The Complete Development History of DEAD RISING

[STiP0]

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(2024-11-17)

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Before we begin . . .


This archive has been the primary source of DEAD RISING development research since it's conception. It is always being improved to suit the level of accuracy it truly deserves. This archive would not have been possible without the help that countless people in the community have provided. We are fortunate enough to be able to document iterations of the game's development in this article that were previously unseen and were never meant to be seen. You will witness changes made to the game in various milestones or "eras" of development that may seem confusing, or even inexplicable at times. DEAD RISING has taken over 2 years to take shape, and along that journey it has changed it's concept and it's appearance multiple times.

This archive will only document unique and individual builds of the game that are known to exist with photo or video evidence, and the only exception to this will be the Snatcher era of development as it is crucial to the game's timeline. Capcom would have compiled thousands of unique playable builds of the game during development, but footage of only a handful of these have actually made it out. I've done my best to group every existing Beta image of DEAD RISING into their own respective date and "version" so that the development of this game can be easier to understand. Some of the pre-release builds of DEAD RISING that you will read about within this article are builds that we actually have access to, marked with a "" symbol. These will have considerably more in-depth documentation of their differences from the final game and from each other. Pre-release versions of DEAD RISING that we do not own can only be observed through gameplay footage and promotional material, and therefor we can only document the changes that we are physically capable of seeing.

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"Snatcher" (Pre-Production)

2004 ~ 2005

Long before Capcom was ready to unveil DEAD RISING to the public, they were working for nearly half a year to develop various aspects about what exactly this game should be. During this stage of pre-production, Capcom was still creating the MT Framework Engine, as both the engine and the game were being developed simultaneously. Before there was ever a "DEAD RISING" there was a game called "Shadow of Rome" - A PlayStation 2 title created by Capcom. During late 2004, DEAD RISING was first being prototyped using Shadow of Rome source code as a blank slate, as that game played similarly to how DEAD RISING was going to feel. SoR provided the foundation of various mechanics and even character animations that would eventually be used in DEAD RISING. During pre-production, they would use a variety of different SoR assets as placeholders, and one of the more notable of which being the recycling of a character named "Sextus" who was now being used as a placeholder enemy for DEAD RISING. Throughout pre-production and the beginning stages of actual development on DEAD RISING, Capcom would internally refer to this game as "Snatcher". It is unknown why they chose such a name, and what it was supposed to mean or be in reference to, but they used it throughout the entirety of DEAD RISING's development. The name "Snatcher" is still widely referenced throughout the final game's codebase, and with references to it even reaching in-game Easter eggs, such as the name of the Willamette newspaper "Snatcher Journal" (Comedically misspelled as "Jourual")

SPOILER: Click to show

The only known (technically*) "in-game" photograph to exist during Pre-Production DEAD RISING is this title screen background image, which was datamined from a much later version of the game. The text that would display over this title screen would state "Press Start Button", as well as two selectable languages - English and Japanese. There is simply no other in-game images from this stage of development that exist.



Here we have a placeholder enemy type that was being used for something during this Pre-Production era of the game. This character's name, if he was even given one, is completely unknown. All we know is that this character would recycle the head, hair & hands from "Sextus", a Shadow of Rome character.

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E3 2005 (& Xbox Summit 2005)

2005-05-16

DEAD RISING made it's first public appearance at E3 in May of 2005, and was then also shown at the Microsoft Xbox Summit convention in July of 2005 using the same build. Capcom would produce a unique trailer for each of the two events, therefor different things can be seen between E3 and Xbox Summit footage. While the game was still only in it's prototyping phase, this point of DEAD RISING's development showcased a completely different "story" compared to what we would end up getting, in which the player would have to survive for a total of 10 days, rather than just 72 hours. Frank's camera was noted to being a much more necessary tool to the player to uncover the games story. This Demo of DEAD RISING, and all subsequent builds of DEAD RISING during this timeframe of development ran on Xbox360 Alpha Hardware, which is considerably underpowered compared to the production Xbox360 hardware the game would release on. As a result, this Demo is running more similarly in spec to an older Xbox Original game, as this machine is only capable of 1/3 the graphical power of the final hardware. It is stated in various articles that on the last day of E3, Capcom allowed reviewers to actually play this Demo privately. Cameras were not allowed in this "VIP" room therefor no footage of such gameplay exists, and it's unknown what exactly these reviewers were able to play. The Mall at this point was simply a mock up or a "Concept" featuring wallpaper-like textures to act as stores in the background. The entirety of this early mall design would be scraped immediately after E3 2005, and was never seen again. We will use various trailer footage of the game for this section, so image quality will vary.

SPOILER: Click to show

Naturally, as this is the oldest known build in DEAD RISING's history, it is going to be the most polarizing. If this is your first time seeing this image, it may appear to look similar to the DEAD RISING we've come to know, as it contains a character vaguely resembling Frank West, and it has zombies in a familiar looking tunnel. However the longer you examine it, you'll begin to notice that quite literally everything is different and foreign in one way or another. Textures, models, lighting and everything in-between has undergone a complete overhaul since this build was shown, as this demo is 1.5 years before the game's release. Due to the almost incomprehensible amount of differences that are present in this build, I will try to explain the most noticeable and important differences. There was very little variation between zombies at this point in development, consisting of a total of only 7 unique zombies, and 5 of which are just differently colored from each other. This causes an effect throughout the images of the E3 Demo that makes swarms of zombies look like a puddle of red and yellow blobs, as the variation is so little. The butcher's truck was labeled "Chie Club" at this point, but was strangely changed to "Michelle club" immediately after this Demo was shown. Frank's design is completely different in this version of the game, but we will focus on this more in the next couple images.



Here is our first look at Seon's Food & Stuff, which at this point of development was actually called "Central Market" - In the far distance we can see there was no entrance to the market where we would expect there to be, because the market did not lead to North Plaza yet as it didn't exist. Instead the entire wall was made of brick, with some stone and wood paneling above it. The ceiling was also open and exposed revealing the metal ducting and structural steel. The support beams that hold up the ceiling were also completely different, and in different locations. All of the advertisements hanging from the ceilings in the final game are not present here, and instead are simply the "Central Market" Banners. The light fixtures are also completely different, emitting huge beams of light. The floor texture wasn't a transparent tile as we know it in the final game, and instead was simply a brown checkered floor. Many other small differences could be spotted in this level as well, but there's just too many to cover.
(3 Images)





Directly ahead of Frank here is a set of doors which presumably lead to the pharmacy, however in the final game they are moved to the left hand side of the supermarket near the wine store. This is one of the most major structural differences made. It's still unknown how the player would actually enter Central Market, as no footage shows an actual entrance.



Here is some of the best overall shots we were given of E3 Frank West, who at this point in development had a much more "cartoonish" appearance. His textures were entirely hand-drawn, resulting in a visual aesthetic comparable to something like Counter-Strike Source. Frank had more of an exaggerated facial expression, and essentially an entirely different face, as his eyebrows protruded further out and his nose was much larger. Franks hairline was also much more pronounced, and his hair had a tinge of red. Most noticeably of course was his completely different outfit, which was a green turtle neck sweater, underneath a dark black jacket.
(3 Images)





Here we can see our first glimpse of the original concept mall featured in this Demo. The design Capcom used for this mall is completely different from what's seen in the final game, as it was only intended to be used as a placeholder for the time being. This original mall design would take on the appearance of a strip mall or a "mini mall", and would only contain a handful of stores and very little places to explore. The repeated store we see in the hallway behind frank would stretch the entire length of the hallway, and was simply a wall-paper-like texture, serving as an illusion that the hallway was populated with stores, when in reality it was not. Humorously, this 2D image of the fake wallpaper store is of an actual store that can be found in real life, and is still in operation today. It is called "Williams Sonoma".



This is the earliest version of the "Fat Male" zombie, which has been changed tremendously in the final game. Following the art style that this E3 Demo seemed to have, this zombie was extremely cartoonish looking, with fake painted-on eyes. There was only 1 version of this zombie model present in this demo, the one you see here. He had a blue sweater with khaki pants. In the final game today, this zombie is capable of wearing many different clothes to add more variety, with a completely redesigned face. We have been lucky enough to actually find this model in the files of a later pre-release version of DEAD RISING, meaning we are now able to see it up-close.
(2 Images)




Here we can see that the Security room was available in the E3 build as well, which is amazing because it shows how long this area was in development. We can see that zombies would presumably spawn in the security room by default, or they would enter through the hallway. (Which probably didn't have the welded door at this point) - The security room went through an insane amount of changes regarding it's textures, but it's very interesting to see that the physical layout of the area doesn't actually appear to have changed that much. All of the holding bay rooms were present in this version, suggesting Capcom knew they would keep saved survivors in these rooms even in 2005. (However, it's unlikely that feature was working yet)



The Hardware Store was very interesting however it's quite difficult to explain exactly how different it was from the final game, as although it's not easy to tell from the existing footage, the Hardware store actually had TWO separate entrances. It was essentially a "middle" store with hallways running along both sides of it. Entering one side of the store would let you walk through it, and exit on the completely other side into another hallway. Despite the structural change involving the entrances to the store, the layout and appearance of the physical hardware store itself has not changed much in the final game today, and the only visual difference is that the wooden doors have been removed from the entrance, and of course the lack of an Elevator that appears only in this E3 Demo.



Here we have two similar images, however each of them show a unique side of the store, which gives us a glimpse into how the dual-entrance worked. This gave the hardware store an entrance at the "front" of the store as we know it today, as well as an entrance at the "back" of the store. It should be noted that one entrance to the store has it's metal gate rolled down, however the other entrance does not. You can see the direction the player is facing in each shot is different by the placement of the green advertisement signs.
(2 Images)




Zombies would begin to pile up and press against the windows as the demo played out, resulting in the glass cracking. It's never shown that the zombies could actually break the glass and enter into the store from the openings, so that's up to our own imagination...



The store gate becomes noticeably cut open after the zombies push the door down, but whether or not the gate actually broke when the doors collapsed is unknown, and It might have just been some clever video editing for the trailer, and not something that actually happened in the Demo. It's important to keep in mind that the entirety of this "Demo" was created simply to gather footage to make a trailer for E3, therefor not much of what you see was actually a working "feature" and was most likely mocked up to work only enough to get the shot, and nothing more.



Due to the fact that there was dual entrances to the Hardware Store, this means the wooden boards were stood up against the side of the store instead. This would of course change in the final game when one of the entrances would be removed in favor of keeping a single entrance to the store. The wooden boards would then be fitted to the wall in the back of the store.



The hardware store featured an elevator near one of the entrances, which seemed to serve an actual purpose for this Demo. We can see some text displaying "Escape via the elevator!" which seemed to be an In-game hint likely suggesting that the elevator was where the player needed to reach in order to complete this Demo, or at the very least escape the hardware store. We can see the elevator is currently at floor 2 in this shot, which was one level higher than where the player is currently within the hardware store. In the next image, the elevator arrives to the player on floor 1, filled with zombies. It's unknown where if anywhere the elevator would actually take the player, but it's possible it brought the player to the rooftop, security room, or the maintenance tunnels.
(2 Images)




The checkout desk was actually incredibly similar to how it became in the final game, however this version had a white door built into the wall, which is missing today.



Frank didn't need to continuously hold his camera while preforming actions or walking, and was also able to walk while holding guns. Frank also had the ability to shoot guns while walking, which would remain in the game for quite some time through development, before being removed.



The giant artwork seen on the wall behind the cashier desk in Rick's Sporting Goods was completely different, however it's incredible to see that the vast majority of the advertisements seen throughout the store have remained exactly the same. A small amount of the exterior hallway can be seen from this store.
(3 Images)





While Frank's camera functioned similarly to how it works today, the actual camera HUD was completely different. The camera would have a semi-transparent viewfinder, which allowed you to see more of your surroundings. There was a bunch of icons scattered throughout the HUD which were to emulate the appearance of looking through a real camera's viewfinder, such as the flash indicator and your remaining film.



The explosions in this build were extremely early and had a completely different effect. When zombies were damaged by explosions, they would spray out huge chunks of red flesh for some reason.



Here we can see Frank actually outside of the stores and running around in the hallway, however it's not a very clear shot. We can also see this early version of the handgun model which was much more realistic. The second image shows Frank using the Neck Twist skill on a Police zombie (Again, outside in the hallway) - These are basically the only shots available of Frank in the hallway.
(2 Images)




We can see to the left of Frank that the mirror reflections were surprisingly working at this stage of development, which is interesting as in some later 2006 builds, they do not work at all. Here you can see Frank battling a very early zombie, which eventually became a variant of a zombie used in the final game, however the model and textures have changed tremendously over time. The red checkered shirt got re-used in the final game, but the rest of his textures (especially his face) were more or less totally changed or removed.



An early unnamed female survivor (NPC01) would spawn in the Refined Class store, seemingly frightened by the events taking place.



Likewise, a very early version of Natalie would spawn in the sports store. Survivors would not actually have names yet at this point in development, and weren't considered integral parts of the gameplay yet either.



Here we can see Frank escorting that female survivor that was hiding in the women's store. In the trailer it shows that she for some reason falls down, likely from fainting or from a zombie bite. We can see that in the background of the Central Market, it was extremely dark, and didn't seem like a playable area. It's seems as if the first two isles of this store were a "beauty" location for capturing trailer footage, and the rest of the supermarket was likely untextured and just completely unusable.
(2 Images)




Frank was able to escort the survivors throughout the mall, and back to the hardware store, as we can see here that the women has been brought to the hardware store. It is still unknown where exactly the player would meet the majority of the survivors in the Demo, or where they would need to be brought to in order to rescue them, but It's believed that "NPC00" (Burt) is found within the hardware store, "NPC01" (The women who falls down) is located in Refined Class, and "NPC02" (Natalie) is found within the sports store. "NPC03" was another survivor planned to be in this Demo, according to datamined NPC spawn code, but was never used. "NPC03" actually turns out to be an early beta version of Gordon.



Here are a few shots of the early Security Room once again, however most importantly we also got a glimpse at some Debug Terminal text that was present in this build. (Shown in the first image below) - as well as a very visible mouse cursor can be seen, because this build ran on Alpha Xbox360 Hardware which was basically just a PC. You can also see that when they entered into Debug Mode, the screen would shrink with a grey border around it, presumably entering windowed mode. Now of course we can also see how early the stage itself was, visible by the very dull lighting, and the text that was present on the holding bay doors.
(3 Images)





In this early version of the Security Room, a yellow garbage bag is shown here on the floor of the computer room, which was then removed in the final game. The images displayed on the security monitors didn't actually change, and their textures for what was displayed on the screen used real life images of mall security footage.



The floor texture where Otis can be found was a dark green, instead of a light blue, but mostly every texture was changed in some way. The hallway which leads to Entrance Plaza seems to have changed the most, as the walls were a very bright red & white texture, and the floor was yellow.
(2 Images)




Here we see Frank fighting in between the isles of the supermarket, which is not something we got to see often throughout the available footage. Notice how dark the surrounding area is, likely because only 40%~ of this store was playable, or finished even.
(2 Images)




Not much about the Maintenance Tunnels has changed visually, but the layout is likely entirely different. We can see that the signage said "North Exit & South Exit", which likely lead to different vehicle loading entrances, rather than passages into the mall.



