Andy Phelps Proposes 'B-Sides' For Games

Andy Phelps has once again begun blogging. A recent post of his to the Corante Tech site suggests an intriguing idea: B-Sides to major commercial games. "I think there is an interesting opportunity here: stick some "B-Side" experimental games on the DVD with the big title. Little Flash games, or student games, or Internet games that haven't taken off yet. Don't advertise them on the box, sell the "big game" just like always." Thanks to Hylton Jolliffe for the submission.

Ridge Racer 4

[alphaseven]

R4 for the playstation had an interesting "b-side", on one disk they had a tech demo of the original ridge racer redone at 60fps, it was done to test the feasibility of doing a racing game on the playstation that could run at 60fps. It turns out they could but they wouldn't have enough resources to put in more than one car. Full Spectrum Warrior also included the prototype "military version" as a bonus.

I think why this isn't more common (including early tech demos) is that they are usually terribly buggy and there isn't enough time to fix them to meet quality control. The developers of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay had wanted to include the early prototype of the game as a bonus but they would have missed their deadline getting the bugs worked out.