Fascinating! It's a crying shame the publishers made you guys use tank controls, and it's an even bigger shame this is considered "one of the worst PS1 games." It controls poorly and the camera isn't very good, but there was so much potential here. I thought the level design was a lot of fun, and the production value was excellent. Very interesting hearing you explain why the camera gets weird when you turn near a wall, that makes a lot of sense.
"just because they are well known" It's not just because he's well known, but also because he did a review of this exact game in which he described how amazing the game was on so many levels (such as detail) except the controls. It's very reliant to his channel as a reviewer who almost exclusively does platform games. Also Nitro Rad only has like 100k subs, which is a lot, but it's not like a super massive popularity or anything. Edit: As a note Nitro Rad's video on this game is probably the whole reason GameHut even released this video, there seems to be a clear connection between points talked about and release dates of the videos.
@@psychonauts0 How else would people know of that review if he wasn't well known? How else would people know him? I've seen his channel, his review(s)". Rascal isn't solely relevant to him. Getting upvotes isn't solely relevant to him. It's usually relevant to popularity.
"It's using all kinds of clever techniques to stop the textures from distorting, which was a big problem on the PlayStation 1." New GameHut video incoming?
From what I know the playstation didn't have any Z buffer, and relied heavily on sorting tris using the painter's algorithm. So I think that the game is using some object midpoint algorithm, and sorting on that. It'd be interesting to actually see what's going on.
IIRC the PS1, like a lot of 3D hardware of the era, lacked perspective-correct texturing and used much less computationally demanding affine texture mapping instead. The effect beingthat the textures appear to warp and wobble as your orientation towards the triangles they're mapped to changes. As I understand it, one common solution is to tessellate (break bigger triangles into smaller triangles) the geometry closest to the player, as smaller triangles meant less noticeable warping. I'd love to hear about what else clever developers came up with.
It's not just the z-buffer. The GPU fundamentally lacked perspective correction for textures on a hardware level. Obviously, there were ways around that (as ControlCardPin and Tanner Schultz pointed out), but it was easily visible in games that didn't take the time to fix it in software (the Twisted Metal series in a HUGE offender on that count... just try getting near any vertical surface in that game and watch the universe warp around you...). I'd say that it was the various ways developers came up with to combat the problem that game the PS1 much of it's very distinctive graphical look (such as shimmering walls, etc.). Although, it's worth pointing out that the competition at the time also had issues with textures (the 4kB limit in N64 giving it's blurriness, the quadrangles in Saturn leading to a similar problem as the PS1, for different reasons, and so on) with perhaps only the failed 3DO (ironically) being the only one without a major issue in that department. Those were some pioneering times. But, hey, they all beat flat-shading!
"use these controls like this popular game that is compete different in style!" it boggles the mind how much the suits don't understand their customers....
3rd person 3D games were a totally new thing back then and Tomb Raider obviously did something right. I totally understand their decision, even if it was the wrong one.
mario 64 came out in 96. the dual analog controller for ps1 came out in 97. rascal came out in 98. i think the publishers had enough time to figure out that tomb raider controls are not necessarily the best for a 3d action game.
Psygnosis were full derp at this moment in time with suggestions. This is the company that changed Wipeout 2097's name to Wipeout XL in the US, as they thought Americans would wonder what happened to the 2095 other sequels! (not a joke)
As a PlayStation fan boy, please make a director's cut of Rascal, Jon! I know Sonic R DX would be amazing, but seeing this game the way it was meant to be would be incredible. The way the textures don't warp and other visual techniques are almost unheard of in 3d games on PS1
The comments ask him to do a director's cut for every single game that he makes a video on. If we really want another director's cut we should pick just one and stick with it. He can't make them all.
Yeah, after commenting, I realized that he probably doesn't even have all of the resources to completely rebuild the game from the ground up. Sonic 3D Blast involved some tweaks, but Rascal is pretty messed up haha. This prototype is just so much more impressive graphically and control-wise than the final product.
@@ReplayStation I'd love to see more of his prototypes released somehow. If we could get "DX" versions of games that'd be killer. I mean, he's got a Patreon, right?
I flew out to the UK 20 years ago to see a batch of Psygnosis games for the magazine I was writing for, and I remember seeing a demo of this at TT when it was a bit further along. We were stunned by the fact that it ran at 60fps on the Playstation. I think TT was working on Sonic R at the same time -- there was obviously a second project going on that they did a good job of covering up during the visit. Can't remember much about the office, but maybe it was in a converted farmhouse? Really high ceilings, I think? Anyway Jon was a fantastic host, thanks again and greetings from Japan!
Couldn't they have compromised and had both control systems? But I thought Tomb Raider only used those controls because of the game was built on a set grid.
Larry Bundy Jr would have been a lot of work to “tune” everything to work with two very different systems. Plus, I just didn’t have the energy to argue... Sonic R was hard...
When the prototype looks and feels better than the finished product, something is wrong. You gotta keep doing these, I love looking at the betas, prototypes, so. The early and unfinished products. They're many a time more interesting than the final game! Thanks for doing this for us!
The most common way to do it is geometry subdivision because smaller polygons are way less likely to warp. Some other devs like Naughty Dog sort of prerendered the perspective each camera frame (I don't know how that works). This game probably checks the camera and the surrounding geometry to do some corrections in software?
The PSX didn't have native support for floating point geometry so all polygon calculations were done as integers. Much of the distortion was due to rounding errors when converting floats to integers. My guess is they used a larger scale so these rounding errors were less noticable; The difference between 1.52 being rounded to 2 or 15.2 being rounded to 15.
Kind of irrelevant, but this is the making of crash bandicoot 1 from the co-founder of naughty dog, Andy Gavin. He explains all the tricks behind the fantastic graphics of the game, i think it says something about polygon distortion as well. Very interesting! all-things-andy-gavin.com/2011/02/02/making-crash-bandicoot-part-1/
That is one of the problems, but that normally resulted in vertex popping or shimmering. The real distortion came from a lack of perspective correction in the PS1 graphics hardware. For a short explanation; the PS1, like most 3D hardware, renders triangles rather than more complex primitives because they're fast and stable. On each vertex of a triangle is a texture coordinate, which tells the hardware how to map a 2D texture onto the triangle. However, since we only have three points on a triangle, we can only make the texture warp parallel to two of the sides of the triangle. So when you have a surface that gets smaller towards the top (Like a trapezoid), it will be made with 2 triangles, neither of which have enough information to take all four vertices into account, so the texture will warp. Perspective correction fixes this by using the depth of the vertices to sort-of reconstruct the missing information, but it requires a divide calculation for every single pixel (Or every few pixels) and back in those days, division was super expensive. If you're curious about learning more about it, look up Perspective Correction on Wikipedia, it has a more thorough explanation. :)
I hated this game as a kid, i couldn't even beat a single stage and i hated the controls, will it ever be possible to make a director's cut of Rascal and fixing the controls?
As someone who's hacked PSX games, yes. You do need special disc imaging tools though - PSX disc images use full 2352-byte sectors instead of the usual 2048-byte data sectors that you're limited to w/ .iso files. I've also done homebrew and successfully tested my stuff on a real modchipped PS1. Also, emulators help a lot here. Even Mednafen has its flaws (mostly pertaining to GPU timing being a bit too kind) but it does get things *mostly* right.
