4 Hours of Cancelled & Lost Games to Fall Asleep to

Toys for Bob was a subsidiary of Activision based in California founded originally in 1989 the company went on to create the hugely successful Skylanders franchise before breathing new life into '90s gaming icons crash bandicut and Spyro the Dragon for a Time the studio appeared to be going from strength to strength until the early 2020s when their staff numers steadily dwindled and they stopped making games Of their own with one notable exception that was crash team Rumble and on online multiplayer crash bico game that was ultimately shortlived in this video I'll be asking the question what

happened to Toys for Bob why did this maker of successful nostalgic Platformers shrink and change in the way that it did between 2020 and 20124 with input from former developers we'll examine the unusual development of Crash team Rumble take an exclusive look at some of their Console projects and uncover the vision that they once had for the future of Crash and Spyro [Music] Toys for Bob marked its dbut in 1991 with star control a landmark sci-fi strategy action game for home computers and the Sega Mega Drive in the following years they would develop a number

of follow-ups before they pivot to license games around the tune of the century throughout the 2000s games using TV and Film licenses were a booming business and toys of Bob was Keen to take advantage of that their work on games like Madagascar provided the studio with a steady stream of Revenue allowing them to support their growing crew developers these games were published by Activision in the beginning of a close partnership between the two companies in 2005 they would deepen their ties further when activition acquired Toys for Bob in its entirety in the short term this

allowed The team greater stability and the opportunity to work on activis franchises like Tony Hawke but uncertainty lay ahead while toys for Bob's license games were generally well received the market had become crowded with lowquality titles pumped out to meet tight deadlines by the late 2000s this once Bountiful well had become poison players were gravitating towards license games less and less prompting TI for Bob to begin shifting away from them What the studio needed now was an IP of their own they began an initiative to find the next big thing with the backing of Activision

This entailed months of internal experiments from which emerged a prototype combining action figures with RFID chips while Activision was willing to take on a degree of Risk by funding the costly production of this toy Centric Enterprise they suggested to of Bob use one of their existing properties to entice players to the new Game they would ultimately choose Spyro a decision that studio founder Paul Richie has said was key to defining the style and humor of the series and instrumental to it finding an audience the project was given the working title of Spyro's Kingdom before eventually

evolving into to Skylander Spyro Adventure which launched in 2011 to huge Commercial Success this marked the Genesis of a popular new franchise spawning multiple sequels and spin-offs Toys for Bob would go on to develop these games alongside fellow activis subsidiary vicarious Visions throughout the 2010s but the ti to life craze that the developers had kickstarted with Skylanders eventually trailed off as the decade went on the market grew increasingly saturated and consumers in turn started to lose interest leading to a decline in sales the true death nail for Skylanders however arrived in 2016 with the launch

of Skylanders Imaginators from toys for Bop this game brought with it a number of new features including the option to make your own Skylanders and playable crash bicu characters but this wasn't enough to attract consumers although it was well received like previous entries the game was a flop selling only 66,000 units in its first month on sale in North America this was a precipitous 41% % drop from how its predecessor Skylander superchargers performed Activision Responded by scrapping future plans for the series including a game early into development at vicarious Visions see my video on vicarious

Visions for more on that Toys for Bob meanwhile was cast into another period of uncertainty rumors briefly swirled at Activision that their leadership was considering downsizing or even closing TI for B all together bitterly disappointed with the performance of Skylanders imaginators the studio became a Prime candidate for Cuts among Activision's heads ultimately they elected to eliminate their art Department almost entirely up until 2017 Ty for Bob had employed a team of full-time artists then Activision determined that they could save money by firing those people and replacing them with contract workers these would be artists working

remotely who would be paid less and receive fewer benefits with these changes implemented the Studio's future remains somewhat unclear For the time being one thing that was for certain though was the rise of remakes and remasters playing out at the time which Activision was at the Forefront of alongside work on imaginators toys of Bob had been supporting the development of the crash BQ Dan San Trilogy a remastered collection of the original crash Trilogy led by vicarious Visions as the launch of the game approached demand for remasters of other games from that era Namely Spyro began

to grow and toys of Bob was listening given their history with the character their experience CED from the crash and SC Trilogy and their availability for a new project the opportunity presented itself for them to Helm remasters of the original Spyro Trilogy for modern systems although it soon became clear that more than mere remastering was in order early into development on the project Toys for Bob made contact with Insomniac Games the Creators of the first spal games in an effort to procure the relevant source code however they were told that Insomniac had lost the original

assets they were rumored to have been misplaced during a comp company move in order to move forward Toys for Bob had to essentially rebuild the entire three games from scratch this entailed a painstaking process of combing over every creature and environment in an emulator and Faithfully recreating IT Consulting the original developers when necessary they were aided in this endeavor massively by an invention called Spyros scope which was made by a single programmer at the company named Steve marotti this was a piece of software written over the course of Just 2 months that scanned each game

in an emulator and extracted the shapes and positions of each asset in the game World in 2024 I spoke to Steve Mariotti who offered the following technical Specifics on how he achieved this quote I hacked up an open-source PS1 emulator to inspect the PS1 memory and sent data over windsock TCP sockets to a separate program I wrote using openg G running on the same computer to visualize and explored the data spos scope allowed them to essentially take a reading of each environment including where every enemy and element was placed so they could reimagine the art

with the exact same scaling and level design intact This would become an invaluable tool as they took on the enormous task of remaking three different games in around little over one year Not only was this much less time than vicarious Visions was given for the insane trilogy but it was undeniably the bigger job given the largest scope of Spyro's worlds to meet this deadline some work was outsourced to other Studios like vicarious visions and sansaro games ultimately the core team ended up requesting more time to Polish it up which Activision agreed to the Spyro reignited

Trilogy was pushed from its initial Target of September 2018 to its final release date of November 13th 2018 paway into development on Spyro and late 2017 tyo Bob expanded their Ambitions even more and chose to take on another original Project based around the crash Bandy hooot series earlier that year the crash Bandy hooot insane Trilogy had launched a massive success moving over 2.5 Million units in its first 3 months alone as such Activision was finally open to continuing the series after years of shooting down pitches for new games some fans around this time speculate that

vicarious Visions the primary developer behind the remastered Trilogy would be the natural fit to take on the next crash game but that was never plann to be the case before the insane Trilogy was even finished Activision had already decided that Vicarious would shift towards providing additional work on Destiny 2 and Call of Duty this left an opening for TI for Bob to pick up the Baton rather than a traditional singleplayer crash title however their first take on the series was a multiplayer game the core concept of it was that two teams would compete to collect

the most wper fruit in a large 3D World and there were a few different ideas for how they would go about this some mly plans tied with the Idea of objective based asymmetric gameplay for instance a one scenario considered revolved around a rocket launch site on a snowy Mountaintop one team would collect wper to fuel a rocket whereas the opposing team would collect them to feed a large Yeti either one team would Supply the rocket with a fuel needed to blast off or the other would strengthen the roughness ye enough for it to sabotage the

launch it wasn't until 2018 that this project Coden named Lava would begin to take shape as an early demo came together internally this prototype was often referred to Simply as crash multiplayer but its de facto working title was wuma leak in their demo two teams of four would scour wide openen 3D levels for wper fruit and bring it to their team's Bank to add it to their total score matches played out over the course of three rounds each one set in a different level and the team with the most W banked at the end of

