In October 1998, Nintendo of America reserved a domain called Riqa.com and a few months later Nintendo Power revealed that the domain was indeed registered because of a game at the time being in development. Nintendo also announced that the game, being developed by Bits Studios in the UK, would be unveiled at the E3 show 1999 and was expected to hit the shelves early 2000.
The title of the game would be Riqa, or RiQa. Development had begun in 1997 and ended in 2001 where the N64 was well past its lifespan and the RiQa team was moved to other projects.
January 13, 2000 - At last year's Electronics Entertainment Expo is Los Angeles, Nintendo previewed brief snippets of a previously unknown Nintendo 64 action-adventure called RIQA. The 3D title, which looked like a cross between Tomb Raider and Mission: Impossible, was not playable and extremely early in development, but it showed promise all the same. Since that time, Nintendo has not uttered a single word on the game, which has led many in the industry to question its status.
The good news is that it's still very alive. We spoke with UK based developer Bits Studios about the project today and were reassured that while Nintendo is reluctant to release any new information on the game, everything is going smoothly behind the scenes. Unfortunately, we were unable to obtain any information regarding gameplay specifics at this time as Bits is under strict NDA by the boys up stairs.
Look for more to surface on the relatively unknown game during the upcoming E3 show in May.
ign.com
The game was presented in somewhat playable form at E3 1999, but shortly after Nintendo quietly cancelled the release. According to various sources it's said that the game never really left the Alpha stage, however a running demo that has appeared online shows a very plable game that looks near complete.
In 2022 a few builds of RiQa appeared on youtube, uploaded by the a former Bits Studios employee.
A few years later in April 2024, the ROMs are now available for download (mirror on archive.org) and you are able to see in what shape the game was before it got scrapped. The former employee who goes by the name Tenshu released the following information along with the roms.
Hi, From 97 to 2001 I worked at a company called Bits Studio. This company made a lot of unrelease N64 games. (most of those game will end up becoming gamecube/ps2 games few years later)
Few years ago I ve released the unfinished DieHard64 Roms I think its time people got a test of the Riqa another unreleased game for the n64.
I ve uploaded the 4 last build in a zip files you can all download and try. The game work in some emulator. it also work on a N64 with an everdrive. I have lot more build of the game but i figured those 4 are probably the most interesting.
One important thing. you need to have 2 controller to play the game. controller 2 is used to open the menu and select a level.
The 4 build in the rar files are the last build made of the game for the n64 before it get cancelled and the team reassigned to Diehard and Thieveworld(RogueOps).
There not much of a completed game here, but there level you can visit, sometime enemies you can kill and button you can press, cut scene and stuff like that. each build as different stage you can explore.