It is theoretically possible (and was done by PSX hackers) but is REALLY tricky and limited. Also prohibitively time consuming. Not even the original devs with full source code are expected to pull it off. In essence it requires one to burn a CD, somehow make the PlayStation execute code off that CD (either modchip or cheat device or exploit of yet another game). At this point you put target game disk in, loader code would then read target executable into memory and hot-patch it before executing. The loader would need to stay in RAM and hook itself to disk code reading subroutines to patch everything else on the fly since measly 2 (TWO) MB of RAM total meant code had to be dynamically loaded. This is not only arduously hard and time consuming, and obviously requires through knowledge of both game and console much beyond official specifications but also likely to require a major game code restructure which is not really an option even for commercial release most of the time. Furthermore, the amount of code that can be patched is very limited, otherwise it would be necessary to sacrifice some gameplay features or even game modes because of such tiny RAM - failing that, constant disk swapping would be necessary. Though it may be possible to store some code onto memory card, reading it back is really slow. Using an emulator that supports some kind of patching would lift a good amount of these problems, but PSX emulators need to use a (copyrighted) BIOS file downloaded from a real PSX (or its replacement) which makes officially endorsing emulation potentially questionable legally.
A fixed up version would be great, but unfortunately I think properly fixing the controls to directional input on the final game would be a lot harder than it initially seems, since the entire game/engine/levels were designed around it in the end. It'd be great, but it'd take more work than it's worth if he couldn't sell the updated version commercially (and he couldn't)
As explained in another comment, hot-patching a PSX game is an achievement of its own and the patch would probably not fit into memory anyway since camera system also needs to be redone.
+Jack White And, as explained in reply to that another comment, it's not too hard, and with a modchipped PS1 or emulator with NoCash BIOS(which is free and legal and works on real PS1 too), you can just push an edited disk image into it and done.
Serious question - was it proposed to the client to keep both control methods and have a toggle in the settings menu? Obviously, hindsight is 20/20 - just curious if that was discussed.
Assuming the controls where what killed it such a toggle could have been the difference between trash and a hidden gem. But as you say hindsight is 20/20
I know I'm two months out now, but...I'm pretty sure they didn't do that because everything would need to be reworked for both, which would eat up a lot of resources. Space and memory-wise. The game needs to be programmed for two different sets of controls and camera movements to make sure no clipping and such happened, like you saw in this video, because the clipping is what causes all the artifacts and weird stuff like items overlapping each other. Then the controls need to be programmed in, of course, and then you have the whole camera system... It'd take a lot of time, effort, energy, and resources. All four of which were probably in extremely limited supply when the decision was made to change it.
I never owned a PSone (well later I did get one for free with a dodgy laser I fixed) and still love those sounds. Although I loved Saturn, Dreamcast and Gamecube intros too. Its sad in some ways modern consoles are always-on so we never get this satisfaction any more. Well except the PS4 where I have the PSone theme. ;)
@@alexatkin Those nostalgia triggers still do exist, you just don't hold nostalgia for them because you're not young anymore. In 20 years you'll probably get the same sensations remembering stuff from now, that is if you allow yourself to form new memories and have new experiences.
The decision they made to keep rotational controls for the game couldn't be any more wrong...What were they thinking? It really is a shame that a game this optimized and technical got the short end of the stick...
Because when 3d was in it's Early days the Devs weren't a 100% sure which would be better... Which is why a GAME PUBBLISHER has even LESS ideas on what to do!
The conviction you have shown during this video shows how genuine you are as a person. I greatly respect you Jon. Not only as a developer, but as a video publisher.
Talk about taking the wrong lessons from the success of Tomb Raider. "Hey, let's make the game have tank controls, that's why Tomb Raider was successful right?" *Facepalm*
It was a success with Tomb Raider...but only because of the type of puzzle game that it was, each block on the ground was designed for that mechanic. Shame some publishers force their bad opinions. As a creative I have been faced with the clients asking for objectively bad decisions without any way of making them see the light, they are much too often the ones with absolutely zero knowlegde on the subjects to boot.
Even back then, publishers were the people with all the clout and none of the understanding. Morons in high places who probably never played a video game before and only knew "what sold before". Trying to make lightning strike the same place. *P:* "If it worked for Tomb Raider, it should work here." *D:* "I'm telling you, with our hands inside this game, up to our elbows in this game's innards, it will be a disaster and nobody will like it. The way _we_ have is better because it is designed for this game." *P:* "Well, do it *_our_* way or we won't fund your project. Also, if it fails, we and everyone else will blame you for your incompetence." It's small wonder so many game devs are going indie, or at least write out in their contracts that they get managerial control of their project, free of executive meddling. Sorry, Jon, but saying "It's my fault too because I was busy elsewhere" isn't going to cut it. I'm not a fly on TT's walls, but it sounds like everyone fought against the publishers as hard as they could, but the ivory towers have the final say.
Noxedwin Tepes Some publishers are still like that. They can get away with poorly designed engines and bad optimization because of more expensive and powerful tech
Paul Westfall Really when you got guys in boardrooms discussing "market metrics" and "whats hot right now", you get no innovation, or bad innovation trying to copy a sucessful formula. It seems like many AAA pubs keep putting out the same game, same engine, just a reskin for your latest IP that your "focus study" told you people wanted. I think that if indie deving hadn't taken off the way it did, I wouldnt play games anymore.
It's because the industry is mostly market-driven instead of design-driven, which is why you get higher ups in these companies more concerned with selling shit than making shit.
Yeah it probably would've been the console's Mario if it actually managed to pull this stuff off... the shooting controls were pretty unique for a platformer of its time, and when you look at the PS1's other platform game offerings like 40 Winks I still think this game was leagues ahead of it, even with all of its flaws.
The thought that they wanted it to have Tomb Raider styled tank controls is baffling. Tomb Raider worked with Tank controls because the entire game was designed around that control scheme. The engine for Rascal looks really nice though. Technically, all of TT's games are competent.
Its really funny because Nitrorad was saying if you could somehow fix the controls and some other minor issues with Rascal the game could be quite good, not a masterpiece but a simple and harmless experience indeed, and you came up with this lovely video XDD Its quite shocking to know that it was meant to be a more traditional platformer and quite possibly a more polished experience than what we got, and yes trying to appeal to the Tomb Raider crowd was the death kiss for this game indeed, if they wanted rotational or "tank controls" for Rascal they should had been tried to mimic Croc's controls instead of Tomb Raider, one its a wacky platformer and the other is a more action oriented exploration-puzzle solving *SLOW* platformer were there is little to none hazzards or even enemies and if they are they dont oppose an inmediate threat for the player like a platformer like Mario 64 or even Croc and Crash have, you dont have crazy stuff flying all over the place in Tomb Raider so this more sluggish and toned down tank controls fits more for the kind of game it is, but for something like Rascal? nope they just dont work at all, and here it shows that the game could had been a more tolerable experience just by the kind of controls it has, because this game has pretty damn cool graphics for an 1998 PSX game and Gran Turismo was the apex of graphical prowess in the PSX era and Rascal sure has pretty damn good graphics, its a shame that the controls are butt ugly untolerable.
1:06 wait, Jim Henson's Creature Shop created the main character design? The same team behind the Muppets and Sesame Street? Sounds like there's more to the story there..
I've always wondered, whats that tune that plays in most of your intros to your videos, its really cool! is it from a game or something or did you compose it yourself?
Yet another example of corporate meddling and bad design decisions being made to "do what the other guys are doing, see, it's all the rage!" That mentality of publishers back in the day seriously neutered some games that could've been shining gems. Very much a fan of you finally showing us how this game could've turned out! As for the future, SUPPORT INDIE DEVS. They are more likely to care about the vision and finesse than appealing to a mass market because it's the hot thing to do. Seriously.
