Geist Force was one of the earliest Dreamcast games that was shown as a tech demo at TGS and E3 prior to its launch. Reportedly 80% complete, it ultimately failed to impress former President Bernie Stolar and his team, so it was quietly cancelled.
Recently a former Sega Employee registered at Assembler Gamer discussed DreamPast in great detail. Along the way he revealed he had a copy of Geist Force, which Assembler acquired for 700$. Currently the Assemblers are working on bringing the game to the masses.
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IGNDC News Post on the Cancellation:
Developed by Sega of America’s internal studio and sporting cinematics by Netter Digital Entertainment, Inc, who also do the special effects for Babylon 5, Geist Force is an enormous 3D flying shooter set on an alien planet in the distant future. The game features hundreds of miles of 3D mountains, deep canyons, erupting volcanoes and rushing rivers. The game also offers full-3D special effects with true-to-life physics. When an explosion occurs, a player’s ship and the objects in the immediate area will be jolted by the blast, as would occur in the real world.
The Tokyo Game Show demo was allegedly nearly 80% complete, but is largely unpopulated by enemies and suffers from occasional slowdown. What’s odd is that the version shown at E3 was packed with enemies, was smooth as silk and was bristling with all sorts of special effects not in this version.
It appears that Geist Force, whose status has been more uncertain than Oprah’s dietary habits, has taken a flying leap of the cliff of gaming oblivion. A spokesperson from Sega told IGNDC that despite earlier rumors that the project was being handed to other programmers inside Sega after a recent internal shake-up, Sega COO Bernie Stolar recently decided the project was better left unfinished.
Prior to E3, Sega claimed the title was still on target for a September release with the system, but apparently after further examination early last week, Stolar decided to cancel the project as it simply did not live up to Sega’s AAA billing. While it is certainly a bit depressing to see Geist fall by the wayside, it is nonetheless a positive sign to see Sega upholding some standard of quality for their titles.
Sega did manage to say that certain element of the title, such as art direction and certain gameplay aspects are being saved in hopes that they could be incorporated into later titles, but as of yet were not prepared to comment on what, if anything, they had in mind. We’ll be sure to keep poking around, and you can expect the full scoop when it surfaces.
See Also: Cancelled Dreamcast Games That Looked Awesome.
Special Thanks to Alex Supersonic for giving us a reminder.
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I'm pretty excited for this game!
The starting felt like a Slowed Down After Burner lol.
New 3D Dreamcast game on it's way?? Awesome!
Could SEGA get after this, I know that they are usually forgiving about this sort of thing, but ex-employees shouldn't be selling company property.
Damn I hope it's released for XBLA.