Sneak Peek: Just some of the amazing art we've rescued recently
Added 2017-04-17 21:11:01 +0000 UTCHi everyone! We've been full steam ahead since launching The Video Game Media Assets Collection earlier this month. You should go read up on that if you haven't, but the short version is: we've rescued over 400 physical pieces of media that contain digital assets sent to the media between 1995 and approximately 2011.
This is a really important, ongoing project for us. Media assets tell us a lot about not only how games were marketed and sold, but even how they were made: often, screenshots sent to the media were made before a game finished development, giving us what in many cases is our only look at a title's creative process. We also often find unique pieces, like concept art and high-resolution 3D renders. In most cases, we'd be surprised if even the game's publishers still had these materials: many might literally only exist on these discs.
There's still...a lot to go through, and I'll be going over our process in a future backer-update post, but for now I thought I'd give everyone here a little peek at some of the art we've dug up. We haven't actually shown most of this off yet, so you're getting a bit of a sneak peek.
One of my favorite finds is the original digital press kit for The Sims. The press kit itself is really cool: it's an interactive Adobe Projector project that's kind of like its own mini Flash site.
But what's even cooler is the art, because this is the first art that the public ever saw for what would become one of the most popular computer games of all time. Check out our galleries:
This was a fun surprise for me: I had no idea that Rayman 2, which was ultimately a full 3D polygonal game, started life as a traditional sprite-based platformer (like the first Rayman).
In addition to pixel-perfect screenshots from an early demo, we were also able to recover some promotional artwork of the Rayman That Wasn't.
Rayman 2 (2D version) Preview Art
This sprite art from PowerSlave was fun to look at on its own, but archiving it led me down the path to learning more about the game, and watching a fascinating documentary about the title and its developer, Lobotomy Software. The console version was practically a Metroid Prime predecessor, despite being one of the earliest console first-person shooters, and it's now somewhere on my video game bucket list.
And finally, here is some promotional art and direct-feed, pixel-perfect screenshot of Amazing Studio's Heart of Darkness...from over three years prior to its commercial release. The game had something of a troubled development history, leading it several delays and platform changes, but these are among the earliest known screenshots of the game.
That's about it for now! If you're on the $25+ tiers, look for an email from me really soon about our next Town Hall hangout, where I'll be discussing this project in greater detail and opening discussions on where we should go from here (and if you'd like to get in on that, it's not too late to upgrade!).
-Frank