Bubsy 3d is an alright game, and the only reason it has tank controls is because the guys who made Bubsy 3d havent noticed that SM64 came out at the time. And when they did, it was too late for them to fix.
game is designed around how a character can move. If character is made to move like a tank then the rooms are designed with that in mind. If you gave them directional controls as an option the game may of been infinitely easier to beat as it wouldnt be designed for that type of movement.
It sounds like in this case the ability to have the more fluid control scheme would be so widely appreciated due to the fact that those challenges implemented into the game certainly weren't made in mind with a more restrictive movement. So maybe the ability to switch would have been a good idea.
Shortest answer: Adding a "simple" toggle option means they have to do twice as much testing and debugging to ensure that both of them technically work. That's not even counting the ripple effect it has on level design and difficulty...
@@IdealIdeas100 Basically what he said in the video was that the camera loaded things based on what was visible (Probably because of the RAM) so if they fixed the camera for both modes they would have to do twice the work (Plus it could be impossible because of disk space/working memory, not really sure)
Dither-swapping the textures like in the Sonic 3D intro! I love seeing how you and other developers from the earlier days of games combatted problems, i find it a bit sad that we dont have the same sort of issues around anymore unless you're either writing super performant code or developing for some obscure low powered embedded hardware.
oof... if only you guys had playtesters who could compare and contrast the control schemes of both the original intended controls with the dreaded "tank" controls that only worked in few games like Resident Evil
This is out and out sabotage by the publisher, I'm genuinely angry watching this. This game had great level design and super impressive graphics, but the camera and controls made it close to unplayable, and now we know why. I'm truly sorry for you, you seem like a great guy who knew what was best for the project. However, if I detected sarcasm when laughing about the "amazingly unique" character design, I've got to say that's uncalled for. The people at the Henson workshop are some of the very best in the business. If you didn't like the design, you should have asked them to tweak it. I assume maybe you would have done so if you weren't away from the project concentrating on Sonic R. Either way its a shame that such incredible tech nounce was ruined by the rubbish publisher. What you guys were pushing the PS1 and Saturn to do with the engines for this and Sonic R is frankly astounding, doing effects we were all told were "only possible" on the N64, and regardless of what people feel about the finished products I give 100% kudos for what you were able to technically achieve.
Pixels Ltd what I’m saying about the character design is that we spent a lot of money hiring Henson’s and for whatever reason what they came up with was the video game equivalent of Poochie. We didn’t get the talent we paid for - I think we were just assigned a junior and although we worked very hard with them, this is the best we got. Obviously we made Muppet Racemania with them years later so we stayed friends...
Even with the clunky rotational controls, worst PS1 game? REALLY?! Whoever thinks this game is the worst clearly hasn’t heard of Bubsy 3D. And besides, TT’s games were almost always technically impressive even when they weren’t the best to play (which they usually were I might add).
Oh wow, those directional controls really do make all the difference in the world. Also? This PSX game prototype, thanks to the smooth motion and not-so-wobbly polygons, looks like it could easily be an early gen PS2 game.
This is kind of sad... I remember still to this day how hyped I was for Rascal back then after seeing pictures of it in a swedish gaming magazine. But afterwards I heard nothing about the game... But the PSX needed another, more open platformer than crash bandicot was. I wasn't a fan of the nintendo 64 graphics. I preferred the sharper textures than the all smoothed look of the n64, but the PSX never got anything that could competed with mario 64. Rascal could have had been the answer though...
I played this a few months ago, and all I kept repeating was, "This game would be great if not for these controls" Turns out you can't trust the bean counters to make gameplay decisions.
Me and my brother wanted this game so bad when we were kids. His birthday was first, so he got the game, but I was the one who was determined to complete it. And I did. A couple of times. He never did. In fact, he quit after a few attempts. Probably got frustrated because of the tank controls... The music was so catchy that it haunted me many nights in bed.
I'm not going to ask for a full Director's Cut of the game like you did with Sonic, but I don't suppose that there's any way for you to re-implement the controls from the prototype into the final version of the game, and upload it as a patch? I used to collect a bunch of different magazines as a kid, and Rascal was one of those games that I was always really curious about, but since I never had a PlayStation, I never played it for myself. I'd never notice the changes in a full DX version since I've never played the original, but I'm still curious about it. I once played Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness for the N64 on emulator, another game that was criticized heavily on the controls, and since I could remap everything comfortably on a 360 controller, I found it a very fun and enjoyable game. I'm very curious how well Rascal would play with the proper controls as well, and it would be fun to discover just how much of a difference it would make on a blind side-by-side comparison.
It would be fucking amazing to see this game remastered like Spyro and Crash were. It deserves a real chance to be played how it was originally intended to be.
It‘s nice to see how you can „redeem“ yourself with those videos, 20 years after releasing the game and having to endure countless of bad reviews and youtube videos. The prototype looks really good and if it wouldn‘t have been for the change forced on you by the publisher, this game would have been actually quite great.
After Nitro Rad's review, I become alot more interested in the game for alot of its design choices, rather than actually playing the game. Hope to see more on this (if there is anything more)!
I'd love to see a more in depth video about the tech here...there seems to be a lot going on that the hardware can't normally do. I'm particularly interested in how you seem to have almost completely removed the "jiggling" (floating point inaccuracy) most 3D PS1 games suffer from.
It's a shame you can't go back and easily change the final game back to how it was originally intended with a simple switch. Nitro Rad did a very fair video on this game. He doesn't exaggerate the games faults for the sake of been entertaining.
Jon: This is one game that I would like to see a "DX" version for. Rascal is not really a bad game. The gameplay is quite good aside from a couple tiny things and there are a lot of other good qualities about it. The engine is really impressive, I can't believe that it is running at almost 60FPS for the majority of the time. The textures look clean and have little warping. Nice use of light maps and environmental maps too. But the tank controls killed this game. Would it ever be possible to patch some of the camera and control behavior code from the beta to a ROM of the final release? I know you are not the coder of this game.
You know, I wonder, if Rascal DID go with Mario 64-esque controls as initially intended, would the game have gotten better reception? Or would it still be seen as just sort of mediocre regardless of the control setup? Also I'm a bit curious, if the tank/Tomb Raider controls in the final game were actually the publisher's idea instead of yours, would it have been theoretically possible to at least have the option to switch between the Mario 64 and Tomb Raider controls? Or would've that been too complicated for the PS1 to handle/would've ticked off the publishers? In any case, bit intrigued what could've been of Rascal, almost makes it bit more of a shame it had to turn out the way it did.
Oh hell yeah, I've been eager to see you talk about this game once I found out you were a part of it. You have such awesome knowledge on everything you work on or have a part in. The technical aspects of everything are always so impressive to.
2:28 I'm always amazed when business people key off of the most superficial of reasons for a product's success (or failure) in a market, while managing to completely miss the fact it's the effect of the whole which really matters. "Pickles are selling great at the concession stand, let's change out the vanilla for pickle flavored ice cream."
My god. You guys found a way to mitigate the affine texture mapping, polygon warping, and still keep a 60 FPS framerate. I too would love to know how this was done as the PSX is my favorite console.
It's weird seeing a PS1 game with such smooth textures and almost none of the typical artifacts and polygon glitching PS1 has. Very impresssive indeed.
