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Roughly two weeks ago, I woke up to the soundless flashing of an incoming MSN message. The incoming message was from Scream and it was a a request for some assistance. Scream claimed to've found something curious and he wanted my help with checking it out.
After showing me what he had found, and a bit of back and forth checking, some general discussion and theorizing started.
Checking what?
If we could get this to work and how far back it dates!
Subject?
What exactly is this that we're looking at?
Well... everything seems to indicate that Scream had just uncovered remnants of what seems to be a proposed (and canceled) VS Battle mode in Resident Evil - Code: Veronica ~Complete~ (Dreamcast). Can only assume that this is one of the many ideas that had been tossing around the developer's office for things to add to ~Complete~ and also evt. the PlayStation 2 port (Code: Veronica X).
Note: No code has been located "so far" on the game's disc. These are just pictures that were found on the disc, much like the Resident Evil 1.5 Player Select screen that was found in Resident Evil 2. Only the future will show whether or not this leads to anything playable. So for now, besides what the pictures show, what you're about to read is pure speculation.
With that out of the way; the reason why these pictures look so "cheap" is probably because they are not screenshots, but most likely rough drafts for proposed screen layouts for this cancelled game mode.
What we have here is what is so interesting, in that raise an eybrow-type of way.
The picture seems to show what is a Character Selection screen, but instead of characters such as the Redfield siblings, you are presented with various (seven, to be specific) B.O.W.'s. These B.O.W.'s are as follows: Hunter, Sweeper, Bandersnatch, Cerberus, Black Widow, T-078, Nosferatu.
Rather curious it is how the layout is very much like that of your everyday VS Fighter, fully presented with a second player and a good ol' VS separating the previews of the select characters. Unless they were planning on somehow implementing a split-screen feature of some sort, it is almost safe to assume that this was certainly meant to be some sort of jab at Capcom's own evergrowing archive of VS Fighters at the time, but we can't exclude the possibility of it being some sort of score based mode where you'd use your B.O.W. of choice to compete with another player in being the one to score the highest (evt. by killing zombies, humans, running in circles, tap dancing, etc...)
The above is obviously the selector for where you want to be duking out. Based on the looks of the above locations, it makes us even more confident in our initial guess of this being a VS Fighting mode.
How this would play out... not good to say. But, since some of these "levels" have rather complicated geometry and aren't just open square-shaped arenas (like the Heli Port is), I think we can rule out that it probably would not play like any of their 2D or 2.5D fighters. As such arenas just aren't very well suited for linear fighting. Features such as sidestepping could've made 2.5D a possibility, but even then you still have "Fields" that either contains elevation or otherwise layouts that wouldn't work too well even with sidestepping added.
So where does this leave us? Initially, in my conversations with Scream, I suggested it'd might play like a simplified Power Stone, which was one of Capcom's 3D fighters that were also available on the Dreamcast at the time.
Of course... there's always a chance that it'd utilize the good old Resident Evil Tank Controls... who knows!
Anyway, for the sake of curiosity, we went through the trouble of locating the rooms present in the Field Select screenshot, you can see them by clicking on the rooms in the previous picture or just keep on reading for a short and cheap description of each and every one of them (this done in the order of left to right):
-The Heli Port-
This is the Heliport where you fight Nosferatu
-Black Widow Boss Room-
This is where you fight the Black Widow
-Alexia Boss Room-
This is where you fight Alexia
-Gulp Worm Cave-
This is where you have one several encounters with the Gulp Worm
-Military Training Facility Yard-
This is where you have one of several encounters with the Gulp Worm
-Harrier Hanger-
This is where people get their lifetime supply of Harrier Jets
-Military Training Facility Bath & Sauna-
This is... pretty useless.
-Albinoid Boss Room-
This is where you encounter the huge Albinoid
At the end of the day one can always ask why the two pictures of this game mode have not surfaced in public press before. Maybe Code: Veronica ~Complete~ and Code: Veronica X never got the love they deserved? Maybe the tools necessary to view these haven't been as accessible and/or available as tools for the original PlayStation titles? Anyway, now that they've finally crawled out of their digital hiding place, we can only do what good fans should do; Bitch, moan, theorize, and hunger for moar!
Thanks goes to Scream for bringing this to my attention, paving the way for writing this post. Project-Umbrella for having their Resident Evil wiki database. And, oh, my thanks also extends to the following youtube users; hiryu69, dangsterr, and Darkkefka for having YouTube footage of Power Stone and Code: Veronica X that I have in all my lazy glory linked to and/or taken pictures from (temporary solution).
After showing me what he had found, and a bit of back and forth checking, some general discussion and theorizing started.
Checking what?
If we could get this to work and how far back it dates!
Subject?
What exactly is this that we're looking at?
