Canceled Sega Project: "Carbondale"

[crocodile]

Does anyone out there know anything beyond what's contained in this press release? The product manager, Cord Smith, is on Twitter.

CARBONDALE - Aliens have landed in Carbondale and they are killing anything that moves. Your natural instinct is to flee, but a severe mid-winter blizzard has cut off all hopes of escape.

Quick! Grab a gun, a sledgehammer, a scythe, any weapon you can get your hands on. Your only hope for survival is to stand your ground and fight - in the mall, the old Carbondale high school, city hall, even the sewer system if you have to.

This is a fight to the death and it's going to be bloody.

The battle isn't real, though. It's one of the biggest video game releases of 2004 being developed by Sega. Thousands of people, maybe even millions, will be fighting to save Carbondale from alien beasties next year.

"Initially Sega said 'We want to place this game in a small town,'" said Cord Smith, product manager for Sega of America. "Initially they said an East Coast town, but they just wanted something that wasn't the West Coast. (The Japanese game designers) are familiar with San Francisco and California culture, but to them, that's not America. America is what's between the two coasts."

Smith knew right where to bring the game's Japanese development team. He grew up in Du Quoin and earned a master's degree in fiction from Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Smith is also virtually the only Midwesterner working at Sega's San Francisco office.

"In the office people make fun of me because I'm one of the only ones who's from the middle of America," Smith said. "Carbondale is this mythical place that we all kind of laugh about, because I love it. I told them, 'Based on all these locations (you're looking for), I can't think of a better place for you to go.'"

The other people at Sega agreed. Smith is now spending nine days leading a team of eight game designers from Tokyo around key Carbondale locations, including University Mall, the old high school central campus, the police station, city hall, water treatment plant, local homes and apartments, and yes, even the sewer system.

"They're soaking all this in, with the biggest smiles on their faces," Smith said. "They keep saying this is kind of what they imagined, but they're blown away that everyone has a yard, everything's beautiful, everything's so lush and green."

The game's designer, Shinichi Ogasawara, says bringing the design team all the way from Tokyo to see the Midwest for themselves is the best way to create a realistic small-town environment.



"Usually we are living in Japan and what we know about America is mainly from L.A. or San Francisco and the West Coast," Ogasawara said through an interpreter. "When we came here I think we're seeing the real Midwest life of the U.S. It's quite different from what we're used to, but I think this will add much to our game."

The team is shooting digital videotape and still photographs that will be used to provide the textures of the games' three-dimensional environment. Some team members photographed close-ups of anything that could be interactive, such as light switches and the weights used by Carbondale firefighters. Other team members photographed walls, ceilings, floors and artwork hanging on walls.

I was really looking forward to this for some reason. I guess all the hyperbole about what a huge project it was going to be captured my imagination at the time.

[gamevet]

The dev team probably went to Carbondale and came to the realization that is was nothing like what Smith had described.

[crocodile]

The dev team probably went to Carbondale and came to the realization that is was nothing like what Smith had described.

Good point.

Depressing Suburbs: The Game might've given Shenmue a run for its money. (I'm just kidding; Shenmue is my all-time favorite series, so please go easy on me)

Honestly, though, just curious if anything was developed or if it turned into something else. Some people think it's Ghost Squad, but I don't think that makes sense.

[xelement5x]

Eh, you could make any location interesting if you've got the story and characters well enough done.

I wouldn't have though Georgia was very interesting either, but the Walking Dead did a good job building an engaging story in that location.

[gamevet]

I was kidding about the location.

[crocodile]

Regardless of where it's set, it's pretty weird a project that sounded as big as this dropped off the face of the Earth after one article in a college newspaper. I tweeted Cord Smith and he offered to tell me more over LinkedIn, so it sounds like there was an actual project underway.

"It will be promoted as one of Sega's top titles," Smith said. "You know how the holiday seasons are with video games. It's noisy and there's a lot of competition. But this is the type of game, because it's being built from the ground up for the U.S. market, it will be one of the biggest Sega titles of next year."