At the end of the Xbox Summit trailer, we can see Frank firing the Machine Gun on top of the Chie Club truck at a crowd of zombies. (Something we will later see again in TGS 2005)



The prologue cutscene featuring Connie and Dakota was something that was added into DEAD RISING since the very beginning of development. The basic layout of this cutscene was exactly how we know it today, however the overall design was still very incomplete, as all of the character models and the level detail was still highly unfinished. Dakota's 2005 model was very early, both in texture detail and the model itself. The car she sat in was fairly different too, as the seats are blue instead of brown like in the final game.
(2 Images)




All of the zombies shown in this Intro scene are the ones that were used in-game for E3 2005, and are all very early. (Aside from the female zombie) - The car's headlights didn't flicker in this scene yet, they just stayed illuminated. In the images below, you'll see many duplicates of the grey checkered shirt zombie, as they did not have a cutscene version of the red checkered shirt zombie at the time of filming this trailer, so it looks quite odd.
(3 Images)





Here is what we believe to be the Mall Map of E3 2005, which is clearly just a single level Mall. It's obviously not a full map, however this is likely a section of the map where the hardware store is situated.

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Tokyo Game Show 2005 (& X05/CES)

2005-09-17

The Tokyo Game Show 2005 Demo would be the first time the general public would be allowed to play the game. While only 4 months after it was last seen at E3, the game has started to take a drastic leap into it's new art style. The Demo takes place in a familiar yet dystopian version of North Plaza, designed to conjoin two stores together with a center courtyard, aptly named "Concourse". This plaza would connect Mc'Handy's Hardware across from Seon's Food & Stuff, which of course is nothing like we know today. This Demo would be the first to finally unveil partial details about the game's story, as it's main objective would involve rescuing Isabela from Larry's capture. While not exactly comparative to the final game's story, it would give us our first glimpse into the cast, as well as the general tone and meaning to the game. This would also be the first reveal of the in-game HUD, which is unlike anything we would receive in the final game. Frank's appearance has been changed since E3, to remove his ogre-like features to a degree. The zombies have also received this same treatment, bringing them into a more modern design. Zombies would take the appearance of much more blood-soaked ghouls compared to how we saw them previously. Most footage captured from this Demo is unfortunately shaky hand-camera footage, so image quality will vary widely. There was two notable versions of this Demo that you will see footage from, the first being the publicly playable Demo at Tokyo, and the second being from Capcom's internal version of the Demo, which was for procuring trailer footage. The public Demo was shown at three separate events (TGS, X05 & CES) however the Demo shown at these events were identical and thus we will simply refer to ALL footage as "TGS".

SPOILER: Click to show

The TGS 2005 Demo would follow a very basic formula. It was intended to show off the improvements to gameplay and the overall design since it was last seen at E3. The Demo would begin with the player cached away on top of some food court kiosks. The main location the Demo takes place in is named "Concourse" which is an alternate version of the North Plaza we would receive in the final game. You are given 10 minutes to complete the main objective, in English: "A Women With Secrets". This objective would have you make your way through Seon's Food & Stuff in order to reach the Meat Processing Area, where you would discover Larry holding Isabela capture, much like in the final game with Carlito instead. Amongst the main objective, you are also given side-quests, which involve saving survivors trapped on top of more kiosks, as well as in the back-room of the hardware store.



The Hardware Store would take up a large majority of the square-footage of Concourse in this Demo, as generally the entirety of the playable space was quite small. The tree and "park" area in the center would be the biggest attraction apart from the store. While inside the hardware store, your view of the outside courtyard would be overshadowed by the entrance to the supermarket, which is completely foreign to DEAD RISING today, as both of these stores couldn't be farther apart from each other in the final game.



The supermarket, which was previously only known as "Central Market" has now been completely redesigned and named "Seon's Food & Stuff". Here you can get a proper sense of scale of the center court in Concourse, which shows that it wasn't actually very big. You had a few benches, garbage cans, and parasols sitting around the grass field. The Sun decal on the floor tiles is the exact same one from Entrance Plaza, as well as many other bits and pieces of the level such as the pillars and some ceiling parts. Entrance Plaza's structure was likely completed at this stage in development so they simply recycled parts of it to make Concourse.



As part of the two available side-quests, you would be able to locate and rescue Kathy and Freddie from atop these kiosks. It is not exactly known where you would bring these survivors, as there is currently no footage that exists of a player successfully saving them. Kathy would eventually be renamed to Lindsay Harris, recycled as an intro survivor. Freddie would be removed from the game entirely.



The second part of the side-quests would involve rescuing two more survivors trapped in the back-room of the hardware store. It is still unknown where you would need to bring these two in order to "rescue" them. These two survivors in the Demo are named Rachel and Alan. Rachel would later be recycled as the woman Frank observes being attacked near her car in the intro, and Alan would be recycled as Ryan LaRosa, without his hat.
(2 Images)




Here we can get a better look of the hardware store in this Demo, which actually turned out to be the area we would see the most of, as most attendees wouldn't survive in here very long, or would run out of time trying to save Alan and Rachel. The hardware store has been completely remodeled since it last appeared in E3 2005. The "double entrance" design has been dropped in favor of a single entrance like in the final game. The wooden boards have now been placed on the back wall, and the elevator has been removed. This store now resembles the Final version of the store in many ways, however a few textures and the placement of items have been changed since this showcase.
(3 images)





When the player died they were shown this extremely early loading screen, which would have various hints that it would cycle between. The player's death in this version of the game was not an instant game-over, but instead it would subtract a small amount of time from their total playable time limit each time they died. This gave players a few attempts to complete the Demo.



This loading screen however was completely different and used at a different point in the game. This was likely used when the player would first get into the game before spawning into the mall, similar to the Xbox Live Demo which shows a controller tutorial as well.



Here is that same loading screen, which was datamined from the files of a later build of DEAD RISING. The text over Isabela's image is referring to the main mission that was present in the TGS 2005 Demo.



The player was able to aim the camera over Frank's shoulder when unarmed like he can in the final game. (For throwing items) - The circle crosshair is still the same one used in the final game as well. It's unknown if Frank was able to preform the spit animation, as there is no footage from 2005 that we can see of it.



When Frank was grabbed by a zombie, he wouldn't drop his currently selected large weapon such as a chainsaw, and he would simply remain holding it with one hand. Therefor, because of his ability to hold larger items with one hand, this also allowed the inventory to store large two-handed weapons as well. (Shown here holding 3 chainsaws in the inventory.)



When you are attacked by a zombie for the first time in the Demo, this early tutorial message was shown on screen. In these 2005 early builds, in order to stop a zombie from attacking you the player would have to mash the 'ABXY' buttons, instead of rotating the analog stick.



There was an unknown hallway which lead out of Concourse, however the player was not actually allowed to enter it. If the player got near it, this message would display and would block the player from entering. A warning message like this alerting the player they are not allowed to go to this area would end up being used in later 2006 builds as well, which you will see eventually.



Footage from within Seon's Food & Stuff is extremely scarce, as not many players survived long enough to enter it. Here we are able to see the complete redesign to the floor since it was last shown at E3. It now has the reflections (see-through floor with a mirrored model underneath) rather than the standard floor we saw previously. Most of what was seen in this store is exactly as it looks today in the final game.



This footage is the only way we are able to see the 5th and final survivor in the Demo, named Kent. It is unknown if you are able to rescue Kent, and he appears to just be sport-killing zombies from a safe location. If you prompt him, he will only tell you about Isabela and where you need to find her, and then continues to shoot at zombies. Kent would eventually be recycled into Brett Styles in the final game.
(3 Images)









- TGS 2005 (Trailer / Internal) Footage -
(The images below are from the Trailer Build of TGS 2005)





You will now notice that the following images are much higher quality than the ones before, as these are from Capcom's internal build of the game, which was not actually a Demo. It was used to procure footage for the trailer of the TGS Demo. (And for various screenshots.) Seon's Food & Stuff is shown here once again in much better detail than in the shaky-cam footage. We can now finally get a better look at the new updated zombie models. A few of the zombies that we've seen before in the E3 Demo, such as the Police Officer and Hawaiian Thug are still being used, however all of the other zombie models have been completely updated. Texture detail is now much higher, and the overall design aesthetic is much more realistic and no longer "cartoonish". We also have a chance to see the newly updated model for Frank West, who while very similar to his E3 design, was a bit less ogre-ish.



Here we see Frank in The Butcher shop finally, which is something nobody was able to capture in the public Demo unfortunately. The design of this area has not changed at all, however item placement has been reorganized quite a bit. There was also no meat hanging from the ceiling yet.



Here we have another angle of the Butcher shop, which again has no meat hooks hanging from the ceiling. We can see Frank attacking duplicates of a new female zombie model that was added into the game. This is now the first in-game female zombie, and Capcom would only continue to add more of them afterwards. It's also very easy to notice that the blood splatters were much brighter and vibrant at this point.



Here we see the main entrance of the mall. Not many changes were made to the entrance, and most of the advertisements have remained the same.



Here is the Helipad Rooftop, which is very different from the final game! We can see that there is no fence blocking the player from jumping off the roof, and instead it only has those yellow bars. The rooftop also seemed to be only one single platform at this point, as the area where you could jump down lower to reach near the fence (in the final game) is not present here at all. Beyond the yellow bars it seems the player would be able to easily jump into the parking lot. The flag pole behind Frank is also slightly different, as it has a model of a wind catcher on it, which is not there in the final game. Interestingly, it seems that the Skybox texture has changed quite a bit, however the town model has remained the same.
(2 Images)




This image is very blurry sadly, but it's the only one we have that shows the overall layout of the rooftop. We can see that there was no trash dumpster or stepladder leaning against the wall like there is in the final game, and instead there is a model of a steel shelving unit and a platform trolley. The steel shelving model has since been moved to the far left of the rooftop in the final game. In this same image we can also see that the layout of the mall was undoubtedly totally different, as in the final game there would be Entrance Plaza directly ahead of frank here. In this image it shows that there is part of the parking lot instead, as well as most of the mall to the LEFT of frank, which is unknown what area that might be. (Possibly Concourse)
(2 Images)




It's difficult to see since it's being obscured but this image shows us another complete change in the layout of the mall, showing the Willamette signage in the background, while the Entrance Plaza skylight is nowhere to be seen. This placement of the mall signage would be impossible to see in the final game if the player was standing in this location, proving a complete change in the rooftop design.



Here is an up close shot of TGS Frank's face, which has shown considerable changes since E3 2005. TGS Frank's model and textures can be found within the files of early 2006 beta builds, so I have been able to capture the model in great detail. (see directly below!)



Here is TGS Frank's model fully exported, thanks to it being found in the files of the Las Vegas Demo.



Here's an amazing view of the Entrance Plaza, which is an area not available in the public Demo. There was no Bumble Bee sitting on top of the clock tower yet, which can be seen in various screenshots. The lighting is also extremely different, with a much brighter tone and the use of a sun flare. While it is very difficult to see, "The Sinister Read" on the second floor was actually called "The Book Nook" at this point, which we will see in closer detail in the Las Vegas Demo further down in this article.



Here is another rare image to see in this quality. This one shows the complete clock without the Bee. Frank is depicted here fighting off MANY zombies, much more than what spawns in the final game. It's easy to see all the extremely early zombie models and textures in this image. Interestingly however, there does not seem to be the orange version of the female zombie, only the blue version. As you can see, "Leisure Time Books" (which was later renamed to "Everyone Luvs Books") is located at the front of the Entrance Plaza, in place of the camping store, which was moved to the back of the plaza near the escalators in the final game. We will see this quite a few times.



Throughout the trailer, Isabela can be seen using Carlito's Sniper rifle, fighting off approaching zombies. Isabela's early model is quite different, however we will mention more about her appearance later. In the background you can see there is no escalators in Entrance Plaza. This seems to be a very early rendition of Entrance Plaza for 2005, which was likely not a completely playable level until 2006. This version was strictly for trailer footage and It's likely not many stores were functional yet. We can see that the Refined Class store was located on the RIGHT of the hallway, which was later moved to the left side in 2006.



Here is a screenshot of Isabela found within the files of the Las Vegas 2006 Demo (a later build from January 2006) - Isabela is shown here in the Butcher Shop. This is very likely a screenshot of a cutscene from TGS, however it could be a loading screen as well...



The concept of Carlito was planned in early 2005, however his model was never shown outside of concept art. Here is the 2005 Carlito model found by datamining the Las Vegas 2006 build. It's possible that if Carlito appeared in the TGS Demo at ANY point, this is the model he would have used.



According to the trailer footage, At 10:00 AM the Entrance Plaza doors would open on their own, allowing the zombies in. This was then changed to having the old woman opening the doors for her dog in the final game. Here we can see very clearly there was only one set of doors for the entrance. We can also see in the third image below that there was a sun flare in the sky at this point in development.
(3 Images)





Here is another shot of the entrance doors. Frank is shown here on the staircase shooting at an early zombie with the handgun. It seems the crosshair for the handgun has not changed, however the placement of those two plants at the bottom of the stairs have been removed from the final game.
(3 Images)





You can also clearly see the plants in this shot as well. The early water texture is used here beneath the clock, which is a much more reflective texture/shader. The early clock tower is shown here once again, with no Bee Mascot sitting on top of it.



Here's a shot of the clock tower from a lower angle. It's very easy to see that there was no mascot sitting on top of it. Once again we can see that the Leisure Time Books store was at the front of the Plaza here, instead of near the escalators.



TGS 2005 Jessie can be seen here running down the empty maintenance tunnels. Jessie is presumably running away from either some zombies or Carlito in his truck. She is then later shown to be leaning up against a wall, presumably dead. This would eventually change to brad being killed here in the final game.
(4 images)






Frank is shown here in the Meat Processing Area once again. This time it shows that the meat is now hanging from the ceiling during this footage. We can see Frank attacking a couple zombies with a lead pipe, and holding a chainsaw in the next image.
(2 Images)




Here we can see Frank in the Maintenance Tunnels, fighting zombies with a machine gun. The Machine gun had a VERY different crosshair than what was used in the final game, and the firing sound is very different. It's likely the Maintenance Tunnels were still very early, and similar to what was shown in E3 2005.
(2 Images)




Once again, here is Isabela after fighting off many zombies with Carlito's sniper rifle, a weapon Isabela obviously never uses in the final game. She also had a unique version of her clothing that was stained in blood, which was very different from her "injured" clothing textures when she gets shot by Carlito in the final game.



Here is a comparison of how much her TGS model was changed for the final game. She has a very different skin tone and her hair style has changed quite a bit. She also has darker makeup and eyebrows. Here we have 3 pre-release versions of Isabela to show the progression of her appearance.



Here we can see Frank attacking some zombies in the Entrance Plaza with a baseball bat. You can see how dull the lighting in this stage was, but it was of course still very far from finished. The overall textures of this area haven't actually changed that much. Once again we can see "Leisure Time Books" in the front of Entrance Plaza, instead of in the back near the escalators.



Behind Frank in this image, there was a considerably early version of "Men's Storehouse" placed at the front of Entrance Plaza, where "Fashion Fiesta" lives today.



Here we can see a bit further down the Entrance Plaza, while Frank is using a Golf club.

