Trivia Browser
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In a 2020 interview conducted by the YouTube channel Archipel with the game's creator Shinji Mikami, he talked about the development of Vanquish, which started after he left Capcom and joined PlatinumGames. While he claimed to not remember how he arrived at working on or coming up with the concept for Vanquish, he pitched 5 different project ideas beforehand to Sega and Platinum:
From the start, Mikami wanted to make an open-world game set in a universe similar to the film "Blade Runner", but due to budget, time and staffing constraints, he considered the project to be impossible to make. Regardless, Mikami drafted a design document that he formally pitched to Platinum as a coping mechanism in order to clear his head of the long-gestating idea and work on other projects, stating "I just couldn't switch my mind for a project that fit budget and resources before I gave form to this one. So I just presented it".
Afterwards he moved on to a completely different project; a cel-shaded game set in a universe akin to the works of Studio Ghibli entitled "The Witch and the Piglet". The game was about an evil witch who turned a prince into a piglet and cursed the accompanying village. The villagers would be friendly by day, but at night, they would turn into animals such as horses, pigs, and goats, and do "terrible things" every night, in turn revealing the villagers' evil sides. The main protagonist, a girl with "magical powers who could hover in the sky with an umbrella", had to defeat the witch and break the curse. Mikami believed the game was a mid-scale project that could be easily managed within a given budget and really wanted to make it happen, so he pitched it to Sega. However, Sega strongly declined the pitch, saying that they weren't looking for a game like The Witch and the Piglet.
Angered, Mikami moved on to another project designed exclusively for the Nintendo DS. The game was about a girl with psychic powers and an unknown serial killer who were confined in a hospital. The killer would murder people in the building one by one, and the girl had to figure out if the killer was a doctor, a nurse, or a patient. She used her powers to fight with the killer remotely, move things from a distance, take limited control of peoples' minds, and used a smartphone to send texts and chat during battles, all the while the killer would threaten to kill more people the closer she was to him. One of the central gameplay mechanics involved selecting floating Kanji on the Touchscreen to form two-word phrases such as "Drop Vase" or "Open Door", and watch the results on the hospital's surveillance cameras. Upon pitching it, Sega also rejected the game for the same reason as The Witch and the Piglet, stating the projects were too small and not what they were looking for.
Mikami then recounted an incident during the same meeting, where Sega's executives told him that they were looking for a "Taisaku", or a major project. In response, and angrier than before, he came up with a pitch on the spot called "Keiko and Taisaku", about two delinquent gang leaders, a boy and a girl dressed in high school uniforms, that fought each other, proclaiming "Here, you get Keiko and Taisaku, there's Taisaku in it so it works right?" Sega's executives silently ignored the pitch. Mikami recalled that after this incident came the back-and-forth talks that led to him working on Vanquish.
Sometime in-between these events, Mikami also had an idea for a rhythm action game that he promptly scrapped after pitching it to Platinum, believing that the idea was not as fun as he had thought it was after presenting it.
From the start, Mikami wanted to make an open-world game set in a universe similar to the film "Blade Runner", but due to budget, time and staffing constraints, he considered the project to be impossible to make. Regardless, Mikami drafted a design document that he formally pitched to Platinum as a coping mechanism in order to clear his head of the long-gestating idea and work on other projects, stating "I just couldn't switch my mind for a project that fit budget and resources before I gave form to this one. So I just presented it".
Afterwards he moved on to a completely different project; a cel-shaded game set in a universe akin to the works of Studio Ghibli entitled "The Witch and the Piglet". The game was about an evil witch who turned a prince into a piglet and cursed the accompanying village. The villagers would be friendly by day, but at night, they would turn into animals such as horses, pigs, and goats, and do "terrible things" every night, in turn revealing the villagers' evil sides. The main protagonist, a girl with "magical powers who could hover in the sky with an umbrella", had to defeat the witch and break the curse. Mikami believed the game was a mid-scale project that could be easily managed within a given budget and really wanted to make it happen, so he pitched it to Sega. However, Sega strongly declined the pitch, saying that they weren't looking for a game like The Witch and the Piglet.
Angered, Mikami moved on to another project designed exclusively for the Nintendo DS. The game was about a girl with psychic powers and an unknown serial killer who were confined in a hospital. The killer would murder people in the building one by one, and the girl had to figure out if the killer was a doctor, a nurse, or a patient. She used her powers to fight with the killer remotely, move things from a distance, take limited control of peoples' minds, and used a smartphone to send texts and chat during battles, all the while the killer would threaten to kill more people the closer she was to him. One of the central gameplay mechanics involved selecting floating Kanji on the Touchscreen to form two-word phrases such as "Drop Vase" or "Open Door", and watch the results on the hospital's surveillance cameras. Upon pitching it, Sega also rejected the game for the same reason as The Witch and the Piglet, stating the projects were too small and not what they were looking for.
Mikami then recounted an incident during the same meeting, where Sega's executives told him that they were looking for a "Taisaku", or a major project. In response, and angrier than before, he came up with a pitch on the spot called "Keiko and Taisaku", about two delinquent gang leaders, a boy and a girl dressed in high school uniforms, that fought each other, proclaiming "Here, you get Keiko and Taisaku, there's Taisaku in it so it works right?" Sega's executives silently ignored the pitch. Mikami recalled that after this incident came the back-and-forth talks that led to him working on Vanquish.