Well... everything seems to indicate that Scream had just uncovered remnants of what seems to be a proposed (and canceled) VS Battle mode in Resident Evil - Code: Veronica ~Complete~ (Dreamcast). Can only assume that this is one of the many ideas that had been tossing around the developer's office for things to add to ~Complete~ and also evt. the PlayStation 2 port (Code: Veronica X).
Note: No code has been located "so far" on the game's disc. These are just pictures that were found on the disc, much like the Resident Evil 1.5 Player Select screen that was found in Resident Evil 2. Only the future will show whether or not this leads to anything playable. So for now, besides what the pictures show, what you're about to read is pure speculation.
With that out of the way; the reason why these pictures look so "cheap" is probably because they are not screenshots, but most likely rough drafts for proposed screen layouts for this cancelled game mode.
Now let's take a look at the first of our two pictures:
-Player Select-
The above image has links embedded in the character portraits! Internet Technique at its finest!
-Player Select-
The above image has links embedded in the character portraits! Internet Technique at its finest!
What we have here is what is so interesting, in that raise an eybrow-type of way.
The picture seems to show what is a Character Selection screen, but instead of characters such as the Redfield siblings, you are presented with various (seven, to be specific) B.O.W.'s. These B.O.W.'s are as follows: Hunter, Sweeper, Bandersnatch, Cerberus, Black Widow, T-078, Nosferatu.
Rather curious it is how the layout is very much like that of your everyday VS Fighter, fully presented with a second player and a good ol' VS separating the previews of the select characters. Unless they were planning on somehow implementing a split-screen feature of some sort, it is almost safe to assume that this was certainly meant to be some sort of jab at Capcom's own evergrowing archive of VS Fighters at the time, but we can't exclude the possibility of it being some sort of score based mode where you'd use your B.O.W. of choice to compete with another player in being the one to score the highest (evt. by killing zombies, humans, running in circles, tap dancing, etc...)
Now, let's move on to the second of our two new imaginary friends:
-Field Select-
More fancy links to click! This time you'll get scaled down pictures of the locations!
Note: Pardon the poor image quality, due to time constrains (aka. pure laziness) most of these have been taken from YouTube videos.
-Field Select-
More fancy links to click! This time you'll get scaled down pictures of the locations!
Note: Pardon the poor image quality, due to time constrains (aka. pure laziness) most of these have been taken from YouTube videos.
The above is obviously the selector for where you want to be duking out. Based on the looks of the above locations, it makes us even more confident in our initial guess of this being a VS Fighting mode.
How this would play out... not good to say. But, since some of these "levels" have rather complicated geometry and aren't just open square-shaped arenas (like the Heli Port is), I think we can rule out that it probably would not play like any of their 2D or 2.5D fighters. As such arenas just aren't very well suited for linear fighting. Features such as sidestepping could've made 2.5D a possibility, but even then you still have "Fields" that either contains elevation or otherwise layouts that wouldn't work too well even with sidestepping added.
So where does this leave us? Initially, in my conversations with Scream, I suggested it'd might play like a simplified Power Stone, which was one of Capcom's 3D fighters that were also available on the Dreamcast at the time.
Of course... there's always a chance that it'd utilize the good old Resident Evil Tank Controls... who knows!
Anyway, for the sake of curiosity, we went through the trouble of locating the rooms present in the Field Select screenshot, you can see them by clicking on the rooms in the previous picture or just keep on reading for a short and cheap description of each and every one of them (this done in the order of left to right):
-The Heli Port-
This is the Heliport where you fight Nosferatu
-Black Widow Boss Room-
This is where you fight the Black Widow
-Alexia Boss Room-
This is where you fight Alexia
-Gulp Worm Cave-
This is where you have one several encounters with the Gulp Worm
-Military Training Facility Yard-
This is where you have one of several encounters with the Gulp Worm
-Harrier Hanger-
This is where people get their lifetime supply of Harrier Jets
-Military Training Facility Bath & Sauna-
This is... pretty useless.
-Albinoid Boss Room-
This is where you encounter the huge Albinoid
At the end of the day one can always ask why the two pictures of this game mode have not surfaced in public press before. Maybe Code: Veronica ~Complete~ and Code: Veronica X never got the love they deserved? Maybe the tools necessary to view these haven't been as accessible and/or available as tools for the original PlayStation titles? Anyway, now that they've finally crawled out of their digital hiding place, we can only do what good fans should do; Bitch, moan, theorize, and hunger for moar!
Thanks goes to Scream for bringing this to my attention, paving the way for writing this post. Project-Umbrella for having their Resident Evil wiki database. And, oh, my thanks also extends to the following youtube users; hiryu69, dangsterr, and Darkkefka for having YouTube footage of Power Stone and Code: Veronica X that I have in all my lazy glory linked to and/or taken pictures from (temporary solution).
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