---

Alpha Development Build (Pre-Las Vegas)

October ~ December of 2005

At some point in late 2005, Capcom started to redesign DEAD RISING from the ground-up. The strikingly outdated and unimpressive visuals of the game throughout 2005 was finally being addressed, and every single design aspect of the game would now begin to be treated to a pretty substantial overhaul. The vast majority of what was shown at Tokyo Game Show in September would now start to drastically change in favor of entirely new game assets and visuals. That being said, at this point in time there is still a few remnants of the older TGS-era that they didn't have time to address, such as various zombie models and weapons. This causes various aesthetics within the art direction to clash during this era of development. It was at this point in development when the game's actual storyline would now fall into place, as all of the motion capture was nearly completed and cutscenes were fully implemented into the game. What you will see for this section is some images that were found that appear to be from this particular late 2005 era of development. There is not many images of this era that exist, and in fact there is only a total of 5 that we will likely ever find. In-game screenshots of this era have only been found because they were taken for use as placeholder tutorial images, which appeared in a later version of the game, the "Las Vegas 2006" Demo. These images are very low quality but they offer us a great glimpse into the development of the game prior to the showcase in Las Vegas. This can be considered a "Pre-Las Vegas" build, as it is incredibly similar, but noticeably earlier.

SPOILER: Click to show

This build has implemented a completely new iteration of the HUD since we last saw it. The game would still only give the player 6 blocks of health, but now the HUD is starting to resemble something much more familiar to the final game today. The inventory slots were now placed at the top of the screen rather than on the bottom. Frank West has been given an entirely new appearance since we last saw him. The entirety of his model has changed, giving him a new jacket, face, and hair model. This model of Frank is now quite similar to how he appears in the final game, however his jacket is a dark black, and his hair is very different.



New survivors have been added into the game since the TGS Demo. Here we can see the introduction of Jeff Meyer. The placement of Jeff is of course very different from the final game, as he spawns in entrance plaza, rather than the rooftop. We will of course see much more of this in the later Las Vegas Demo. There doesn't appear to be any potted plants at the base of the staircases in entrance plaza anymore as we've seen in the early September showcase. Due to the nature of how this Demo likely ran, there was also no evidence of any of the intro assets in this level yet, therefor there is no barricade props placed near the entrance doors.



The same zombie models that were seen in the TGS-era of DEAD RISING's development have been kept in this build. However, the addition of a couple new female zombies have been added. We can see that the Willamette "Mr. Willabee" mascot has been added on top of the clocktower in the background. The game still used a visible streak of air when Frank would swing weapons, however this appears to be one of the last builds of the game to use this feature.



Another view of the still TGS-Era zombies included in this build. We will see these same zombie models much more frequently and in greater detail in the next build showcase. (Las Vegas Demo)



And finally, we are shown just how early the entirety of the UI was at this point in development. The Globe, Newsfeed and Quest interfaces used a gold color scheme rather than blue/black. The ability to check time in the game using a watch on Frank's arm was now added into the game. This image seems to be mainly a UI-mockup for presentation purposes. This is also the only time we've been able to see the Helipad Rooftop since TGS 2005. The skybox is completely different and the Colorado mountains were much taller and greener than they are today. This build did not have a Guide Arrow yet, nor did it include a kill count.

---

  Las Vegas 2006 (Ver. 0.50)

2006-02-01

This Demo was created specifically for a private Capcom-held convention in February 2006 in Las Vegas. (Hence the name.) This event was intended for reviewers to witness the latest development of DEAD RISING, as well as other Capcom games. The shear amount of differences still present in this build compared to the final game is almost mind-boggling and as a result, this section of the archive will be the largest yet. At this point in development, DEAD RISING is still 5 months away from being completed, and still looks almost unrecognizable compared to the final game. Game assets such as zombies, characters, and even the mall itself are still shockingly different, as this build was still using art and assets from 2005. Various Plazas around the mall are not even playable yet. This build is stripped down and designed to run as a Demo, therefor the player is only given one specific case mission, and various side quests. The mission objective is the "Medicine Run" case, which is what starts up immediately after the title screen. When you bring Brad's medicine back to the security room, the Demo ends. - The side quests involve saving various Beta survivors scattered around the playable areas.

SPOILER: Click to show

Here is the Disc this Build came from (Reused for GDC 2006 - Hence the March Date)



Here is the Title Screen, which has a very early version of Adam's theme song playing in the background. (link for the song directly below) - As you can see there is no 3D cinematic of zombies approaching the mall. Capcom would only implement such a concept a few months after this build was shown. Instead, we simply have the game's logo prominently displayed on the screen. The Options menu let's you choose the game's language, between English and Japanese. There is of course no OVERTIME MODE or INFINITY MODE bonuses available in here, especially because the idea of Infinity Mode did not exist this far back in development. A watermark of the Demo's build date and name is shown near the bottom, once again suggesting this build is meant for Las Vegas.



Here is the early version of Adam's theme song.



This is what the one and only loading screen looks like in this build. It will be shown every single time you cause the game to load. It gives the player their only clear indication of where they need to get to, because at this point in development, the 3D interactive MAP found in the pause menu was not finished or even useable yet.



When starting a new game, it will automatically begin the "Medicine Run" case. This cutscene is more or less the same as we know it today, however characters do not have lip-syncing implemented, and the audio mixing is quite different. The appearance of Frank West in this Demo seems to be the same as what we've seen in those previous late 2005 images. In the second photo, we can see Frank humorously getting directions to the Supermarket from a calendar on the wall, rather than a photo of the Mall Map.
(2 Images)




After the cutscene, we are shown this early Case Menu screen which shows unfinished renders of the Case thumbnails. It is so early in fact that we can still see a 2005 version of Frank's face being used. Reaching new cases in the game originally required the player to reach a certain level before being able to progress throughout the story, which is of course an idea that never made it further in development. It shows us that Case 4-1 is "closed", simply because this Demo is only intended to let the player experience Case 3-3, and nothing afterwards.



The Security Room uses very intense bump-mapping on the textures for some strange reason, but was likely an intentional display of the game's engine capabilities. Reviewers in Las Vegas would mock this decision, claiming they thought the walls looked like they were sprayed with glycerin. The HUD has changed considerably since we've last seen it in the November/December Development build. While the Inventory interface has only changed color scheme, the entirety of the Health interface has been completely redesigned. The cubes of health are now grey, which was a rather peculiar design choice. The guide arrow is a long skinny yellow arrow, and was much less accurate. Often times, the arrow is practically useless as it can't seem to distinguish where the player is in the Mall. There is still no kill counter in this build either, as the idea likely hadn't been thought of yet. The NPC names were green, with a dark rounded background. The NPC "health bar" would also scale to the size of the NPC's name proportionately. However, this health bar would not actually display health yet, acting more like a nameplate than anything.



During this mission, Jessie was still sitting by Brad's side on the bed as she does today, however her position is slightly different. Due to the collision in the security room being considerably unfinished, Frank was able to stand on the bed where Brad is sleeping, which allows you to interact with him, resulting in Frank saying to himself: "He's out like a light".
(2 Images)




Here we can see the camera HUD which is completely different from the final game. The "TIME" icon on the top has been around since the first builds of the game, but surprisingly does not actually do anything. The surrounding box around the viewfinder is transparent instead of opaque, and we see many icons at the bottom that have since been removed from the final game. The available film in the camera starts at 000 images and counts UPWARDS instead of decreasing downwards, It has been doing this since E3 2005 for some strange reason. The buttons to make the camera function are totally different as well, for instance the X button zooms, and the right trigger takes the photo. The "camera flash" icon actually has a purpose, as when you take a photo there is a visible flash!



The maximum images you can take in this build is 32, and once you reach the limit you'll be given a warning message on the screen to replace the camera batteries. However, hilariously, at this point in development there was nowhere throughout the mall to actually replenish Frank's camera batteries, as likely that feature was still being made.



Frank's watch is very similar to the final game, however the bar displaying your time remaining for events was very different. In the final game, you are able to highlight a specific case with an arrow, which will update your guide arrow to track it's position on the map. In this Demo, you are not able to interact with the available events, and the guide arrow cannot be reassigned to another event. You have to do each Case or Quest 1 by 1, and in the order the game wants you to do it in.



Barnaby can still be found unconscious and held capture in the electrical room like he is in the final game. Interestingly however, his name was "Dr. Barnaby" instead of just "Barnaby"



The text that was previously seen printed onto the doors in the E3 2005 Demo ("EAST, WEST, NORTH, SOUTH") is no longer present in this build, and was likely only used for E3. All of the interaction icons in this build including interacting with a door will use a yellow closed fist icon, and in the final game they included a unique button icon for doors, and an open palm icon for the other common interactions.



Saving is possible in this build using the normal saving locations such as the Security Room bench and the various bathrooms, however it behaves in a rather odd way. When you interact with a save prompt, it will open this unique box with a YES or NO option, rather than opening the Xbox Guide Menu like in the final game. If you press on YES, it will automatically save the game to the hard drive, and then will immediately kick you back out to the title screen. There is no ability to save the game and continue playing for some strange reason, and you are not allowed to select the storage device that you wish to save to, which is pretty ridiculous.



Much like the elevator rooftop, the Helipad rooftop is also not playable in this build, and will give you the same warning message when attempting to enter the area. Many other unplayable areas will give this warning message as well, as we will see later.



The Security room had many strange differences, including parts of random scenery geometry such as a green garbage bag, trolleys, and various cardboard boxes laying around. Here are some of those changes.
(2 images)




You were able to stand on many surfaces that you cannot in the final game, but this also created lot's of issues like falling through the map, zombies clipping through walls, etc.



Here is the Demo version of the Pause Menu. It is a highly gutted version and only contains 3 features. This is because the actual Pause Menu was extremely unfinished and not entirely usable yet. The "Options" menu is actually locked, and does not let you select it. Modifying the game to allow us to select the Options link reveals that it actually does nothing. Capcom likely wanted to do add a few in-game options for this demo, but decided not to, or didn't have enough time to implement them.



After modifying the Executable, I was able to find and restore the actual "Work In Progress" Pause Menu. It is clearly very unfinished and was never intended to be seen at this point in development. The entire color-scheme of the menu is completely different. It draws a 2D texture of a globe onto the screen for no apparent reason, and also draws a 3D spinning globe in the center. There are many more selectable pages in this version, which were later condensed in the final game's Pause Menu down to 6 pages. Rather than saying "Pause Menu" at the top, it instead oddly states the name of the game.



The MALL MAP (renamed to simply MAP in the final game) is surprisingly usable, considering this entire menu was hidden away. None of the stores or areas show a description text, and the cursor was completely different. It is however still a completely functioning map otherwise, as you are able to zoom in or out, change floors, and move your cursor around.



The PICTURE VIEWER menu was much less usable or stable, as it often crashes the game, and will never properly display any of your saved photos correctly and they will simply appear as a mess of pixels, usually resulting in crashing the game upon attempting to view them.



The SCOOPS page was completely unfinished, and had absolutely nothing to show. This entire page would be removed in the final game.



The PROFILES menu (renamed to NOTEBOOK in the final game) was once again highly unusable, as there was nothing to actually interact with. At the top, they were clearly beginning to implement character descriptions, however it is simply a placeholder for the time being.



The FILES page was another menu to be completely removed in the final game. Once again there is absolutely nothing to interact with in here.



The KEY ITEMS page was also removed as a standalone menu, however it was eventually merged into the final game's STATUS page, to display important story-related items the player has found. Unsurprisingly, this menu has nothing to interact with at all.



The STATUS page is much more useful than the previous few pages, however it was still extremely unfinished. Frank's display image is completely different, and actually just renders a 3D model of him into the display window. (Similarly to items in your inventory.) - Frank's Age was 34 at this point in development, which would be changed to 36 in the final game. The Status page would strangely label Frank's gender, and would describe him as a "Freelance Photojournalist". Quite a few different skill names can be seen, such as Saddle Throw. You are unable to scroll through the list of skills, likely meaning these were the only skills planned in this stage of development. Since the list of skills extends the full length of the STATUS page, it's impossible to see our Current PP and Zombies Killed statistics. The "LIFE" label was called "Toughness". Player's abilities had some different attributes as well, as your Throw Distance had 6 different upgrade stages, which was then changed to 5, and the Attack damage had 4 stages, which was then changed to 3.



And finally, THE FACTS (which was eventually renamed to CASE FILE). This is the same page we are shown briefly at the start of the Demo, but the only difference is this one will render
the green Pause Menu background behind it.



Around 2006, Capcom designed a new version of their Debug Menu since it was last seen in the E3 trailer. Here is that new menu, which would be called the "SysMenu" and became the common MT Framework Debug Menu for many other Capcom games. It has various features to allow you to explore the build further. Every option is contained within the menu, therefor there is no way to display any extra text onto the screen. (Such as an FPS counter.)



Using a second controller (or by modifying the game to use the primary controller) you have the ability to open a smaller version of the Debug Menu, which only has cheats. The only options in here that actually do anything is "PLAYER MUTEKI", "PLAYER NO DAMAGE" & "CAMERA_MOVE". The two player-cheats will just mimic the God Mode cheats available in the full SysMenu found in the "DebugShortCut" page. The "CAMERA_MOVE" function is exclusive to this mini-version of the debug menu, and will cycle between the debug flying camera, and the normal 3rd person camera. Entering debug camera will also lock the players position and stop the controller from interacting with Frank.
(2 Images)




The Demo gives the player some starter weapons, all of which do not spawn here in the final game. This is similar in concept to the starting weapons the player was given during the TGS 2005 Demo. This was likely done to make it easier for the reviewers to play the demo, and not something that was necessarily intended to be kept in the final game.



Otis will still have his normal conversation with you, instructing you to go to the Pharmacy for Brad's Medicine. However, the root that the player needs to take is completely different, as you can not use the air vent, due to the rooftop not being accessible in this build. You must travel down the security room hallway into Entrance Plaza, and throughout the entire mall. Attempting to travel using the air duct will result in a warning message stating it is not usable. In the final game, the hallway door becomes welded shut after meeting Brad and Jessie, making this demo-route completely impossible to recreate today.
(3 Images)





While carrying a Shotgun, Frank will recycle the same animations he used previously in the TGS 2005 Demo, which is an exclusively unique animation specifically for the Shotgun, which has him holding the shotgun with two hands. The entirety of this "certain weapons having their own animations" concept has been mostly removed from the final game, and although this running animation remains in the files today, it is no longer used for Frank.



Here we can see more of the reflective surfaces in the security Room hallway. It is honestly an incredible sight to behold but it does not make much sense, as everything just looks wet. The door that leads to Entrance Plaza was yellow and is much narrower compared to the Final version - It also contains no "EXIT" sign above it.
(2 Images)




However, once we load into Entrance Plaza, the model of the door is now the grey finalized version, which is hilariously wider on this side of the door than it was on the other side. It still does not contain the "EXIT" sign above it.



The lighting in Entrance Plaza is noticeably darker than the final game, and the Depth of Field is set to an extreme level. Here we can see our first look at the early zombie models used in this Demo, which were quite similar to the ones that appeared in the earlier TGS 2005 Demo, likely because they didn't have much time to redesign their appearance.



