Eternal Darkness (lost build of finished Nintendo 64 survival horror game; 1998-2000)

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Title screen of the GameCube version of Eternal Darkness.

Status: Lost


Eternal Darkness is a survival horror game developed for the Nintendo GameCube, released on June 24, 2002. However, it was originally developed as a Nintendo 64 game in 1999. The story was to follow the return of The Ancients, a tribe that existed before humanity on their hunt to claim Earth. 13 people from different time periods all unite in order to destroy the Ancients once and for all and save Earth. The game was in the final stages of development before it was scrapped on November 29, 2000 in favor of remaking the game for the newly released GameCube

Features

Eternal Darkness was, during development, the first Nintendo 64 game that ran at 640x480 resolution without the use of the RAM expansion pak, but putting it in the game was optional. The only thing effect of putting it in was additional effects It was reportedly so unbelievable that Nintendo inspected the development kit that the game was running on just to make sure the expansion pack was not installed. A cartridge with a capacity of 256 megabits would have been required just to support all of the voice lines, recorded in Dolby surround.

Differences Between The N64 Version & The GCN Version

Rather than having just the 12 characters present in the GameCube version, the Nintendo 64 had an additional character called Joseph De Molay. De Moly would have roamed around a castle and was a lot slower than most other characters in the game. He was featured in the 1999 E3 demo of the game. The character Michael Edwards was going to be a Gulf War commando rather than a firefighter. Both were taken out of the Gamecube version due to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Sanity effects were also meant to play along through out an entire level until the player managed to increase their sanity high enough again. The game was also meant to be 60 to 80 hours long and would have ended in many different ways, unlike in the GameCube release where it would take 7 hours with only two endings (counting the special ending after beating the game three times.)

Gallery

Augustus's undead transformation

Footage of Martain Luther and Anthony's segments

Recorded footage of Joseph in the E3 demo ripped from a VHS

A promo for the Nintendo 64 build

Joseph De Molay going around a castle