I only ever played the demo of this game, but I remember being utterly perplexed by how unintuitive the controls were - I always felt like I was fighting them, especially after the perfection of Super Mario 64's movement. I just can't understand, especially in the wake of what that N64 classic (and a bunch of others in the time before Rascal) showed us 3D movement could be, why'd you'd be instructed to disregard direct controls for a weirdo tank method. Having never read reviews for this game at the time, was the resounding opinion from games mags YO THE CONTROL IN THIS GAME SUCKS? And if so, what was the publishers reaction when their decision was obviously shown to be an error of judgement that was so way off base, easily avoided if they hadn't meddled? Did they cop it fairly, or as it the usual company thing of obfuscating blame? Did Tt get any misdirected blame thrown at them? I always love your videos, but knowing this decision was made and was beyond your control to push back against has left me so frustrated! :D (Nah, really, it's all good. Amazing behind-the-scenes stuff as usual!)
Mario 64 really was epoch-defining when it came to movement in a 3D space. I remember playing through _Portal Runner_ on the PS2, and its big control problem was the choice of "tank" (rotational) controls.
Could the publishers be worried about how many PlayStation owners had the Analogue Controller? Sony were the last to bring out an analogue pad, with Nintendo and Sega both beating them to it, and it wasn't standard until PS2. Even the PlayStation Classic/Mini is going to be a digital controller only by the looks of things... and back in the day - an Analogue controller meant directional controls, and a D-pad meant tank controls, =S. Croc had tank controls. Deep Fear for Saturn had tank controls with the D-pad or Directional controls with the Analogue stick of the 3D Pad, depending which you used. Typing on a Wii U right now, so sorry if this text doesn't flow too well...
In that case, why couldn't they use both? Tank mode for digital, 3D for Analog. When I started PSX, Dualshock Controller were a "must have". Almost everyone had them back in the 90s.
@@Sypaka To me it was the opposite - nobody I knew had analogue lol I stuck with digital pad for 5 years and was very angry I couldn't play Ape Escape because of "analogue only" controls. Tank controls made sense for digital pad.
That's right Mr. Publisher, Tomb Raider was a great success because of it's amazing controls. What planet were these people on? I used to play the demo of this all the time.
It's fortunate that I haven't played Rascal, but looking at this prototype... yeah. That was a stupid mistake to change the controls. Publishers don't seem to understand game design, unless they ARE the developers. Nintendo, anyone? The only exception to this seems to be Activision, but to a pretty small degree. At least they allow their developers to create what they want and hardly ever interfere... unless it's to cancel a project. Any others that I might have forgotten about?
I absolutely HATE when the prototypes and demos show so much potential, only for the finished product to be WORSE than them because of publishers and executive meddling (i.e. this game, Superman 64, Sonic 06....)
Damn, the same people who made the game that introduced me to video games (LEGO Star Wars) were the same people that made the infamous Sonic R and Rascal. Huh
And this is why publishers should not be allowed to make programming decisions on games. Leave the engine work to the people who actually know what "game engines" are and which controls are more suited to the game. (In fact, publishers, license holders, and marketing types in general should be banned from any process that isn't initial design and QA. They get a lot more wrong than they get it right, from what I've seen of the hot messes they tend to cause. The most obvious one I can think of is how the beta for Superman 64 wound up looking much better than the post-meddling legendary POS DC Comics' marketing team wound up causing with their stupid demands.)
One guy calling it the worst PSX game doesn’t mean much. Busy 3D is universally called the worst PSX game. I just read a few worst PS1 titles lists, and Rascal wasn’t on any of them. There’s much worse out there! You love the dramatic video names, but don’t be so hard on yourself. Also make a directors cut with the controls fixed ! Thanks
What a wonderful video. It's so sad to hear that the publisher forced you all to give the game tank controls. They didn't knew what was best for the game, you guys at TT did. A real shame they essentially sabotaged it.
Imagine someone getting ahold of the rom data and making the controls directional in their own cracked version for the world to play, essentially fixing the worst ps1 game
It's such a shame that this amazing engine ended up being wasted on a game that was only bad due to mismanagement. I hope the person who pushed for rotational controls felt bad when they saw the reviews.
Why do publishers always ruin things. Amazing that you got the PS1 to do all of this. Maybe a rerelease of this game can be released with directional controls
In the prototype, was Rascal's weapon and outfit supposed to match the time era? Would have had each level more unique with more weapons to play with in my opinion.
![FendiDa Rappa - Clock Dat ft. Shamar Marco [Official Music Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/3NBU8KHdxYY/mqdefault.jpg)
![NOSFERATU - Official Trailer [HD] - Only In Theaters December 25](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/nulvWqYUM8k/mqdefault.jpg)
Fascinating! It's a crying shame the publishers made you guys use tank controls, and it's an even bigger shame this is considered "one of the worst PS1 games." It controls poorly and the camera isn't very good, but there was so much potential here. I thought the level design was a lot of fun, and the production value was excellent.
Very interesting hearing you explain why the camera gets weird when you turn near a wall, that makes a lot of sense.
Somehow I knew you'd be in the comments on this one.
Was curious if you saw this video, such a sad fate for this game.
I hate when people get mass upvotes just because they are well known.
Plenty of people surely say the same things and go ignored.
"just because they are well known" It's not just because he's well known, but also because he did a review of this exact game in which he described how amazing the game was on so many levels (such as detail) except the controls. It's very reliant to his channel as a reviewer who almost exclusively does platform games. Also Nitro Rad only has like 100k subs, which is a lot, but it's not like a super massive popularity or anything.
Edit: As a note Nitro Rad's video on this game is probably the whole reason GameHut even released this video, there seems to be a clear connection between points talked about and release dates of the videos.
@@psychonauts0 How else would people know of that review if he wasn't well known? How else would people know him? I've seen his channel, his review(s)". Rascal isn't solely relevant to him. Getting upvotes isn't solely relevant to him. It's usually relevant to popularity.
"It's using all kinds of clever techniques to stop the textures from distorting, which was a big problem on the PlayStation 1."
New GameHut video incoming?
Yes please!
Heck yes that would be great!
From what I know the playstation didn't have any Z buffer, and relied heavily on sorting tris using the painter's algorithm.
So I think that the game is using some object midpoint algorithm, and sorting on that.
It'd be interesting to actually see what's going on.
IIRC the PS1, like a lot of 3D hardware of the era, lacked perspective-correct texturing and used much less computationally demanding affine texture mapping instead. The effect beingthat the textures appear to warp and wobble as your orientation towards the triangles they're mapped to changes. As I understand it, one common solution is to tessellate (break bigger triangles into smaller triangles) the geometry closest to the player, as smaller triangles meant less noticeable warping. I'd love to hear about what else clever developers came up with.
It's not just the z-buffer. The GPU fundamentally lacked perspective correction for textures on a hardware level. Obviously, there were ways around that (as ControlCardPin and Tanner Schultz pointed out), but it was easily visible in games that didn't take the time to fix it in software (the Twisted Metal series in a HUGE offender on that count... just try getting near any vertical surface in that game and watch the universe warp around you...). I'd say that it was the various ways developers came up with to combat the problem that game the PS1 much of it's very distinctive graphical look (such as shimmering walls, etc.). Although, it's worth pointing out that the competition at the time also had issues with textures (the 4kB limit in N64 giving it's blurriness, the quadrangles in Saturn leading to a similar problem as the PS1, for different reasons, and so on) with perhaps only the failed 3DO (ironically) being the only one without a major issue in that department. Those were some pioneering times. But, hey, they all beat flat-shading!
