Some good replies in here already--I too would not have expected any more beta JJ1 screenshots to show up ever, especially in a magazine like this. It's interesting that one of the images is from an end-of-episode cutscene, and so was presumably drawn by Nick Stadler, but the rest of the images appear to be from earlier in development than when Nick was hired to work on the game. So these must be publicity images that Epic had sitting around and chose to send to this magazine.

It's a shame this version of the HUD doesn't seem to contain any world/level numbers, for further data about how the planets might have been ordered in development.

I'm unconvinced by the idea that all non-blaster weapons fired two bullets in a V pattern, despite the HUD images. I think we're seeing ECTO in most of those shots--note that we only see them colored blue in the Diamondus screenshots, and in those two we don't see the HUD at all. It's probably just a quirk of the Diamondus palette. But if you look at the explosion in the Tubelectric screenshot with MIT selected, that's plausibly from a weapon that fired in an arc, like launchers, yet didn't have code yet to bounce off the floor once it lands.

The bonus level screenshot is indeed very strange. The texture looks similar enough to the Diamondus walls that I'm guessing the two are associated, but there are two counters in the HUD, blue gems in the top right and something unknown in the top left. Maybe those red orbs?


Thanks for finding and posting these!