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Perfect Dark Zero Tech Demo
"Rare's two N64 first-person shooters, GoldenEye 007 and
Perfect Dark, received strong acclaim from critics and players,
and demand for another title in the Perfect Dark franchise
was high. Development of Perfect Dark Zero began on the
Nintendo GameCube. At the time, Nintendo had a 49% stake in Rare,
making Rare a Nintendo second-party developer. The game made a small
appearance at Spaceworld 2000, an event exclusive to Nintendo. But
apart from the confirmation that it was in development, few official
announcements were made. Perfect Dark Zero, along with
several other Rare games, was intended to be finished in time for
the Gamecube's launch, but did not.
In September 2002, after losing a
steady trickle of staff for two years (including many of their
Goldeneye 007 team members, who went on to found Free Radical), Rare
Ltd was purchased by Microsoft. Around the same time, Rare released
several images of Joanna Dark, the protagonist of the Perfect
Dark games. The "cartoony" style of these pictures incited
speculation that the final game — then intended for the original
Xbox — would employ a less realistic graphical style than the
original game; possibly an anime like cel-shading technique, (RARE
had hired UK Manga artist Wil Overton to work with them, after
seeing an anime-like image of the Original Perfect Dark game
he had created for the cover of N64 Magazine.)
Development of the title was later
transferred to the Xbox 360. Perfect Dark Zero's senior
designer Chris Tilston (also one of the project leads for the game)
later revealed that the Xbox version was "about twelve months away"
from completion when the switch occurred.
In 2005, one of the rewards in the
OurColony viral marketing campaign for Microsoft's next Xbox video
game console was an image of Joanna Dark. At the official unveiling
of the Xbox 360 on May 12, 2005, it was revealed that Perfect
Dark Zero would be a launch title for the new system in the fall
of 2005. The game's development has therefore spanned three
platforms: the Nintendo GameCube, the Microsoft Xbox and the Xbox
360." - [wikipedia] |