Here is a closer look at some of the zombies that can be seen in this build. We will not focus too much on the zombies throughout this build as they are merely a background detail in comparison to the immense changes elsewhere, and they are essentially the same zombie models that we've seen previously in the TGS Demo. Strangely however, a few zombie variations are actually missing since TGS, giving even less variation between zombies. This build finally introduced the "fat female" zombie into the mix as that model was not shown at TGS. Zombies in this build are regarded by many to be more "gruesome" and it's easy to see why. Textures are stained with more apparent blood, and their color pallets are focusing more on dark, cold colors. Variation in the zombies was severely lacking compared to the final game, making it look like there is twins of each zombie as far as the eye can see.
(4 Images)






The Entrance Plaza "Mr. Willabee" mascot has been added onto the clock tower finally, as it was previously missing in older versions of the game. By now, the structure of Entrance Plaza has taken it's final shape, and there is not many differences to the overall stage compared to the final game.



The first survivors you will encounter can be found in Entrance Plaza. Natalie is always located on the lower floor, and Jeff is usually on the top floor looking for you and Natalie. Natalie will not move until Jeff finds her, and Jeff will roam the entire mall looking for her. These survivors of course are not here in the final game, but rather placed on the rooftop instead.



Survivors didn't have any way of visually conveying their health, as in this stage of development nameplates would only display a name. Therefor, the only way to actually tell how much health a survivor had was to look away from them and see their "survivor box", which would function similarly to the final game, displaying the box as white, yellow, or red.



"Jason Wayne's Sporting Goods" was originally called "Rick's Sporting Goods" which has been it's original name since the very beginning of DEAD RISING's development.



A few of the stores in Entrance Plaza were not yet implemented and therefor used an empty shell for the store, which used a similar design to what can be seen in North Plaza today.
(2 Images)




There was originally going to be a third store along the back wall of the second floor in Entrance Plaza, situated between "Kathy's Boutique" and "Estelle's Fine-Lady Cosmetics" - However it never got far along enough in development, therefor just another empty store shell was used in it's place. This unused store's Area ID was "s128" which of course no longer exists today and was blocked off with a wall in the final game.



The hallway that leads into Al Fresca Plaza is very unfinished, and contains no advertisements along the walls. The ceiling is a placeholder block-out texture which is really cool to see. The hallway is noticeably wider than the Final version as a result of not containing the wood paneling along the sides. It somewhat resembles the hallway seen in Concourse from the TGS 2005 build.



"Everyone Luvs Books" was originally known as "Leisure Time Books" but was likely changed due to the ambiguity between "Leisure Park" and this store.



"The Sinister Read" was accidentally hilariously called "The Snister Read", and the texture can also be seen repeating the "T" a few times.



Inside the store, there was an earlier version of the flags along the walls, which displayed the original name of this store from 2005, which was called "The Book Nook". These flags were later changed to support the final name of the store, and were changed to green as well. Unsurprisingly, there is yet another spelling mistake. "Since 1859" was "Sience 1859". In the back of the store, we can see a painting marked with a pink dot. This was to signify that the painting was placeholder and was meant to be changed, which it was in the final game.



In both "Kathy's Boutique" and "Ladies' Space" there is an early advertisement texture with "tentative" (placeholder) written on it in Japanese.



The "Distinguished Gentleman" store originally had these blue flags containing the stores older logo "Men's Shop". These signs would eventually be removed not long after.



The Golf Club had a crosshair in this build, which used the handgun's crosshair. It's unclear why they removed such a feature, but it is very unfinished in this build and doesn't work correctly.



When you get grabbed by a zombie for the first time, this was the early tutorial message that would be shown which is very similar to the one that appeared back at TGS 2005.



Frank's appearance was quite different from the final game. His hair, jacket, pants and overall body shape was completely different. His jacket would be often seen clipping through his pants, as the model was thinner and more tight to his body. This was arguably a far superior design of Frank West compared to the final game, however his appearance was likely changed to reflect the design elements of the final game.



There is only 1 facial expression that Frank was capable of at this point, which was just his neutral face. Attacking or consuming items would keep Frank looking stoic like this.



The treadmills in Flexin' were considered "areas" with a button prompt over them for some inexplicable reason, and they do not move if you run on them.



You cannot save in the Gym, as the entire Gym locker door is missing. The Mirror is a metal texture and it isn't reflective at all. The mirror technology was not currently working at this point in development so they instead changed all mirrors in the game into non-reflective textures or "fake" mirrors.



There was much more zombies that would spawn in Al Fresca Plaza near the pond, and just in general.



Here is the earliest known version of Sophie, which was drastically different compared to how she appears in the final game. She has a completely different face scan, and is wearing a lot of makeup. Her shirt was a dark blue with a white stripe going across it, and her skirt was colored more similarly to jean denim. She was also wearing white sneakers instead of boots, and the strap for her wrist watch was green instead of brown.
(2 Images)




The large pop-up text that appears when a survivor joins Frank, or is killed, is a very different color and style compared to the final game, and is sometimes using two exclamation marks.
(2 Images)




There are a total of 14 Achievements in this build, however the only one that can be unlocked in-game is the "Vertical Jump" Achievement, which simply requires you to jump a total of one time. There is also the "Zombie Hunter", "Zombie Killer" and "Zombie Genocider" Achievements as well however they do not seem to unlock in-game despite my best efforts. I have force-unlocked all the available achievements to see their icons out of curiosity. They all use the original Xbox logo for placeholder reasons. The other Achievements simply say "<Insert translated text here>" - All Achievements except for Vertical Jump are worth 0G in this build.
(2 Images)




Floyd was using Kindell's model for some reason. Nothing else is noticeably different about his behavior otherwise.



When you successfully escort survivors to the Security Room, the game won't show you that you gained any Prestige Points for doing so. It simply places them in the holding bays once you load into the map. Only one of the four holding bays are used to store the survivors however, regardless of who you save. Only the yellow door room will be used. Saved survivors do not move around the room or talk to Frank at all in this build like they do in the final game. They lack nearly all of their AI when they're placed in here.



When you rescue more survivors, they appear in the same 2 spots, causing them to pile up inside each other.



The entire flower garden in Leisure Park was different from the final game. The two yellow flowerbeds were much smaller compared to the red ones and they also had a bit of red flowers within them in the center. The red flowerbeds were mostly the same as the final game, however they are a much brighter red and the flower models were lower quality, resulting in some strange effects when seen from above. The green hedges that line the perimeter of the flower garden didn't make it into the final game, and they also have no collision here for some reason.
(2 Images)




The entrance to the parking lot from within the park was sealed off with this wall, however you can drive through this wall with the Jeep and you are free to explore the parking lot. The collision of the parking lot is only assigned to vehicles, therefor if you exit the Jeep you'll fall under the map. This of course is the result of the level designers trying to figure out how exactly the convicts will spawn, and how the layout of the parking lot should work.



There was this weird structure on top of North Plaza's entrance, which perhaps was going to be made into a sign to announce North Plaza's construction, but was later removed. It should be noted this structure is the same thing that Paradise Plaza has on top of it's entrance.



The animation for Frank while using his camera was not finished, and would instead play a strange animation of Frank in a mid-landing motion, frozen in the air. Frank will also not be holding his camera either. There are no mirrors in this build to see our reflection, therefor I simply used the debug camera.
(2 images)




The water in the large pond in Leisure Park was essentially just a giant mirror, as the ripple effects in the water shader was not quite working yet. Surprisingly it did not cause any stability issues whatsoever.



However the smaller pond has no water in it at all, and a Submachine gun can be found near it in the grass for no apparent reason.



The trees in Leisure Park did not have any textures assigned to them yet which made them look quite creepy.



During night time when the Mall lights would shut off, there was no "Night Light" attached to Frank, making the mall completely dark. Objects that emit a reflection (such as the clock here) would continue to shine even during total darkness, which looked strange.



Frank would still use the early 2005 firing animations when firing either the Handgun, Nailgun, or the Submachine gun. This would be the last build of the game to do this.



The concept of Frank kicking the soccer ball was not implemented into the game yet, therefor pressing X will simply make Frank swing the soccer ball as if it was any normal melee weapon.



The Soda cans were also very unfinished, as Frank would hold them as he would with any other large object, and you cannot throw the individual cans either as he will only throw the entire box.



Frozen Vegetables were also considered to be a melee weapon instead of an actual edible health item, for some strange reason.



The "default" state of Pizza when equipped will actually be presented as "Microwave Pizza", which is simply an unused state of the Pizza. After about 30 seconds, the pizza will oddly change to "Uncooked Pizza" on it's own. Microwave Pizza posses no gameplay differences from Uncooked Pizza, however it's physical appearance is different and looks basically frozen.
(2 Images)




The Fire Extinguisher had the ability to aim and spray the foam in any direction. (We briefly saw this in E3 2005 trailers) - Therefor, pressing X with the Fire Extinguisher will only preform a melee attack, as the spraying attack is reserved for holding the right trigger down and pressing X together.
(2 Images)




While holding a large two-handed weapon or item, the ability to pick up a new item off the floor to swap what's currently in your hands was not working yet, and therefor the prompt to interact with the item is just disabled and won't let you equip it. You must drop your large item first.



When items in your inventory were about to break, they flashed RED instead of fading in and out. This was a common quirk with pre-release versions of DEAD RISING and it would continue to do this until a few months before release. We can also see that the early female zombies would still preform this unique attack animation on Frank, despite being very different looking females zombies in tone compared to the final version.



Since the beginning of Dead Rising's development, Police zombies equipped with the handgun would be able to randomly and sporadically fire their weapon in random directions. This would not only injure the player if hit by a stray bullet, but would also unintentionally kill surrounding zombies as well. This was likely removed in the final game as a result of the chaos it ensues. It would be brought back in the Nintendo Wii Chop Till You Drop version of the game, for some reason.



Another unique Police zombie trait only seen in early Dead Rising development was this Idle animation used when a Police zombie is equipped with a nightstick, featuring the zombie tapping his hand with the nightstick continuously.



Shooting a zombie's head would cause it to explode into chunks regardless of the power or type of firearm used, which has been reduced to only powerful weapons in the final game, such as the Shotgun or Sniper Rifle.



The Nailgun would also inflict the same amount of damage as any other gun in this build, thus exploding zombie heads each shot as well. It seems to share the exact same code as the handgun.



Back to the topic of the early zombie designs in this build, there are a few standout variations in clothing or body parts that are worth examining a bit closer. There are a few unique zombie parts that were common to see in this era of development, such as different designs in jeans, jackets, or even entire face models. While these zombie parts were often seen throughout gameplay/trailer footage of the Tokyo Game Show Demo, it's very exciting to be able to see them up-close in this newer build. As I mentioned earlier, this Las Vegas Demo is actually missing a few zombie parts that were shown in the TGS 2005 Demo, most importantly being the lack of a very noticeable orange shirt that was featured in that Demo, as well as a few different face models. It's unclear why this build is lacking those specific zombie parts, as removing them only served to restrict variation between zombies that much more. However, the most noticeably early or just simply unfinished zombie parts thankfully still exist in this demo, such as this pair of jeans with a thick coating of blood running down the left leg [First photo], or a grey version of a jacket that no longer exists in the final game today [Second photo], or even an entire face model that has been completely redesigned for the final game [Third photo], or an entire color palette of a zombie model itself (The Hoodie zombie in the Fourth photo) that simply no longer exists today.
(4 Images)






The unloaded levels throughout the mall (the glimpse of the mall you see before you load into it) would render a "block-out" model in it's place, which is an extremely undetailed version of the level, from it's early development phase. Usually, when approaching the level transition point, it would display this under construction disclaimer, and the player would be faced with a wall of collision preventing you from entering.
(2 Images)




Here is possibly the earliest draft of Entrance Plaza imaginable. It featured an entirely different pond, which didn't seem to have anything resembling the bumblebee clock tower. This prototype of entrance plaza is likely from 2004. Everything is made out of basic shapes.
(2 Images)




the unloaded model of Leisure Park was also an extremely incomplete prototype block-out of the level, as it only features the clock tower, garden, and the pond, all of which are completely unfinished.
(2 Images)




The unloaded prototype model of Wonderland Plaza contains all of it's collision, allowing us to fully explore the area. The stairs to the Space Rider are simply a low-detailed slope, and those kiosk beauty stores are giant unmodeled boxes which look pretty hilarious.
(2 Images)




The unloaded Food Court model is extremely rough, as it's made up of mostly boxes and cylinders. All of the collision is loaded in, allowing us to explore around it easily.
(2 Images)




The entrance to Al Fresca Plaza is considerably unfinished, and will render several overlapping textures. Of course, the unloaded model of Al Fresca Plaza is also untextured, and purple for some reason.



Aaron used David's model in this Demo for some strange reason, showing that during the games development, this was likely their original idea for the character.



- and here we can see that David's model is of course swapped with Aaron. Even if it seems strange, this is their original models.



In this build you had the option to carry David on your back, instead of in the final game where you can only lend him a shoulder.



The Transceiver had a noticeably different texture, which was black along the edges of the radio almost like a rubber coating. The most noticeable difference about it however was the different ringtone sound effect that played when you received a call. Frank would also not need to hold the transceiver in his hand when talking to Otis, allowing you to freely do anything while talking.
(2 images)




In many cases, Pre-Release versions of assets tended to be strangely better in comparison to what we got in the final game. The Machine Gun was one of these cases. The model of the gun was more realistic to the real-life counterpart. The magazine had a strap around it, and the iron sight was period correct to the real rifle, etc. The animation that Frank used for holding the gun was also strangely better in the Beta of the game, as his hands held the weapon properly.



Two convict trucks will spawn in Leisure Park at the same time for some odd reason, and Frank is also not usually targeted by them. They also have completely different dialog and their seating order is totally different. Reginald was the driver at this point, and Miguel was the gunner. They seem to spawn in the parking lot, and then drive out to the park. The convict holding the Baseball bat in the final game is actually using a Lead Pipe here.
(2 Images)




Killing the driver of the Humvee will allow us to drive the vehicle while the gunner and passenger are still alive. This was of course quickly fixed to ensure all the convicts must be killed first before entering.



The Photo Reward UI was incredibly early, and would give the player different types of grades compared to the final game. Font, color, and wording was all completely different, as well as the placement of the icons on the screen. You would be graded on the Type of photo, based on what's occurring in the scene. (Much like in the final game) - However you would also be given a grade based on the amount of PP you gained. There are quite a few secondary grades that can be achieved, such as "PERFECT!", "GREAT!", "NICE!", "NOT BAD!" and for taking a picture of nothing, you would receive "DAMN..." - It would also interestingly display the entire characters internal name, including the model number.
(2 images)




Combining multiple photo genres in one photo would give you a prototype combined rating system with placeholder names. In the case of getting an outtake and horror together would result in FUNKY-HORROR(kari)



There are a variety of issues with the Baked Shadows throughout North Plaza in this stage of development, which made several inconsistent shadows appear in areas they don't belong. This was likely due to the fact that this area, specifically the geometry, was changing drastically and quickly as the game was being made.
(3 images)





The bathroom in North Plaza didn't fully exist yet, but the collision and entrance to it is still here. The save game prompts were located outside near the entrance instead of inside the bathroom for some reason.
(2 images)




The only clothing option available throughout the mall and in the Security Room is the "Naked Frank" clothes. There is various extremely early outfits within the files of this build, however they are not wearable. Here you can see that originally the prompt when examining a clothing dispenser would display the name of the outfit, however in the final game it was changed to a simple global string that states "Change outfit". The Naked Costume would keep Frank's shoes on in this build, as his barefoot model was not yet completed and was not useable.



Through the SysMenu, we can give Frank the barefoot costume, however it is completely untextured. It was not meant to be worn this early in development.



