ONM Remembered – #243
“Q: So did the disaster of the film have any psychological effect on your development?”
from Nintendo Pro issue 33 (2000)
The Nintendo 64 got a little weird at the end of its era. Okay, I’ve said it was weird at darn near every part of its life cycle, but you’d pick up the latest issue of ONM (or, in this case, the cheapest imitation the duty-free had on their shelves), leaf through the previews, and come across some games that just made you wonder… why? What audience was there for such a particular game, and what was the developers reasoning behind it? I mean, we had Donkey Kong 64 already, and Banjo-Tooie came out just a month after this in America. I think we were sorted for 3D platformers ’til the next generation, lads.
As light as it is on actual preview material (enjoy the blurry, context-free screenshots!), it does offer a neat little interview with Holly Hirzel, then-president of the Player 1 development studio, but has since made a name for herself in Microsoft’s Xbox Live department, which is a good step-up from duff bowling games. She mentions the challenge of Titus handing them the license out of nowhere, which I find amusing: both the possible (if unlikely) notion that Titus were still holding the Blues Brothers license since 1991, and the reality that developers must face of being handed a completely outrageous license and asked to make a game out of it. A Trading Places game, you say…?
It also amuses me to read an interview with a woman in games development that isn’t harassing her about her credentials, but instead “did you really like Blues Brothers 2000?”
