We often laud Rare's incredible library of games on the N64, and while the focus has recently been on its seminal movie tie-in shooter GoldenEye 007 over the past week, we want to turn your attention to Perfect Dark for just a few minutes. Footage of one of the game's cut features from E3 1999 has been shared online.
As highlighted by @Musical1250 on Twitter (thanks Time Extension!), the archived footage comes from Hard4Games' YouTube video (see below), as provided to them by livingaretrogaminglife.
Perfect Head mode was intended to use photos imported from the Game Boy Camera via the Transfer Pak. This would allow you to pop your face — albeit a little more polygonal than in real life — onto the heads of guards. The feature was eventually cut from the game due to tech issues, but it was shown off during E3 1999. We've seen screenshots of the mode before, but this is one of the first times we've actually seen it in action!
It's a little uncanny, isn't it? Well, if we were actually N64 character models in real life that is. Maybe. Still, it's pretty impressive, and we would've loved to have seen it make the cut, but that's video game development, folks!
For a better look, Hard4Games' one-hour video covers a bunch of new footage from that same E3 show. You can edit the photo in-game by cropping it and adjusting the lighting, and also change the positioning of the photo on the face. It's... interesting. Perhaps we could've used it to scare our friends, instead.
Even without this feature, Perfect Dark turned out to be a rather excellent shooter, and we'd be lying if we said we didn't want to see it make an appearance on the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pass service.
Let us know what you think of this cut feature in the comments!
[source youtu.be, via twitter.com, timeextension.com]
Comments 38
I reckon it was really banned because of the name.
I thought this was removed because some wieners got mapped to faces during development.
I wonder how something like this could even work on modern platforms, let alone the Duplo brick that was the N64. A fascinating idea with the most unfortunate name.
I remember that at the time my friend group were quite disappointed that they dropped the feature. We were looking forward to running round as ourselves in the game.
<insert obligatory chuckle about the name of the feature, complete with Roger Moore style raised eyebrow>
Was this not banned because they realised people could put photos of Hitler and the like onto faces, or children?
I seem to recall Nintendo took issue with ‘killing’ real people in-game. Perhaps I’m Imagining it. Long time ago.
@Fizza They did it on the Face Raider's game that came with the 3DS. Tearaway on the Vita does some similar things too putting your face as the Sun.
It's actually not that difficult, you're just mapping a texture to a 3D surface, so it's just telling it to take that texture from the camera feed. I mean there's a little more involved, but that's the basic principle. The trouble always is it can never really take your face shape and structure into account, which was theoretically something that the Kinect could do but I don't think it ever used?
@arabiansanchez that was what I heard around the school yard. You could import pictures of people you disliked and shoot them. The Columbine shooting was still fresh in many peoples memories.
Yeah the rumour at the time was they removed it after the Columbine High School shootings
I really could've gone for some Perfect Head. Fairly certain that not just the name, but also the ability to put any face into the game was what ultimately caused it to get cancelled. A fascinating bit of trivia, though!
I recall reading somewhere that some of the guard's faces were actually the developers themselves.
I somehow remember that one of the developers said they were worried kids would put their teachers head in the game to shoot them, so they took out the feature. Basically worried about a backlash. Maybe I read it in N64 magazine, not sure.
@OldManHermit that is correct, there is even an ingame cheat called "Team Heads Only" that only selects the dev's faces/heads instead of completely randomizing the heads from the collection.
Columbine happened and suddenly the media spot light was on violent video games as a potential cause. Putting your school chums faces into a shooting game went from a cool feature to a PR nightmare and presumably was dropped for that reason
Are we not doing phrasing anymore?
I ran around R6: Vegas with my face on.
It looked like an absolute nightmare and I hope my opponents felt the fear.
I remember getting the Zelda edition GameBoy camera just to do this. In those days I would often call the NOA headquarters in Washington to get info on release dates and to order games direct. I called in Spring of '99 to order one and started chatting up one of the reps there. We got to talking about PD and the face mapping feature; she went off: "Oh yeah! Treehouse has it right now. We've been taking turns testing the multiplayer. The face mapping is amazing. It's so cool...". It blew my mind. That's why, roughly a year later, when Miyamoto talked about it's axing and how it 'never worked properly' I didn't believe him. I knew it was a PR thing and Nintendo was afraid kids would take pictures of kids from year books and if a school shooting happened Nintendo did not want to be any part of that. It's really sad, that feature came out for EAs sports games 2 years later with the PlayStation Camera. Nintendo would have been ahead of the curve once again.
Perfect head... giggity!
i remember this! wouldve been cool.
too bad companies that have nothing to do with school violence or real life violence in general have to change their behavior while arms manufacturers and dealers get to pretend its not happening, or even use politics to sell even more weapons off the controversy.
plus yeah like someone said, there was talk of weiner faces. i was a 12 y.o. with a gb camera once...
also, "perfect face." come on guys.
Why is this article only half researched?
Rareware staff working on Perfect Dark have stated in numerous interviews because of high school shootings in the USA Nintendo asked them to remove it. Of course Nintendo's official line was technical issues to save face and avoid fan backlash.
The code is still in the game and can be reactivated and played using a patched PD rom via Everdrive and using a GB camera on real hardware if you have the equipment.
This is also the reason why you have the opportunity to shoot interfering Miyamoto in the back on Pelagic 2.
Even without this feature this game was easy ahead of it's time. Probably still my favorite fps with friends.
@arabiansanchez My memory as well
@Chocobo_Shepherd (et al) You can be sure the phrasing was 100% intentional; old Rare was a team of absolutely incorrigible naughty jokesters when they could get away with it. Doubly so if it happened to dovetail with peculiar Britishisms, as with, say, when they named one of their later games around that time period (for Xbox, RIP the Nintendo-partnership golden age) "Grabbed by the Ghoulies."
I was such a nerd that I captured all of my friend's faces on my GB Camera months before release in preparation. I was extremely disappointed when it was cut.
I heard it was cut because Columbine happened and suddenly the idea of shooting your friends seemed less fun.
This isn't new footage. I've seen it online long before. They definitely cut it because of Columbine. A shame since it would have been fun but understandable.
Just be careful when you Google those words
Hard4Games reporting about Joanna Dark's perfect head, got it...
@liveswired so is there a modified rom of this game available that has the feature reinstated? As in I can take a picture with the GB Camera and upload it into the game via the transfer pak? I have all that stuff (and an Everdrive 64), so could actually do it. I just didn’t realise there was a version of the game that had the feature reinstated.
@Ogbert @Fizza I remember it being a feature of - I think - Rainbow Six 3. You could use a camera to take a photo of your face and map it on to your own character.
Am I the only one who would rather buy N64 games on Switch than locking them behind a service that will be gone one day?!
@Fizza I’m not sure if the function exists in the switch version but I played an NBA2K game on PS4 with a created character that used my scanned face. It looked pretty good, considering the source material.
It's cool to see some footage of the cancelled N64 version of "Eternal Darkness".
@Fath As a non-Brit, what does "Grabbed by the Ghoulies" mean?
I always saw this as a casualty of the school shooting fiasco in the late 90s. However I'm starting to think that the functionality was just a little too lame, uncanny, and more importantly: unpolished (unpolishable?) for a Rareware N64 game.
@Chocobo_Shepherd https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/goolies
@Fath Wow that's... unexpected.
@Chocobo_Shepherd What do you mean by "We're not doing phrasing"?
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