Elder Mathias's banner
Elder Mathias's profile picture

Elder Mathias

@animathias2,147 subscribers

☥ games ♪ music ♪ nostalgia ☥ No DMs

Videos

animathias's profile picture

Uniracers is a technical marvel, maintaining its speed when most other SNES games would start chugging. It's also a fascinating story. In 1994 shortly after the game launched, Pixar of all companies sued DMA Design, claiming the Unicycles ripped off their 1987 short Red's Dream. Pixar ultimately won (or the publisher, Nintendo settled) and the game was ordered to cease production after only 300,000 copies were made. Pixar had a point, the Unicycles looked similar. They're also unicycles. Once you animate those, there's not many differences that will happen. Interestingly enough, this whole legal debacle was a shift in direction for the Lemmings developer. Uniracers was their pitch and Nintendo loved it. If Pixar hadn't pulled the rug out from under them, they would have their own pillar under Nintendo's flag. Without Uniracers, DMA had to start over without their family-friendly franchise. Nintendo wanted them on the Ultra 64, but it soon became clear to both companies that only one of them was interested in making a cute N64 mascot. Body Harvest is a little tale on its own, but the funniest part of the story is how DMA Design started working on this small PC game called Race n' Chase at the same time. DMA Design released Grand Theft Auto in 1997, rebranding into Rockstar North after releasing GTA 3. If Pixar hadn't done a Disney, we might be Uniracing in Mario Kart World right now. Meanwhile #GrandTheftAuto might be nothing more than a spark in David Jones' eye. Probably not, but it's fascinating speculation. Also this game is dope.

Elder Mathias

140,336 次观看 • 3 个月前

animathias's profile picture

In the Fall of 1990, Nintendo Power held a contest for players to send in a photo of them finding WarMech, a very rare enemy found deep into Final Fantasy. While it's never been officially verified, there's some strong evidence that the winner of that contest was Chris Houlihan, and the prize was to get your name featured in a future Nintendo game. He was mentioned in one subsequent issue from 1998 as a contest winner in '92, Zelda's North American release year. As I'm learning while writing this, there's evidence that the winner was actually Chris's dad, immortalizing his son's name in one of the most unique video game stories out there. Kevin Hainline on YouTube posted a video with some fascinating insight and perspective on the story. ( In short, it seems that Chris was also named in the 1991 Game Boy version of Nintendo World Cup Soccer, where Terry was benched from the U.S. team in favor of the contest winner. The timing lines up really well. As for why his name is only found in the failsafe room in The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, it probably lies with just the nature of game production. They clearly missed a deadline since they never gave Houlihan the later highlight that seemed to be the standard for the Power contests. Also if Kevin's story holds water, they were rightfully not happy with simply naming a team member "Chris" in a handheld title. So it actually makes sense his name gets put into this room. It's probably the highest caliber game they could add him to, in one of the only places the devs could reasonably put him. They had to have known some players would eventually find it, and it would be a mystery. I just wonder if anyone involved knew just how wonderfully complex and interesting it would be. The poetic thing is if everything I learned today is real, "Chris" appeared on the Game Boy, then appeared with his full name in the legendary SNES room, and now is book-ended with just "Houlihan" in Cadence of Hyrule on the Switch. A fascinating legacy spanning nearly three decades and consoles. #RetroGaming

Elder Mathias

19,269 次观看 • 13 天前