It Came From The Desert for Sega Genesis - the developer's story

[CMA Death Adder]

Hello, everyone.

Since Cinemaware's website offers a free, legal download of the unfinished / unreleased Sega Genesis version of their "It Came From The Desert" videogame, I gave it a try. While it isn't the most fascinating game in the world, I wanted to know more about it and why it was ultimately cancelled. To get the answers I talked to Matt Harmon, who designed and developed the game for New World Computing. The resulting article was written for and submitted to Sega-16.com, who posted it today. If you're curious, come and have a read:

*** It Came From The Desert for Sega Genesis - the developer's story (http://www.sega-16.com/feature_page.php?id=383&title=Interview:%20Matt%20Harmon)

[zektor]

I kind of figured that memory/cart limitations had something to do with it. I played this first on the Amiga, and anything less than that spectacular showing would be an injustice to the game in my personal opinion.

[ryborg]

Great interview, very interesting. Nice to know who to personally blame for White Men Can't Jump for the Jag.

[Steve W]

Was White Men Can't Jump for the Genesis related to the one that came out on the Jaguar? I thought that WMCJ was an Atari published game, not licensed from someone else.

[ryborg]

The interview mentioned the infamous perspective-scrolling court and that it was sent to the scrap-heap soon after, so maybe Atari bought up the rights to it for whatever reason.

[j_factor]

Was White Men Can't Jump for the Genesis related to the one that came out on the Jaguar? I thought that WMCJ was an Atari published game, not licensed from someone else.

White Men Can't Jump for Jaguar was developed by High Voltage Software (currently working on The Conduit for Wii, which I sure hope is a better game), whereas the one being discussed was developed by Tahoe Software. Tahoe Software went out of business circa 1994-95, so I suppose it's possible that Atari purchased the demo/rights from them in a bankruptcy sale, and then had High Voltage Software develop a game for the Jaguar based around that. Pure speculation, but it would be very interesting if that was the case.

[Superman]

The only copy I have of It came from the Desert, is for Turbo Grafx and it is sealed. (I really should take the game out and play it!)

After reading the article and seeing the screenshots, the Genesis version looks nice. I'm not that into emulation, but since it is the easiest (and cheapest) way to try the game out, I will probably download the rom and give it a try.

Thanks for the post, CMA!