Each 5-minute round would score one point in a best of three setup players could diminish the W count of opponents by attacking them and knock them out either by whittling down their health or by bumping them into Stage hazards like Bottomless Pits over time the game play evolved somewhat and in addition to wper players would also collect melons and capture bananas by standing on pads for a few seconds to mark them for their team a variety of different characters From the series were playable including all of those later made playable in Crash Bandicoot form which

were crash Coco Tona dingodile and Dr neocortex other characters being built for their prototypes around this stage included fake crash ripu Papu Papu enbo enin and Nina cortex each of the five characters from Crash for played essentially the same as they did in that game with a few extra movements and combat options that were unique to each of them for example Cortex could launch himself vertically in a special move that double dozen attack all characters also equipped with a parachute that could be deployed at any time with the left shoulder button to Glide around levels

players were able to catch updrafts with the parachutes and certain stages to propel themselves upwards some of these early prototypes utilized fard as placeholder assets such as this piece created by artist Fus the Bandit which was used in an early W League Banner the levels in W League were intended to be completely original Creations inspired by the crash Universe each with their own unique hazards and features one tested out was a harbor in which players would run along boardwalks above a sea of toxic water every so often waves would Ripple through the level forcing competitors

to scale higher in order to survive players could take out their opponents by using a turret located towards the center of the Battlefield a creature known as the wper whale would swim throughout the map which players could land on to rapidly gain wers another level took place in a chemical plant where Liquid Nitro filled the bottom of the level but would periodically be drained putting additional deposits of wumper fruit up for grabs for those willing to risk it many of the stages were envisions such as Dr and Brio's Mansion a treacherous Cliffside filled with exposed

wiring and The remnants of his past experiments there was a world set high above the clouds a docking station for airships of different kinds like a cargo plane players could bounce on players could even Commander small airanes to fly around and fire on opponents art also existed for a setting where players would ride Minecarts all of these levels were fast and wide open for exploration a direction One developer told me was inspired by Super Mario 64 early in Development one pague tied with a handful of mechanics that were ultimately never implemented like Animal Companions who

would assist you mounts wall running rails characters could grind on and the ability to grab and throw over players at one point in 2018 the team even considered adding characters from other Activision franchises to the roster such as ghost from Call of Duty who would have been joined by Riley the dog although these Characters never Advanced beyond the concept phase during this exploratory period W League was being envisioned as a standalone multiplayer game but as 2018 went on the project entered a state of flux after assembling their initial prototypes Toys for Bob Drew plans to

create single player tutorial levels for the game these would have essentially served as a way to get players to grips with the move set of each character before heading online one of them was Set in a prehistoric world where din SS roamed at some point in the making of these stages toob Bob's leadership decided that they would instead use what they had built to develop a brand new single player Crash Bandicoot game this was initially discussed as a possible reboot of the series codenamed Quantum they went from putting the finishing touches on their Spyro Trilogy

to conceptualizing a Crash Bandicoot multiplayer game and now a single player Title as well all at various stages of development simultaneously as work on Spyro was gradually wrapping up project Quantum shifted to become the Studio's primary focus with one pague being put on the back burer Toys for Bob knew that they wanted to do a new single player crash but according to Studio head paulan they arrived at the concept for their project by reviewing the critical and Commercial Success of each past game they determined that the Pinnacle of the Series in terms of both sales

and reviews was the first few games therefore they decided to create a direct sequel to crash party cute W the third game in the series effectively ignoring titles that had taken place after it in the previous timeline this project would become known as crash 4 sometimes stylized with the A and crash replaced with a four and some internal renders the developers of Crash body H 4 made a concerted effort to make the game Visually distinct from the nane Trilogy from the beginning reasoning that they did not want it to be perceived as a sequel to

the remasters or DLC for it they wanted it to be immediately recognized as something new and standalone hence its shift in art design the luck of the game would be guided by art director Josh nberg who had previously overseen the Spyro reignited Trilogy many of the same contracted artists from that project were attained To work on Crash over the course of pre-production the game was subject to a number of notable cuts and changes as the developers honed their Vision at one point they considered having recurring crash file reru return as a mini boss in the

run it Bou level but this was later excluded due to time and resource constraints one character that played a major role in the game was an alternate reality version of crash's past love interest torer toys for Bob's artists Proposed many different takes on the character such as this rendition by Rob dwes that adhered more closely to her original design and some that were more radical like one from James Li Martin which imagined her as wielding a boomerang and carrying a baby Bandicoot in a pouch tor's Boomerang was something heavily considered as a possible game mechanic

throughout pre-prod uction appearing in a number of different sketches before being scrapped in favor Of a grapple gun another element under consideration early on was the idea of having war proofs the 3D hubs present in Crash 2 and three that allowed players to enter levels in an order of their choosing these were dropped as the team determined that they wanted to adopt a more linear structure for their narrative and gameplay design the music of the game was given much thought as well and could have taken a somewhat different direction at one point Grant KOB the

composer ER from such games as golden eye and banjo kazui created a number of tracks to pitch his take on the game he wrote demo songs based upon early level descriptions he was provided but they were ultimately rejected the final soundtrack was composed by Walter mer who had previously worked on Killzone and Grand Theft Auto crash bicu 4 or Quantum had by all accounts a symbiotic relationship with its counterpart project lava AKA W League Technology character move sets and tutorial levels were lifted from lava to become the initial basis for crash 4 a prime example

of this is the aformentioned prehistoric stage from lava which later evolved into a crashforce Dino Dash level where in the player is chased by a ravenous T-Rex the notion of w League including those single player tutorial levels was abandoned as crash 4 became established in a similar vein many of the concepts For multiplayer maps in W League were reworked into stages for crash 4 the Nitro processing plant became the level Nitro processing cortex's Mountaintop rocket site morphed into the icy Mountain Lab seen throughout the 11th Dimension ideas for a map set aboard aircrafts led to

a set piece at the end of the crate Escape where crash has to leak between cargo falling out of the back of an arlane production on Crash bodyo 4 lasted around only 18 months Between 2018 and 2020 the final level to be added to the game's plan was offbeat a New Orleans inspired stage featuring musical elements on Parade flow this stage was created from scratch just 12 months out from its launch in October 2020 like the Spy reignited Trilogy before it crash B 4 its about time was subject to a quick turnaround despite the fact

that staff were forced to work remotely for the last months of its production amid a global pandemic over The course of that development work on wague stalled after 2018 as they focused on Crash bandicot 4 and it went from initially being thought of as a standalone game to possibly being an addon during this time to soab was considering releasing W league as a free update for crash 4 that would launch around one year after it did crash 4 released in October 2020 on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One and according to this early plan one

league would have Followed in around September or October of 2021 on those same Platforms in the months leading up to that they were set to carry out both closed and open Beta tests throughout the summer of 2021 one League was intended to launch with 12 levels and 16 different players characters most of those would have been returning heroes and villains from across the series but they had also considered a myriad of fully original characters made specially for this Project during early deliberations in 2018 artist Nicolas saviori put together a poster containing a plethora of fully

original crash characters he had conceived of former developers say that this was made as an inspiration piece none of these new characters were formly approved for inclusion in the game but served to demonstrate the divers IE possibilities of the crash Universe in a multiplayer context despite it being a multiplayer project the developers did Explore ways for the W League to feature narrative elements that could have possibly unfolded over the course of future updates in Universe the W league would have been an East sport style competition set in the wper islands that attracted people from all

over the crash body hoot World Not only would pass crash characters like ripu or Papu Papu have come out of the W workor for it it would have also drawn in previously unseen anthrop from foreign lands a Concept heavily influenced by the Olympics a multitude of these was sketched out as potential playable characters many of which were inspired by different places from around the world for example there was a German hamster with a Tesla coil helmet who would have been one of cortex's minions a Canadian Beaver girl and a mole inspired by a Wyoming coal

miner others conceptualized included a gun toing hyena an opera singing cow a pirate bird And a cat hybrid named catbat this last character which was inspired by David Bowie was conceived as a creature who could fly through levels and swoop down to attack they was later teased in one of Crash body hoot 4's unlockable ending art pieces where they could be seen alongside the game's main cast one story concept floated was that it would eventually become clear that the people behind the one League competition held some kind of Nefarious intentions the Developers discussed an idea

for the main villain being an evil CEO pulling the strings from behind the scenes although how exactly this plot would play out in game was never determined while one League was at the time being considered as a possible free update for players of Crash 4 it was set to feature in-game microtransactions whereby players could purchase Cosmetics for their characters a robust selection of skins was being mapped out all of which Could be leveled up by completing matches with them equipped through this unique progression system players could upgrade their skins over time every skin was planned

to feature three different variations starting off fairly rudimentary before growing gradually more elaborate and flashy for instance there were ideas for a zombie crash skin whose body would gradually Decay as you upgraded him or a dingo dial Space Marine who upon reaching tier 2 would Fall victim to an Alien Parasite by tier three the creature would have fully taken over and transformed dingo dial completely players would have also been able to collect backpacks which would contain the different theme parachutes that they could deploy during gameplay by the summer of 2020 Toys for Bob had devoted