While it can't be acquired by any normal means throughout the Mall, there exists a prototype alternate costume for Frank that goes unused in the files. It is known only as "COS002", and is of an earlier version of Frank's default outfit. It uses pants that are slightly too skinny, causing his shoes to clip through the legs, and a jacket that also pre-dates the model he normally uses. For some strange reason, instead of a white t-shirt, this alternate costume uses a red woman's shirt, which clearly has the outline of breasts. This outfit was clearly some prototype mock-up for testing changing costumes at some point in 2005, and just continues to live in the files here. The SysMenu is required to wear the costume.
(2 Images)




Frank had the ability to walk while holding a single-handed firearm in this build, which for some strange reason was removed from the final game. Frank would still use the majority of the animations seen back in E3 2005.



The toy Megabuster can be found in the North Plaza, which is surprising to see it existing in such an early version of the game. It behaves roughly the same way as it does in the final game. The real Megabuster cannot be found in this build however.



The Bowling Ball is hilariously misspelled as "Bowing Ball", however it is surprisingly the only misspelled item in the game.



The water gun was not meant to be seen at this stage of development, and will basically behave as a handgun. It uses the firing effect of the Machinegun, and has no water spraying effects.



When plates are thrown onto certain surfaces, they had the chance of not breaking and would instead drop to the floor as props. (and they don't delete themselves.)



The crates in the food court that allowed you to jump to the upper level were differently modeled, as they were 3 boxes stacked in a triangle shape this way, and in the final game it has become 4 boxes stacked in a rectangle shape.



Within the dining area of the Food Court, a large group of Police zombies will spawn seemingly for no reason at all, likely due to a glitch in the spawning system for this level.



The collision in the Food Court was quite early, and allowed the player to stand in a lot of interesting places that they never intended.



The lighting in the Food Court is very unfinished, and causes Frank's skin tone to darken in certain areas. It was also the main cause of the severe lag in this level.



The exterior of Seon's Food & Stuff was still using a block-out prototype of North Plaza, and as a result would be missing the supermarket's signage over the entrance doors.
(2 Images)




Getting back to our main task within the Demo, we are guided to Seon's Food & Stuff to retrieve the medicine for Brad. Just like in the final game, a boss battle will ensue with Steven Chapman after we are introduced to him in a cutscene. The cutscene is of course incredibly early, lacks any facial animations or lip-syncing, and all the rest of what we've come to know from this build.



The actual battle is also incredibly early as well. Steven does not have any sort of remaining health indicator, or even a name. The structure of the battle is fairly similar to the final game, however he has extra dialog, and he gets stuck on surfaces very often. It's also much easier to kill him, as a single shotgun blast to the head will usually kill him instantly. (Presumably to make this Demo easier for reviewers)



After the we return to the Security Room and give Jessie the medicine (Or we ran out of time to save Brad) The Demo will promptly end displaying this screen. The background seems to be a very early rendition of the Willamette Parkview Mall, as it has large balloons that would float above the rooftop and the Mall seems to be called the "Riverwalk Mall" - The balloons seemed to have a similar head of the Bumble Bee on the Entrance Plaza Clock Tower. There are also palm trees and very different signage on the face of the mall. The layout of the parking lot also seemed to be rather different as well. After this message disappears, we are returned to the Title Screen.



Of course, I was curious to see what more of this build can be explored if it weren't to end here, so I bypassed the standard "ending". There is not much of the "story" hiding in this build as it is either too early, or it was carefully removed from the code for this specific Demo. Missions I was able to load into included Encountering Carlito in the Entrance Plaza with Brad, however it is still incredibly early and Carlito will not actually spawn.



Interacting with Brad will incredibly display the message regarding rescuing Isabela from TGS 2005, and even still says "Kent".



Another mission that can load into is Food Court battle with Carlito, however Carlito will once again be missing, and Brad will shoot at nothing endlessly.



If we force the game to enter the "Carlito Defeated" state, we can reload back in with Brad, however Brad will refuse to move.



If we go check on Jessie and Dr. Barnaby, we can see them arguing amongst each other in a very comical fashion, waving their arms around in the air, using animations that do not appear anywhere else in the game, or anywhere in the final game for that matter. If you talk to either of them, only Japanese text is rendered in the dialog boxes, and seems to be placeholder text.



There is also an message that can appear on screen that will show you how many days you've survived "In Hell". This is of course just an early alternative to the "Time Until Helicopter Arrival" or "72 Hour Mode"



For some reason, while Leah is meant to be included in the list of survivors in this Demo, she is never capable of spawning normally. While we are on the topic of pushing the build to discover more hidden things, I've also been able to make Leah spawn. She won't be placed behind the <3elry counter like in the final game, and is instead wedged into the table. Interacting with her will make her join us immediately, and she won't have any mention of her missing child.



And finally, that brings us to our last notable thing in this Demo. The Unused Ranking Screen. At this point in development, features like this were too early to be unveiled, but the code for the Ranking screen can still be found in the game as it is simply disabled, and can be reimplemented back onto the Title Screen. Doing so will reveal an extra link on the Title Screen that will load us into Ranking when clicked. Xbox Live is required to enter into it, and it miraculously uses the same server as the final game to pull leaderboard information! It is only capable of showing the top 8 entries in the world, and you cannot scroll down to see more. It will only show Prestige Points as the concept of showing Survival Time was not implemented yet. There is also no ability to see your friend's ranks, as it can only show the "World" data. By now, the top 20-30 ranks on the Xbox360 leaderboards have been cheated, including my own rank, hence the ridiculously high prestige count.
(2 Images)

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Promotional Build (Las Vegas Trailer)

2006-02-17 (Approx.)

This build is visually similar to the Las Vegas Demo, however this one was in a much more playable state. This build introduced new areas of the mall that were not in the previous version. The only major differences we can see visually compared to the Las Vegas Demo is that the security room no longer has the strange wet-looking reflective surfaces, and the HUD has slightly changed. The yellow guide arrow has now been removed, and many animations are now closer to the final game. This seems to be the exact build that was used to create the "Las Vegas 2006" Trailer that would be released some time in February, however this build does not have any correlation to the Demo that was shown in early February in Las Vegas. This build was seemingly the entire[/i playable version of DEAD RISING as of February 2006, and would include much more of the story, as it was not cut down to run as a Demo or Trial. This was a standalone development build of the game created entirely for capturing footage, a build which reviewers or anyone outside of Capcom likely never got to play.

SPOILER: Click to show

Wonderland Plaza was now finally a playable area, however it was still fairly early. This was likely the earliest playable version of this stage that we will ever find. Here we see Frank holding the sniper rifle, a weapon that wasn't available in the previous Demo. The appearance of the zombies have not changed whatsoever since the previous Demo, therefor we will not mention them again.
(2 Images)




Paradise Plaza was finally added into this build as well, but was still extremely early. While its difficult to say for sure, It's likely there was no water in the ponds at this point in development, as that would continue to be an issue with Paradise Plaza throughout development for a few months. The blue signs hanging from the ceiling use a different slogan from the final game, expressing the mall is undergoing Final Winter Clearance. The small section of Leisure Park outside through the windows shows what appears to be a tree, meaning the model was no longer the rough "block out" mesh, and was beginning to use the actual Leisure Park model. This is the only in-game image of Beta Paradise Plaza from such an early state of development that we have, and we likely won't find any others.



Here we can see Frank armed with the Sniper Rifle once again. The model of Leisure Park was the same early unfinished version we've seen in the previous build, as the flower garden is still very early, and it has the green bushes on the perimeter of the flower garden. The trees are also still untextured and would continue to be this way for a few months.



Here we can see that the strange structure on top of North Plaza's entrance was still being used. This structure would continue to be seen far into development, until the entirety of Leisure Park was finished, at which point this structure, along with the different shrubbery and uncolored trees would be replaced. In the far background, we can see that Paradise Plaza's unloaded model was still a "block-out" mesh, as we've previously seen. Sophie still had her early appearance, with a dark blue shirt and sneakers.



Crislip's Home Saloon was also finally included into this build, as it was previously missing, however like many other stages it was still very early. The floor would render a reflection of various surfaces for some reason. This was likely cut out due to performance issues. The overall design of the stage is mostly the same as the final game.
(3 Images)





The Boss Battle stage was surprisingly included into this build as a "playable" area, though it's unclear if it was even possible to get to this location without the use of the Debug Menu. Brock's Tank is in a very different position from the final game, and It's unclear exactly as to how many changes were made to model of this stage. The collision seemed to be very unfinished due to the zombies clipping through the floor.



In this build, Steven's boss battle now had a name at the bottom of the screen with a health bar, however he was just called the "Market Manager". This Health Bar was later reused for the XM3 Prototype Tank Battle in the final game. This build has a noticeably different HUD from what we saw in the previous Las Vegas Demo. The label indicating player level would simply read "L :" instead of "Lv:" as it was seen previously - and the "PP" label is placed farther to the left compared to how it was seen before. This is mainly the reason why most people get confused with the timeline of the Las Vegas Demo and this later build, as to which came first. This build is indeed a later build, but it's unknown why these strange changes were made. Immediately after this build was shown, Capcom would then revert these changes, and continue using "Lv:", and reposition the HUD elements back to how they should be.



Here we can see that David now has his finalized model, and is no longer using Aaron's model. Interestingly however, the player was still able to carry David on their back like in the previous build.
(2 Images)




And of course, we can see that Aaron is now using the correct model that he uses in the final game.



For some strange reason the survivor being held capture by Jo was Sophie, which is odd because Sophie could still be found in the Leisure Park, which would result in potentially 2 Sophie's within the game...



The Maintenance Tunnel was now a playable area, however was still quite early. It featured these metal electrical/service cabinets around the map, and Frank was able to stand on them. These red cabinets would continue to be used until E3 2006, where they were finally removed. It's unknown how early this stage was but it doesn't appear to be much different from the final game.



Here we can just slightly see that the Security Room exit door was still yellow like it was in the Las Vegas Demo, and still lacked the "Exit" sign above it. This new version of the Security Room no longer uses the strange wet-looking reflections all over the walls and floors.
(2 Images)




When the Pistol was fired in this build, it no longer used the early Beta animation from 2005, and it now used the Final animation. Headshots from low powered guns like the handgun would finally no longer explode the zombie's heads as we've seen previously, and would simply spray blood.



The running animation for the Shotgun is now the same as the final game, and no longer uses the unique animation of Frank carrying it with two hands. The shotgun still had it's grey beta texture though.



The transceiver now had it's finalized appearance, and when Otis called Frank he would now have to hold the transceiver to his ear like in the final game.
(2 Images)




Seon's Food & Stuff hasn't gone through any major changes since we last saw it either, however it now renders much more zombies at a single time, and the lighting has been noticeably changed to a brighter and more saturated appearance.



The cutscene of Frank encountering Steven now finally has lip syncing, but this time Isabela is nowhere to be seen for some strange reason.



This build was still using that very early version of Entrance Plaza that we saw in the Las Vegas Demo. The sports store was still named "Rick's Sporting Goods", and you can see that to the left of Frank, a store is still totally missing. The only noticeable difference is that the lighting is much closer to the final game now.



The water in the Entrance Plaza was still the highly reflective light-blue color that we saw in the previous build. However one new change is that here we see Natalie would run around the mall looking for Jeff, but in the previous version she stood still waiting for him to locate her.



The seating order of the convicts was still the same as the earlier Las Vegas Demo. It's not really known if any improvements were done to their AI since then, but it's likely they were still just as unfinished. It's also unknown if two convict jeeps still spawned, or if they fixed it to only one this time.



In the Trailer footage, it shows that the Convict Jeep's windshield would now appear cracked near the top half of it, and the textures throughout the model appeared all mangled. It seems they were in the process of updating the model slowly.



The Gym in Al Fresca Plaza was still very incomplete, and still lacked the locker door and it's save prompt. The reflections on the mirror were still missing.



Here is the Food Court, which now seemed to render much more zombies in the dining section compared to what was shown in the Las Vegas Demo. This build now seems to run much smoother with no visible signs of lag when the player was inside the Food Court.



The glowing eyes effect was also finally completely implemented into the game now, as in the build before it would only work on some of the zombie models.

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Internal Development Build (Xbox Live Promotional Material)

2006-02-27 (Approx.)

Images of this build surfaced on the Xbox Live Marketplace as downloadable dashboard themes. Capcom likely assumed nobody would notice or pay attention to the clearly in-development assets seen throughout all the image. This was likely the most playable and presentable state of DEAD RISING Capcom had available at that time and decided to take images of it. The most noticeable differences between this version and earlier builds of the game is that the female zombies models have now been completely remade. Capcom had finally ditched the earlier turtle-neck sweater female zombie, in exchange for more "realistic" looking zombies, and with many more variations available. There is also many zombie textures that are hilariously obviously placeholder, or are using human survivor textures with no blood on them.

SPOILER: Click to show

All of the female zombies were using their human survivor counterpart textures. The only logical explanation for this is Capcom just finished creating these new female survivor models, and they didn't have zombie versions created yet, so they just used the survivor versions instead. If you look around the image, primarily on the far left in the background, you can see a variation of the fat male zombie with a light purple shirt similar to what David Bailey wears, however that shirt would later be removed from the zombie textures and does not appear in the final game today. You can also see to the far right side, a zombie with a clearly placeholder pair of orange pants that are completely clean without a single splotch of blood.



The purple shirt zombie is very visible here to the right, and he is also wearing the placeholder orange pants. Quite a few of the zombies textures are simply reused from much earlier builds of the game that we have seen before (Specifically from the Las Vegas Demo) The Leisure park model seems to still be a really early version, as the trees seem to still be lacking their textures. Here we have a very clear shot of the "human" textures being used on the female zombie to the left. The textures being used are a prototype version of Simone from the final game. (Prototype Cheryl textures are also used)



Again the human versions of the female zombies can be seen, as well as the pink shirt zombie textures in the background. Here we can see a lot more stores were introduced into Entrance Plaza, and it's clear that it is now much closer to the final version.

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Internal Preview Version (Promotional Media)

 2006-03-20 (Approx.)

The majority of game assets are now starting to resemble how they would eventually appear in the finished product, however some extreme differences can still be seen. Many images of the game were taken throughout the month of March to show development progress, and some of those images were even taken only a few days apart from each other, therefor some images show differences that are not present in others. This is because March was "crunch time" for DEAD RISING and many changes were being made very quickly. Assets were being introduced and taken out seemingly at random. Frank was still using his early 2006 jacket texture, as well as his early hair model, however the jacket model was now identical to the final game. The lighting throughout the mall was still unfinished and the HUD was a mystery as to what it looked like at this point, as it is not shown in any of the promotional images at this time. Not much is known about this build but thankfully there is quite a lot of images out in the wild thanks to Capcom.

SPOILER: Click to show

There are many new zombie textures added into this build which closely resemble the final versions, and most notably being the final version of the female zombies. The survivor names were still green, and still lacked any sort of visual representation of "health" and the nameplate bar would still scale accordingly to the size of their name.
(2 Images)




Here is an early cutscene of the character introduction of Frank, Jessie & Brad. We can see Frank is still using his early 2006 appearance and still has his early hair model, however they gave the jacket model it's finalized shape. The cuffs of the jacket are now wider like they are in the final game. This was done to avoid frank's hands clipping through the cuffs like they did in earlier builds.



Jack had a baseball cap instead of his beanie in this build.



