We have some exciting news for N64 fans. Another build of Sammy Corporation and Racdym's cancelled Star Fox-style shoot 'em up Viewpoint 2064 has been dumped and preserved online.
This time by the YouTuber and video game preservationist Hard4Games.
Viewpoint 2064, as the name indicates, was a 3D follow-up to the Neo Geo top-down isometric shooter from Aicom and Sammy, which was also subsequently ported to the Sega Genesis, FM Towns, Sharp X68000, Sony PlayStation, and Windows computers.
It was in development in the late '90s and is believed to have been shown off at Nintendo SpaceWorld in 1999, as well as Tokyo Game Show, with the original plan being to release the title on November 11th, 1999. However, despite garnering some enthusiastic previews from members of the media, such as IGN64, who praised its "polygonal graphics", "lock-on system", and "impressive... boss battles", it would eventually end up missing this date, being delayed several more times throughout 2000, before quietly being cancelled in 2001.
Following that, it then pretty much faded into obscurity until a prototype cartridge of the game surfaced on eBay in 2015. This then led to a group of video game preservationists tracking down a copy of the game, which resulted in a dump by GamingAlexandria in 2020.
As noted by Hard4Games in his recent video going over the latest dump, the earlier version of the game dumped by GamingAlexandria in 2020 was incomplete, featuring issues with collision detection, a different UI from the advertised screenshots, missing boss fights, and a developer debug menu. This new build, however, appears to be final, fixing many of the above issues, and being referred to as a "Master" on the cart itself.
You can download the game here, but we highly recommend checking out Hard4Games' video for a full breakdown of the differences between the two builds.