Video game projects are quite vast and a lot of studios end up making concepts of games that get scrapped. Other projects are lost in limbo while the development team can get everything to see the title go through the entire development process. While there are a ton of games that get lost forever, one particular game managed to see a release into the wild years after being first developed.
The game is Magic Castle, a title that was being developed by a small team in the late 1990s. Released by an individual that goes by the name Pirowo, who just happened to be one of the original developers behind the game, we’re finally learning the history of Magic Castle and the development struggle that went into the title. Released online, players can enjoy this action RPG title that a small group of developers was banking on when they left their jobs at development studios.
According to a small interview that the developers put together with the launch of Magic Castle, this title was created under Net Yaroze. This was a PlayStation 1 game development kit that the general public could purchase and make video games with. At the time, there were two individuals behind this video game project, Pirowo, and Matsunami. The duo spent about a year living off their savings while they developed their own video game until it was ready to be shopped around for a publisher.
Ideally, their first choice was Sony and they even managed to get a meeting with the company as they showcased the game. Unfortunately, when the showcase came to an end, Sony revealed that they didn’t have any intentions of publishing Magic Castle, but was interested in having the teamwork on an already established project. Since Magic Castle was a passion project and the reason the duo left their last corporate development jobs, the team opted to pass on the offer and continue shopping the project around.
This game even got an interest from another unnamed company that big in terms of Japanese RPGs. The deal that was made is that the publisher would have front the rest of their development costs but that the team would have to find the rest of the developers to finish the project. With the group unsuccessful in finding more employees to develop the game, Magic Castle was scrapped. That was until recently where Pirowo finished the project and released the game online for the world to enjoy.