Sometime in-between these events, Mikami also had an idea for a rhythm action game that he promptly scrapped after pitching it to Platinum, believing that the idea was not as fun as he had thought it was after presenting it.
Franchise: Phantasy Star
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According to a 1993 World of Phantasy Star book interview with Miki Morimoto, she stated that the meaning of the game's title was like “a planet/star of fantasy” and that Yuji Naka was the one who originally named the game Phantasy Star. He started with just the word "Fantasy", and played around with it until he figured out what to name the game. He was also influenced by a song called "Nagisa no Fantasy" (Beachside Fantasy) by his favorite singer, an idol named Noriko Sakai.
subdirectory_arrow_right Mario (Franchise)
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After the launch of Mario Strikers Charged, Next Level Games had pitched to Nintendo a Mario volleyball game titled Super Mario Spikers. Referred to during development as simply Mario Volleyball, it was to be a mix of volleyball and wrestling mechanics, and was presented with hints of a TV game show. It was intended for the Wii and work began on it around the end of 2006. Development was canceled in 2007 after the pitch had failed with Nintendo. The game was financed as a reward from the studio's previous work on the Strikers games, and the volleyball mechanic was thought to have been reused for Mario Sports Mix.
Unseen 64 article:
http://www.unseen64.net/2011/08/06/super-mario-spikers-wii-prototype/
IGN article [link and attached image provided by KnowledgeBase]:
https://www.ign.com/articles/2014/09/19/super-mario-spikers-the-cancelled-volleyballwrestling-mashup
http://www.unseen64.net/2011/08/06/super-mario-spikers-wii-prototype/
IGN article [link and attached image provided by KnowledgeBase]:
https://www.ign.com/articles/2014/09/19/super-mario-spikers-the-cancelled-volleyballwrestling-mashup
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System Shock 2, according to its pitch document, was originally titled "Junction Point". It was intended to expand upon the role-playing element of the original System Shock, which itself was intended to bring the gameplay of another of their games, Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss, into a science fiction setting.
The first System Shock was generally perceived to be a Doom clone, and the developers blamed this for its limited commercial success. With Junction Point, their goal was to add significant role-playing elements and a persistent storyline so as to distance the game from Doom.
The first System Shock was generally perceived to be a Doom clone, and the developers blamed this for its limited commercial success. With Junction Point, their goal was to add significant role-playing elements and a persistent storyline so as to distance the game from Doom.
subdirectory_arrow_right Super Mario Galaxy (Game)
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Yoshi was originally planned to appear in Super Mario Galaxy, and was featured in proposal documents for the game from 2005. However, he was removed due to the developers thinking that "it would've been too much all at once." They said that, "if you're going to put Yoshi in a game, he has to be a main element, but [Super Mario Galaxy] had spherical land forms and gravity shifts and lots of elements that were entirely new" and, "Even if we had used him, we might have only been able to use him on a single stage."Despite this, it was decided early on in the development of Super Mario Galaxy 2 to include Yoshi in the game, because his control scheme could act as a new main element of a new game and a "multiplication" of the elements from the previous game. The Wiimote controls for Yoshi were also formed early in development, with Shigeru Miyamoto taking pride in the tongue pulling mechanic used for eating fruit, fighting enemies and flipping switches, saying it "isn’t like anything you've ever experienced before." The rest of Yoshi's controls were shaped based on internal feedback from "everybody's love" for Yoshi, listing the development team, Mario Club Inc., and Nintendo of America as primary influencers for what the image of Yoshi should be, but tried to avoid making him too powerful. The developers also had composer Kazumi Totaka record new voice lines for Yoshi for the first time in ten years, and was reported as feeling "a little uneasy" and worried that Yoshi would sound like he had aged, but these were not concerns to them and the recordings were used in the game.
Iwata Asks interview:
http://www.nintendo.co.uk/Iwata-Asks/Iwata-Asks-Super-Mario-Galaxy-2/Volume-2-Koizumi-Motokura-Hayakawa-and-Hayashida/1-More-Super-Mario-Galaxy-/1-More-Super-Mario-Galaxy--237972.html
https://www.nintendo.com/en-gb/Iwata-Asks/Iwata-Asks-Super-Mario-Galaxy-2/Volume-2-Koizumi-Motokura-Hayakawa-and-Hayashida/2-That-s-Not-My-Yoshi-/2-That-s-Not-My-Yoshi--238028.html
http://www.nintendo.co.uk/Iwata-Asks/Iwata-Asks-Super-Mario-Galaxy-2/Volume-2-Koizumi-Motokura-Hayakawa-and-Hayashida/1-More-Super-Mario-Galaxy-/1-More-Super-Mario-Galaxy--237972.html
https://www.nintendo.com/en-gb/Iwata-Asks/Iwata-Asks-Super-Mario-Galaxy-2/Volume-2-Koizumi-Motokura-Hayakawa-and-Hayashida/2-That-s-Not-My-Yoshi-/2-That-s-Not-My-Yoshi--238028.html
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