Unseen64 digs deep into the cancelled Wii project and the findings are troubling.
http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/news/40687/details-emerge-about-project-hammer
A new video has been produced and posted by Unseen64 that examines in great detail the cancelled Wii game Project H.A.M.M.E.R and the issues that led to the game being sacked.
Project H.A.M.M.E.R was in development at Nintendo Software Technology beginning in late 2003, with the aim of being developed for a new console (which would become the Wii) and development headed by many veterans of 1080 Avalanche and Wave Race: Blue Storm for the Gamecube. The game was allegedly 75% complete in 2005, but concerns about the game's quality emerged. Tensions between the developers and NST management were raised as there was a dispute over how to make the game more appealing - the developers wanted to change the core gameplay, while the management felt the gameplay concept was solid and ordered the developers to enhance the environments.
The playable demo at E3 2006 was presented as Project H.A.M.M.E.R, but the game was being referred to as MACHINEX internally by this time. As rumors of the title's cancellation began to spread, the management at NST elected to restart the game with an artstyle more reminiscent of the Wii Sports games, the new working title "Wii Crush", and replacing the cyborg main character shown at E3 2006 with a "cartoon character".
In 2009, with still no progress on making the game ready to ship, Nintendo Company Limited pulled funding and cancelled the project. By this time, the chief game designer had been fired, and his replacement was disciplined due to the money lost on the project. No members of NST management were implicated, despite a Nintendo of America internal review showing record low levels of employee morale at NST because of the harsh management style. To this day, NST has been focused on developing the Mario v Donkey Kong series of games and smaller applications such as the Wii U Panorama View, while the senior designers have left the company and in some cases, the game industry itself.
The full video from Unseen64:
The thing that kept sticking out to me with this video is "it wasn't fun".
Sounds like a good reason to cancel a game to me.
You mean the western developers wanted to change the game they'd been working on for years already to finally make it fun?
Good plan.
You mean the western developers wanted to change the game they'd been working on for years already to finally make it fun?
Good plan.
After all, since when did Wii-era Nintendo care about quality so long as they could broadcast misleading commercials showing grandma swinging a Wii remote?
After all, since when did Wii-era Nintendo care about quality so long as they could broadcast misleading commercials showing grandma swinging a Wii remote?
Ummm...Project HAMMER?
The state of which was Nintendo's fault, and which they canned basically because all the developers left for better pastures after being fed up with being set up to fail. It's a project they got to can without taking any responsibility for the state they put it in.
So the part about how Nintendo was racist and didn't punish the managment of NST because they were also Japanese is clearly false since Iwata literally windowed seated the management of NST by condemning them to nothing more then the low budget Mario vs Donkey Kong studio after what happened.
