Time to airlift some transparent aluminum.
It’s not every day that some long forgotten N64 game gets a playable build found. But that just happened with SimCopter 64.
SimCopter 64 was being made by Maxis as a companion to SimCity 64, with both games in development for the ill-fated 64DD add-on for the N64. While SimCopter eventually saw release on PC, this version never did. Which is a shame, as there were interconnectivity features planned; you could build a city in SimCity 64, and fly around it in SimCopter 64. When Nintendo dumped the plans for an international release for the 64DD, it likely saw to the death of this game.
It was thought lost to time… until Reddit user a707northbayer dropped images and video for it on two different subreddits.
Despite being an early build, it does seem to be functional, at least through the first level. As seen in the video, the build is from December 26, 1997. That’s significant, as while it’s several months after its showing at E3 (where it was not available for hands on demos), but several months ahead of 1998’s Tokyo Game Show in March, where it was fully playable.
According to a707northbayer, the cart came off of Craigslist, where the seller was apparently, “someone who worked in the industry”.
Through Craigslist. Met a dude who worked in the game industry. He sold and traded me a whole bunch of dev systems, along with a few games like this one.
a707northbayer
That all said, there’s been no word on whether or not the cart has been dumped yet. There’s just a promise of the user working towards it. Here’s hoping that the right thing gets done, and it doesn’t get hoarded away in someone’s collection, like so many of these things lamentably do.
Source: VG 24/7
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