Xbox the E3 2004 demo build of the cancelled OG Xbox version of Kameo has been dumped and posted online.

[Krvavi Abadas]

before we get into the actual meat of the thread, it’s worth briefly recapping what happened prior to the creation of the build.

Kameo was one of the many long delayed Rare games to start development on the N64, though the public wouldn’t learn of it’s existence until it had moved to the GameCube.

Given the fact that up until yesterday no one even knew what Kameo: Elements of Power was, it's safe to say what we are seeing at E3 are the early stages of development. Things that seem limiting can easily be worked on with time and given the fact that this title is set to be released sometime in 2002, Rare has more than enough time to perfect what already seems like a very promising titles.

…then Rare was bought by Microsoft a year later.

despite that obvious set-back, they were still fairly confident the game would prove to be a major exclusive. just now on the Xbox.
the fairy protagonist even made a cameo at the end of the promotional video Rare created to commemorate the acquisition.


the game continued to truck on for the next two years, with a fair bit of retooling along the way. the Pokémon-like focus on capturing monsters was thrown out, in exchange for having a pre-determined selection of them you’d gradually unlock through progression. and the fairy went from being a “cute” pink clothed girl to getting a slightly edgier green outfit.

“Rares creative masterminds have transformed the character from pretty to gorgeous - no mean feat.” - some random forum user after the design was revealed. ​

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this demo represents an interesting stumbling block in the game’s final transition to the 360. Rare was very confident in it’s potential as a major game for the Original Xbox, planning to spread this demo through magazine cover discs. (with another 20 disks containing Kameo and nothing else already being manufactured, a likely source for this dump.)

from the official Prima guide for the game.​

the reasoning for why it got shifted to 360 at the last minute was likely Microsoft mandated, the original Xbox was a massive money drain owing to it’s high manufacturing cost. with a reportedly poor & pricey contract with Nvidia (who made the console’s GPU) being one factor for the poor margins.
with a successor being so quickly fast-tracked, a project like Kameo made more sense as an early launch game rather than a swansong. as Microsoft had already poured their expectations on Halo 2 (itself undergoing severe development problems to ensure it launched on-time) being the last major title planned for the 2004 holiday season.

with this historical context in mind. it’s understandable why the release of this matters, as while a somewhat later build containing the entire game has been floating around online for over a decade by this point. this marked the closest moment where the general public was meant to try this version of the game for themselves.

 

[Rareware]

It was also one of three Rareware games that was featured on the back of the GameCube launch boxes alongside Donkey Kong Racing and Star Fox Adventures!

The game was crazy ambitious at the time with it going to initially feature over 60 or so creatures that could evolve over time. Obviously it was heavily scaled back for its Xbox to Xbox 360 version.

Thanks for sharing this! Always great to see stuff like this for comparison to the final product.

 

[StretchNStripes]

This is really neat!! While maybe not the most memorable Rare game, I did always find it charming. I think it would have been remembered more fondly if it had been a Gamecube release but… alas…

Thank you for sharing!! I wonder how some of the more ambitious aspects of the game would have panned out on OG Xbox…

 

[Red Monster]

This is freaking cool.

I haven’t played Kameo since the launch of the 360. It sits in this neat little nostalgia window for me, along with other launch window titles like Call of Duty 2, Project Gotham Racing 3, and Perfect Dark Zero. I was a freshman in high school, and the 360 was pretty much the coolest thing in the world. Great memories.

 

[Rareware]

Using the good ol' Wayback Machine, here's the description of the game Rare had on their website back on February 7th, 2003, which still had the game dated to release sometime that year and also retained Meepo as Kameo's sidekick and the feature of capturing baby monsters and having them mature into larger creatures!

Rare's first outing on the Xbox is a highly inventive and atmospheric adventure, offering you the chance to join roving princess Kameo on her travels throughout the land and the unveiling of her inherited gifts in the wake of Dark King Thorn's return.