Over 2 years of on andof work to developing their ideas for the W League code named lava former workers told me that they were genuinely passionate About the project and believed in its potential as it quietly continued in the background of Crash 4 Midway through the a the company began drawing plans for a third project that could have possibly been their most ambitious game yet at the direction of the studios's management a small team of developers started Imagining the future of Crash bandicut which they were simply calling crash byy hoot 5 as the name suggests

this was a direct Mainline sequel to Crash byy hoot 4 and like its predecessor it would have been another singleplayer 3D platformer that was set to bring back a number of past characters from across the series crash 5 intended to reintroduce plot elements to the series that were first established in 2004's crash twin sanity in that game Crash visits the Academy of evil a school for villainous children that was once attended by Dr Neo corch there they meet Dr cortex's niece Nina Cortex and come to blows with the head Mistress of the school Madam Amy

according to their initial concept The Academy of evil would have returned in Crash 5 as the game's main setting it had been greatly expanded over its previous appearance and would have functioned as a hub world of sorts crash would have explored the campus grounds a dark forboding World filled with Gothic architecture and danger around every corner in this incarnation of the Academy its faculty would have been made up of past crash bodyy hoo villains like en Jin enbo and Dr cortex himself a major idea that the developers were experimenting with was inspired by the game

Psychonauts wherein the player enters the consciousnesses of various characters and explores 3D worlds based around their innermost thoughts Toys for Bob staff were envisioning a similar premise in which crash would enter the minds of his greatest enemies and Literally delve into their inner turmoil often gaining greater insight into their back stories for example the team had conceptualized a world portraying the subconscious mind of Dr cortex in this realm players would have traversed a landscape comprised by cortex's greatest fears and most significant memories some ideas for this included seeing him capture crash and Coco in the

wild before their mutations navigating a creepy circus from his childhood and Meeting cortex's family a collection of oddballs and lunatics there was his elderly mother Mama cortex with her deadly weaponized Walker his hunky Adonis older brother huge cortex ID cortex his Sinister nephew with a proclivity for experimenting on animals and his sister Sarah Bell cortex who was a high-tech dentist comparatively the most normal of the bunch through the evil Academy faculty and the concept of invading Minds taobab was opening the Door for more classic crash villains to make a comeback one of these returning foes

would have been pinstripe Tommy Gun wielding pooo from the original crash game within Pinstripes mind crash would have battled his Road minions through a 1930s gangster theme level before confronting him in his office on Route he would have possibly been given a glimpse of the family pinstripe was taken from prior to his mutation another occurring body set to resurface was Tiny Tiger whose mindscape would have manifested as a medieval style area inspired by Dungeons and Dragons in this section crash would have to navigate a perilous Castle rigged with traps making his way down to its

Cella where he would find Tiny's Lair a horde of gold treasure and we weapons tiny would have eventually emerged from the Shadows to fight him in the depths of his subconscious other characters lurking the academy that were sketched out Included Madame Amy and Nina cortex this was the original concept for crash 5 But as time went on the Project's Ambitions expanded well past the scope of the evil Academy soon they decided that the game's main antagonist would be ukauka the musk Spirit introduced in Crash baroot warped who was set up to reemerge in Crash for

secret ending in Crash 5 he would have returned with a Vengeance wreaking havoc across the Academy of evil and Beyond in the story ukauka Would have gained access to an interdimensional portal hidden beneath the economy that would allow him to travel to the universe of Spyro the Dragon there he would use his magic on the dragon Elders cursing one of each of their feathers in a ritual to corrupt them the dragon Elders would then do his bidding plunging Spyro's Dimension into chaos and in turn threatening crash's home as well crashing Coco would follow his path

of destruction and embark on an Adventure traveling to and from Spyro's reality in Pursuit they would eventually encounter and befriend the hero dragon teaming up to restore the dragon elders and defeat ukauka they would follow him through the various Realms from the original Spyro game like Artisans Beast makers and Magic Crafters which they would find besieged by ukuku sorcery along their Journey they collect Dragon fvs as they undid the dark magic afflicting the various characters they'd Run into there were some considerations for fvs that would Grant characters different special powers similar to the masks from

Crash 4 in addition to a variety of different dragons other Legacy Spyro characters like the NOS from the first game were being weighed up for appearances as well on top of that the team did contemplate adding more gender swapped alternate universe characters into the mix similar to how they did with entropy in Crash 4 female Versions of the kodo brothers from Crash BQ 2 were among those sketched out following around several months of early work this was the core concept behind crash barud 5 a full-fledged crash inspiral crossover bringing back past elements from across both

franchises the project largely existed as concept art with some early demo environments tested out one of these was Tiny's Lair which gives us a glimpse at some of the more open level design we could have seen in The game recalling titles like crash TNS sanity according to the developers I spoke with crash and Spyro were intended to be the two main playable characters with Nina cortex and Koko also under consideration among the small group at the company who worked on the game there was a lot of excitement for it one Soul shared that they were

enticed by the prospect of reimagining old Spyro worlds in the style of classic Crush gameplay the team conceptualized everything from Crash riding on Spyro's back or using him as a weapon to Spyro lifting him up to Aid in platforming there were considerations for them being playable both separately and together in a potential mashup of the two move sets many possibilities like these were being discussed with plenty subject to change one prevalent idea that the developers had talked about was finally shedding some light on Uka UK's backstory revealing the source of his rivalry with Aku Aku

the team looked at using their mind Invasion concept to have crash explore his fractured memories gradually piecing together his history they were even ruminating on potentially showing the two masks in their original humanoid forms it was a slightly darker sequel compared to the light-hearted it's about time both in terms of visuals and storytelling with a greater emphasis on fleshing out the series law crash 5 was Worked on for around 3 to four months between summer and November 2020 in an early pre-production state in that intervening space of time crash Bic HUD 4 it's about time

launched on October 2nd 2020 for the Xbox One and PS4 to for Bob planed to Port it to the Nintendo switch and PC for 2021 the Studio's relatively small size had prevented them from being able to release it simultaneously on all platforms crash party C 4 received generally very Positive reviews and became the highest rated toys of Bob game yet at the time of release gaining an 85% critic score on Metacritic according to sources from Activision the publisher had high sales targets for the game internally this was largely due to the massive success of the

crash insane Trilogy that had sold well over 10 million copies by this point Activision hoped that it would perform comparably which it did didn't quite manage to do while crash 4 was Moderately Successful by all accounts its initial performance didn't live up to their lofty expectations although it secured the top spot on UK sales charts for two consecutive weeks physical launch sales would down 80% from the insane Trilogy according to game industry. Bas in the US sales were down two here's a telling statistic from neelon Super data research which tracked digital sales data for video

games throughout the US in particular reported First month sales the crash Bandu nane Trilogy released on June 30th 2017 and despite it coming out on the final day of that month it recorded 520,000 digital sales on that day alone crash B HUD 4 it's about time launched on October 2nd 2020 and sold 402,000 throughout that entire month in the same region the insane Trilogy comfortably outsold it within 1 day versus 30day super data research speculated that crash War being priced at $59.99 $20 more than the insane Trilogy and launching in a crowded release season could

