Liam Robertson dug deep into the development and troubles surrounding Project H.A.M.M.E.R. earlier this year.Today, Robertson published a new report that sheds even more light on the cancelled Wii game.

Here are a few highlights:

– Shigeru Miyamoto wasn’t happy that NST spent over $1 million on lavish CGI sequences which were ordered the game design was concrete and before the game’s reveal in 2006
– Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2: March of the Minis also featured cut-scenes from Silver Ant for a high sum of money
– This all caused the person in charge of budgetary concerns on both H.A.M.M.E.R. and Mario vs Donkey Kong 2 getting a slapped wrist from Miyamoto
– Miyamoto branded the investment in CGI “superfluous”
– This ended NST’s relationship with Silver Ant
– Katsuhiko Kanno was the person in charge at the game’s inception
– Kanno was apparently “difficult to work with”, “rude” and “uncooperative”
– Around this time, is is thought that a large number of NST staff left the company under their own volition
– Staff count at NST dropped from 50 to about half of that
– To steady the ship staff were moved onto the project from elsewhere in Nintendo’s North American network
– Metroid Prime level designer Jason Behr was brought on to bring things back on course
– Behr found himself singled out as a scapegoat for the game’s shortcomings
– Behr stayed on until around 2008, and would leave NST to join Monolith Productions
– Senior staff at NST finally spotted the friction between Kanno and his team
– He was removed from the project in 2007 and replaced by Masamichi Abe (Pikmin 1 and 2 director)
– Metroid Prime producer Kensuke Tanabe joined in a supervisory role towards the end of the project
– He didn’t have much of an impact, and only visited NST’s offices a handful of times
– Project H.A.M.M.E.R. would be re-tooled as Wii Crush, a casual title aimed at the Wii Sports audience
– Would have supported MotionPlus
– Project cancelled entirely in 2009

You can see the latest report on Project H.A.M.M.E.R. in its entirety below.

Source

More: NST, Project H.AM.M.E.R., top

A look into what went wrong with Project H.AM.M.E.R.

Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Videos, Wii | 26 Comments

Unseen64’s Liam Robertson has posted a new video that looks into the various issues Project H.AM.M.E.R. encountered while in development. It also explores problems within Nintendo Software Technology as a whole, including apparent racism.

You can watch the full video below. There’s also a quick summary that can be read as well.

– After 1080, NST went on to start a new project (a small team that outsourced concept art, CGI opening, etc)
– The internal name for the project was MachineX
– In 2005 it had reached 75% completion and was nearing completion
– Japanese staff were overseeing the development at the studio which posed cultural challenges
– There were continued arguments and debate between the Japanese management and the NST developers
– At late 2007, it was 4 years in development
– Towards the end, changes were demanded to the environments and then the entire visuals
– This complete change despite mechanics eventually culminated in a more ‘lighter, casual’ visual style that was codenamed Wii Crush
– 2008 onwards, staff left
– Nintendo of America had to carry out a review of staff conditions which recorded a low morale
– Midway into 2009, a small number of staff still continued to work onto it until it ended
– NCL finally withdrew funding
– ‘Nintendo have made some great games, but with NST it came with a price’: Former NST developer

Thanks to Jake and Fred for the tip.

Source, Via