This gives us a good view of this later iteration of Frank since he was last seen in the Las Vegas Demo. Again, his older hair model was still being used, as well as all of his older textures, the only difference they made was giving him a new updated jacket model.



A large majority of the zombie textures are now completely identical to the final game, and only a few textures were still being used from earlier builds, such as a single early face texture, and some clothing textures. Frank did not have a "Night Light" yet at this stage in development, making night time extremely dark around the player.



One zombie to the right side of the image here is shown still using the early bloody pants texture that was used in older versions of the game. This was the last known build to feature that pants texture. Leisure park seems to be much closer to the final game now, as the lights are working correctly at night time, but the trees seem to still lack their textures.



Multiple shots of the in-game lighting and the day-to-night transition. Frank can be seen running in the background.
(4 Images)






This image seems to be the same exact image Capcom used to develop one of the case images for the final game. The Beta hair model can still be very clearly seen here on Frank. Frank seems to be using his final jacket textures here, but it might be an illusion caused by the lighting. Every other image from this build shows Frank using his darker Beta jacket, so that's most likely the case here as well.



When Isabela gets attacked in the North Plaza, the cutscene is actually quite different from the final game. The lighting is incomplete, and a different zombie model attacks her. (It uses an Intro zombie model as a placeholder)



In this build, "The Coward" scoop would place Gordon into the camera store in Wonderland Plaza, instead of the hardware store in Al Fresca Plaza. We will see this again in April of 2006 in a later build.



Isabela's hair was still unfinished, as the hair did not have any bones for movement. Most Cutscenes seem to have lip-syncing correctly implemented into the game now.

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  "ROMRelease" Internal Development Build (Ver. 0.70)

2006-04-04

This is one of very few builds of DEAD RISING that was burned onto a DVD, yet seemingly wasn't intentionally created for promotional material, and was instead purely a development build of the game. This build is internally labeled "ROMRelease" which is a term Capcom used for many of their in-development games to indicate that this particular build is an internal debugging version. As a result of this, the performance in these types of builds is usually very poor, as it's not essential for the build to achieve a high frame-rate. A drastic amount of work on the game has been done since the previous showcase in March. The game is now visually starting to resemble the DEAD RISING we've come to know, however everything lacks a layer of polish. Most features in the game that you would expect to be completed by now, this late in development, are simply not finished yet, showing an immense amount of crunch time during these last few months of development. Frank's appearance in this build has now been finalized, however his animations have not. The HUD is very close to the final game visually, as it now has yellow blocks of health, however the rest of the game's UI is still very early. This build contains a game-breaking glitch which renders the game completely unplayable after the Carlito Food Court battle. This can easily be fixed however, which will allow much more early hidden content within the game to be seen. (Which we will do.)

SPOILER: Click to show

Here is the Disc this Build came from.



Here is the Title Screen for this build, which now displays a looping cutscene of the mall exactly like in the final game. The lighting is very different however, as there is a noticeable strange hue of green over everything. The menu selector was simply just a red placeholder gradient, rather than the bloody hand in the final game. Frank West is spawned in the center of the parking lot as a static object, for no apparent reason. Many different zombies appear on the screen compared to the final game, using different animations and the direction at which they approach the mall. Every game mode is unlocked from the start, allowing you to enter INFINITY MODE without even loading any save data. The player's Gamertag is displayed using a dark grey font. The text that says "Last Update" was changed to "Last Save" in the final game. Despite the numerous differences, the title screen is shockingly similar to the final game, considering how early this build still is...



Frank's facial expressions were much more pronounced in this build. This was likely one of the last builds to use it to this degree. It will cause Frank to appear much more concerned, however sometimes it can be excessive, and was likely reduced in the final game as a result.



The Helicopter Intro scene was very early in development, yet it surprisingly functions the same way as the final game. We can see Aaron being attacked on the car instead of Rich, and Leah is being chased by zombies on the rooftop rather than Michelle. The square icon that is used to indicate the position of the camera zoom is not working correctly and goes above the limit of the gauge. There is no film indicator for some reason, however there's a flash icon which has been in all previous versions of the game. The flash icon does actually indicate that the camera will "flash" some light into the scene before taking the picture, however there has never been a build of the game where the light is actually captured in the photo, rendering the flash idea completely pointless.
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When Frank encounters Carlito on the rooftop, the lighting for this scene is still far from finished, as Frank's skin will reflect bright red light throughout most of the scene.
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When we get in-game we can begin to notice some very apparent differences. The first tutorial window you are shown is noticeably unfinished, and has some Japanese text on it.



Frank's camera would start out with a strange default amount of 34 images which would be changed to 30 in the final game. It's unclear why there is an extra "0" in the film counter before the "34", but it's possible Capcom intended the player to be able to keep up to a hundred available film. (or more)



The pause menu is still VERY early, and for some reason says the name of the game on the top instead of "Pause Menu" - The pause menu let's us return to the title screen if we so choose. This feature would be removed from the final game on Xbox360, however it would be brought back in the 2016 remaster. The background is an absolutely blinding blue color, as it is missing the gradients and the moving background detail that would be added on top in the final game.



The Notebook page contained a "SCOOP" section, which is completely unknown as to what it would do. It was most likely intended to display Case / Quest info that the selected survivor took part in, however upon looking into the code, it is actually completely useless and has no code assigned to do anything of the sort. There was only 3 points of data on survivors, as it was currently missing the "Total" bar. At this point in development, the text that should read "DEAD / UNDEAD / LOST" would simply say "DEAD".



The STATUS page also had a few interesting differences, such as the placement of the "Overall Total PP:" label. It was placed in a row with the Current PP and Zombies Killed labels, forming a total of 3 rows. (This was then moved to the upper left box in the final game, and only 2 rows are seen today) - The placement of Frank's level was slightly different, and it still labeled Frank as a "Freelance Photojournalist". This label would be removed entirely in the final game. Frank's notebook image would not display in this build for some reason.



And lastly we have the MAP menu, which was still very unfinished at this point. None of the store descriptions will display in the DATA box yet, and none of the controller button hints are displayed. Using the MAP still functions more or less the same way as it does today, with the ability to zoom and change floors being the same. The MAP itself is still slightly unfinished, as it still had markers displaying all the various load-points in the game. (Likely just for a reference during development)



Frank's Skills still had a few different names, such as "Head Banger" and "Decap Kick"



While it cannot be accessed normally, and therefor technically doesn't count, the "FILES" page seen from the earlier Las Vegas Demo still exists in the code of this build, and can still be entered. It still lacks any actual use, of course.



This build would use a similar saving system to what we've seen previously in the Las Vegas 2006 Demo, as it would bring up a unique box UI rather than using the Guide Menu. This time, you have the ability to save the game and continue playing. The text written in the box was also updated to explain this. Here you can see that while at Level 1, Frank had five blocks of health, instead of four. The entire HUD is basically recycled from the earlier Las Vegas Demo, however the blocks of health have simply been recolored to their final yellow color.



The collision in the security room was still very early, however some of the serious issues from earlier builds have been fixed. Frank is shown here standing on the bed, which is no longer possible in the final game.



This build has the same Debug Menu or "SysMenu" that was present in the earlier Las Vegas Demo from January 2006. It looks visually identical to the previous iterations of the menu we've seen.



This build also includes the extra second-controller cheat menu as we've seen before. There is only 2 options available in this build however, both of which again just mimic options available in the full SysMenu



You can preform the over-the-shoulder view from inside the security room at any point during the game, and we can see that the door to Entrance Plaza is now it's final model and color. For some reason the door-prompt icons were using the weapon icons instead.
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During the Entrance Plaza opening cutscene, the water in the pond is completely flat and lacking any detail. This can be seen in a few trailers of the game made during this point in development as well, but here it us up close. It tends to flicker during parts of the scene, and it appears brighter depending on the distance of the camera.
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Once we get back in game however, the water appears normal and has texture to it. The water reflection shader is still quite early, and actually looks very impressive for the time. This would unfortunately cause excessive lag however, therefor they would later reduce it's reflective properties in the final game to solve the performance issues. Entrance Plaza is much further along in development, as the majority of the stores are now finalized. The Intro survivors will not have any names above their heads for some reason, likely because they had not decided what their names should be.



The survivors guarding the doors aren't actually holding on to anything, as all of the barricade props are missing. When taking a picture of a survivor, it wouldn't assign the correct name yet, as it would pick a random name from a list. In this case, it even uses names that the developers marked as "deprecated" which would not make it in the final game, hence the "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx".



The intro survivors are loaded into the world as a "decoration prop" in this build, and can be moved around by simply walking into them.



The Paradise Plaza sign in Entrance Plaza has a physical spelling mistake in the model, which instead hilariously spells "Paladise Plaza".



After talking to Barnaby, we can see that no survivors will load into the level. The barricade props are still missing, and zombies are unable to pour into the mall as there is a wall of collision preventing them.
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Once again we can see the very early facial expressions for Frank. Every scene that he appears in will involve very dramatic facial expressions whenever Frank is meant to express concern like this.
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However, Frank isn't the only one. Here is Jessie's early facial expression multiplier, which gives her a very noticeable "pouty" expression.



Otis has a much longer conversation with you before handing over the Transceiver and the Mall Map. Frank would actually talk back to Otis multiple times during this conversation, and you have to keep prompting him to continue talking. The game does not tell us when we acquire the items from him however, you're just left to assume you have it. Here you can see the air duct door is still facing inwards like we saw in the Las Vegas Demo.



The message that displays when you attempt to open the welded door is differently displayed, with a much smaller black background. Frank would also use this "Default" interaction animation, which he will also use for a lot of other interactions such as saving the game. (this is because those animations weren't finished yet and are using this as a placeholder)



The extra metal shielding that covers the wires near Otis is still here from when we last saw it in the earlier builds, however now the collision is a bit easier to walk on.



ALL of the achievement rewards for clothing are unlocked by default, however the clothing bags don't actually appear. The clothing is permanently unlocked likely only for testing purposes.



At various points throughout the story, Jessie isn't sitting in her chair for some reason and is instead magically floating.



Zombies will spawn in the elevator during your initial confrontation with Jeff and Natalie, and the door of the elevator doesn't load in, allowing zombies to roam around the rooftop the entire time. Jeff does not have his golf club in this build for some reason either, which is odd as he was equipped with it in the earlier Las Vegas Demo. When we rescue both Jeff and Natalie, we can see they stand in the security room much like in the final game, however they play very early unfinished animations.
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The font and colorization of various pop-up text messages in the game were quite different, and used a variety of different gradients. The color can either fade into black or into white.



The photo Reward UI was still very different from the final game. Text was larger, in different places, and using different fonts. The early color gradient was applied to the text as well, with the color fading into a white. The photo grading label would not match the color of the target in the photo, therefor "Zombie" is in blue while "Horror" is white. The individual points of each photo were gold and wouldn't share the color of the photo grade either.



The prestige bonus icon that appears in the camera HUD was just a red camera icon at this point in time, and there was no visual percentage of your PP multiplication, making it impossible to tell how much of a reward you would get from a bonus sticker. Simply aligning the sticker into the camera's focus will bring up the red icon, regardless of how much you zoom into it or your distance away from it.



Taking a photo of a PP Sticker will only give you a maximum of 999PP, and the label of the sticker was called "(yobi)" meaning "Placeholder". The PP Bonus Stickers were also considered "horror" category which is rather strange.



The Photo Viewer was also very early, as it would render two placeholder left-stick icons onto the screen for seemingly no reason. The quality of the saved photo was also much lower compared to final game. On the bottom of the screen we can see the addition of a 4th button hint, suggesting the player is able to cycle between their photos with the use of the DPAD. This however is not actually possible as the feature was never implemented, therefor that button hint is meaningless.



Even in such an early build of the game, you were still able to keep or "save" your photos in the PICTURE VIEWER, however prior to the game preserving the photo, it will prompt you with a Yes or No box, asking if you want to save it. This no longer occurs in the final game, as today pressing the Y button will simply go ahead and save the photo without asking. The scroll bar to the right of the photos, while small and difficult to notice, was a bright green instead of the yellow or gold in the final game.



A large industrial door spawns at the top of the warehouse which does not appear in the final game, however the outer shell of the door is still used, so it's unclear why this door was removed in the first place.



Random Cardboard Box Dispensers can be found around the warehouse, and they also do not have a name string yet for the item.



The case menu was still very unfinished, and looked a lot like what was shown in the Las Vegas Demo.



When we load into a new area, the game will tell us the current time and what day we are on, Instead of the game telling us how many hours we have left from our total 72 hours.



During specific times of the day, Paradise Plaza can be FILLED with zombies for some reason, causing an unbelievable amount of lag.



When a cutscene doesn't exist or was still heavily in development, it would instead show this message which would require the player to press the Start button.



The Carlito Food Court Battle plays quite similarly to the final game, however Carlito will not move from where he spawns. He will still throw grenades at you, and uses his P90 just like in the final game, but he will use different voice lines throughout the battle. Under normal conditions, this build will not allow you to progress any further after defeating Carlito as the developers accidentally left a glitch in the code which will cause a soft-lock and create an infinite loading screen. This can be fixed quite easily, allowing us to see more of the build. The following images are technically only possible to capture as a result of repairing this soft-lock issue.



The Scoop "The Coward" contains a pretty massive difference in this build, as similarly to earlier builds of the game, Gordon can be found in Wonderland Plaza inside Philo's Photos, rather than inside the Hardware Store in Al Fresca Plaza. Apart from his placement on the map however, Gordon behaves identical to the final game.
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Likewise, Gil can be found hiding in CD Crazy in the North Plaza in this build. He is placed on top of this CD rack safe from zombies, and is surrounded by bottles of wine. He behaves exactly like the final game in every other aspect.



David behaves similarly to the final game, however we are still given the ability to carry him, as we've previously seen in the Las Vegas Demo. In the final game, we can only offer David a shoulder.



Susan was also able to be carried rather than holding Frank's hand. The positioning information for Susan was clearly not figured out yet, as she would just merge into Frank's body.
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During the "Above The Law" boss battle, Kay is missing her sitting animation and will be in t-pose. Her chair that she sits in can be picked up as a normal chair item, which is no longer possible in the final game. If you help Kay by untying her, Frank will be teleported to the center of Leisure Park for no apparent reason.
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Jennifer will behave similarly to Kay with t-posing, as the box she should be sitting in doesn't exist yet. Instead, the early platform cart is used, which is a model that doesn't exist in the final game anymore. Each cluster of Cultists throughout the mall will be accompanied by an individual cart, as it seems to suggest this was the method the cult would originally transport the player in if they were to be knocked out.



After fighting your way out of the Cult Hideout, you are given a "Paper Scrap" instead of a "Passcode"



Defeating Cliff would not automatically grant access to the store next door, instead, you have to physically equip this key left on the floor wherever Cliff was killed.



The Gas Welder that Otis uses to weld the Security Room door shut can be found spawned into Crislip's Home Saloon, however it cannot be equipped. 



The yellow balls from the toy megabuster would remain loaded into the world forever, and some awesome displays of physics can be had with them. Each ball interacts with each other and allows you to fire a ball into a pile of others and cause a huge explosion.



The collision in Leisure Park is still very unfinished, and zombies will sometimes fall through the floor. Frank shown here with his feet underground.



When a zombie is missing a limb, the game would render this strange ball of flesh where the limb is severed.