have harmed its sales potential less than 2 weeks before its debut Nintendo published Super Mario 3D Allstars a collection of 3D Mario Platformers that was highly successful in the days leading up to it breakout hits like Hades and genin impact landed on the same day as crash 4 EA released a new Star Wars game Star Wars squadrons on the same platforms as it FIFA 2021 Came out one week later to make matters worse Activision had dropped crash 4 one month before the launch of the PS5 and Xbox series consoles with no Next Generation versions or

upgrades announced those wouldn't arrive until the following year when I spoke to different former Toys for Bob employees however they pointed to the lack of a Nintendo switch version at launch as a critical mistake citing the popularity of 3D Platformers on that console Activision has been C about the exact numbers crash bodyo 4 sold in the years after but according to the people I spoke to it was financially successful in 2024 Toys for Bob design director Toby shot claimed on LinkedIn that it had reached 5 million units sold within the first month though it fell

short of Activision's high expectations with drastic consequences throughout the summer of 2020 work on W League or lava slowed down and days after crash fors Launched the project was being second guest allog together since 2018 Toys for Bob had gone back and forth on whether one pague would be released as an add-on or a standalone game by the time crash 4 was finished there was still some uncertainty around this in the end Activision wasn't interested in either and shot down their proposal to put it into full production sending them back to the drawing board X

developers indicated that the publisher had lost Confidence in it motivated at least in part by early crash for sales numbers by the time it was halted a considerable amount of progress had been made on it a variety of different character move sets had been built and dozens of skins practically finished as October 2020 went on the company's heads believed that they would have a better chance of justifying its existence to Activision Blizzard if it became linked to other properties they owned as such they drew Plans to revamp the wper league as a crossover multiplayer game

centered around an All-Star lineup of Blizzard icons this quickly into being focused solely on World of Warcraft characters like th and Uther the lightbringer all of which were reimagined in a cartoony art style akin to the Studio's previous works it was intended to have essentially the same gameplay style as W League a competitive multiplayer platformer developers who were privy to This pitch said that internally there was limited enthusiasm for this shakeup but it would prove ultimately shortlived blizzard had no interest in this alternate take on their franchise and shut down the idea to towards the

end of October in the weeks that followed toys forab attempted to salvage some of their work by again repurposing the bones of the project in November 2020 they developed a pitch for what could have been their first original property since Skylanders which was called Monster Max this was planned to be an online multiplayer game about small creatures who would pilot Mech suits to do battle players could collect different parts like arms legs and chest armor and create their own Mech by combining together the pieces they like best this endeavor lasted only a few weeks before

being rejected by Activision who was not interested in funding it then 6 weeks after crash Biko 4 launched the axe fell On its planned sequel its developers had hoped to transition into full production in the near future building upon what they had learned from both crash 4 and the Spyro reignited Trilogy to take their work to new heights despite an extensively mapped out plan Activision was not willing to move forward with it in November 2020 crash barud 5 was canell the publisher was in general pulling back from producing big budget single player games at the

time and it Turned down a number of such pitches from their other subsidiaries including new Tony Hawk titles instead they wanted to focus on multiplayer franchises using the games as a service model which had proven financially successful the initial sales figures for crash 4 only spurred the on further in this direction in the aftermath of Crash 5's cancellation there were brief talks about combining their CR spiral crossover and multiplayer Concepts Together but for the time being project lava was effectively shelved as toys for Bob's projects were shut down Activision decided that they would begin to

work primarily on providing support for future Call of Duty releases they joined around 3,000 other people across various studios around the world that were working on the franchise at the time amid this reshuffling numerous employees expressed their profound disappointment to me about this turn of events the Making of crash 4 and one pague by all accounts had a scrappy improvisational quality to it a lot of room for experimentation with ideas regularly in flux by the time crash 5 came around the developers had honed their process and had a much stronger sense of direction going into

it they had learned a lot from the last game and with that experience came a newfound sense of confidence that they would be able to improve upon those foundations but they Were ultimately denied the chance to prove that in the months after a number of developers from Crash 4 began to leave the studio some of which were disillusioned by the fate of its Sequel and completely opposed to working on Call of Duty according to several people I spoke to Josh nadelberg the art director behind this SP reignited Trilogy on Crash 4 Departed the company in

February 2021 John St crash 4's lead designer left in March 2021 Nick Livingston the Studio's longtime executive producer who'd been there since 2006 left in May 2021 all three of these incidentally went to work for Phoenix Labs a vancouver-based developer known for games like dauntless and Fay Farm despite the reality of the situation rumors began to percolate around this time that toys forab was developing a new Spyro game this was based almost solely on the official art book for crash barute 4 Page 252 of the Book contains art of the snu dimension one of the

later worlds from the game in this image a building with a statue of Spyro can be seen with his name beneath it the artist responsible for this illustration Bron Crow wrote a short paragraph describing his work quote it was fun to combine dingo's din with the futuristic element to have those cars with the city below and a little hint at Spyro many fans took this to mean that Toys for Bob was teasing a new Spyro Title leading to a number of news outlets picking up the story one site gam reactor. euu even went as far

is using the headline Spyro 4 all but confirmed regardless of all this hype Toys for Bob was not working on Spyro 4 at the time nor was this image teasing anything I confirmed this after contacting Bron Crow the artist behind the piece who told me that it wasn't a hint at a new game at all he was a freelancer who worked on the project via An external Outsourcing studio for art and was not directed by Toys for Bob or Activision to ad Spyro it was entirely his decision he had known knowledge of any new Spyro

project and simply included it as a nod towards a character he liked Spyro is referenced in Easter egg throughout crash 4 and the Spyro building scene in the art book doesn't even appear in the actual game in reality it was nothing more than one artist having fun with their assignment Toys for Bob by all accounts gave artists a lot of room for self-expression and allowed them to put their stamp on their work for instance an artist named Brett Bean would sometimes depict wper fruit as living beings in his sketches through the first months of 2021

most of toys for Bob's staff worked on content for Call of Duty war zone while a small group completed development on the switch next gen and PC versions of Crash 4 in the absence of an original project of their own being commissioned their management attempted to keep as many of their staff employed as they could by picking up additional support work on OverWatch 2 for blizzard they did this in the hope that they would get to go back to larger original projects with as much of the crash 4 team intact as possible however multiple ex-workers

have since told me that the experience of working with blizzard on OverWatch 2 was miserable citing an impersonal management style and an unclear creative direction that often fluctuated on a whim some even told me that being put on Call of Duty felt like a punishment from Activision for failing to live up to their expectations one former developer provided the following comments on Activision's treatment of Toys for Bob workers at the time quote the idea that the team that had been built at Toys for Bob would be an Appropriate team to work on Call of Duty

was just completely off at that moment it was clear that Activision just did not care about who we were what we did whether or not we were a good fit for it they didn't really care who we were as a studio or as a team towards the start of 2021 Toys for Bob was not able to find enough support work to keep all of their developers together and how to begin letting people go later on April 29th of that same year Toys for Bob shared on Their social media that they were supporting the development of