I'm surprised no one's tracked anything about this down over the years. Seems like there's got to be some artwork or something out there.

[crocodile]

Are these Shinichi Ogasawara's complete credits?

http://www.mobygames.com/developer/s...operId,529519/

None of these games matches the Carbondale description.

Found an old conversation thread on Slashdot...

Could be.. There was speculation from Gamers.com that that particular game is a collaboration with Michael Crichton dealing with an alien invasion and is slated to be released this fall. As the second article states the director of the game, Hitmaker's Shinichi Ogasawara, last did The Lost World: Jurassic Park, a Crichton universe game that probably involved interaction with the writer. Their inference is probably dead on.

http://www.gamers.com/news/1242927
http://www.g amers.com/news/1413594

Unfortunately, the gamers.com links don't work.

[cabear]

this sounds more like something team wanted to do or pitched versus something that was actually funded.

[crocodile]

I guess so, but calling it "the biggest release of the 2004 Christmas season" sounds pretty ambitious for something that was only being pitched.

"It will be promoted as one of Sega's top titles," Smith said. "You know how the holiday seasons are with video games. It's noisy and there's a lot of competition. But this is the type of game, because it's being built from the ground up for the U.S. market, it will be one of the biggest Sega titles of next year."

Anyway, sounds like nothing's out there. Figured I'd ask since there's absolutely no information out there...

[crocodile]

I guess so, but calling it "the biggest release of the 2004 Christmas season" sounds pretty ambitious for something that was only being pitched.



Anyway, sounds like nothing's out there. Figured I'd ask since there's absolutely no information out there...

Not that anyone seems to care, but Unseen 64 is working on finding out more information. They've contacted Cord Smith with some questions I wrote. Hopefully we get to the bottom of those and something cool turns up.

[crocodile]

Apparently a prototype video exists and Cord is looking for it.

[xelement5x]

That's awesome news. 32X is such a small library anyway, any new titles are always neat to hear about.

[crocodile]

https://www.unseen64.net/2017/03/27/...ps2-cancelled/

As far as we were able to gather, Carbondale was being developed for Playstation 2 and Xbox, but at that time, many devs were also looking into next-gen tech. We were told that the early prototype of Carbondale seemed to be on the PS2. Unfortunately it appears that this early prototype simply wasn’t of high enough quality to receive the green-light for its next milestone, but there is not enough info available to know exactly what happened to the game, and additional details about its gameplay mechanics are scarce.

It seems that the game was meant to be a traditional survival horror with moments of more “bombastic action”, potentially through the invasion of alien enemies. People who talked with Ogasawara at the time got the sense that they wanted it to be SEGA’s answer to the Resident Evil franchise, featuring a much more realistic Western setting (hence the research), but also SEGA’s leanings towards action and arcade-like fun factor.

We were able to exchange a few emails with Cord, who shared a few memories about this lost game and their Carbondale exploration:

“One of my favorite locations was an abandoned high school. The city had built a new one and left the old in an eerie state, with lots of books, equipment, and other items left behind. We visited it at night, so it was as if a apocalyptic event had occurred and everyone evacuated in a hurry. In other words: perfect video game reference.

The mirrors behind the theater stage still had cosmetics nearby, the cafeteria had trays out on the tables, and textbooks were strewn about the classrooms. We split up into two teams, each with cameras and flashlights, and in one area I found a CPR dummy, which amounted to a dressed male mannequin torso. Without hesitation, I took it and returned to the main stairway near the school’s foyer. I could see the other team’s flashlights scanning the walls along the distant hallway, and faked a scream before sliding the torso along the floor towards them. As the seemingly severed body moved into the beams of their flashlights, the school erupted with the other groups’ terrified screams. And we laughed, and laughed. So much fun!”

We hope to be able to preserve more details and footage from the game in the future.