ASK_Story said:

Thank you much for this!

Love artbooks, especially Zelda! Nintendo is like a secret covert op developer. I never seen artbooks based on Nintendo games. I seen Square-Enix artbooks, other JRPG artbooks, I even own a few of these, but for some reason, Nintendo always keeps their concept art away from the public.

This is the first time I've actually seen official concept art from Nintendo, and not just any game but a Zelda game! Seeing these scans, it proves that Nintendo has some of the best concept artists in Japan! Sadly, they don't show their work that much.

 It's a pretty great collection of art. 

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesssssssssssssssssss!

Eurogamer

Halo 2 E3 demo was "smoke and mirrors"


Bungie's admitted to Eurogamer that the Halo 2 E3 2003 presentation was a fanciful snapshot of a game that could never be recreated on Xbox hardware.

"The graphics engine that we showed at E3 2003, driving around the Earth city... That entire graphics engine had to be thrown away, because you could never ship a game on the Xbox with it," said Chris Butcher, engineering lead on Halo 2.

"Through putting ourselves through hell, we were able to do a five-minute demo of it, but after we came back from E3 we had to admit that this graphics engine was never going to work - it was never going to support the kind of environments that are really important for a Halo game."

"So we literally scrapped the entire graphics engine and started from scratch."

That E3 2003 Halo 2 reveal can still be found on YouTube, complete with audience whoops and cheers as dual-wielding and Covenant vehicle-stealing mechanics were shown.

But an overly ambitious E3 demonstration turned out to be the precursor of a wild development cycle, in which hype and disorganisation created a monster in need of a brutal haircut and weight-loss programme.

"We were building stuff that just couldn't be played, in any engine," revealed Butcher. "We built, and detailed, and went a huge way down the path with a whole bunch of environments and levels for the game that just totally didn't make it.

"If you look at the level with the Flood, inside the quarantine area - that is the remaining 20 per cent of a gargantuan, sprawling level that was meticulously built and hand-constructed, but that could never, ever have shipped in any engine."

Head over to Eurogamer's detailed, seven-page interview with Bungie about the making of Halo 2 to find out much more.

 I feel vindicated. Way back then I criticised the BS screens and video. Then it was only shortly before launch when we saw real media. 

gamingeek said:

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesssssssssssssssssss!

http://epiconeliner.com/yeah.swf

Getting back to the whole, what were you playing this weekend, I traded in a few games and picked this up:

Mimana is an okay game.  Very very standard Tales styled RPG where the random battles are fought by the player with the other team members do their own thing following basic strategies. Frankly it's almost a little too by the books for my taste.  It's basically go fight in a dungeon, return to town and advance the story, go to another dungeon, and repeat.

However, what saves it is the script and the characters.  It's filled with very over-the-top characters, a bunch of truly perverted moments (mostly courtesy of one character who practically has an orgasm when starts talking talking about science), and multiple moments where the 4th wall gets broken (at one point a character criticizes the writer for being lazy when a scene skips while a new character is brought up to speed on the plot). So it's worth putting up with all the typical RPG trappings to get to the goofy stuff.

gamingeek said:

It tends to droop when I catch a glimpse of your troll face.

?

gamingeek said:

Why is Silicon Knights getting a $4 million get out of jail free card?

Government offficials are hoping for a Too Human sequel maybe?

phantom_leo said:

?

 It's too cute to get hard over.

Not like Steel's Zorro face. 

phantom_leo said:

Feeling a tiny bit better!

YAY!

On top of everything else... I think I had a stomach virus Friday through yesterday! EVERYTHING I ate gave me a horrible, upset stomach. Nothing beats the feeling of being unburdened of an illness after being sick for a while; I'm still tired, but not so much in uncomfortable pain and for THAT I am humbly grateful...!

I'm clearing my schedule of all appointments today and FINALLY just relaxing!

I got to take my walk today. Got a cup of coffee and am currently listening to the Podcast! My Sunday morning ritual on a Monday, but totally overdue.

Yay!

 That sounds great, hopefully you can get back up to 100% soon. On my front the medication I've been given is a neuro blocker so it blocks the pain receptors. Seems to work quite well, I still feels some nagging pain. The problem is the side effect is that it makes you very drowsy in the mornings.