SEGA DREAMCAST iNFO Preservation games

New Geist Force Dreamcast prototype, in the heart  of the milky way

Geist Force was being developed by a new in-house team of developers at Sega headquarters in Redwood City , CA. They were new and relatively inexperienced. This is probably one of the reasons they took so long and why in the end the game was not rated as good enough.

Geist Force's cancellation was due to the game's budget overrun. Japan were unhappy with the title's progress after 18 months of development. Sega Japan decided to stop funding and took the opportunity to cancel all other Sega of America (studio name) games in development.

“I worked as an internal tester at Sega, their headquarters in Redwood City, CA (we then moved to San Francisco ). I tested a few new games there. When I started, the very first one game I was put on was a Dion Sanders soccer game for Saturn that ended up getting canceled. I also tested a shooter for Dreamcast called Geist, which was supposed to look like Star Fox 64 , but it was also canceled "

"If only he hadn't had such a difficult development journey, he probably would have been a success!"

"Geist Force has been canceled  because its development took A LOT too long and was not going well. Development started long before the Dreamcast launched and was no further ahead than what we see in builds when the Dreamcast was on the verge of dying out.  It's a shame because it could have been a really cool Star Fox clone. "

My trailer including, the intro, stage 1, stage 5 and a new cutscene!

The game Geist Force certainly helped inspire a "spirit" (German translation of geist) of optimism for Sega when it was unveiled in 98 at the Tokyo Game Show . The visual effects of this sci-fi shooter were breathtaking. Nothing had sparked more interest in Sega's new console than these previews of Geist Force . We unfortunately know the rest ...

Video  presentation at the Tokyo Game Show

Overall the game is really reminiscent of  Starfox . The player evolves  on the screen when seeing his ship from behind. It is then necessary to face the adversaries who arrive in waves.

This prototype suggests a game that still had some great trumps up its sleeve. We Weren't Going to Say No to a Lylat Wars Clone  ! Kill the most enemies with a single missile shot, we would have asked for more !!!

Geist Force was not going to revolutionize the genre. Some ideas were good, like the possibility of destroying part of the decor. We were going to put people on the streets by destroying their houses!

With a good calibration of the difficulty, an adjustment of the number of enemies present at the same time (there are not enough of them), a tweaking of the graphics, it could have been a good game, especially for one of the first to have to go out on Dreamcast. He could never have dethroned the Nintendo juggernaut.

Information meteor shower from the Kuiper belt

History does not tell us if the Voyager probe encountered Geist Force spacecraft in infinite space.黃心健 Hsin-Chien Huang , the game's artistic director, passed them on his way:

"I was the artistic director in charge of 6 artists + 1 artistic director. The studio, called  SEGA of America , consisted of 4 programmers, 2 game designers, 1 producer, 8 artists. "

The storyline was based on a human who arrived on a planet and befriended a local alien. Then a strange creature that had the ability to turn a machine into a monster appeared. So the human and the alien allied to fight it. The model of the game was Star Fox.

"All the artistic elements were done, the basic flight mechanic had been implemented, so that you could fly through all the levels. 2 maps had been made by the programming team (also with the boss of each level). The 6th was to take place in space. It involved special flight mechanics and was not completed. "

"It was fun working on this game. I am very sad that it was canceled, because I think it could have been a great and fun game ..."

Inspired by Alien films and some Japanese manga, the Team's mission was to create a 3D Shmup on Dreamcast. This Rail shooter was unfortunately canceled. The reason was that the management had decided to close the studios after the end of the development of Geist Force. But this information leaked and the programming team decided to quit before being fired.

"Game development is about solving a continuous succession of problems."

Another major info, a 2-player mode was planned, he confirms to us. Probably for Adventure mode!

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Finally, he offers us 2 videos related to Geist Force. The first was the initial animation proposal for the game (at 1:00). The second is a technical setup video.

Geist Force, initial proposal animation, video presentation at E3 1998

Geist Force, technical configuration video

After research, the original animation proposal video is the one used at E3 1998 to present the game to journalists. Bernie Stolar had said it was in real time when it was wrong. The trade press had been disappointed when they saw Geist Force at TGS 98 a few months later. An old article mentions a stint of a few seconds with a giant spider in a canyon (0:57) as well as floating islands with towns built on them followed by a fight against a species of jellyfish (2:08).

Even though Geist Force leaked back in 2012, finding a new prototype version of the game is always nice, a real honor. It is now possible to see the evolution of the title between the 2 betas, the differences being visible to the naked eye. This prototype version is older than the known one.

Before getting to the heart of the matter, the differences game, it is good to recall some commands of Geist Force and that it has a debug menu:

The orders :

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• joystick: move the ship

• d-pad: choose between the different bomb attacks of button B

• A button: shoot lasers

• Hold A: Lock multiple enemies, releasing A after targeting allows you to shoot locked enemies.

• B: shoot multiple missiles in a burst.

• X + A: another multiple missile attack

• X: speed increase

• tap X: barrel

• Y: short deceleration capacity

• L or R: tilt left and right respectively, L does not work exactly like R (sometimes you have to press R then L for tilt L to work).

• L and R at the same time: brings the ship up in altitude very quickly.

• L + R + START simultaneously: pauses the game, pressing this combination will pause it.
  In 'level selection' mode, unplug and re-plug the controller twice, in order to automatically start the game without a debug menu.

The debug menu (plug in a Japanese keyboard that has the "S3" button in controller port 2):

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• S3: Open debug menus

• D: Open debug options

• U: Open user options

• S: pause the game

• T: Button for switching the menu screen
  Arrow keys: navigate in the menu (after pressing a letter)

• F12: Suicide the player's ship

• F1: Gives the player's ship 9999 shield points

• Z: rapid-fire laser for the player

When you start the game, you get to a level selection screen. Some are unplayable like stage 3 which does not charge or stage 4 which has an invisible barrier above the snowy ridge. Other lands do not have enemies, however they are explorable, like number 5 or Mike's Room (I will come back to this later). Map 6 is absolute nothingness, you will see !!!

Old prototype

New prototype

Looking at this window in detail, we can notice that the build number, date and time are not present.

Stage 2 has  its share of change. At the halfway point, crossing the debris of a crash of an unidentified flying object, the enemies, balls crossing the screen, have a green color and not red. Their appearance is of little importance, they are easily dodged!

Not far from there, at the end of this passage, we should meet 4 monsters which apparently have not yet been implanted. We can therefore continue on our way without fear of having scratches on our space zinc. The bodybuilder must have preferred the old prototype!

Map 5 is  the most interesting of this beta. The level's long, endless intro cutscene does not yet exist. We start directly by piloting our death machine that kills. It was impossible to visit it completely due to a limitation of the scenery. No longer present, we can go to a place that was to serve as an arena against a boss, a kind of power generator. (See the video at the beginning)

Old prototype