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Jamison accidentally spilled blood on the beef on Shigeru Miyamoto and then knocked over his beer.

Nintendo's N64 console has been on the market for 26 years and still has a large number of fans, but its sales are far behind the original PlayStation, which is only about 1/3 of that of the latter. The sales gap between the two is largely related to the public's perception of them. PS is widely thought to be cool and attractive to older players with higher disposable income. By contrast, the N64, which uses plastic cassettes and uses the Malio series as its main game, seems to be more suitable for younger people.

If Nintendo doesn't decide to go its separate ways with British game developer DMA Design, the predecessor of Rockstar North, players' perception of the N64 may change. In the mid-1990s, DMA made the planned N64 debut game "Body Harvest" for Nintendo. The game development process was full of twists and turns, and the partnership between the two companies did not last long. Today, the failed cooperation is almost unknown, but among game history enthusiasts, it is still a topic for many players to recall the past.

DMA was founded in 1987 by Scottish programmer David Jones, who initially developed games for 16-bit computers such as Commodore Amiga. A year later, artist Stacy Jamison joined the company. "my mother saw a job advertisement in the newspaper the other day and asked me, you like both painting and games, why don't you apply for it? so I went."

Jamison was involved in the development of several games, including "Oh no!" More crazy little lemmings (Oh No! More Lemmings) and Lemmings 2. "at the time, DMA was in an old low-rent building in Dundee." "our original office had only a few small rooms and a toilet, which was so shabby that the walls shook when the toilet flushed," he recalled. " Later, with the amazing success of Mad Lemming, DMA rose to fame and quickly moved to a high-profile office park.

After 1996, with the rapid development of 3D technology, developers began to try to make completely different games, while encouraged by the success of the 16-bit mainframe SNES, Nintendo began an aggressive expansion plan in the mid-1990s, seeking to work with more British developers to form an exclusive game lineup for its next generation of home consoles.

"I remember being told that Nintendo was working on a new console and that we were going to develop exclusive games for Nintendo." "before the launch of the console, originally known as the Ultra 64, we were part of the Nintendo Dream team, and we had T-shirts to prove it," Jamison said.

Under DMA's agreement with Nintendo, the Scottish studio needs to develop three games for N64. After brainstorming and internal discussion, they decided to combine the original open-world aesthetics of the developing game "three people and one Dog" with the B-rated atmosphere to produce a new film. Brian Baglow, a member of the design team for the Human Reaper, explained: "the 1950s B movies gave soul to games, such as The Blob, Them! and even Plan 9 from Outer Space."

The story of the Human Reaper, set in the United States in 1966, was inspired by a series of B-rated films at the time. In the official release of the Human Reaper, the setting was completely different from DMA's original plan, and the disaster exceeded most science fiction storylines: for a century, evil aliens came to Earth every 25 years to "harvest" humans as an organic material. Since Greece in 1916, these insect-like aliens have built an impenetrable outer shield every time to prevent people trapped inside from escaping while preventing them from being rescued by the outside world.

In the two subsequent invasions, the aliens harvested billions of humans, until 1991, when the remaining humans bravely established their last stronghold on a plain, but they were also wiped out. Finally, a handful of survivors live on the omega space station, a secret research base in planetary orbit. Fortunately, there is still hope for mankind: researchers at the space station have invented a time-travel device that can send a person back to the past and prevent an alien invasion.

"the idea that evil aliens appeared at different times in Earth's history and harvested human food and resources to fight against aliens is in line with Nintendo's spirit of family friendliness. At the same time, it makes the game look and feel different." Baglow said. In DMA's vision, the Human Reaper will be an open-world game with a third-person perspective, where players can drive vehicles around, complete tasks, and kill a large number of alien invaders.

"the Human Reaper" gave DMA plenty of 3D development experience, which established the successful "Culture shock" of "three people, one Dog 3". Given the Japanese love for monster disaster movies such as Godzilla, it is not surprising that Nintendo is attracted to the concept of "Human Reaper". At the same time, Nintendo also liked the atmosphere of 1950s B movies, recognized DMA's SNES game "Unirally" and decided to sign up for "Human Reaper" as one of the 13 launch games of the N64.

However, things didn't go well after that, and DMA suffered a lot of setbacks during development. As Nintendo wants to incorporate RPG elements into the game, DMA also sent a team to Nintendo headquarters in Kyoto, Japan, to discuss the details.

"from the moment we stepped on the plane, we felt a huge culture shock." Jamison recalled. Jamison and several of his colleagues had never flown business class and seemed at odds with the other passengers in suits around us. "I thought we looked so different that in the middle of the flight, the stewardess came up and politely asked if we were members of the band! when she heard that we were game developers, she seemed quite disappointed."

When Jamison and his colleagues arrived in Kyoto, the experience of this group of young developers became even weirder.