"use these controls like this popular game that is compete different in style!" it boggles the mind how much the suits don't understand their customers....
The game's industry is just *full* of stupid shit like this where clueless execs ruin otherwise great games.
It's not even about understanding customers. It's about understanding function.
@@Aaron-sl9ov I wonder how functions would work like Dead or Alive...!
3rd person 3D games were a totally new thing back then and Tomb Raider obviously did something right. I totally understand their decision, even if it was the wrong one.
mario 64 came out in 96. the dual analog controller for ps1 came out in 97. rascal came out in 98. i think the publishers had enough time to figure out that tomb raider controls are not necessarily the best for a 3d action game.
Psygnosis were full derp at this moment in time with suggestions. This is the company that changed Wipeout 2097's name to Wipeout XL in the US, as they thought Americans would wonder what happened to the 2095 other sequels! (not a joke)
I think they did that as Wipeout XL seemed more like an expansion pack than a sequel.
Good thing they didn't publish the Anno series.
@@EdHarrisonMusic Lol didn't even think of that and a 40th game in a series is far more plausible than a 2097th.
Hello you ! Good to see you here .
Nice plug there mate
As a PlayStation fan boy, please make a director's cut of Rascal, Jon! I know Sonic R DX would be amazing, but seeing this game the way it was meant to be would be incredible. The way the textures don't warp and other visual techniques are almost unheard of in 3d games on PS1
The comments ask him to do a director's cut for every single game that he makes a video on. If we really want another director's cut we should pick just one and stick with it. He can't make them all.
Yeah, after commenting, I realized that he probably doesn't even have all of the resources to completely rebuild the game from the ground up. Sonic 3D Blast involved some tweaks, but Rascal is pretty messed up haha. This prototype is just so much more impressive graphically and control-wise than the final product.
@@ReplayStation I'd love to see more of his prototypes released somehow. If we could get "DX" versions of games that'd be killer.
I mean, he's got a Patreon, right?
I assure you, Jon Burton does not need a Patreon.
I wonder if even just a quick hack to use directional controls in the final game would make it decent.
I flew out to the UK 20 years ago to see a batch of Psygnosis games for the magazine I was writing for, and I remember seeing a demo of this at TT when it was a bit further along. We were stunned by the fact that it ran at 60fps on the Playstation. I think TT was working on Sonic R at the same time -- there was obviously a second project going on that they did a good job of covering up during the visit. Can't remember much about the office, but maybe it was in a converted farmhouse? Really high ceilings, I think? Anyway Jon was a fantastic host, thanks again and greetings from Japan!
Sweet.
Couldn't they have compromised and had both control systems? But I thought Tomb Raider only used those controls because of the game was built on a set grid.
Larry Bundy Jr would have been a lot of work to “tune” everything to work with two very different systems. Plus, I just didn’t have the energy to argue... Sonic R was hard...
@@GameHut you developers don’t get the love you deserve
When the prototype looks and feels better than the finished product, something is wrong.
You gotta keep doing these, I love looking at the betas, prototypes, so. The early and unfinished products. They're many a time more interesting than the final game! Thanks for doing this for us!
Would love to hear about how you solved the texture/polygon distortion on the PSX.
Me too, I have seen a few games solve it but an explanation would be interesting.
The most common way to do it is geometry subdivision because smaller polygons are way less likely to warp. Some other devs like Naughty Dog sort of prerendered the perspective each camera frame (I don't know how that works). This game probably checks the camera and the surrounding geometry to do some corrections in software?
The PSX didn't have native support for floating point geometry so all polygon calculations were done as integers. Much of the distortion was due to rounding errors when converting floats to integers. My guess is they used a larger scale so these rounding errors were less noticable; The difference between 1.52 being rounded to 2 or 15.2 being rounded to 15.
Kind of irrelevant, but this is the making of crash bandicoot 1 from the co-founder of naughty dog, Andy Gavin. He explains all the tricks behind the fantastic graphics of the game, i think it says something about polygon distortion as well. Very interesting! all-things-andy-gavin.com/2011/02/02/making-crash-bandicoot-part-1/
That is one of the problems, but that normally resulted in vertex popping or shimmering. The real distortion came from a lack of perspective correction in the PS1 graphics hardware. For a short explanation; the PS1, like most 3D hardware, renders triangles rather than more complex primitives because they're fast and stable. On each vertex of a triangle is a texture coordinate, which tells the hardware how to map a 2D texture onto the triangle. However, since we only have three points on a triangle, we can only make the texture warp parallel to two of the sides of the triangle. So when you have a surface that gets smaller towards the top (Like a trapezoid), it will be made with 2 triangles, neither of which have enough information to take all four vertices into account, so the texture will warp. Perspective correction fixes this by using the depth of the vertices to sort-of reconstruct the missing information, but it requires a divide calculation for every single pixel (Or every few pixels) and back in those days, division was super expensive.
If you're curious about learning more about it, look up Perspective Correction on Wikipedia, it has a more thorough explanation. :)
I hated this game as a kid, i couldn't even beat a single stage and i hated the controls, will it ever be possible to make a director's cut of Rascal and fixing the controls?
Hear, hear! Director's cut!
I'd imagine its tricky with there being no legal way to download it that can be patched. We got lucky with Sonic due to Steams mod system.
Plus, is it even possible to hack a PSX game? I know you can use stuff like gameshark to mess around woth the game, but to actually hack it?
As someone who's hacked PSX games, yes. You do need special disc imaging tools though - PSX disc images use full 2352-byte sectors instead of the usual 2048-byte data sectors that you're limited to w/ .iso files. I've also done homebrew and successfully tested my stuff on a real modchipped PS1.
Also, emulators help a lot here. Even Mednafen has its flaws (mostly pertaining to GPU timing being a bit too kind) but it does get things *mostly* right.
It is theoretically possible (and was done by PSX hackers) but is REALLY tricky and limited. Also prohibitively time consuming. Not even the original devs with full source code are expected to pull it off.
In essence it requires one to burn a CD, somehow make the PlayStation execute code off that CD (either modchip or cheat device or exploit of yet another game). At this point you put target game disk in, loader code would then read target executable into memory and hot-patch it before executing. The loader would need to stay in RAM and hook itself to disk code reading subroutines to patch everything else on the fly since measly 2 (TWO) MB of RAM total meant code had to be dynamically loaded.
This is not only arduously hard and time consuming, and obviously requires through knowledge of both game and console much beyond official specifications but also likely to require a major game code restructure which is not really an option even for commercial release most of the time.
Furthermore, the amount of code that can be patched is very limited, otherwise it would be necessary to sacrifice some gameplay features or even game modes because of such tiny RAM - failing that, constant disk swapping would be necessary. Though it may be possible to store some code onto memory card, reading it back is really slow.
Using an emulator that supports some kind of patching would lift a good amount of these problems, but PSX emulators need to use a (copyrighted) BIOS file downloaded from a real PSX (or its replacement) which makes officially endorsing emulation potentially questionable legally.
Omg this actually looked like good?? A DX version of this would be so rad!!
Nitro Rad? ;)
A fixed up version would be great, but unfortunately I think properly fixing the controls to directional input on the final game would be a lot harder than it initially seems, since the entire game/engine/levels were designed around it in the end.
It'd be great, but it'd take more work than it's worth if he couldn't sell the updated version commercially (and he couldn't)
@@theSato very true. Just thought it would be neat if it happened :)
Someone should make a hack that re-implements directional controls.
