To preface this, it's been known since Yoshio Sakamoto's pre-Other M press tour that Nintendo had offered some 3rd party developer the chance to develop a Metroid 64, but they declined:
(Interview link)
DidYouKnowGaming did an investigation recently where they spent a long amount of time trying to figure out what the company was that turned down this offer, but ultimately had no success.
Anyhow, last night I was talking with a friend on Discord, and we were looking into the pre-2004 Super Metroid speedrunning/romhacking scene. After exhausting a tiny, defunct fansite, I was curious enough about things to try looking at Google's Usenet Graveyard. I was mostly curious if there were any references to the mockball/speedball trick prior to this FAQ from April 1997, which happened reference the alt.games.video.nintendo newsgroup.
Anyhow, it turns out Google's frontend for these newsgroups is uniquely awful, and the search functionality seemed Pretty Bad, so I just typed "Metroid" in the search bar and clicked on stuff that seemed interesting and/or funny, like this thread:
Pretty decent reasoning, as far as these kinds of old, baseless guesses are concerned.
I found one of the responses to be amusingly incorrect:
I think he needs to check his sources.
Now, the real reason I made this thread is this particular response:
I couldn't really believe my eyes, so I had to double check the credits for Body Harvest on MobyGames:
It turns out that guy was indeed from DMA Design, as the Lead Artist on the game. While this is not necessarily 100% conclusive (there's an unlikely chance he could just be repeating an internal company rumor), the fact that this post is from 1997 from a guy who was actually in the industry at a company working under Nintendo's direction gives it more credence than literally any other Metroid 64-related rumor I've seen before. (It's worth noting Body Harvest was announced in 1995, released in 1998, and Nintendo had a large hand in the direction of the game.)
Anyhow, as I was talking about this with my friend he found this amusing YouTube comment from some random guy a few months back:
For reference, Body Harvest looks like this:
Yeah that tracks.
(i also posted about this on cohost)
(Interview link)
DidYouKnowGaming did an investigation recently where they spent a long amount of time trying to figure out what the company was that turned down this offer, but ultimately had no success.
Anyhow, last night I was talking with a friend on Discord, and we were looking into the pre-2004 Super Metroid speedrunning/romhacking scene. After exhausting a tiny, defunct fansite, I was curious enough about things to try looking at Google's Usenet Graveyard. I was mostly curious if there were any references to the mockball/speedball trick prior to this FAQ from April 1997, which happened reference the alt.games.video.nintendo newsgroup.
Anyhow, it turns out Google's frontend for these newsgroups is uniquely awful, and the search functionality seemed Pretty Bad, so I just typed "Metroid" in the search bar and clicked on stuff that seemed interesting and/or funny, like this thread:
Pretty decent reasoning, as far as these kinds of old, baseless guesses are concerned.
I found one of the responses to be amusingly incorrect:
I think he needs to check his sources.
Now, the real reason I made this thread is this particular response:
I couldn't really believe my eyes, so I had to double check the credits for Body Harvest on MobyGames:
It turns out that guy was indeed from DMA Design, as the Lead Artist on the game. While this is not necessarily 100% conclusive (there's an unlikely chance he could just be repeating an internal company rumor), the fact that this post is from 1997 from a guy who was actually in the industry at a company working under Nintendo's direction gives it more credence than literally any other Metroid 64-related rumor I've seen before. (It's worth noting Body Harvest was announced in 1995, released in 1998, and Nintendo had a large hand in the direction of the game.)
Anyhow, as I was talking about this with my friend he found this amusing YouTube comment from some random guy a few months back:
For reference, Body Harvest looks like this:
Yeah that tracks.
(i also posted about this on cohost)
