A little piece of gaming history has been uncovered this week, as a Reddit user has brought light to a game thought to no longer exist. Originally scheduled for release on the Nintendo 64 after its appearance at E3 1997, SimCopter 64 never found its way into final production. However, a picture was posted online of a prototype build playing on a Nintendo 64, only for it to promptly be removed by the owner a day later. Prior to deleting the post, the OP claimed that the development cartridge plays fine, but they're worried about it corrupting, and are currently looking into making a backup of the cart in order to preserve it. Footage of the game playing was also posted--and is now deleted as well--but it showed that the date on the build was December 26, 1997, a handful of months after its reveal at E3.

Source

 

[ciaomao]

* Not technically one of the largest cartridge storages as it was never released on a cartridge.

At least not officially. Alibaba sells Master Quest on cartridge.

 

[Frankbel]

It seems to be an alpha build rather than a beta one.

 

[AmandaRose]

I wonder if the N64 version has the Easter egg that was in the PC version of a bunch of shirtless men in speedo trunks running around pointlessly Jacques Servin one of the main programers did this as a protest at being bullied by his work colleagues for being gay if I remember correctly.

 

[Emperor_Norton]

Always glad to hear it when someone decides to share a lost game rather than hoard it

 

[coffinbirth]

Well that logic also applies to all the N64 games I mentioned - most games don't use every byte of storage on the cartridge.
In this specific case, the Ocarina of Time + Master Quest ISO uses 1.04GB on the disc.

Now, you don't need all of that. There's trailers for other games on the disc, and if you strip them out, it's 538 MB.

You can actually do further stripping. There's a gamecube disc image inside the disc image that you can pull out and run directly (It might be the japanese disc image). It's 518 MB. The game selection menu isn't included though, and it defaults to running the Master Quest version. Also, saving seems to be broken. If offers to format my memory card, but I'm unwilling to check if that fixes the issue.

Despite being unplayable, this tgz contains the unmodified rom, which can be deleted for a total of 485 MB which is actually "necessary" for playing the game. I put necessary in quotes because there's a 450 MB pre-rendered credits movie so credits can display at the gamecube's native resolution. You don't really need that, but it's part of the game, so I'm including it.

This is just how GameCube loads the N64 emulator. The "actual" files it needs are < 100MB, haven't tried to see how far you can strip it down to work in Dolphin, but yes, the actual rom is 32MB and works on actual N64 hardware. Haven't had an issue with saving, but I might have just grabbed a modified rom back in the day and replaced it, can't remember....unless you mean on GC, to which disregard if so.

But if we're going by just size of N64 games ported to other systems, Mario 64 is the largest at 354MB via Super Mario 3D All Stars. Unsure of what
Jet Force Gemini is sitting at on Rare Replay though, might be more.

But as others have said, Conker and RE2 are the largest actual N64 carts.

 

[Guacaholey]

Do I get to fly into the twin towers?

 

[SaulFabre]

so soon we can enjoy this unreleased N64 game after so may years? Awesome!

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Always glad to hear it when someone decides to share a lost game rather than hoard it

They talked about dumping, that doesn't mean they're intending to release the dump. A lot of people are scared of Nintendo's lawyers, or just don't wanna promote piracy. Here's hoping though. I love seeing prototypes of unreleased games surfacing years later allowing everyone to enjoy what would otherwise be lost forever.

 

[Wolfy]

Even the 1.4 GB is disingenuous. Nintendo padded ISOs with garbage data to meet the exact size. If you ran a compression algo to rip out the data, the ROMs + overhead to run them is probably no more than a few hundred MB.

Looking at Animal Crossing in particular to that situation.

 

[Mikemk]

This is just how GameCube loads the N64 emulator. The "actual" files it needs are < 100MB, haven't tried to see how far you can strip it down to work in Dolphin, but yes, the actual rom is 32MB and works on actual N64 hardware. Haven't had an issue with saving, but I might have just grabbed a modified rom back in the day and replaced it, can't remember....unless you mean on GC, to which disregard if so.

I gave the numbers in the post you quoted, did you not read it? It's 485 MB for just the game files. Sure you could strip out the enhanced assets, and sure there's no reason you'd necessarily want higher resolution credits, but at the point you're modifying the game itself, not just removing the extra stuff. (Yes, the saving issues were on GameCube)

But if we're going by just size of N64 games ported to other systems, Mario 64 is the largest at 354MB via Super Mario 3D All Stars. Unsure of what
Jet Force Gemini is sitting at on Rare Replay though, might be more.

485 MB > 354 MB. And no, I wasn't considering N64 games ported to other systems, I was considering the N64 game that had its original release on another platform.

But as others have said, Conker and RE2 are the largest actual N64 carts.

As I said in my original post?

 

[urbanman2004]

The beta footage looks cold blooded ... Hopefully, there's some talented hobbyist dev out there w/ a reimagined vision and passionate enough to finish up what was started.

 

[coffinbirth]

I gave the numbers in the post you quoted, did you not read it? It's 485 MB for just the game files. Sure you could strip out the enhanced assets, and sure there's no reason you'd necessarily want higher resolution credits, but at the point you're modifying the game itself, not just removing the extra stuff. (Yes, the saving issues were on GameCube)

485 MB > 354 MB. And no, I wasn't considering N64 games ported to other systems, I was considering the N64 game that had its original release on another platform.

As I said in my original post?

Again, the game files are less than 100MB combined. There are no "enhanced assets"... the game simply runs at 2x resolution vs. N64.

The only differences (besides the emulator upres) between running this on GC vs. N64 is the game select screen, the rumble select screen and the memory card prompt.

The games are 32MB each, with an emulator profile for each one. They can be played start to finish without those menu screens on N64 hardware.

 

[Mikemk]

There are no "enhanced assets"

Yes, the rom files are 32MB and run on a N64. And yes, if you do that, you've stripped out the enhanced asset. I don't deny it's a pointless asset, but it is part of the game.

Ocarina of Time: 485 MB (32 MB ROM + 450 MB enhanced asset)
Master Quest: 485 MB (32 MB ROM + 450 MB enhanced asset)
Emulator: 3 MB
Total: 518 MB

 

[Deleted member 596797]

Yes they do. The Superman 64 Beta (much better than the final product) looked like that too

Are The Cartridges Bigger So They Can Hold Extra Memory? If Not, Why Are They Like That?

 

[|<roni&g]

It's nice but all this should of been done a while ago, there should be no undumped betas sitting in drawers waiting to be cashed out

 

[ciaomao]

It's nice but all this should of been done a while ago, there should be no undumped betas sitting in drawers waiting to be cashed out

better late than never

 

[Dr_Faustus]

Awesome to hear, hopefully he is able to get it dumped!