Many of the zombie animations in this build are still unfinished, primarily the hurt / stumble animations when a zombie is attacked. Many animations take longer to end, leaving the zombie standing still for a long time.



Some of zombie model "level of detail" or LOD stages, particularly stage 2/3, had some missing polygons that were very noticeable in-game. Here we see the black shirt is missing multiple polygons around the zombie's neck, making a large part of the upper chest invisible.



Depending on the item, the interaction icon can vary between the weapon icon and the default "interact" icon - for no obvious reason. Things such as the Steel Rack are inexplicably considered an interaction rather than a weapon.



Mirrors are completely broken in this build, and show this strange pink glitched reflection instead.



INFINITY MODE is an interesting one. This entire mode was basically brand new at the time this build was compiled, as it was completely missing in the Las Vegas Demo just 2 months prior. While it does technically function as a survival mode, with health depleting as you play, it was still incredibly unfinished. The tutorial pop-up was still using placeholder images, and the description of Infinity Mode itself was described fairly differently, and has a humorous spelling mistake of "insantiy". While health does deplete in this mode, the player's Prestige Bar would not reflect the amount of time they had left for each block of health. It also will not appear yellow either. The Prestige Bar continues to function exactly the same way as it does in 72 Hour Mode, showing a blue bar referencing how much total PP the player has. As you would expect, this mode is still so early that none of the survivors will actually spawn. There is nothing to actually do in this mode, apart from simply surviving and finding the normal infinite amount of food in the mall to replenish your health. When you die in this mode, you won't be shown your survival time like in the final game, and instead will be shown the same "Coming in 2006" screen as the Las Vegas Demo. Seon's Food & Stuff is also still accessible, as the mode does not set the food throughout the mall to be limited.
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The ponds in Leisure Park are completely empty of water. One random Sub-Machine Gun will spawn in the small pond like it did in the Las Vegas Demo.
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All of the ponds in Paradise Plaza do not have water in them either. It's possible the flowing water code was broken at this point in development and it was easier for them to just leave it out entirely for a while until it was fixed.



The water inside the Al Fresca Plaza fountain is also missing, however Frank's feet will cause the non-existent water to ripple regardless.



Hitting zombies with vehicles do not count towards the kill counter in this build. Otherwise, the ability to run over zombies with vehicles is the exactly as you would expect it to be.



The white van that is normally found in the maintenance tunnels can be seen spawned into Leisure Park's parking lot for some reason, which takes the place of where the motorcycle should be.



The red convertible has a strange issue with the way it renders it's suspension components, as for whatever reason the driver side suspension assembly is flipped nearly 90°. It also causes the wheel to sit inside the fender. The convertible also has completely different driving characteristics, and is about 10x faster than in the final game.
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Within the maintenance tunnels, a Car, Truck and a Motorcycle will spawn near the entrance of the tunnels, and all of which behave very differently from the final game (much faster, different handling, etc.)



The Sedan is the only vehicle in this build that renders a "damaged engine" effect through it's use of smoke. It will not actually damage the vehicle if you crash into things however and it will never cause the vehicle to become inoperable. The smoke will not display correctly on the model of the car, and will usually just render off to the side.



Here we can see that the metal electrical cabinets that we saw in an earlier version of the game were still being used within this build. The overall lighting in this stage is fairly different compared to the final game as well, with much more dense fog.



The smoke effect that pours out of the meat trucks is always active, and doesn't require the mission to cause them to turn on. Opening the door from the back of the truck causes the door to close inwards, rather than open outwards.



During the "Bomb Collector" mission, Carlito does not have any AI or targeting to chase the player. Carlito isn't placed into his truck quite right so it looks really funny. We have the ability to drive the truck with Carlito still inside it which is a hilarious sight.
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Much more zombies would spawn into the Meat Processing Area, causing it to lag severely. Overall the design of this location has not changed since we've seen last it in 2005.



Night Time was still very dark like it was in the earlier builds, as Frank didn't have his night light following him.



During various stages of "night time" in the game, usually between 12am and 4am, the exterior world lighting isn't working correctly. The town will appear to be rendered in the day time while the skybox, and every light in the mall is set to "night". Some stores around the mall will even keep their lights on as well, making it look very strange.
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A strange layer of fog enters the mall in the morning hours, which slowly dissipates over time.



Strangely, during random times of the day, there is an odd chance of loading into an outdoor area (Such as Leisure Park) and having the lighting be incorrectly loaded. The sky will be missing, and the environment will be unshaded.



After rescuing Isabela from the zombie attack in the North Plaza, she falls completely unconscious and uses unique animations for laying down and being picked up. Isabela is incapable of walking on her own and needs to be carried.



The lighting in Carlito's Hideout is just completely and inexplicably broken.



Isabela is sitting on the floor in a completely different direction, and using a completely different animation. In the final game she is on her knees, however here she is sitting down. She of course doesn't have her laptop yet either. Talking to Isabela will display some very different dialog, and some Japanese text as well. Her wrists aren't connected to her arm, so they move around in a very odd way.
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All of the items the player needs to collect in Overtime Mode can be seen in the watch menu, however attempting to place a guide marker on any of them will direct the player to the center of Leisure Park. The Items do in fact spawn, and can be acquired throughout the mall, however the Blender does not spawn, making it impossible to collect all the items needed.



For some strange reason, Dr. Barnaby continues to wear the rope around his chest from when he was captured by Carlito. His name is still written as "Dr. Barnaby" as it was in older versions of the game, however now the final NPC health bar has been added into the game, therefor his name doesn't quite fit correctly.



If a floor contains multiple layers of geometry (EG: Metal parts, Carpet, etc.) - Frank's shadow will not be cast onto it, as the engine did not render these various upper layers as a part of the same ground geometry, and treats them as decals. This was quickly fixed in later builds of the game.



Similar to all 2005 and early 2006 builds, glass will crack first before shattering completely. Different melee weapons would decide how much the glass cracks or if it simply shatters after impact instead. (Like in the final game) - Some weapons do not cause the glass to shatter at all however, and will display an infinite amount of "hit" marks on the glass. Capcom decided to completely remove this feature from the final game for unknown reasons.



Gunshots will not destroy the glass whatsoever, regardless of the type of gun used or the amount of bullets fired.



The Power-up books in this build were just considered to be Melee weapons, and functioned similar to the Handbags in regards to damage and animations. They do not give you any noticeable Power-up when storing them in your inventory.



The Fire Extinguisher can still be aimed in first person, like previous builds, however here it is a completely broken mess. Firing the Extinguisher will cause it to infinitely expel foam, causing the game to lag. It will even continue firing the foam when the player exits the aiming animation.
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As we've seen previously in the Las Vegas Demo, once again the "default" pizza state was still the "Microwave Pizza". Again, it has no differences in it's usage, but has a different appearance from the normal "Uncooked Pizza". It will also automatically revert to Uncooked Pizza after about 30 seconds.
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When you throw gems, they will not disappear, and will pile up around the map on the floor causing the game to lag severely.



In certain situations, Frank will initially hold onto a ledge upon jumping towards it, awaiting the player to press A once again to lift him up. This feature has been completely removed from the final game.
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The weapons in the Gunshop are freely available to equip using an infinite item dispenser, rather than the items being physically spawned onto the walls. You can take as many guns as you want. A Shotgun dispenser will also spawn in the middle display case of the store, which will not happen in the final game as only a Handgun dispenser can be found there.
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The bathroom in the North Plaza was still unfinished, and would display an LOD model instead, allowing you to partially see through the walls. This was an issue previously seen in the Las Vegas 2006 Demo.



For some inconceivable reason, there was two military helicopters that would fly around Leisure Park when the Special Forces arrive. their AI is non-functional and they just fly around the park in a circle without ever targeting Frank. They continuously fire their machine guns nonstop. They are also completely invincible, but do show a "damaged" fireball effect on their tail rotor like they do in the final game.



While I'm not exactly sure what causes it, every now and then when progressing through the game, you can cause a bug warning to appear in the newsfeed which states: "+++If you can see this, it is a BUG!+++"



The SysMenu contains a few extra debugging utilities over the previous iterations of the menu. Here is a visual rendering of "Cloth" nodes, which allow hair or clothing to move freely. It can also be seen in Cutscenes as well.



The Unused "Beam Gun" weapon is something that has been known about in the files of the final game for many years, however it is useless in the final game. The Beam Gun exists in this build as well, but it can actually be used! It recycles the same aiming animation and crosshair as the machine gun. It does not have any firing effects associated with it, and will only shoot handgun bullets. Just like in the final game, the material and textures do not render correctly due to a small bug, however this can be easily fixed. (Which I have done.)
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The Heavy Machine Gun is another weapon that I manually loaded into the game, as it will not spawn normally. It only has 30 rounds of ammo, and uses the same animations as the normal Machine Gun. It can also be stored in your inventory!
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I was also able to spawn the completely unused Rocket Launcher! This is a model that has been spotted in the final game's files for years just like the Beam Gun, however it was never clear what it would have been used for. This build finally unravels the mystery for us. It seems to be a placeholder prototype of the Toy Mega Buster, as it will shoot similar yellow balls. It will also recycle the Machinegun for various animations.
(2 Images)




And lastly on the topic of hidden weapons in this build, I also spawned in the Plywood Panel. For whatever reason this model is incorrectly scaled to the player, and is roughly twice the size of the final model. It looks absolutely ridiculous.



If there is an item placed on a second floor of any location in the mall, the item's shadow will be shown through the floor and onto the ground below it.



Police zombies were still able to fire their handguns just like all the previous builds. This is likely one of the last builds where this was functional.



This build would also still include the Idle animation for Police zombies equipped with nightsticks, featuring the zombie tapping his hand with the nightstick in an Idle state. This animation is no longer used in the retail game.



There would be a huge cluster of Police zombies near the fountain, similarly to how they would appear in this spot in the earlier Las Vegas Demo.



The Golf Club in this build is still quite early, as it retains the crosshair seen in the previous earlier builds of the game. The crosshair for the golf club has since been removed from the final game for some unknown reason. When you press X to hit a Golf ball while aiming, Frank will automatically lock-on to a zombie, causing the player to not need to actually aim. This feature has also been removed from the final game.



The Rooftop has this strange button prompt here, which does absolutely nothing. It was likely used for testing any variety of code, but we will never know it's actual use. It uses the weapon icon, however it is not related to a weapon at all, as it is simply an empty AreaHit button.



While it cannot happen normally in this build without modifications, forcing the credits screen to roll shows us a very early rendition of the credits screen. There is only 2 developer names that appear, "Taoka Jiro" & "Nonaka Tan" - Which were likely the ones who created the credits screen, and used their names as a placeholder for the time being. The song that plays in the background is Jo's theme instead of Justified, likely because Justified wasn't planned to be the credits song at this time, or it wasn't finished yet.



And lastly we have the Ranking or "Leaderboards", which of course requires an Xbox Live connection to see any data. Much like we've seen previously with the Las Vegas Demo, this build still uses the same server as the final game to retrieve leaderboard statistics, and therefor is capable of showing the data in this Beta Build as well. The UI is broken once data is loaded onto the screen, as it begins to flicker due to it exceeding the maximum allowed amount of text on the screen, therefor the background and various text starts to flicker. (As you can see here). This build was still incapable of showing Survival Time, and is only allowed to show Prestige Points. The Ranking screen will forcefully display the DEAD RISING logo in the background, which does not appear in the final game. "NAME" was eventually changed to "GAMERTAG" in the final game, and in this build all of the gamertags are using a darker grey color, whereas in the final game they are simply white. The rest of the Ranking screen and it's functionalities are as you would expect. As mentioned in the Ranking screen for the Las Vegas Demo, the top 20-30 ranks on the Xbox360 leaderboards have been cheated, including my own rank, hence the ridiculously high prestige count.



And for achievements, this build has all of the 50 normal unlockable achievements from the final game, however many of their names are quite different. The requirements for unlocking them was also very different, and in some cases physically impossible. Zombie Genocider would require killing 100,000 zombies, rather than 53,594. It would also unlock a costume at this point, rather than unlock the Mega Buster. Achievements with a ★ icon would unlock a costume or item.



The "7 Day survivor" achievement was originally named "30 Day Survivor★" therefor requiring the player to survive for 30 DAYS, which is completely ludicrous.



"Hella Copter" was called "Fall Down, Go Boom" in this build.





(Full List of 0.70 Achievements)


Zombie Hunter -- REQ: Defeat at least 1,000 zombies.
Zombie Killer -- REQ: Defeat at least 10,000 zombies.
Zombie Genocider★ -- REQ: Defeat at least 100,000 zombies.
Self Defense -- REQ: Defeat at least 1 psychopath.
Peace Keeper -- REQ: Defeat at least 5 psychopaths.
Punisher★ -- REQ: Defeat at least 10 psychopaths.
Legendary Soldier★ -- REQ: Defeat at least 10 special forces soldiers.
Fall Down, Go Boom★ -- REQ: Successfully repel a helicopter..
Tour Guide -- REQ: Escort 8 survivors at once.
Frank the Pimp -- REQ: Simultaneously escort 8 female survivors.
Full Set -- REQ: Collect all portraits in the NOTEBOOK.
Humanist -- REQ: Escort at least 10 survivors to the Security Room.
Life Saver -- REQ: Get at least 20 survivors out of the mall..
Saint★ -- REQ: Get at least 50 survivors out of the mall.
Strike! -- REQ: Send at least 10 zombies flying with bowling balls.
Costume Party -- REQ: Place novelty masks on at least 10.
Raining Zombies -- REQ: Knock at least 30 zombies aside with a parasol.
Gourmet -- REQ: Eat all types of food available in the mall.
Item Smasher★ -- REQ: Break at least 100 items.
Bullet Dancer -- REQ: Fire at least 1,000 bullets.
Perfect Gunner★ -- REQ: Don't miss with a machine gun.
Photojournalist -- REQ: Score at least 500 PP from a single photo.
The Artiste -- REQ: Score at least 1,000 PP from a single photo.
Group Photo -- REQ: Get 100 Target Markers with the camera.
Portraiture -- REQ: Photograph at least 10 survivors.
Census Taker★ -- REQ: Photograph at least 50 survivors.
Psycho Photo -- REQ: Photograph at least 4 psychopaths.
Psycho Collector -- REQ: Photograph at least 10 psychopaths.
PP Collector★ -- REQ: Photograph all PP Stickers.
Snuff Shot B -- REQ: Successfully photograph zombie Brad.
Snapshot J -- REQ: Successfully photograph zombie Jessie.
Transmissionary★ -- REQ: Answer all calls from Otis.
Indoorsman -- REQ: Spend at least 24 hours indoors.
Outdoorsman -- REQ: Spend over 24 hours outdoors.
Freefall -- REQ: Drop from a height of at least 30 feet.
Marathon Runner -- Cover a distance of 26.22 miles.
Carjacker★ -- Steal the convicts' vehicle.
Stunt Driver -- REQ: Jump a car to a height of at least 65 feet.
Stunt Rider -- REQ: Jump a motorcycle to a height of at least 65 feet.
Zombie Road -- REQ: Walk over 330 feet on the backs of zombies using the Zombie Ride.
Karate Champ★ -- REQ: Defeat at least 1,000 zombies barehanded.
Sharp Dresser -- REQ: Change into at least 20 different costumes.
Clothes Horse -- REQ: Change into all costumes available in the mall.
Level Max -- REQ: Reach Lv. 50.
Unbreakable★ -- REQ: Get the good ending without being knocked out.
Overtime Mode★ -- REQ: Unveil all CASES and be at the heliport at noon.
∞ Mode★ -- REQ: Get the true ending in Overtime Mode.
3 Day Survivor -- REQ: Survive for at least 72 hours.
10 Day Survivor★ -- REQ: Survive for at least 10 days.
30 Day Survivor★ -- REQ: Survive for at least 30 days.

