Between a disappointing technical achievement to the point of struggling to reach 30 frames per second and, more seriously, a multitude of bugs simply preventing some players from progressing in the adventure, through inconsistent dialogues and impossible interactions with certain objects or characters, it is an understatement to say that Sports Story did not have the debut we expected, especially coming from a game promoted by Nintendo in its Indie World program.
All cries the SOS
As indicated by his name, Sports Story is based on the concept of golf story, namely a mix of role-playing game and sports game, but with the ambition to spread its systems over a variety of disciplines instead of focusing on a single sport. If Sidebar Games has been working since the game’s release on a first patch to rectify the situation, the state in which Sports Story came out shows that the development team was probably overwhelmed by its ambitions.
In this context, the discovery of a hidden room within the game adds an important gray area to the conditions of development. Within this room where a team is busy developing a game called “GALF”, the workers offer the visitor a series of replies which seem less to do with a coded message than a cry for help. We are indeed witnessing exchanges of dialogue between certain developers, in particular an author and a programmer, who quarrel over a lack of vision, reject responsibility for missing functionalities, or on the contrary lament having wanted too much To do. Anthology:
“One could say that we live in a disturbed development.“
“You could also say that someone kept asking for new features and my original vision no longer exists.“
“You could even say that we should have made the game work instead of adding features.“
“The menu STILL does not work!“
“They told me it was fixed. Should I report it again?
“It’s hard to write stories. I’ve started over 10 times and it just seems to get worse.“
“We’ll probably have to remove all boss fights now.“
Combined with the fact that Sports Story came out in a deplorable state, it’s hard to think that the dialogues in this hidden room fulfill the simple desire to do a little humor about the difficulties of developing a video game. No member of Sidebar Games has expanded on the issue at this time, while the first patch of the game is still awaiting certification from Nintendo. Posted by user tendog, the video below shows how to access the hidden room as well as its contents.