As explained in another comment, hot-patching a PSX game is an achievement of its own and the patch would probably not fit into memory anyway since camera system also needs to be redone.
+Jack White
And, as explained in reply to that another comment, it's not too hard, and with a modchipped PS1 or emulator with NoCash BIOS(which is free and legal and works on real PS1 too), you can just push an edited disk image into it and done.
So disheartening that the publishers couldn’t comprehend feedback from the team.
Serious question - was it proposed to the client to keep both control methods and have a toggle in the settings menu? Obviously, hindsight is 20/20 - just curious if that was discussed.
Assuming the controls where what killed it such a toggle could have been the difference between trash and a hidden gem. But as you say hindsight is 20/20
I know I'm two months out now, but...I'm pretty sure they didn't do that because everything would need to be reworked for both, which would eat up a lot of resources. Space and memory-wise. The game needs to be programmed for two different sets of controls and camera movements to make sure no clipping and such happened, like you saw in this video, because the clipping is what causes all the artifacts and weird stuff like items overlapping each other. Then the controls need to be programmed in, of course, and then you have the whole camera system...
It'd take a lot of time, effort, energy, and resources. All four of which were probably in extremely limited supply when the decision was made to change it.
Ps1 bios sound.....ears pleased!
I never owned a PSone (well later I did get one for free with a dodgy laser I fixed) and still love those sounds. Although I loved Saturn, Dreamcast and Gamecube intros too.
Its sad in some ways modern consoles are always-on so we never get this satisfaction any more. Well except the PS4 where I have the PSone theme. ;)
@@alexatkin Those nostalgia triggers still do exist, you just don't hold nostalgia for them because you're not young anymore. In 20 years you'll probably get the same sensations remembering stuff from now, that is if you allow yourself to form new memories and have new experiences.
The decision they made to keep rotational controls for the game couldn't be any more wrong...What were they thinking?
It really is a shame that a game this optimized and technical got the short end of the stick...
Because when 3d was in it's Early days the Devs weren't a 100% sure which would be better...
Which is why a GAME PUBBLISHER has even LESS ideas on what to do!
Human idiocy making something good bad in matter of seconds yet again.
The conviction you have shown during this video shows how genuine you are as a person. I greatly respect you Jon. Not only as a developer, but as a video publisher.
Yeah I think it's cool of him to own up to his share of the blame
Liam He is a venerable guy. I really respect him.
I agree that the publisher messed up with that descision
Talk about taking the wrong lessons from the success of Tomb Raider. "Hey, let's make the game have tank controls, that's why Tomb Raider was successful right?" *Facepalm*
It was a success with Tomb Raider...but only because of the type of puzzle game that it was, each block on the ground was designed for that mechanic. Shame some publishers force their bad opinions. As a creative I have been faced with the clients asking for objectively bad decisions without any way of making them see the light, they are much too often the ones with absolutely zero knowlegde on the subjects to boot.
This breaks my heart, so much potential
Even back then, publishers were the people with all the clout and none of the understanding. Morons in high places who probably never played a video game before and only knew "what sold before". Trying to make lightning strike the same place.
*P:* "If it worked for Tomb Raider, it should work here."
*D:* "I'm telling you, with our hands inside this game, up to our elbows in this game's innards, it will be a disaster and nobody will like it. The way _we_ have is better because it is designed for this game."
*P:* "Well, do it *_our_* way or we won't fund your project. Also, if it fails, we and everyone else will blame you for your incompetence."
It's small wonder so many game devs are going indie, or at least write out in their contracts that they get managerial control of their project, free of executive meddling.
Sorry, Jon, but saying "It's my fault too because I was busy elsewhere" isn't going to cut it. I'm not a fly on TT's walls, but it sounds like everyone fought against the publishers as hard as they could, but the ivory towers have the final say.
Noxedwin Tepes Some publishers are still like that. They can get away with poorly designed engines and bad optimization because of more expensive and powerful tech
Paul Westfall
Really when you got guys in boardrooms discussing "market metrics" and "whats hot right now", you get no innovation, or bad innovation trying to copy a sucessful formula.
It seems like many AAA pubs keep putting out the same game, same engine, just a reskin for your latest IP that your "focus study" told you people wanted.
I think that if indie deving hadn't taken off the way it did, I wouldnt play games anymore.
I agreee its extremely sad to see how many projects, regardless of the medium, get ruined by someone who has literally no concept of the medium.
It's because the industry is mostly market-driven instead of design-driven, which is why you get higher ups in these companies more concerned with selling shit than making shit.
Yeah it probably would've been the console's Mario if it actually managed to pull this stuff off... the shooting controls were pretty unique for a platformer of its time, and when you look at the PS1's other platform game offerings like 40 Winks I still think this game was leagues ahead of it, even with all of its flaws.
The thought that they wanted it to have Tomb Raider styled tank controls is baffling. Tomb Raider worked with Tank controls because the entire game was designed around that control scheme.
The engine for Rascal looks really nice though. Technically, all of TT's games are competent.
Its really funny because Nitrorad was saying if you could somehow fix the controls and some other minor issues with Rascal the game could be quite good, not a masterpiece but a simple and harmless experience indeed, and you came up with this lovely video XDD
Its quite shocking to know that it was meant to be a more traditional platformer and quite possibly a more polished experience than what we got, and yes trying to appeal to the Tomb Raider crowd was the death kiss for this game indeed, if they wanted rotational or "tank controls" for Rascal they should had been tried to mimic Croc's controls instead of Tomb Raider, one its a wacky platformer and the other is a more action oriented exploration-puzzle solving *SLOW* platformer were there is little to none hazzards or even enemies and if they are they dont oppose an inmediate threat for the player like a platformer like Mario 64 or even Croc and Crash have, you dont have crazy stuff flying all over the place in Tomb Raider so this more sluggish and toned down tank controls fits more for the kind of game it is, but for something like Rascal? nope they just dont work at all, and here it shows that the game could had been a more tolerable experience just by the kind of controls it has, because this game has pretty damn cool graphics for an 1998 PSX game and Gran Turismo was the apex of graphical prowess in the PSX era and Rascal sure has pretty damn good graphics, its a shame that the controls are butt ugly untolerable.
1:06 wait, Jim Henson's Creature Shop created the main character design? The same team behind the Muppets and Sesame Street? Sounds like there's more to the story there..
and yet it looks like something out of the NES era, like Treasure Master.
@@moosemaimer Hah, I think TT would have been better off designing their own character.
The character comes off as a severe case of "Greetings, fellow kids" from 1994 maybe?
I've always wondered, whats that tune that plays in most of your intros to your videos, its really cool! is it from a game or something or did you compose it yourself?
I believe I came across it from the royalty free audio section that youtube offers when editing videos on this site.
Yet another example of corporate meddling and bad design decisions being made to "do what the other guys are doing, see, it's all the rage!" That mentality of publishers back in the day seriously neutered some games that could've been shining gems. Very much a fan of you finally showing us how this game could've turned out! As for the future, SUPPORT INDIE DEVS. They are more likely to care about the vision and finesse than appealing to a mass market because it's the hot thing to do. Seriously.
I'll support indie devs when they actually make a game worth giving a damn about.
@@LOOMING_WRAITH_OF_BAD_OMENSupport good developers that make good games and gatekeep THE MESSAGE out*
How could one consider this the worst PSX game ever Bubsy 3D takes me he cake for this
Why do I feel like you haven't played neither of the games?
Bubsy 3D is bad but far from the worst PS1 game. Psybadek is contender for THE worst game on it.
Bubsy 3d is an alright game, and the only reason it has tank controls is because the guys who made Bubsy 3d havent noticed that SM64 came out at the time. And when they did, it was too late for them to fix.
Welfz Twingo Furs because I haven’t
+Nerd_in_a_Nutshell There. Not playing a game makes it kind of bullshit to say it's worst than something else that you haven't played either.
Why did you not have the option to just switch between the two control modes?
game is designed around how a character can move. If character is made to move like a tank then the rooms are designed with that in mind. If you gave them directional controls as an option the game may of been infinitely easier to beat as it wouldnt be designed for that type of movement.
It sounds like in this case the ability to have the more fluid control scheme would be so widely appreciated due to the fact that those challenges implemented into the game certainly weren't made in mind with a more restrictive movement.
So maybe the ability to switch would have been a good idea.
Shortest answer: Adding a "simple" toggle option means they have to do twice as much testing and debugging to ensure that both of them technically work.
That's not even counting the ripple effect it has on level design and difficulty...
@@IdealIdeas100 Basically what he said in the video was that the camera loaded things based on what was visible (Probably because of the RAM) so if they fixed the camera for both modes they would have to do twice the work (Plus it could be impossible because of disk space/working memory, not really sure)
Dither-swapping the textures like in the Sonic 3D intro!
I love seeing how you and other developers from the earlier days of games combatted problems, i find it a bit sad that we dont have the same sort of issues around anymore unless you're either writing super performant code or developing for some obscure low powered embedded hardware.
Shows dithering at low framerate, cool effect... Can't unsee it now, though.
Nice textures,love that it runs with 60 frames,lets make a racing game with this engine :)
oof... if only you guys had playtesters who could compare and contrast the control schemes of both the original intended controls with the dreaded "tank" controls that only worked in few games like Resident Evil
This is out and out sabotage by the publisher, I'm genuinely angry watching this. This game had great level design and super impressive graphics, but the camera and controls made it close to unplayable, and now we know why. I'm truly sorry for you, you seem like a great guy who knew what was best for the project. However, if I detected sarcasm when laughing about the "amazingly unique" character design, I've got to say that's uncalled for. The people at the Henson workshop are some of the very best in the business. If you didn't like the design, you should have asked them to tweak it. I assume maybe you would have done so if you weren't away from the project concentrating on Sonic R.
Either way its a shame that such incredible tech nounce was ruined by the rubbish publisher. What you guys were pushing the PS1 and Saturn to do with the engines for this and Sonic R is frankly astounding, doing effects we were all told were "only possible" on the N64, and regardless of what people feel about the finished products I give 100% kudos for what you were able to technically achieve.
calm down about him teasing the character design, im sure all he meant was that it's a little on the nose. he's not exactly saying they're trash
Pixels Ltd what I’m saying about the character design is that we spent a lot of money hiring Henson’s and for whatever reason what they came up with was the video game equivalent of Poochie. We didn’t get the talent we paid for - I think we were just assigned a junior and although we worked very hard with them, this is the best we got. Obviously we made Muppet Racemania with them years later so we stayed friends...
O shit jons goin hard
I was really impressed by the reflections
Rascal Remastered with proper controls: Make it happen!
Holy damn, the game runs at 60fps?
This looks like an early PS2 demo. Very impressive.
Uh.... No...
Looks amazing for a PS1 game! This engine would have been great for a Zelda type PS1 adventure game
Even with the clunky rotational controls, worst PS1 game? REALLY?! Whoever thinks this game is the worst clearly hasn’t heard of Bubsy 3D. And besides, TT’s games were almost always technically impressive even when they weren’t the best to play (which they usually were I might add).
Oh wow, those directional controls really do make all the difference in the world. Also? This PSX game prototype, thanks to the smooth motion and not-so-wobbly polygons, looks like it could easily be an early gen PS2 game.
Having never played the released version I would have appreciated even a 30 sec comparison.
You can buy a copy for $3 and emulate it on your PC if that's your cup of tea.
The sad thing is this could have been considered a classic if the Publisher didn't steer the project to their vision
Hey, I know you
It's always Sonic R's fault
This is kind of sad... I remember still to this day how hyped I was for Rascal back then after seeing pictures of it in a swedish gaming magazine. But afterwards I heard nothing about the game... But the PSX needed another, more open platformer than crash bandicot was. I wasn't a fan of the nintendo 64 graphics. I preferred the sharper textures than the all smoothed look of the n64, but the PSX never got anything that could competed with mario 64. Rascal could have had been the answer though...
I played this a few months ago, and all I kept repeating was, "This game would be great if not for these controls" Turns out you can't trust the bean counters to make gameplay decisions.
Tragic decision on a potentially great title.
Me and my brother wanted this game so bad when we were kids. His birthday was first, so he got the game, but I was the one who was determined to complete it. And I did. A couple of times. He never did. In fact, he quit after a few attempts. Probably got frustrated because of the tank controls...
The music was so catchy that it haunted me many nights in bed.
I'm not going to ask for a full Director's Cut of the game like you did with Sonic, but I don't suppose that there's any way for you to re-implement the controls from the prototype into the final version of the game, and upload it as a patch? I used to collect a bunch of different magazines as a kid, and Rascal was one of those games that I was always really curious about, but since I never had a PlayStation, I never played it for myself.
I'd never notice the changes in a full DX version since I've never played the original, but I'm still curious about it. I once played Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness for the N64 on emulator, another game that was criticized heavily on the controls, and since I could remap everything comfortably on a 360 controller, I found it a very fun and enjoyable game. I'm very curious how well Rascal would play with the proper controls as well, and it would be fun to discover just how much of a difference it would make on a blind side-by-side comparison.
"What Went Wrong?" executive meddling, sadly. shame really since it looks like a fun game otherwise.
I always get a laugh at your thumbnails, they always get me
It would be fucking amazing to see this game remastered like Spyro and Crash were. It deserves a real chance to be played how it was originally intended to be.
It‘s nice to see how you can „redeem“ yourself with those videos, 20 years after releasing the game and having to endure countless of bad reviews and youtube videos. The prototype looks really good and if it wouldn‘t have been for the change forced on you by the publisher, this game would have been actually quite great.
After Nitro Rad's review, I become alot more interested in the game for alot of its design choices, rather than actually playing the game. Hope to see more on this (if there is anything more)!
So, can we expect Rascal Director's Cut with fixed controls?
If you ask me, Sonic R wasn't worth ruining this game.
Can someone make a mod for Rascal where it utilizes the directional controls?
I'd love to see a more in depth video about the tech here...there seems to be a lot going on that the hardware can't normally do. I'm particularly interested in how you seem to have almost completely removed the "jiggling" (floating point inaccuracy) most 3D PS1 games suffer from.
It's a shame you can't go back and easily change the final game back to how it was originally intended with a simple switch. Nitro Rad did a very fair video on this game. He doesn't exaggerate the games faults for the sake of been entertaining.
I wonder what would happen if "someone" patched the game nowadays and would "accidentally" upload it ^^
Jon: This is one game that I would like to see a "DX" version for.
Rascal is not really a bad game. The gameplay is quite good aside from a couple tiny things and there are a lot of other good qualities about it. The engine is really impressive, I can't believe that it is running at almost 60FPS for the majority of the time. The textures look clean and have little warping. Nice use of light maps and environmental maps too.
But the tank controls killed this game. Would it ever be possible to patch some of the camera and control behavior code from the beta to a ROM of the final release? I know you are not the coder of this game.
