The community around the preservation of the video game recovers for the public a Nintendo 64 shoot'em up
In the early 90s, a new arcade called Viewpoint appeared on the SNK MVS system, one of the few Neo Geo shoot'em up. It was at a time when it was difficult to stand out with a mantamarcianos in the arcades due to the great wave of a few years ago and the new trends that were starting to orbit around the fighting games after the overwhelming success of Street Fighter 2. It was necessary to To have something clearly unique to present in this arena and Aicom thought it had it in the form of a shooter that certainly did not look like (almost) any other thanks to its isometric perspective and 3D elements that gave it a “futuristic” look compared to the use of the usual pixels (the almost goes for Zaxxon, who had a similar perspective). It was a difficult game but really well done, with inspired designs, obstacles that went beyond shooting everything that appeared and a delicious soundtrack, different from the usual in the genre.
It was a success that established the studio in the genre and was the touchstone on which the exceptional Pulstar and Blazing Star stood, which left Aicom / Yumekobo as a great benchmark for the platform – it will not be surprising to know that in the studio Several members of the R-Type team entered. Viewpoint would be taken to different systems, including Mega Drive, FM Towns, the usual domestic versions in AES and CS, X68000 and a version with improved graphics for Playstation quite forgettable due to the absurd change in such a special soundtrack.
This was the classic Viewpoint
The story could have ended there but years later, the producer Sammy commissioned the studio Racdym (later Racjin) to come up with a sequel for the Nintendo 64 that would be called Viewpoint 2064, a polygonal 3D shooting machine that would serve as a successor to the classic. The game had a presence in one of the historic Space World, on August 1999, also listed as "100% complete" and a release date set at November 11, 99. There was even talk of the possibility of taking it to markets international. He would also attend the appointment of the Tokyo Game Show, one last step before reaching the stores … something that never happened. Despite being announced as "finished" and having everything in order apparently to get out, the game simply disappeared from the map and was never heard from again. A shame given the bleak landscape of traditional shoot'em ups on the Nintendo console (which is limited to little less than a version of Space Invaders, another version of Star Soldier and Dezaemon 3D, if we discard some less traditional initiatives such as Sin & Punishment or Bangai-o, which still leaves a meager catalog compared to that of Saturn and PSX)
20 years later, thanks to an anonymous donation and community efforts around video game preservation, it has emerged to download a very mature but not final version of Viewpoint 2064, fully playable by emulation or on a real console if you count with an Everdrive. It is a testing version that allows us to play practically the entire game, with some limitations, and check what the team tried to put on the table: a very interesting game with some very attractive ideas, as well as a very good execution. eye-catching (although a bit confusing) thanks to different camera perspectives throughout each phase.
The exclusive comes from the Hard4Games and Gaming Alexandria channel, which details the process and the circumstances (which can be counted) of this version and how it has finally come into the public domain after being kept secret for a year after the change of owner. . There only seems to be a known original copy, of which something was known from a video recorded by its previous owner, but now it can be safeguarded so that everyone can know it and even enjoy it if we have the right equipment and knowledge for it. .
It is certainly a different game with some curious designs. It has a total of 15 phases, a considerable number, but in each game we will not see them all but it forces us to choose between different routes, so that each game we can see different phases and access three different endings. These are saved and reveal various aspects of history, which revolves around the fragmented "memories" of a planet, which we will have to uncover from game to game to find out what happened to it and, incidentally, find the keys to our past as well . One of the problems of the version is that they have to be played in a specific order or the game breaks – it is not known if there were more planned endings or how it would work exactly, but it is clear that it was necessary to play several times to see the whole game. content-
The action is developed with several perspectives, although the movement of the ship is strictly maintained on a two-dimensional axis, so we do not manage the height of it -in a similar way to the original Viewpoint-. We have a normal shot and the ability to fix enemies to launch a missile salvo – similar in this to After Burner or Panzer Dragoon. We also have satellites in the form of power ups that we can use as shields to accumulate energy, which we can download once it is full in the form of a devastating attack. The music is not as striking as that of the original Viewpoint, but it is not at a bad level and in general it is noted that it is a grounded game. Racdym does not have a great career in the genre, which is noted in the general simplicity of the game, but the previous experience in the use of Nintendo 64 by the creators of Snowboard Kids (who would later make Bomberman 64 and other games) was noted. on the platform).
Thanks to the community around the preservation of the video game, a title that was considered forever lost can claim its place in history and we get to know a new facet of the N64 catalog, proving once again that in the video game, retro is always alive and constantly changing and reviewing.
