Description:
This little known fighter from Acclaim London Studios (formerly
known as Probe Software Inc.) appeared at the 1997 ECTS in
London. According to Artist Miha Rinne, "The game's design was
very ambitious. The [development] team used motion
captured movements from real martial artists, weapons, spells,
and slightly interactive 3D environment (you could fall off a
cliff, there were hills to climb). The team was also pretty good
though understaffed, George Allan (who did Venus the flytrap and
switchblade2 for Amiga) was the lead programmer, Pierson Lippard
and Darren Goodacre were the lead artists (and probably the best
artists I've ever worked with)." Neil Maguire was also
involved as a concept artist on the project.
Miha states "We had about 6 skinned characters with individual
motion captured movement, as well as numerous spells,
environments, and weapons. Problem was that because so much of
the technology was new, everything had to be created from
scratch, and during most time of the project we just did not
have the tools to work with. Tools from Acclaim (when they
finally arrived) were very first generation, and painful and
slow to work with. Furthermore, since directors and executives
at Acclaim and Probe were accustomed to quick conversions and
licensed games with recycled concept and technology, they just
simply could not grasp the idea that creating something new and
ambitious takes staggering amount of times and resources. Spirit
Master was seen simply as something that ate bucketloads of
money and resources without giving immediate returns in sight.
Well, we all know what happened to Acclaim and their fate shall
be the testament for their shortsightedness.
It should be noted that Spirit Master was the pet project of Tim
May, and it was approved by Probe founder Fergus McGovern before
he sold his company to Acclaim. It was cancelled at the time
when Fergus disappeared from the company."
Above are PlayStation Museum
EXCLUSIVE screenshots from a work in progress version with three
playable characters. However, you will notice 14 characters as a
possibility to fight with. Pressing L1 or L2 will cause
your fighter to sidestep. By pressing the R1 and R2 buttons on
the controller, your fighter will power up with a weapon. Gwen
powers up with two light sabres and Omega powers up with a light
scythe. Special signature moves are evidently available for each
character. For instance, Gwen will jump in the air and a laser
will shoot diagonally downward and burn everything (this concept
has obviously been influenced from another fighting game). The
characters are quite large on screen. The movement is stiff, but
I have played a lot worse fighting games. Animation is what to
be expected from a Work In Progress. This particular version
only has 3 fighters available, each character has an unlimited
power gauge, and each fight is timed whereas it will reset to
the main menu after a few minutes. This game has the markings of
either a concept demo, or it was made exclusively for the E3
expo.
Above are ghosts from the defeated
opponents you would meet later in the game.
Below are some character designs from
Spirit Master. Be sure to check out exclusive concept
story boards as well. More images can be found in the
Spirit Master Gallery.
The PlayStation
Museum would like to thank Neil Maguire and Miha Rinne for
contributing their artwork and time. |