You know, I wonder, if Rascal DID go with Mario 64-esque controls as initially intended, would the game have gotten better reception? Or would it still be seen as just sort of mediocre regardless of the control setup?
Also I'm a bit curious, if the tank/Tomb Raider controls in the final game were actually the publisher's idea instead of yours, would it have been theoretically possible to at least have the option to switch between the Mario 64 and Tomb Raider controls? Or would've that been too complicated for the PS1 to handle/would've ticked off the publishers?
In any case, bit intrigued what could've been of Rascal, almost makes it bit more of a shame it had to turn out the way it did.
Oh hell yeah, I've been eager to see you talk about this game once I found out you were a part of it. You have such awesome knowledge on everything you work on or have a part in. The technical aspects of everything are always so impressive to.
The title screen is so cool. The way it is a freeze frame, and then you press start....boom straight away!
I call rotational controls “tank controls,” since they usually allow you to turn in place.
I want the rom of this beta
Would be interesting if someone could release a patch to fix it.
2:28 I'm always amazed when business people key off of the most superficial of reasons for a product's success (or failure) in a market, while managing to completely miss the fact it's the effect of the whole which really matters. "Pickles are selling great at the concession stand, let's change out the vanilla for pickle flavored ice cream."
I would imagine this is probably far from the only game that was ruined due to an inept publisher.
check out executive meddling on the crappy games wiki for a big ol' list of this kind of stuff, it also includes a link to this video
It stinks that they made the mistake of changing the controls. I didn't know about this game until I saw NitroRad's review of it.
My god. You guys found a way to mitigate the affine texture mapping, polygon warping, and still keep a 60 FPS framerate.
I too would love to know how this was done as the PSX is my favorite console.
It's weird seeing a PS1 game with such smooth textures and almost none of the typical artifacts and polygon glitching PS1 has. Very impresssive indeed.
I only ever played the demo of this game, but I remember being utterly perplexed by how unintuitive the controls were - I always felt like I was fighting them, especially after the perfection of Super Mario 64's movement. I just can't understand, especially in the wake of what that N64 classic (and a bunch of others in the time before Rascal) showed us 3D movement could be, why'd you'd be instructed to disregard direct controls for a weirdo tank method.
Having never read reviews for this game at the time, was the resounding opinion from games mags YO THE CONTROL IN THIS GAME SUCKS? And if so, what was the publishers reaction when their decision was obviously shown to be an error of judgement that was so way off base, easily avoided if they hadn't meddled? Did they cop it fairly, or as it the usual company thing of obfuscating blame? Did Tt get any misdirected blame thrown at them?
I always love your videos, but knowing this decision was made and was beyond your control to push back against has left me so frustrated! :D (Nah, really, it's all good. Amazing behind-the-scenes stuff as usual!)
Mario 64 really was epoch-defining when it came to movement in a 3D space.
I remember playing through _Portal Runner_ on the PS2, and its big control problem was the choice of "tank" (rotational) controls.
I hope the guy forcing rotational control was fired after the game flopped.
Could the publishers be worried about how many PlayStation owners had the Analogue Controller? Sony were the last to bring out an analogue pad, with Nintendo and Sega both beating them to it, and it wasn't standard until PS2. Even the PlayStation Classic/Mini is going to be a digital controller only by the looks of things... and back in the day - an Analogue controller meant directional controls, and a D-pad meant tank controls, =S. Croc had tank controls. Deep Fear for Saturn had tank controls with the D-pad or Directional controls with the Analogue stick of the 3D Pad, depending which you used. Typing on a Wii U right now, so sorry if this text doesn't flow too well...
In that case, why couldn't they use both?
Tank mode for digital, 3D for Analog.
When I started PSX, Dualshock Controller were a "must have".
Almost everyone had them back in the 90s.
@@Sypaka To me it was the opposite - nobody I knew had analogue lol I stuck with digital pad for 5 years and was very angry I couldn't play Ape Escape because of "analogue only" controls. Tank controls made sense for digital pad.
It's crazy that for being a seemingly 3d-focused console, the PS1 hardware does not calculate anything in 3D.
That's right Mr. Publisher, Tomb Raider was a great success because of it's amazing controls. What planet were these people on?
I used to play the demo of this all the time.
And this is why publishers should have no rights to force or decide what mechanic/system will be used in the game.
That shiny armor is something else.
It's fortunate that I haven't played Rascal, but looking at this prototype... yeah. That was a stupid mistake to change the controls.
Publishers don't seem to understand game design, unless they ARE the developers. Nintendo, anyone?
The only exception to this seems to be Activision, but to a pretty small degree. At least they allow their developers to create what they want and hardly ever interfere... unless it's to cancel a project. Any others that I might have forgotten about?
They even fixed the texture warp! That's insane!
That golden shield is so gorgeous!
I absolutely HATE when the prototypes and demos show so much potential, only for the finished product to be WORSE than them because of publishers and executive meddling (i.e. this game, Superman 64, Sonic 06....)
Damn, the same people who made the game that introduced me to video games (LEGO Star Wars) were the same people that made the infamous Sonic R and Rascal.
Huh
Tomb Raiders controls is Specifically why I never could get into that franchise... :(
Any plan for a Rascal Director Cuts with analogs controls ?
And this is why publishers should not be allowed to make programming decisions on games. Leave the engine work to the people who actually know what "game engines" are and which controls are more suited to the game.
(In fact, publishers, license holders, and marketing types in general should be banned from any process that isn't initial design and QA. They get a lot more wrong than they get it right, from what I've seen of the hot messes they tend to cause. The most obvious one I can think of is how the beta for Superman 64 wound up looking much better than the post-meddling legendary POS DC Comics' marketing team wound up causing with their stupid demands.)
Top 10 Anime Betrayals
One guy calling it the worst PSX game doesn’t mean much. Busy 3D is universally called the worst PSX game. I just read a few worst PS1 titles lists, and Rascal wasn’t on any of them. There’s much worse out there! You love the dramatic video names, but don’t be so hard on yourself. Also make a directors cut with the controls fixed ! Thanks
What a wonderful video. It's so sad to hear that the publisher forced you all to give the game tank controls. They didn't knew what was best for the game, you guys at TT did. A real shame they essentially sabotaged it.
I actually like this game!
Me too. I had it on PSX and completed it. At the time the controls never bothered me.
Ohhh the irony, nowadays nobody uses rotational controls anymore! Because everyone knows directional controls is superior!
I’d like to know how the texture warping was fixed
Imagine someone getting ahold of the rom data and making the controls directional in their own cracked version for the world to play, essentially fixing the worst ps1 game
I would love to see a mod for _Rascal_ that switches the controls back.
It's such a shame that this amazing engine ended up being wasted on a game that was only bad due to mismanagement. I hope the person who pushed for rotational controls felt bad when they saw the reviews.
Does anyone else think this guy has an ASMR voice?
Why do publishers always ruin things.
Amazing that you got the PS1 to do all of this.
Maybe a rerelease of this game can be released with directional controls
Would love to hear some more about the techniques you used for some of these effects and reducing the texture warping on the PS1
STOP TEASING US AND KICKSTART A NEW GAME MY WALLET IS READY
Okay gang, show of hands: who wants a Rascal DX hack with the old directional controls?
In the prototype, was Rascal's weapon and outfit supposed to match the time era? Would have had each level more unique with more weapons to play with in my opinion.
1:25 RTX ON
This is so sad really... This would've been a great game!