Call of Duty war zone season 3 this prompted numerous developers to come forward revealing that they were no longer employed by the company one of these was Blake Maloof a designer who had worked there for over a decade who tweeted quote I no longer work at Toys for Bob with a crying Emoji another person to speak out about the situation was Nicholas Cole a character designer who Would serve there since 2017 he said it was quote the end of an era and that everyone he had interfaced with and worked alongside had been let go furthermore

when asked if toys of Bob was only working on Call of Duty at the time Cole replied simply yep game industry. Biz reported on the story and one day later Activision reached out to them attempting to change the narrative around the situation quote reports of lofs at toys for Barber incorrect there Has not been a reduction in Personnel recently at the studio the development team is operating fully and has a number of full-time job openings at this time the studio is excited to continue supporting crash Bondo 4 it's about time and more recently provide additional

development support to Call of Duty war zone the statement was worded fairly nebulously for instance the line there has not been a reduction in Personnel recently at the studio which carefully Avoided establishing the exact period of time they were referring ing to this statement was issued in April and the people affected will let go towards the start of the Year technically there were no layoffs at Toys for Bob around this time as they said but neither Nicholas cooh or any other employees ever claimed otherwise with all that said their claim that there was no reduction

in Personnel was clearly false many of toys for Bob's workers at the time were there on a Contract basis these people work for them fulltime and did essentially the same amounts of work expect from people in permanent positions but got paid less and had fewer benefits as I've mentioned Activision like many other Publishers uses contract work as a cost cutting measure in the first months of 2021 as Ty for Bob was unable to secure enough work for them a number of people did not have their contracts renewed and so they were let go this mostly

impacted the Company's art Department which was heavily reduced although people in other roles like designers were affected too some of these contractors had been there for over half half a decade going back as far as the Skylanders days out of the former developers I spoke to for them getting their contract renewed every several months was just a formality they had no expectation that they were going to be let go generally most people would not define those as layoffs but the Effect is very similar to say that there was no reduction in Personnel was simply not

truthful hence why Nicholas Cole for example said that everyone he interfaced with had been let go as for their claim that t for Bob would continue supporting crash Bandy HUD 4 that didn't turn out to be accurate either Toys for Bob did not work on any additional content or even patches for it after this statement was made for some of the contractors I spoke to this Saga was a last Twist of The knife from an organization that often made them feel less valued than full-time workers despite the substantial contributions they made to the games they

worked on an example pointed out to me by former employees of how little Activision value these workers can be found in the credit sequences of Crash bicot 4 and the Spyro reignited Trilogy in both games the pets belonging to fulltime staffers at Toys for Bob received a higher billing in the Credits than their contracted art team I spoke to a number of these former contractors one of whom offered this comment quote I love the people at Toys for Bob there were individuals there that did their best to make us feel part of the team but

as an organization Activision or Toys for Bob wherever the book stopped it was made clear that we were considered ultimately pretty disposable by the end throughout the remainder of 2021 the Studio's main Assignment was contributing to Call of Duty war zone and Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 partway into the air however their management resumed exploring ways for them to do their own original projects from these discussions emerged the idea to reboot project lava once more and attempt to rework it into something Activision would be willing to green light as opposed to being being an

update for crash 4 lava was revived as a budget Standalone spin-off game catered To activis sensibilities it would be a live service multiplayer title with a seasonal battle pass system that would be built primarily from recycled crash 4 assets and would require little R&D due to the extensive amount already done on W leak while that iteration of the project had fully original worlds this new game would consist of stages based around levels from Crash 4 like rude awakening and Insanity PE this approach would make it cost Effective and relatively quick to develop crash 4 had

since been released on more platforms like Nintendo switch and PC these ports strengthened sales numbers helping to alleviate concerns about the viability of the IP Activision approved of their New Concept setting in motion the game that would eventually come to be known as crash team Rumble while a lot of the relatively small Studio continue providing support for Call of Duty the remainder worked on Rumble the game's Ambitions were vast scaled back from what was proposed with wumper League not only were plans for fully original locations dropped the levels in Rumble were generally much smaller Arena

type environments than those built for its prior iteration due to this downsizing the parachute mechanic that had previously enabled players to Glide around its expansive environments was dropped entirely although the game retained the backpacks That once housed them as unlockable Cosmetics the idea of having multi-tier skins that would evolve as players leveled them up was stripped out too in another example of budget trimming Rumble also abandoned the concept of having other types of fruits scattered throughout levels while melons were removed entirely the idea behind bananas pads players had to stand on to capture was reworked

into gems these functioned essentially the same but would provide a Temporary boost to the amount of w fruit banked by a team if they managed to activate a full set of gem Parts another old idea that made a return was the W whale previously this was a stage element played could ride on to a mass wper but in Rumble it was reimagined as its own mode players had to collect relics from around stages and bring them to a bank to summon the wper whale the team to successfully bring about the whale would rapidly gain wper

while the Opposing team would have to frighten the creature off by collecting rubber ducks the whale in the final game maintained the low poly appearance of the model used during the prototyping phase this game type was experimented with throughout crash team rumble's run appearing occasionally as a limited time mode while the developers had considered including story content of some kind during Wampa League Rumble did away of that notion altogether and was focused Solely on a multiplayer experience the only hint of any narrative elements existed outside the game itself alongside each seasonal update TI for Bob

released a short web comic introducing each new character these Comics were illustrated by Nicolas saviori who had previously worked at TI for Bob on Spyro crash 4 and rumble's earlier incarnations the first of these told the backstory of of catbat a character originally imagined for one Pague who was revealed to have been an escaped experiment of cortexes with a passion for rock music catbat would in the end be the only original character to be carried over from W League to crash team Rumble for some former Toys for Bob workers seeing W League be reworked into

a new scaleb form was a bit of sweet experience here's what one of them had to say about that quote I think Rumble was fun but Rumble was a skeleton of what it was intended to be In the end very few assets were created originally for rumble it was all asset reuse from the games we did create very very little of what was intended to be the multiplayer project actually survived but the core of the gameplay loop I actually thought was still fun I just feel like all around you could sense that it was not

given the full love and attention it would have gotten had it been developed as a serious product while TI for Bob was quietly Pitching their Revival of project lava in mid2 21 speculation around the W League reached a fever pitch although that iteration of the project was effectively No More by this point it was widely believed to still be coming this was largely down to two different factors assets from W League were discovered inside crash 4 and the fact that a piece of official marketing material had referenced wague by name back at the end of

November 2020 after Wague had stopped development the official Crush bico social media accounts released an advert ement paying aage to the Uncharted Series in this clip crash and KOCO are seen playing Uncharted 4 and not to a scene from that game in which Nathan Drake and Elena Fischer play the original crash bodyo this video primarily served as an advertisement for crash 4 going into the holiday season but it also included a small teaser for the once planned W League as the camera pulls away from crashing Coco a sign spelling out the words W League can

be seen in the distance I spoke to an activis Source Who revealed that this video was locked in months before being posted regardless it would lead to Lasting confusion as rumors and speculation run rampant throughout 2021 a number of different theories gained traction over this period the most prominent of which baselessly claimed that one League was a Party game linked to the PS1 spin-off title crash bash further fuel was dumped onto the fire by to for Bob themselves during an August 2021 GDC presentation on the making of Crash Bary H 4 during this talk Studio

head paulan discussed the early days of pre-production when they were deliberating over what crash for would and would not be attempting to hone in on its identity as he talked about this he displayed a slide in which one could be seen among the different Facets of Crash for's development listed gesturing towards the fact that the two projects were developed in tandem on another occasion the presentation briefly cut to a cropped piece of kiot from wak in both instances paulan didn't verbally acknowledge these references and continue talking in what was clearly supposed to be a tip

of the heart towards an unrealized concept they had once hoped to produce on top of that in September 2021 they released a video Marking crash's 25th anniversary which ended with co- Studio head Avery loado saying happy 25th anniversary crash we'll see more of you very soon with this discourse around the project only grew more frenzied in December of 2021 this would lead to the official Twitter account for the game show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire tweeting a poll which asked for Real where is wague over 3,000 people participated in the poll with dead emerging

as the Top Choice whereas Its form iteration W League was no more by this point project lava was very much alive quietly under development at Toys for Bob although it would be another 12 months before fans would get to see it while toys forb projects before it had utilized Outsourcing a standard practice crash team Rumble leaned on it slightly more heavily due to their art Department being reduced considerably in 2021 external companies like Airborne studios in Germany were contracted to pick up The slack airborn it previously worked on both crash 4 and WP league but

their contribution to rumble was slightly more extensive they helped to realize stages for the game and a multitude of different skins for characters over the course of development the core team continued to experiment with ideas for how those skins would be doled out and how monetization around the game would function at one point they considered having a premium currency that could be Purchased with real money called wper buck in the end they chose a battle pass system and W bucks reworked into crash coins a currency introduced in Crash team Rumble season 2 that could be

spent to skip teers of the battle pass without playing the game would ultimately be set for a June 2023 release in the meantime fans would endure a year of false theories and hoaxes suggesting it would appear at Summer Games F Gamescom and other events it was eventually announced In December 2022 at the game awards where in a crash body cute muscot repelled down onto the stage to present its debut trailer the unveiling brought to a close two solid years of speculation following the initial wi League teasers in late 2020 it was set for release on