During the last Great Battle, Thorn sought to conquer the Fairy race in a bid to exert total control over the planet's wildlife, and would have succeeded but for an act of final desperate magic which saw him locked in stone along with three of the remaining four Fairies. Her sister and brothers' selfless sacrifice left only Theena, the Fairies' devoted Queen, and her unborn child to guard the curse on behalf of future generations.

Now, however, the release of familiar dark energies can mean only one thing: a curse which seemed unbreakable was not truly so, and Thorn is free to pick up his campaign where he left off so many years ago. Worse than that, he has turned the tables on his previous captors and now holds prisoner the three petrified Elemental Ancestors (as they have become known), draining their energies to produce an elite force of elemental mutant warriors.

And so Princess Kameo's life changes forever in a single day as Theena relates the whole story, ending in the revelation that her unique gifts must pass to Kameo in this time of need. As of now, only the Princess has the power to oppose Thorn. Only the Princess can revive her legendary aunt and uncles and enlist their help in overthrowing the Dark King - permanently.

Kameo's blossoming talent lies in the capture, development and control of the many and varied beasts that populate her homeworld. Like any skill, hers becomes more effective with practice and experience, and with your help Kameo will graduate from the control of baby monsters with limited skills to hugely powerful titans. Another twist, and another aspect of Kameo's power, lies in the fact that she can actually choose to transform into any of the creatures in her menagerie, depending on how close to the action she wishes to get.

Each creature, regardless of size and ability, falls into one of six elemental fields - Fire, Water, Wind, Plant, Ice and Rock - and each has a significant role in battle against Thorn's elementally-enhanced troops and in opening up further areas of Kameo's world for her to explore. Consequently it's always in Kameo's best interests to seek diversity in her collection, as dragon-with-attitude sidekick Meepo will be sure to remind her when he joins her on her travels. In fact, Meepo plays an essential role in the capture of those baby monsters that will mature into members of Kameo's bodyguard, so he's definitely worth keeping around...

Blending the heady thrills of exploration and puzzle-solving with the adrenaline rush of real-time 3D battles, Kameo: Elements of Power is an ambitious title with something for every gamer to love, and a debut of fitting quality for Rare on a brand new platform. Enter Kameo's breathtakingly beautiful world and join her voyage of discovery exclusively on Xbox in 2003.

 

[Dinoman96]

One thing I'll always remember this game for is how it's own creator came out and admitted that he even regretted releasing it.

Rare: We should have scrapped Kameo

Xbox 360 launch game Kameo: Elements of Power should not have been released, developer Rare has admitted. Speaking in a…

www.eurogamer.net

Really interesting but also sad development cycle this game went through.

 

[MisterSpo]

I always had a soft spot for Kameo, and it was an odd game in that I followed its journey right through from being one of the initial games confirmed for GameCube, through to it porting to Xbox, before finally playing it on Christmas Day 2005 as my first Xbox 360 game.

There's a lot there to enjoy, even if it is a fairly flawed and limited game; and especially not a game that lived up to the initial ambitious concept. It really did feel like a game stuck between two ages; it had a level of visual flair that I hadn't ever seen before, and it certainly tried to appear next-gen with hundreds of character models on screen for battle sequences; but it still felt very traditional and grounded in an odd mix of N64 Zelda and 3D platformers.

 

[MisterSpo]

Also just in light of Sony's recent news reinforcing how insane high end videogame development has become: Kameo started as an N64 title concept in 1999/2000 and by its launch in 2005 had been in development on N64, GC, Xbox and Xbox 360. So a game that started just after DK64 became a launch title for the HD era and spanned 3 generations of hardware.

These days that six year cycle is increasingly 'normal' and eats up the bulk of a single console generation.

 

[Shadow]

I could've sworn there was a beta that had leaked ages ago, guess that was a 360 build. I genuinely don't remember exactly. Have the game as part of Rare Replay, went through the opening, and about an hour or two after that. Enjoyed what little of what I did play, but game hadn't aged really well. Though graphically, it still looks stunning.