Cabbage 64DD Game

While the original version of MOTHER 3 on the Nintendo 64 may be series creator Shigesato Itoi’s most famous failed project, little do most people know there is another! Announced in the April 1997 issue of 64 Dream, project “Cabbage” was Itoi’s other Nintendo 64 project. For many years, very little was known about the game; however, Itoi did mention many details about it in Japanese publications! So let’s explore the secrets behind Cabbage, Itoi’s elusive animal-breeding game.

Nintendogs, one game which reused many concepts from Itoi’s Cabbage.

The original inspiration behind Cabbage was Itoi’s desire to create “a game that can be developed only by three people.” Besides himself, Itoi only wanted one excellent programmer, and a competent game designer. Of course, the excellent programmer Itoi had in mind was none other than HAL’s own Satoru Iwata! Miyamoto also naturally served as the game’s designer. Initially, the project was imagined for the Game Boy in 1992, but upon seeing the potential of the N64 hardware when developing MOTHER 3 on the disk drive, Cabbage itself officially began development on the N64DD. Tsunekazu Ishihara of the Pokémon Company also assisted development before its eventual silent cancellation. 

Since the main focus was on MOTHER 64, the three developers didn’t invest much budget into the project. Early on, a lot of research went into the technology of the game. The three friends worked on Cabbage in their spare time, dubbing their team the “Cabbage Research Project.” Nintendo, HAL Laboratory and Hobonichi all were investors in the project, with a prototype being developed in meetings with Miyamoto from 1995-1997

But what exactly was the whole concept behind Cabbage? Early interviews had Itoi and Miyamoto comparing the game to the popular digital pet game Tamagotchi at the time. However, Itoi insisted it was far more complex! 

And what about that title? Was it going to be called “Cabbage” if it released? Itoi commented in the December 1997 issue of the 64 Dream that the title “is strangely popular. [laughs] It’s just something I randomly blurted out, though. Either way, being asked about the title makes me want to just stick with Cabbage. [laughs] Maybe there was some subconscious connection with Cabbage Patch Kids. At this point I think Cabbage would be just fine. It’s not that there aren’t other names on the board, though.”

Cabbage took place in a small garden, where it was the player’s responsibility to nurture a group of creatures and befriend them. The player could customize the garden to their liking, whether they decided to build some ponds, or buy a swing set and slide! You could even exchange gifts with them, further developing your relationship with the creatures of the garden. Since the game was utilizing the 64DD add-on, it was planned to have a dynamic world that would permanently change over time, as well as a real-time clock system. Iwata wanted the gameplay to invoke a feeling of “taming an unbehaved child.”

Even though the Game Boy was no longer going to be the main platform Cabbage was launching for, Itoi still intended for the game to have connectivity with the system. In March 1998, he told 64 Dream, “I want to use the Game Boy as an ‘insect cage’ to keep the animals inside.” He expressed that he wanted to use the Game Boy as a “waiting room”, where you could prepare a temporary environment for the characters to grow even while the DD is off. Here, you could even exchange characters between your friends, and have them enter each other’s game! Shigeru Miyamoto at one point acknowledged the similarity to Pokémon, reconfirming planning for Cabbage pre-dated the development of the aforementioned series. Hiroshi Yamauchi even spoke about the similarities at Spaceworld 1997, proclaiming Itoi was developing “a new type of nurturing system, that is neither like the ones found in Tamagotchi or Pokémon.”

Not only did Cabbage aim to differentiate itself by being far more interactive, but the team aimed to develop new types of technology to bring out the most of their concepts. A new “skin animation” technology was planned to debut with the game, in order to make “these living beings (in the game) move more like actual living beings.” 

Animal Forest (“Animal Crossing” in North America), another game which reused ideas from Cabbage.

The core of the programming however was a GA “neural network” being developed by Satoru Iwata. This was made in order to make the creatures in the game feel as alive as possible, as explained by Iwata himself: 

“The neural network is a program that mimics human neural circuits, and it works in unpredictable ways. Basically, it will be what we call a ‘breeding game,’ but you don’t know what kind of creatures will be born, and you will be breeding ten different kinds of creatures… In other words, we’re going to use sophisticated programs that mimic the genetics of living things to create characters that develop in unpredictable ways, just like real creatures. The patterns are infinite, aren’t they? Therefore, it’s practically impossible to do bug checking without checking all the patterns.”

While Cabbage was originally planned to launch along with the DD at the beginning of 1998, it unsurprisingly missed that opportunity. Even later on, Itoi, Iwata and Miyamoto all remained vague on when the game would release, with another missed launch date in the middle of 1999. In February 2000, Miyamoto told 64 Dream:

“We’re trying to get something done in the year 2000, though. So it probably won’t be released on the 64DD. But, we’re trying to review the possibility of the Game Boy Advance and Dolphin.”

In May 2000, Cabbage was revived in the upcoming 64DD software lineup, with a planned playable demo at Spaceworld that year. In the 64 Dream for that month, Itoi spoke more about Cabbage‘s ideas one last time, including what the art style might have looked like:

“Cabbage is a sudden idea I’ve been thinking about. I’ve been frustrated now, I keep trying to think about it, but I have a feeling it’s not going to go off with a bang. Eventually, when those elements are added, I think I’ll be able to race to the finish saying ‘woah, it can work!!’ This kind of thing might not be able to work as a game mechanic.

I want it to be a cool game. I don’t think it would be cool like an anime though. We’ve had artistic traditions for a long time. When I saw Donkey Kong 64 for example, I thought its graphic design was so different. It’s strange – it’s like someone who’s really good at drawing a picture. That’s what I’d like for Cabbage, something comparable to that. ‘Painting already exists’ – I want to do something different in terms of how images are expressed.”

Alas, come Spaceworld in August, the game was nowhere to be seen!

For years after, those involved in the project remained silent about what happened to Cabbage. In 2006, Miyamoto finally spoke up about it, saying, “… the conversations and design techniques that popped up when we were making Cabbage are, of course, connected to Nintendogs and other things that we’re doing now.”

As stated above, many of the ideas and elements that went into the creation of Cabbage were recycled in later animal simulation games by Nintendo. Even though the game was never released, its spirit lives on in games like Nintendogs and Animal Crossing, especially, the latter of which Itoi would go on to praise for realizing the many concepts he wanted to achieve with both MOTHER 64 and Cabbage respectively. 

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