PS4 PS5 Xbox One and Xbox series consoles in the following months advertising around it was sparse with only occasion details trickling out through press previews it was revealed That the game would receive both standard and Deluxe editions The Standard Version which was digital only was sold for $30 £25 in the UK whereas the deluxe retail for $40 £35 and was available both physically and digitally the standard included a premium battle pass for the first season while the deluxe had premium battle passes for seasons 1 and two the option to instantly unlock the first 25 tiers

of season 1's battle pass and an unlock Code for the protopak this was a line of exclusive skins derived from the Prototype character models used in their early W League demo both editions came with pre-order bonuses which were access to a retro Tona skin and entry into a closed beta held on the 20th of April 2023 toys for barbad planned a stream of new content lasting at least one year after launch but according to some involved in the development activition was already pulling back on their Support for it before was even released around the launch

of Crash team Rumble an Outsource Studio that had been working closely with Activision on the game was told that their services would no longer be required this came as a surprise to those involved who had previously been under the impression they would be working on the game into the indefinite future crash team Rumble was finally released on the 20th of June 2023 and received mixed reviews from Critics Landing an average score of 67 on Metacritic many praised its core gameplay Loop while criticizing its monetization and progression systems sales for the title were markedly slow out

of the gate after just 2 weeks on the market it was outs sold in the UK by the crash insane Trilogy which released 6 years prior by the following week it it dropped out of the charts all together 5 days after launch videogamer.com reported that rumble's Viewing figures on Twitch had already dipped below 30 people a figure they used to Brand the game as dead on a arrival TR trophies.com was another source for the game's underwhelming metrics their data indicated that during launch week its PS5 player count was 69% lower than a 2-year-old Peppa Pig

game it then hemorrhaged active players in the subsequent weeks dropping out of the top 200 most played games on the PlayStation Network within its first Month on sale after having been in the works on and off since 2017 crash team Rumble arrived late to a live service Trend in the games industry the market for games like this had become largely Consolidated into a handful of Heavy Hitters like fortnite and Call of Duty and in 2023 carving out an audience in this competitive field was becoming increasingly difficult in the months leading up to rumble's release numerous

live service titles were discontinued Including Marvel's Avengers balon's fall Crossfire X knockout City and Rumble verse all of these came to an end in the first half of 2023 alone crash team Rumble like many of these games failed to make a dent shortly after its launch I set up a survey to find out why so many people had chosen not to play it from around 500 people here were the most popular reasons given 12% of people said that it was not released on their platform of choice the game launched Only on PlayStation and Xbox consoles

skipping PC and Nintendo switch Al together 16% of those surveyed exited concerns about the payment model the entrylevel premium price tag and all the battle pass and microtransaction systems many other more popular live service games like OverWatch 2 or Call of Duty have offered an entrylevel free-to-play version but crash team Rumble did not its cheapest version was sold for $30 and the game was heavily monetized with Microtransactions within 25% of people voted for what I would summarize as ineffective marketing or lock their of many people responded by saying that they'd never even heard of the

game and a similarly large group told me that they didn't understand what it was either marketing didn't reach them or failed to convey what the game was it debuted with a trailer that was entirely CGI and when Activision finally did show in-game footage months later there was No attempt to explain how the game actually worked audiences were told that it was a 4v4 game where he play as different crash characters and attack one another but that was about it by far the most popular reason why people didn't play it however was that they were not

interested in playing a crash game in this style 40% of the people who responded indicated that they were simply not looking for an arena style online multiplayer crash game with live Service elements and this was something that commentators had raised the alarm about during previews kaku's Kenneth Shepard for instance said the following I can't help but feel like regardless of the game's merits and problems it's facing an uphill battle because it's just not what crash bandicot fans want crash team Rumble already has a lot going against it in the eyes of purest crash fans it's

not a platformer and it's not a cart racer that cor Loop is Solid but it's likely not what the average crash fan is looking for these days the article also mentioned the potential of Crash team Rumble going free to play in an effort to grow its player base this was something that Activision never chose to pull the trigger on although Ty for Bob did attempt to lure a new players in the months after launch starting in August 2023 they held occasional 4-day free trials where anyone could download a Limited version of the game for free

with a few different characters to try they also offered Double XP weekends for people with the full game new content was periodically added including more characters like riparo and a number of experimental new modes however these efforts failed to move the needle in any meaningful way in terms of growing Rumbles audience in the game second season they continued adding new maps and limited time modes as well as Kicking off an ongoing Crossover with the Spyro franchise this season introduced Spyro 2 villain ripto as a playable character whose arrival was explained via a short tie in

comic as in being inadvertently summoned through a dimensional portal the addition of ripto would Herald the arrival of more Spyro characters in season 3 which started in December the purple dragon himself and his friend aora this round round of content came with two new maps both Based around locations from the series Artisan's Arena and summer forest season 3 also marked the conclusion of the web comic series which saw crash characters traveling to Spyro's Dimension and recruiting him to deal with ripto three years after the cancellation of Crash bicute 5 toys of Bob was finally able

to realize their crash Spyro crossover within crash team Rumble unpronounced to many they even hid material from Crash 5 in the game special unlock bonnas were Included in the season 3 bottle pass which were made from concept dot created for crash 5 this included one named t team in which crash and Spyro can be seen adventuring together in the Beast makers World in typical winking toys of Bob fashion the developers were able to sneak in nods to a project that they were never able to bring to fruition the Studio's efforts to build the excitement around

crash team Rumble were in the end unsuccessful the small spikes and Engagement generated by new characters proved shortlived and by the end of 2023 its feature was looking more and more uncertain a Nintendo switch version of the game had been in development but was cancelled by Activision due to the lack of interest in the other versions in the final months of the year Toys for Bob began to look to the Future starting work on a brand new game and mulling over plans to Sunset crash team Rumble according to former developers they Aimed to deliver a

fourth and final season in 2024 this was set to add Nina cortex to the roster a character that had previously been outlined to appear in Crash 5 whose design from that project they were reusing the developers had once done preliminary work towards more characters Beyond this like tiny tiger pinstripe and the original male version of entropy but these were eventually nicked to focus on delivering season 4 alongside work on this they Were creating an original Ip what would have been their first in well over a decade that was planned to use on real Engine 5

hype around this new Venture was growing internally as 2024 began but the company's plans were about to be appended once again by external forces in October 2023 Microsoft completed its acquisition of Activision Blizzard following an extensive and tumultuous battle with Regulators they now owned one of Gaming's biggest Publishers and Toys for Bob with it from early on developers told me there were concerns about how this seismic shift in the industry would impact them but it wasn't until the 25th of January 2024 that the reality of the situation set in on this day Microsoft gaming CEO

Phil Spencer sent out an internal memo which opened as follows it's been a little over 3 months since the Activision Blizzard and King teams joined Microsoft as we move forward in 2024 the leadership of Microsoft gaming in Activision Blizzard is committed to aligning on a strategy and an execution plan with a sustainable cost structure that will support the whole of our growing business together we've set priorities identified areas of overlap and ensured that we're all aligned on the best opportunities for growth he went on to say that he and other members of Microsoft's management had

made the quotes painful decision to lay off an enormous 1,900 people across Activision Blizzard zenax and of Xbox teams the email caused Panic across their various subsidiaries as they gradually found out who among them would be affected in my conversations with developers they described the process as incredibly disorganized and stressful on that day the confusion lack of clear communication from leadership was such that developers were contacting journalists rather than their own bosses to find out what was happening Bloomberg's Jason Shri for example tweeted the following these Xbox layoffs are such a mess that staff across