"We were so excited that we thought Nintendo's office was wonderful, full of color and fun." However, as the car pulled up in front of the humble gray building, we were disappointed with what we saw and our dreams were dashed! DMA's studio culture is always very noisy, and many employees like to wear torn jeans and T-shirts. By contrast, Nintendo headquarters is very quiet and full of business atmosphere, with all employees wearing gray overalls.

At DMA's first office, across the street from my colleague's father-in-law's fries shop, the Human Reaper team struggled as new technology slowed development. "as far as I can remember, the development tools given by Nintendo were difficult to use." "and it's a patented technology, and when we have a problem, we can't even find a solution ourselves," Baglo said. "

During that 12-day visit, Nintendo and DMA worked together to design levels, puzzles and games, and tried to finalize the basic template for the "Human Reaper." Jamison and others also learned about the inner workings of Nintendo. "there are post-it notes all over the room, pictures are posted everywhere on the wall, and when you walk in, it feels like you're in a game. there are mattresses on the floor and designers sometimes sleep in the office."

Jamison recalled painfully that during that time, Japanese food gave him the biggest headache. "it was the first time I used chopsticks, the first time I ate raw beef, and the first time I saw a lot of things I didn't know."... now I'm used to it, but at that time we couldn't get used to it and felt too hungry, so we went to the local convenience store to buy more 'Scottish' food. " When Jamison saw some doughnuts with sugar, he thought they were good. "you can imagine how shocked we were when we took a bite and found jam and sausage in it!"

For Jamison, a dinner in Kyoto made him particularly embarrassed. At that time, Jamison accidentally spilled blood on the beef on Miyamoto Shigeru, and then knocked over his beer.

The DMA team posed for a poster in which graphic designer Jamison and his colleagues continued to produce the Human Reaper after they parted ways and returned to Scotland. Although the DMA team has gained a lot of knowledge about the basic design of the game and the concept of light RPG action games, the overall theme of the project has changed dramatically over time-the B-rated gimmicks in DMA's original plan have disappeared and been replaced by the scarier scenarios described earlier. Interestingly, Nintendo headquarters and its North American branch also disagree on how to view the game.

"the North American branch feels that the plot of time travel is very good and hopes to interpret it in more detail and complexity." In 2012, DMA designer Steve Hammond wrote, "Japanese headquarters want to simplify the storyline." At first, Nintendo headquarters wanted the Human Reaper to become more like a RPG, but later wanted it to return to its roots and adopt a more direct style of play. "Nintendo knows what it wants, but they often don't know what DMA thinks."

The tone of the "Human Reaper" is also a problem. During the game development, the differences between the two companies over style continued to widen: Nintendo wanted a family-oriented N64 game, and they thought the game content designed by DMA was not appropriate because of cultural differences in different countries. "Yes, the giant bugs ate humans, and the plot may be hard to play down," Baglow recalled. I guess Nintendo is under a lot of pressure to make sure that all the N64's first games are excellent and fit its core audience. "

To make matters worse, DMA failed to complete the development of the Human Reaper on time. When a DMA delegation visited Nintendo's headquarters in February 1997, the N64 was already on sale in the United States and Japan a few months ago and was about to launch in Europe. As a result, the game failed to make it into the starting line-up as planned, and DMA was forced to give up its third game, Zenith, which was signed with Nintendo. John White, the project manager, recalled that he had tried every means to keep all his members motivated. He also admitted that the "Human Reaper" is a typical case of excessive ambition with bad consequences. "at the beginning, we had no idea what difficulties we would face."

Packaging, cassette and instructions for the Human Reaper Nintendo cancelled its cooperation agreement with DMA at the end of 1997. "this is a huge blow to us because many members within the team and DMA are Nintendo fans," Baglo said. "but from a business point of view, the situation is not too bad." At the time, the first film in the series was such a success that DMA had been acquired by Gremlin Interactive, a Sheffield-based publisher. "they sent me to San Diego to promote the Human Reaper to Midway, who won the rights to distribute the game in North America."

In October 1998, Gremlin finally officially launched "the Human Reaper" in Europe, and the second game in the original partnership agreement between DMA and Nintendo, Silicon Valley Space Station (Space Station Silicon Valley), was also released. Unfortunately, due to the "Human Reaper" and Rare's "Banjo Bandar", Nintendo's RPG masterpiece "the Legend of Zelda: flute of time" came out at about the same time, and the popularity of the N64 has declined, these games have not achieved the success that DMA had hoped for.

Nevertheless, the Human Reaper still has a group of loyal fans. In a sense, it allowed DMA to accumulate valuable experience on how to design an open world and laid the foundation for the subsequent creation of the "three people, one Dog" series. "I like the Human Reaper." "Today, many players are still impressed by it," Baglo said. "although it has a lot of problems and a lot of challenges in the development process, I am still proud of it."

This article is compiled from: https://www.eurogamer.net/how-gta3s-predecessor-fell-out-of-favour-with-nintendo

Original title: "How GTA3's predecessor fell out of favour with Nintendo"

Original author: Graeme Mason

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