Visual Connection: The Best Part about Halo (Vistas)
September 17th, 2009
I want to conclude my discussion on the Halo series by not saying very much…herm..yes. It’s fair to say that I thoroughly enjoyed playing through both Halo and Halo 2, which is why I want to celebrate by discussing my favourite part of the series — the vistas. And no, I don’t mean Windows Vista, but rather the gorgeous landscapes of Halo‘s self-titled ‘Halo’ level.
I love the visual aura I get from this area. The landmass is simply overwhelming. Your place in the pit of this valley heightens the sense of surrounding scale. The deep blue and purple sky colours the white cliff faces with it’s reflection. The land full of detailed texture, long in range. Everything augmented by the giant Halo ring splitting the sky. It’s very iconic.
In my time of playing this level I took time out of the strict alien-zapping regime to just survey the surroundings. It’s the first time I’ve ever felt like a tourist in a video game. In which case here are some happy snaps;
Video
Visual Connection – Raylight Studio’s Blue Roses GBA Tech
September 3rd, 2009
Raylight Studios is a small Italian games developer that unfortunately don’t have many high profile games to their name, besides a sadly woeful GBA port of Gradius III and a specialty in handheld racing games. As someone that enjoys maxed out handheld tech, I’m fascinated by this studio.
Some time after the GBA’s release (2002-ish) Raylight Studios showed off video and screenshots of a 3D game engine for the system, titled Blue Rose. The team had rendered a series of demos based on popular Playstation games such as Resident Evil, Wipeout, Metal Gear Solid as well as a series of others.
This was very exciting at the time as, at least on a surface level, it showed that the GBA was in fact capable of producing 3D graphics on a somewhat similar plane to the PSone. Mammoth potential for the emerging GBA. Background information such as memory constraints were fairly unknown, but it’s still nifty nonetheless. Unfortunately little eventuated from the project and the studio has gone on to product a handful of low-tier portable games, mostly racing games – their forte.
Considering how well the tech holds up in comparison to the DS, I figure it’s worth remembering their endeavours and pondering what might have been. I tried to get in contact with the studio but had no luck, so instead, let’s just look over what we have;
Resident Evil 2
Metal Gear Solid
Air Race (ie. Wipeout)
SRS: Street Racing Syndicate (appears to be using same tech, actually released)
Screenshots
Additional Readings
Unseen64 (Also good for these kinda bits-and-pieces games, prototypes etc.)
Visual Connection: Resident Evil Game Boy Color
July 27th, 2009
Back in 1999 Capcom, through London developer HotGen Studios, began porting Resident Evil to the Game Boy Color. The game was canceled about a year later, supposedly Capcom had been unhappy with the product which would have likely eventuated into something in the same vein as Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare. That’s common-sense portable gaming in sacrifice of technological overkill – I’m not criticizing though, I think it was a cool idea! Resident Evil GBC was later replaced with the standalone Resident Evil Gaiden.
Although there was meant to be some new content included in the title, I’m curious as to how much of the original title was actually planned to fit to cart. Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare only managed an hour of play time, so it’s highly doubtful that all of the content from the series’ progenitor would have made it over. I’m not sure how much Capcom would have been willing to scrap, perhaps it’s what caused the bust. In anycase, let’s take a look at some video I scrounged up;
Additional Readings
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