Activision Blizzard are texting me to try to find out if they might be impacted nearly 2,000 job Cs and people now just have to wait around to see if they're part of the blood bath as the hours went by it eventually became clear that Toys for Bob would be heavily affected by the restructuring 35 of their developers were laid off and made This sudden shakeup at its peak during crash 4 the studio had employed around 180 people they were now down to just 50 the layoffs affected Junior developers and longtime Toys for Bob veterans alike

one of the latter was lead concept artist Ron key who had been with the company for a decade he had been serving as art director on their new IP and development when Microsoft's changes took hold in the days after I learned about many different stories of how the Layoffs affected people but here's one example that I think speaks to the scale and severity of what happened Mayar Murthy was a designer at Toys for Bob who worked on Crash team Rumble one of her contributions to the game was writing humorous self-aware messages that appeared during loading

screens some of these cheekily nodded towards the Project's protracted development cycle and ideas that were cut along the way like many others at the studio she Found out that she was losing her job from the news media rather than being told by her Employers in February 2024 Murthy got in touch of Activision looking to be reimbursed for her ticket to the 2024 game developers conference an event set to take place 1 month from then typically this would have been covered by Activision since she was employed there but the sudden and unexpected layoffs left her uncertain

she was told to email Activision's Accounting department with the request and so she did this was the response she received which she later shared on social media quote hello I am sorry but that is not something we can confirm it would need to come from the travel department or maybe your former Department the travel Department was liquidated we are trying to find out who has taken over their tasks but we have not been given any guidance yet to clarify this former employee who had Been laid off emailed Activision's accountants who told her that they would

not be able to help her get reimbursed and that she would need to contact the travel Department however the entire travel Department had been laid off as well so they didn't know what what to do because Activision had yet to replace the person who would have dictated what to do in this situation since that role was also reduced this is just a small slice of what some people were faced With in early 2024 and it serves to illustrate the bedum that Microsoft left in their wake the Activision Blizzard layoffs were met with intense criticism from

consumers journalists and politicians alike the FTC who had tried unsuccessfully to prevent Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard claimed that the tech giant had made false promises about how it intended to run the publisher Microsoft had stated unequivocally in court that they Intended to be hands off in their management of Activision Blizzard and said that they would be able to operate independently in Phil Spencer's own words however they had just admitted that the layoffs were implemented to eliminate areas of overlap between Microsoft and Activision Blizzard suggesting that it was not operating independently at all one commentator

critical of the mass layoffs was game industry veteran Joseph chivate who Claimed that days later the publisher was already attempting to poach developers from other big companies chivate a well-connected 3D artist who had worked in the industry for around 20 years alleged that recruiters from Activision Blizzard contacted people at places like Rockstar attempting to hire away developers already in full-time positions here's what he had to say about the stories he had been hearing quote Activision Blizzard would rather Try to poach someone who's currently employed instead of hiring any of that talented recently laid off former

employees into the role or transferring them instead of laying them off in the first place applying for jobs at Activision Blizzard is just data harvesting for them they would rather poach someone else who's currently employed just to eventually lay them off too the next time Microsoft needs to make their stock price go up a nickel to Meet their quarterly quotas Microsoft released their quarterly earnings report 5 days after the restructuring revealing that their gaming revenues had gone up 60 1% largely due to the Activision Blizzard acquisition Days Later toys for Bob's headquarters in California was

shuttered as part of the new coats while many of their staff had worked remotely in the previous few years their vibrant Tiki themed offices had been held up as a source of Pride for the company with Their HQ closed the remaining staff switched to working remotely full-time in February 2024 a month that would bring further upheaval some reports at the time attempted to spin the situation in a positive light but these claims are difficult to reconcile with the reality behind the scenes Microsoft's overhaul of activis Blizzard devastated Toys for Bob along with 40% of their

Workforce being abruptly laid off and their offices closed the cost cutting led to Their new IP being discontinued and crash team rumble's life support being pulled Rumble had started with sales and never managed to recover adding Spyro and other characters had done little to turn things around for some perspective let's briefly compare its twitch viewership numbers to two other Activision Blizzard live service games active at the time on the 12th of February 2024 over 52,000 people were watching live streams of Call of Duty War zone OverWatch 2 had around 58,000 viewers crash team Rumble had

an average of seven the game never came anywhere close to breaking out of its Niche audience as a result plans for a fourth and last season were scrapped it was around just over 1 month away from being ready at the time the call was made with support for the project now gone developers hastily reworked some of what they had finished like unreleased Cosmetics as part of a final free battle Pass the game was set up to end on a whimper compared to the bang they had once hoped to go out on as the dust was

settling toys for Bob's heads enter discussions with Microsoft to go independent the studio had been a part of the Activision umbrella for nearly two decades and had seen its share of highs and lows since then with fresh leadership overseeing activition blizzard they took the opportunity to renegotiate the terms of their Relationship and were successful Microsoft granted them their independence and a fresh start on the 28th of February 2024 the company's future plans were revealed to the public via a blog entry on their website quote we're thrilled to announce that Toys for Bob is spinning off

as an independent game development Studio this opportunity allows us to return to our roots of being a small and Nimble studio in in that same post they announced that they Were exploring a potential partnership with Microsoft on a new project less than an hour later the fate of Crash team Rumble was officially confirmed when a message quietly appeared in the game's home menu it stated that March 4th 2024 would Mark its final content update although the game would continue to be playable microtransactions were being discontinued and a free 500 tier battle pass was to be

made available for all users which had unlockables from Previous seasons and 100 four new items made up of content once planned for future updates it even included an unlockable season 4 icon in memory of the final season that they were prevented from finishing the end of Crash team Rumble was noticeably unceremonious outside of this single concisely worded message neither to for Bob or Activision chose to acknowledge it on any of their official channels no eulogies from the development team no Mentions of it on social media or even their official website this would lead to some

confusion among fans who hadn't seen the easily missed in-game message that would later vanish alog together for context Toys for Bob had routinely made posts about their in-game events on sites like Twitter and Facebook in the months prior even when the game made a bevy of content free for uses on March 4th all parties remained quiet on it it was clear that the project was something That they had chosen to move on from in the end the studio managed to weather this storm under an embattled Activision Blizzard they entered a new era of Independence setting

their sights on a partnership with Microsoft over the previous several years they had gradually lost a lot of their workers their headquarters and suffered multiple consolations along the way this was the outcome of a parent company in crisis that had lost faith in Traditional single player games struggling to find a place for Toys for Bob in their pivot towards the games as a service model activition originally purchased the company at a time when its speciality was making middle tier budget Platformers despite how successful their single player games continue to be the publisher had Toys for

Bob move away from what they had been built to do in order to supplement their drive for live service content this disconnected One-size fits-all management style led to a slump in morale developers leaving and eventually an online only crash game that audiences rejected consider also the fact that in the almost 20 years that activition owned Toys for Bob they were only ever allowed to ship one original Ip and it was the most successful Endeavor they ever embarked upon together after squeezing every last penny out of Skylanders Activision then refused to ever again take a gamble

on Any new property they wanted to attempt as they became increasingly averse to risk even a crash body Hood cross spal platformer was deemed too big of a leap the Game Boy notable for such Landmark titles as Tetris Super Mario Land and links Awakening for some players however their Nostalgia towards the system is tied not only to its games but its wild assortment of accessories the era produced a glut of unexpected peripherals for the device everything From a camera to a fish sonar was covered in a frantic bid to cash in on Nintendo's hit handout

many of these fetch top dollar in online auctions years later as enthusiasts continue to hunt down these increasingly obscure pieces of video game history but for nowly 30 years one of these has consistently eluded collectors around the world a device known as work boy this PDA style add-on would have granted users access to all manner of Productivity related applications propping the Game Boy up with its accompanying stand and plugging it in promised to essentially transform it into a small personal computer officially licensed by Nintendo and produced by Washington based Fab Tech Inc the work boy

