A playthrough of twelve unused levels found in the files for LEGO Rock Raiders (PlayStation, NTSC) in the "levels1" folder.
A lot of these levels have older file types and were probably made for early versions of the PAL version. How they would've ended up in the NTSC version's files alongside the new levels Gameworld 7 made for that I don't know. The current version of the game only reads the terrain map and not the height and predug maps.
Some thoughts on these:
* Riverboat Ride - A very PAL-type level, probably the only one I really liked.
* Whaletastic - Freezer beams interact with rock whales a lot more confusingly than pusher beams. Hope this isn't foreshadowing!
* Spider Queen - Early design docs reveal there were supposed to be multiple spider types, including a "spider queen" enemy that could've produced or split into smaller spiders. There's only one type in the final game, but the random floating platform at 20:52 was probably originally supposed to be a spider queen before object types got shuffled around.
* Geysers - Not possible due to crystals in solid rock.
* Work The Whole Day Long - Very long and frustrating, and the part where I had to drive a small digger on the wall around lava probably wasn't the intended solution.
* Be Quick or Be Teleported - Rock whale jumpscare. But also impossible due to not enough crystals.
* Drill Speed and Lasers - very basic levels.
* DAVES LAVA01 - An oddly-named one. Dave here could refer to either David Allen or producer Dave Upchurch, I'm leaning towards the latter since I know he was involved with a lot of early level testing.
* Whale Confused - Probably the worst LRR level I've ever played. It took almost an hour and a half to do this, and only with a lot of savestating. I feel like the freezer beam has to have worked differently in early versions of the game, or I'm totally missing something, because how rock whales react to it is so unpredictable and weird.
* Smokey island - There's some weird things going on here, like water in a wall and two lava monsters stuck inside each other.
* Splish Splash - This felt like an early version of Hot Scoop from the PAL version
Thanks to:
* Sadie for modding the level back in
* Baraklava and MrPinball for hosting D.U.T.I. and other DDI files at the LEGO Research Realm
* Obscure Gamers (RIP) for the DDI file dump
Emulated using DuckStation. Internal Resolution set to 3x; Aspect Ratio set to PAR 1:1; Crop set to All Borders; True Color Rendering and Geometry/Culling/Texture Correction enabled.
Revision 1 of the game was used.
Recorded at 1125x720 resolution (game originally 375x240), 60fps. This video has been upscaled to 1080p to fit KZfaq's allowed resolutions, and to improve its quality due to KZfaq's terrible compression (please KZfaq use higher bitrates for videos).
CONTENTS:
0:00:00 Intro
0:00:41 Riverboat Ride
0:07:34 Whaletastic
0:15:59 Spider Queen
0:26:28 Geysers
0:30:24 Work The Whole Day Long
0:50:50 Be Quick or Be Teleported
0:59:00 Drill Speed
1:04:20 Lasers
1:09:21 DAVES LAVA01
1:15:34 Whale Confused
1:32:45 Smokey island
1:39:21 Splish Splash
#rockraiders #beta #unused #lego #ps1games #retrogaming