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Seeds of Evil is a huge game. In terms of scale, it's likely one of the largest FPS games on the Nintendo 64. Twenty-nine to 30 enemies, four enormous bosses, and roughly 23 weapons (depending on how you view them) spread out over six sprawling levels. And even this is only due to the fact that Iguana Entertainment had to twice put in a special request for a larger cartridge to hold it all (8 MB just didn't cut it, and they quickly found out that 16 MB wouldn't either).
So how would you feel if I told you that Seeds of Evil was, at one point, planned to be significantly larger?
Years ago, when Acclaim went bankrupt, most of their stuff was auctioned off or otherwise disposed of. Among the items that were rescued was a rough draft for the in-house published strategy guide (file last modified August 6, 1998; the initial creation date seems to be lost, but the draft requests certain weapon and boss text to be submitted before July 9), and it's a gold mine of information.
Now, way back when (March '98), IGN reported that the then-upcoming Turok 2 would feature "eight unique graphic sets" for each of the eight levels. "Eight, you say? LM, stop it with your crazy talk." It's true! Much like Dinosaur Hunter, there would have been eight levels, but no hub from which to access them. The game would have progressed linearly as Joshua Fireseed attempted to stop the Primagen from destroying the Energy Totems. Most of the levels now present in the second Turok game appear here, roughly in the same order.
But The Port of Adia is not one of them.
Seeds of Evil would have started with what is now the second level, Slaughter by the River of Souls and continued on from there. But this is not to say that The Port of Adia was too much of a latecomer. An issue of the Official UK Nintendo Magazine shows screenshots of The Port of Adia while still referring to the game's eight levels. While it hasn't been spelled out anywhere, I believe that one of the original level ideas was considered too difficult for the N64. We'll be coming back to what this level would have been a bit later, but for now, just know that it was removed from the rotation and The Port of Adia was put in its place, just moved to the front of the game.
So is there anything that can be said about this level? Sort of, though it's less about the level itself and more about an enemy that used to be in it.
Meet the Hunter:
The Hunter is a bit of cut content that's nevertheless managed to pop up quite a bit throughout Seeds of Evil's promotional content. It even managed to get an entry in the game's manual, which says:
quote:
Hunters are the result of centuries of selective breeding. Bred to perform as reptilian bloodhounds, the Hunters are also used as instruments of terror and death. Heavily muscled and powerfully built, they can leap great distances and are extremely deadly.
It's unknown how often the Hunters would have appeared throughout the game, but they at least would have made an appearance in The Port of Adia (or at least what appears to be The Port of Adia), as seen in this screenshot of the game's level editor:
And since I'm here, a brief shout out to the original texture set for the Raptors, which was another prominently-displayed element of the game before its release:
