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August 8th, 2015 
Carl Williams 
Videogames are not new to the idea of there being problems after the game has shipped. For proof of this, just look at the more modern games for countless pieces of proof of game companies charging for prototypes. The number of games being patched to hell and back after they are released is staggering, and a bit sad really. Gamers today are probably used to paying to be guinea pigs for game developers, the problem is it wasn’t always like this. There was a time that games were released after something called “quality control” was supposed to be implemented, developers found bugs and squashed them before shipping the game (when they had time that is). Gamers could, almost, always rest well knowing that when they plunked down a fair bit of cash for that latest game that it was complete and as the developers intended it to be. Here are five examples of when that was simply not the case. While some of these games were good, they were flawed in many ways and quite honestly, were prototypes by all accounts of the term.
1) E.T. for the Atari 2600
Okay, this is an easy one to call out for many reasons. Sure, it was not as good as it could have been, it didn’t even try to follow the plot of the movie and it was rushed. While many will call it the reason for the gaming crash, those people need to look at the bigger picture and realize that it was not just the work of one or two titles that caused that massive failure.
E.T. was programmed in a marathon session that lasted five and a half weeks. The deadline was quite a tough one to meet but programmer Howard Scott Warshaw met it as best he could and history has not been kind to his hard work and sweat (someone start this man an IndieGoGo to help with the stress of 30 years of seeing his work pulled over the lukewarm coals of history).
This was clearly a prototype and something that would have benefited from having at least another three to four months of development time. Sure, Atari didn’t have that time since they were looking to hit the release of the movie but they would have been better off to have missed the theatrical release and pushed more for the home video option that would surely follow.
2) Star Fox for the Super Nintendo
Star Fox is a seminal title for Nintendo. It is a series that helped solidify the Super Nintendo as a quality platform in the eyes of gamers in the early 90’s. It was also a title that Nintendo pushed pretty hard, even breaking their long term policy of ignoring their competition in their advertising. Nintendo referenced Sega’s popular “Welcome to the Next Level” ad campaign in one of their Star Fox commercials. The tag line was along the lines of “Why goto the next level when you can go light years beyond.” This was a break in the defense Nintendo had been using since before their popular NES console was released (they made arcade games and games for earlier consoles like the Colecovision and Atari 2600).
Star Fox is obviously slow and slightly buggy, both things that would have benefited from more time in development. Had there been an option to release updates of any kind back then surely Nintendo would have offered something to fix the overall speed of Star Fox and maybe improve the lack of texture mapping.
Even though Star Fox was slow paced, not a good thing for a game that is patterned after a genre that is known for its speed. Nintendo went onto celebrate record sales with Star Fox and even continued the brand running up to modern consoles. All because they were able to get gamers to purchase a prototype over 20 years ago.
Our historical article for Star Fox is here and another article that featured Star Fox, 5 Retro Games Released Before Their Time, is here.
3) Pac-Man for the Atari 2600
Pac-Man was another rush title for Atari but it failed for different reasons than E.T. did. Actually, Pac-Man reportedly went onto score over 7 million copies sold. The problem for Atari was that they had allegedly ordered 12 million copies total (quite a few more units than they had sold consoles to play them on). The graphics are obviously rubbish and this was not something that can easily be laid at the feet of Tod Frye (the programmer). The limitations of the hardware were the problem but as proven in later Pac-Man games (Ms. Pac-Man and Jr. Pac-Man) had there been more time allowed to work on things, the results surely would have been improved. No, Atari had to have this one out ASAP so gamers got tricked into buying a prototype (and probably mad when they saw Ms. Pac-Man and Jr. Pac-Man later). Thanks, Atari.
4) Virtua Racing for the Sega Genesis
Virtua Racing holds the same honor as Star Fox does. Both were released to “showcase” a new add-on chip that is inside the cartridge. Unlike the chip in Star Fox though, Virtua Racing was the sole flagship for this chip. Virtua Racing was different versus the other racing titles on the Genesis, it was polygonal instead of sprite based but graphics took a hit for this.
Sega re-released Virtua Racing, much like they did with Daytona USA years later, with each version getting slightly better than the previous version. Virtua Racing also hit the Sega 32X and the Sega Saturn where it finally seemed to be working “right”. That makes Virtua Racing a double award winning title as the 32X version was more or less the Genesis version sped up.
5) Blade Force for 3DO
Okay, I am not taking the easy road and just saying that “anything” on the 3DO could be considered a prototype. Believe me, it was a thought that bounced around in my head till I got to this point in this article. In the end, Blade Force won the war against over 300 other 3DO games. What a (dis)honor to behold aloft to the crowd.
Blade Force is an unfinished mess, just play it to find out how bad it is. There are points in the game where you “should” be able to travel but you are not able to due to shoddy collision detection. The difficulty is set on impossible and you are going to get lost a lot. That is just the start of the problems for Blade Force. All of which could have been fixed had Studio 3DO just kept this one in the development phase just a bit longer. This was one of the swan song flagship titles for the 3DO and it was not exactly a great way to go out.
Prototypes are hard to point out but with hindsight being 20/20 it is a bit easier. What do you think of the picks? Got a prototype that was missed but deserves attention? Let me know.
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Not sure you can texture map polys on the SNES – i doubt very much it has the capability to handle a texture over the geometry?
Didn’t they use texture maps for the slot machine boss and for the asteroids (or were those just sprites? Been awhile since I have flown a zero wing).
Ive got a sneaking suspicion they were mode-7 style sprite effects, perhaps piggy-backing off the extra grunt the Super FX chip was providing. Textures are expensive (both for ROM and CPU) but to be honest I am not 100% sure
I knew there was a reason they were using gouraud shading for the polygons instead of texture maps. The system, even with the Super FX chip probably simply was not powerful enough to pull them off.