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April Reviewer Trial (Pre-E3 2006)

2006-04-14 (Approx.)

This build is fairly similar to the previous ROMRelease build, however this one is in a much more playable state comparatively, and seems to have more of the story available. While the previous build was only meant for internal development testing within Capcom, this build was used to show reviewers privately how DEAD RISING was shaping up as of April 2006. It seems a total of 3 major review companies (IGN, Gamespy & Gamespot) were shown this build, and articles that were written on their experiences seeing this build would mention that a few representatives from Capcom actually visited their offices in person to show them the build. The most noticeable improvements in this build over the earlier development build was the ability to now rescue more survivors throughout the mall without the game completely crashing. The build now had the ability to encounter more boss fights, see more cutscenes, and use more weapons and features throughout the game. Various lighting issues have been resolved, and the build was likely much more stable than the previous ROMRelease build. Judging from the pictures that exist, it seems almost the entire game was playable.

SPOILER: Click to show

Cutscenes that were not previously included in the game are now working. This includes defeating Carlito and even scenes further into the game, such as the Carlito Sniper Battle. In the previous build, the last cutscene that you would be shown was encountering Jessie in the warehouse. Afterwards, it would simply state the following cutscenes are not finished yet, and not play any of them.



Survivors could now be found loaded into the world, and could even be rescued. This was physically impossible in the previous ROMRelease build without manually repairing issues in the code.



The camera HUD was the exact same one that was seen in the ROM Release 0.70 build.



After a loading screen, we can see that the developers added a background image behind the text of your time played, unlike in 0.70 which was simply a black void behind the text. This background was quickly removed after this build however, and never made it into the final game or any later builds.

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Development Build / E3 Candidate (Pre-E3 2006)

2006-04-XX (Uncertain)

After the April review build was shown, Capcom then continued to work throughout April of 2006 to fix as many bugs and graphical issues as possible. The game would go through changes rapidly during the end of April as Capcom needed to fix the enormous amount of issues plaguing the game at this point in development. They were also getting very close to showing the game at E3 in May of 2006, therefor this was crunch time to get a presentable Demo up and running in time. Capcom started to experiment with adding new Demo-related features into the game in preparation for E3, such as a count-down timer (which would never get used at E3) as well as setting up a path for the Demo to take the player on. During this time, it seems Capcom was experiencing a few technical issues with some game mechanics, therefor they implemented various debug diagnostic information overlays onto the screen that would print strange text about various different data. This build is only known to exist because Capcom used footage of it sparsely throughout various trailers of the game in 2006.

SPOILER: Click to show

Here we can see the 72-hour timer that would be on your screen at all times while In-game. It's unknown what would happen once it reached 0:0:0, but it would presumably end the Demo or show one of the game's endings. We can also see that the HUD has changed considerably since it was last seen, as Level 1 now has 4 blocks of health instead of 5, and the font has also been changed to match what would be used in the final game.
(2 Images)




While in Camera Mode, there was some Debug Information about the size of the image that would be taken, and how it was stored to your Xbox's hard drive. This functionality has been completely removed from the final game, as you would expect.



While in a vehicle, there was a prototype RPM Gauge that would display on the screen, that Capcom was likely intending to implement into the game but was later removed afterwards. It would tell you which gear the car was in, as well as the RPM, Speed, and Health [Damage State] of the vehicle. It's possible this was just a diagnostic tool to test the vehicles and know their exact speeds.

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  E3 2006 (Tradeshow Demo)

2006-05-06

DEAD RISING has now reached it's largest milestone in development before release. What was shown in this build was considered "the final look" of the game, however many differences can still be seen, both physically and internally. The majority of the game's assets are visually finalized, and cutscenes are now in a near-complete state. Most of the graphical and technical issues that plagued previous development builds (specifically 0.70) are now polished out. This is the actual Demo that was ran at the E3 2006 convention, therefor this build operates like any typical Demo would at such an event. This build does not contain the debug functionalities that we've seen previously, however it has a few developer options that were mainly used to assist the presentation at E3. The title screen states "E3 Version" - and this build is only playable until you encounter Doctor Barnaby. After the encounter, the Demo will promptly end with a message stating "Coming in 2006". There is a constant timer in the build that will end the Demo in 15 minutes, regardless of if you locate Barnaby or not. There is also an "Idle Timer" that will end the Demo if the player has not touched the controller for roughly a minute. This is because the build was meant to be restarted several times for each attendee at E3. Saving has also been disabled in this build due to that exact reason. I will exploit the game's code in order to bypass several E3-specific limitations to allow us to see much more early content within this build.

SPOILER: Click to show

Here is the Disc this build is from.



Here is the Title Screen for the E3 2006 Demo, which is beginning to resemble what would be used in the final game, however there is still many differences. There is a "E3 VERSION" watermark that can be seen in the bottom left corner. The links for RANKING and OPTIONS are disabled in this build, as well as the OVERTIME MODE and INFINITY MODE sub-menu links. This build still used the red gradient instead of the bloody hand as the selector.



This build introduces a total of 4 PP stickers that can be photographed during the helicopter Intro cutscene. These stickers do not seem to be tied to the in-game sticker system and wouldn't count towards the achievement. It is actually incredibly easy to accidentally photograph ALL of the stickers in a single shot, which is likely why they removed them in the final game.



The HUD is now beginning to shape up and function more closely to the final game. However, one strange difference is that the font for the lettering layered on top of the health bar is noticeably blurrier for some reason. This would be fixed in the final game.



The E3 camera HUD no longer has the flash icon, however it strangely still has the 3 digit photo counter. You are given a starting amount of film of 24 photos instead of 30 for some strange reason. There was still no percentage when taking a picture of a PP sticker, and it would only display the "PP" icon whenever a sticker was in focus.



Despite the pause menu appearing to be much more finalized in this build, as it is nearing the game's completion, it was still very early and was still labeled as "DEAD RISING" on the top. Originally, the PICTURE VIEWER is disabled in this build, as there was still quite a few issues with this feature. However, I forcefully enabled it within the executable for the purposes of archiving the differences, which you can see in the following pictures. More importantly, the "Return to Title" button seen in the previous 0.70 build has been removed, which is unclear why.



This build still has a very early NOTEBOOK page, as it includes the unused "SCOOP" section, which has been completely removed from the final game. This feature does not function at all in this build either, and is just a pointless visual.



The PICTURE VIEWER was obviously never supposed to be accessed within this build, as it is still too early in development to be properly functional. Similarly as we've seen in the older April 2006 build, you were given a prompt when you attempt to lock or keep a photo, which does not happen in the final game, as this prompt is now only used when deleting a photo. The prompt itself seems to have developed an issue since it was last seen in the April build, as the red selector GUI is now broken and is displayed off to the left side of the screen.



The CASE FILE menu is also very far along in development, however it's still unfinished. Case 4 would begin at 12PM in this build, rather than at 3PM like it does in the final game.



and finally, the OPTIONS menu was simply missing a couple features, however nothing else was much different.



You cannot save the game in this build as Capcom disabled that feature. This is because the build was played publicly at E3, and they didn't want people using this feature.



Due to the collision still being unfinished for various areas, you were still able to stand on the bed in the security room.



The security room still had this metal shield covering the wires near the air ducts as well. This was previously seen in both the Las Vegas Demo and the 0.70 build of the game. The player is also still able to enter the "over the shoulder" view in any area.



The Entrance Plaza is now basically the same as the final game (with a few exceptions) - however most noticeably it has the same exact water reflections that the 0.70 build used. All of the survivors now have their names above their heads.



Intro survivors stood in different places from the final game, Verlene cannot die because of this as she is standing on the top of the advertisement structure. All of the survivors were much stronger and took much more damage to kill. We can also see Brian still alive using his shotgun. It should be noted that you cannot save these survivors in this build, despite what rumors have led people to believe.



The majority of the in-game text was still differently colored from the final game, or it used a different shade/gradient over the font.



Jeff was still not equipped with his Golf Club, however now the elevator door is working correctly.



The names of survivors wouldn't disappear after they are killed. This was a common issue with earlier builds of the game.



The Warehouse still has the door on the top level hallway entrance. This was likely the last time it was ever used.



The watch menu was still fairly unfinished, as the length of all the cases in the game do not display a time limit of any sort, and just appear empty or "out of time"



Even in the E3 build, when you hit glass with a melee weapon, it would crack first before completely breaking. This is likely the last build to have used this feature.



A few item names were still fairly different, as shown here. (Severed Arm instead of "Hunk of meat")



Zombies could easily pour into the fountain in Al Fresca Plaza by simply walking over the walls, removing the players ability to take a break in here.
(2 Images)




The majority of the water reflections in this build are basically finalized, however the smaller pond in Leisure Park was a green mirror for some reason.



When items were about to break, they would still flash RED (As they did in the every earlier build) - This was likely the last build to ever use this, as it was changed to simply fading in-and-out for the final game.



The water Shader behaved much more like a mirror in this build, and in some areas it does not visually ripple like it's supposed to. This allows you to see things reflected in the water.



The shortcut that can be unlocked in Wonderland Plaza / Paradise Plaza is unlocked by default in this build, and oddly uses the weapon icon instead. (Left over from 0.70?)



The large-attack animation for the hedge clippers are still unfinished, as the blades will not open, making Frank appear to hold it in one hand.



Once the Demo timer reached 15 minutes, or the player had not touched the controller for a few minutes. The Demo will promptly end, revealing an image saying "DEAD RISING - Coming Soon". This same thing will occur after the player encounters Doctor Barnaby in Entrance Plaza. The Demo is not intended to go any further than that.



However, of course, that doesn't stop me from bypassing it. Once you remove all the E3 Demo-specific features like the timers and such, you are able to progress further into the build, revealing many more hidden differences. Here we can see the ending screen has been bypassed, allowing us to continue on in the cases.



Rescuing a survivor found in the Mall (Which is never normally possible in this Demo) will show a very different font and color for the text that will display.



The convicts were still placed differently amongst the vehicle as seen in older versions of the game, as Reginald was the driver, and Miguel was the Gunner. This was changed soon after.



While driving the stolen convict truck, if we enter into the Maintenance Tunnels, or reload back into the Leisure Park, the convicts will reappear on the truck alive while we're still driving it. You can see why this was fixed later.
(2 Images)




Overtime Mode was sealed away for evidently a very good reason, as the majority of it is not exactly playable. While the player will still load into Carlito's Hideout, and Isabela will still be there with you, none of the scoops to obtain the items for Isabela will appear. More serious issues start to be found the further you play, including the Special Forces being nowhere to be found, zombies will still load into many areas despite the fact they should all be wiped out by the military, and various other oddities.



Despite the scoop list being empty, the items required for Isabela's shopping list are still loaded into the levels, and can even be obtained.



However, bringing the items back to Isabela is a different story. Once the game presumably registers that you have obtained all of her items, Isabela will hilariously leave you behind for no apparent reason. She was also nice enough to shut all the lights before leaving as well.



The crashed helicopter rubble contains no collision models whatsoever, allowing the player to walk right through it.



The hole in the clock tower created by the crash is not sealed off by a wall of collision, allowing the player to simply hop down there as they please. Nothing of interest can be seen down there, but it's obvious why they fixed this later.



Lastly, we have a few developer features in this build that we have access to. The first of which is in the Titlescreen, in the form of a serial key that can be rendered onto the screen near the bottom left side. The game pulls a unique encrypted key value from SerialKey.serial.xml on the disc, which contains a unique serial key or disc "number" which is unique to each DVD that was printed. All pre-release builds of dead rising have the ability to render a serial key to the Titlescreen. Interestingly, the serial key for all builds will always begin with "SNATCHER", followed by the date, and the unique disc number, which in the case of mine is 0176. The second developer feature was a tool that could be displayed onto the Titlescreen at the top of the screen, which would allow you to change the overall Time Limit of the Demo. This feature would have been used whenever Capcom needed to change the time limit for a specific E3 attendee or a reviewer to give them an extended session. To display the time limit, you have to press LT and RT at the same time with a second controller plugged in. The Y button will decrease the time incrementally (by minutes) and the A button will increase the time.



The last developer feature included in this Demo could only be seen from in-game. Since the game no longer has a "Return To Titlescreen" button in the pause menu, Capcom implemented a developer function to do exactly that. If RB-LB-LT-RT is held down for 2~ seconds, this guide dialog will appear with the ability to return to the Titlescreen. It was only intended to be used by a developer for them to be able to easily return to the Titlescreen for the next E3 attendee.

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  Preview Build (Microsoft Authorizing Submission)

2006-06-30

This build was an Internal Preview that was sent to a testing facility in the UK. This build was likely used for Quality Assurance testing, or ESRB submission, or anything to do with Microsoft's direct approval. It will only run on Xbox360 Development Kits, and features very minor differences from the final game. This build is as close as it can get to the final game visually, however it still contains many differences internally. When this build is loaded up, it will display a third legalese screen before it reaches the title screen, which is the generic ESRB rating message. The final game does not use this and will only display the CAPCOM and Dolby Digital logos. The title screen has very minor text location changes and a few cutscenes in the game have subtle lighting differences. The most noticeable in-game difference is the lag during the loading screens, visible by the spinning globe stuttering. This build contains the same "Return to Title Screen" developer feature that was shown in the E3 2006 Demo. Infinity Mode is still considerably unfinished, as the health blocks deplete and pulse VERY slowly. Lastly, whenever the game would return to the title screen, the screen actually fades to black unlike in the final game where it simply cuts to a black loading screen.

SPOILER: Click to show

Here is the Disc this build is from.



The first noticeable difference in this build is when it is first launched, as an ESRB message can be seen before the Capcom and Dolby Digital screens. The ESRB screen goes completely unused in the final game and does not show up.



The title screen is nearly completely finalized, however it has a few text location changes, such as the positioning of the "Lv" indicator as well as the distancing or spacing of the level number from the Lv indicator.



Here is the 'Return to Title Screen' Debug feature, which has of course been removed from the final game. It's the same one that was in the E3 2006 build as shown before. It can be opened by holding down "LB,RB,LT,RT" for around 2~ seconds. It also gives you the ability to 'Continue playing', which is the same as just closing the guide.



This specific Infinity Mode screen was later changed for the final game so that the description text was placed higher up closer to the blue bar, so that the placement of a saving disclaimer message can be inserted in the final game, which is clearly not present in this build.



Here we can see just how different the timer was for each Health Cube to drop during Infinity Mode. In the Beta, it would take a total of 6 minutes for one single Health Cube to drop. In the final game, we can see it only takes 1:39 for the yellow timer bar to be completely empty, while the bar in the Beta still has PLENTY of time left. It is unknown why such a change was made, but it's likely to give Infinity Mode more of a challenge, as the Beta is too easy.

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THAT'S IT!

Special Thanks To:
PixelButts
Freako

-BNJ-
Reese

Solidcal

SWEGTA
ping182
ASSEMbler
ASSEMblerGames Community
Wombat
Drahcir
ThrowingOutRoX
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