = Sega Rosso = Kenji Sasaki = never did anything outside Japan, so we never cared about him to begin with.
AM6 = SmileBit = Shun Awaya = Has gone indie as well.
AM7 = OverWorks = Noriyoshi Oba = My favorite studio, Oba went independent released a couple of shitty games in Japan only. Now is employed by Premium Agency a studio composed of Sega Alumni.
AM8 = Sonic Team = Yuji Naka = PROPE = I've played a trio of his iPhone games and checked out one of his apps as well. They are pretty good and deserve more of a spot light.
UGA = Mizuguchi = Q Entertainment = Was the most prolific departure from Sega and made a few splashes, like Naka makes great games that just don't get the attention they deserve.

Completely irrelevant to our already off topic discussion, but I suppose I love talking about Dream Past.

[park]

Around 30 minutes of gameplay.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0w9X-_iipQ

[cube_b3]

This game looks very meh...

[DaMadFiddler]

This game looks very meh...

In other words, a Toejam & Earl game

I am curious, though: does this differ significantly from the game that ultimately came out for Xbox?

[cube_b3]

That is what the comments on YouTube seem to suggest.

[Christuserloeser]

This is such a nice find! I am really really looking forward to playing this once it has been released!

[not just souLLy now]

aaaand it's leaked:
http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/sh ... mcast-Beta

[cube_b3]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPp3bJdrwZM

The creator talks about the differences between Toe Jam & Earl DC beta with X-Box.
I think towards the end of it.

[Christuserloeser]

Wow this really is a nice present! - It's great that the guy got feedback from Greg Johnson for this release.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPp3bJdrwZM

The creator talks about the differences between Toe Jam & Earl DC beta with X-Box.
I think towards the end of it.

Indeed! He even mentions the email correspondence with ZakhooiTM leading up to the release. Very nice!

[|darc|]

Interesting that he bought that Devbox on eBay. I was actually bidding on that auction, but it got too expensive (way more expensive than Devboxes have been going for, actually) and I didn't have the money for it. Shucks. Haha.