Mini Racers finally leaves the pit-stop

Three long lost Nintendo 64 games have surfaced on the ‘net in the form of playable ROMs. All three were in development at Looking Glass Studio, who handled the N64 versions of both Command & Conquer 64 and Destruction Derby 64, but were canned after the studio hit troubles.

Mini Racers was pretty much finished and features 39 tracks in total. You can see footage of the Japanese version in action below:

Tamiya Racing 64 – based on the popular RC model line – is a curious one as it started out as prototype version of Mini Racers. It evolved into Mini Racers, in other words. It’s not clear why the license was dropped.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y98pur9IYHI

Then we have the kayaking sim Wildwaters which Ubisoft was keen to publish at one stage. The build that has been dumped online is of an early version shown at E3 1999 and includes just a few tracks and place-holder menus. The water effects are formed of vectors as opposed to Wave Race 64’s polygons, which is why it looks a bit more realistic. Well, realistic by N64 standards.

A few other N64 games have surfaced online over the years on such sites as Unseen 64, including playable betas of Glover 2 and Dragon Sword 64. There’s also the curious tale of Jungle Bots – a FPS based on an action figure range which Titus was hoping to cram onto a tiny 32MB cart. Oh Titus!

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