was previewed by multiple press outlets in the early '90s before Vanishing Without a Trace in the absence of an explanation from any of the parties involved a mystery spawning Multiple decades lingered what really happened to the work boy and would it be possible for me to find one nearly 30 years later I set out to answer these questions and more the result was an investigation spanning many months in this edition of game history Secrets I bring you the story of the work boy and my experience with [Music] it now you can have all the power

and excitement of Nintendo right in the palm Of your hand tracing the origins of the work boy takes us all the way back to the early 1990s online information on its creation has been largely sourced from a small handful of gaming magazines that had written features on it back in the day such as Nintendo Power the Game Boy was in its prime and two companies had joined forces across two continents to take advantage of this rapidly expanding user base Source research and development in the UK designed the Peripheral and Fabtech a washington-based startup was planning

to produce it in close collaboration with Nintendo trademark filings indicate that the device was first registered by Nintendo of America in January 1992 several months later the work boy came to the attention of the press when it made a couple of appearances at trade shows most notably the consumer electronic show in May in the midst of a massive Nintendo Presence at the event Was a modest ftech Booth where an early prototype could be glimpsed displaying its various functions responses to the demonstration were largely positive UK publication Game Zone described it as an impressive little utility

and said Nintendo's success was visible by its showing at the CES it virtually had a whole hanger to itself filled with its own products and those of its developers but there was little on offer that was radically different little that is Except the work boy a Chicago Tribune writer on the other hand was less enamored with it branding it as the exhibition's most ridiculous Nintendo peripheral it's just a thing for the 12-year-old entrepreneur on the go and it should be a big hit with young drug dealers everywhere they said these comments aside the work boy

star was clearly Rising the developers were being profiled in magazines Nintendo was pushing it at events and it was even Given a glowing endorsement on UK television games master a popular UK video game TV show ranked it as their number one add-on for handeld consoles what's more is that they had arranged to launch the workboy exclusively at a games master live event due to take place in December 1992 games master live did go forward at birmingham's NEC but the work boy was nowhere to be found the show never Revisited the topic and the device was

never again seen despite this Among those aware of the niche add-on it has become commonly believed that it did receive a release but that very few units were produced this idea seemingly spread to popular internet series The Angry Video Game Nerd has seen in his coverage of Game Boy accessories lots of these Game Boy accessories are rare some of the ones that I couldn't get my hands on are the Game Boy FM radio the work boy where he can plug in a keyboard and turn the Game Boy into a personal Computer just in case you

didn't like using a monitor the truth is however that the work boy was never released and no prototype units have ever been recovered to find out why I began reaching out to former staff from Source R&D its original creators as I began my research in late 2019 it became apparent to me that I was not the first person to look into this I spoke to a number of fellow writers and gaming history enthusiasts who had also attempted to Get answers on why the work boy had disappeared tracking down the developers of an unreleased peripheral from

nearly three decades ago has its challenges the two major companies behind it source and Fabtech ceased operations long ago and everyone who worked there has obviously moved on with their lives they found work in other Industries some of them have retired and in some cases they've forgotten a lot of what they were privy to but all was not lost I did have a Couple of leads to go on a number of sour staff were featured in a 1992 issue of Game Zone Magazine having both names and faces made tracking them down considerably easier all these

years later the former members of source typically maintained a fairly minimal internet presence but thankfully the person whose Insight I most sought was reachable that was the original architect of the work boy Eddie Gil who agreed to share his side of the story Eddie founded Source in 1987 the company based in Leeds England allowed him to realize his Ambitions of inventing new technologies alongside these technological Pursuits they were also creating video games this arm of the business led to them sometimes being referred to as Source the software house the company developed a number of titles

including Game Boy puzzle game pyramids of and Noah's Arc a religious platformer For NES published by Konami it was only a matter of time before the company's Fascinations with technology and video games overlapped and in early 1992 the work boy was born Eddie partnering with Fabtech in the US had identified a gap in the market for a Game Boy add-on for productivity purposes with personal computers still being financially prohibitive to many and holding limited appeal to the masses Eddie concept for the work boy presented a more accessible Alternative it was a lower cost option that

could be used with a device many families already owned the gadget offered a multitude of different functions including a world clock calculator bank account statements weight and currency conversions and an appointment book it would have retailed at around $79 to $89 in around late 1992 early 1993 as to why this all never came about out Eddie presented his recollection of events but Suggested I reach out to someone else for clarification he also left me with one more tantalizing piece of information Eddie had not seen a work boy in person for many years despite creating it

he did not own a prototype himself and believed that potentially only two were left in existence one he said was rumored to have been retained deep in the vaults of Nintendo the other was possibly in the possession of a former colleague of his this individual Was Frank beloo the founder of Fabtech who was in charge of production on the work boy beloo was a games industry veteran of many years having worked at numerous big companies at the dawn of the Home console Market years later he had left the business behind and was imparting his wisdom

at speaking gigs around the world Skyping in from his home in Athens Greece Frank regaled me of how he came to be in charge of a lost Game Boy Adon his time in the industry Started in 1975 at Atari where he became the vice president of marketing at their coin operated games division there he helped steer the company's game output through an unprecedented period of growth ultimately however Frank was fired from the video game Giant in 1982 he claims this happened as the company's management was restructured to incentivize Atari exec Don Osborne from leaving to

work for a competitor Frank Ended up Bing Nintendo of America in 1983 placed in charge of sales and marketing at their coin op division after 9 months in the job he was head hunted by arcade game producer gotle known as Milestar electronics at the time to run their pinball and video development Frank says he departed Nintendo on very good terms and was even told by Nintendo of America founder minoru arakawa that he had an open invitation to return this was an offer Frank ended up accting ing much sooner than anticipated less than one year later

he quit Milestar following friction with their parent company Columbia pictures after nine months I went back to Nintendo Howard Lincoln who is senior vice president goes Frank what do you mean our and Ron Judy are nuts how do we know you won't do this again I go Howard Howard if somebody offers me a 35 40% raise again I probably will do it after several years at Nintendo The Winds of Change was sweeping the industry as their grip on the Home console Market tightened the arcade industry was steadily becoming less of a focus for Nintendo shortly

after releasing their play Choice 10 cabinets in 1986 Frank made the decision to leave and form his own company as I told Nintendo I got guys you've got more to offer the industry and and I go I've got more to offer the industry they go Frank we thought you would say that but we Understand in 1987 Frank formed ftech a game publisher and technology company whose name was derived from its own initials we had some games like everybody else but but we had some classic games uh a game called cabal which did very very well

for us while heading up Fabtech Frank was also running the American branch of Japanese arcade game manufacturer irm it was through that job that in the late s he met Source founder Eddie Gil creator of The work boy Eddie was so so far ahead of his time overall premise for the work boy was parents are going to get tired of buying games for their kids let's buy something that the parents and grandparents will think it's useful for them as Al CH l in was time developing the work boy Frank casually dropped a bombshell on our

conversation I'm looking o over in my bookcase one of the original work boys just just sitting there you know and uh you know it it it It it could have been something just to go back a little bit uh did you say that you've got uh something of the work boy there oh yeah oh yeah I I I I've got one that hold on my earphones won't reach out far a few moments of rummaging later he appeared on my screen work boy in hand oh wow okay so so you can see that then yes I

can see that yeah adding to the gravity of this Frank mentioned that he Believed this was the last work boy left when the project met its end he held on to it as a Keepsake a fond reminder of what could have been after our call Frank gave me a closer look at this NE to finalize prototype it was in good condition having survived numerous overseas trips and years of sitting on a shelf we both agreed that it would more than likely still work however we had no way to test it since Frank did not own

an original Game Boy himself I offered To send him one but he had a simpler idea [Music] a few weeks later it arrived in my mailbox seeing it in person was more than a little surreal up until this point the only images of it online that I could find were taken 28 years ago and yet here it was well-kept preserved in a Game Boy advanced carry case alongside a prototype of source's pyramids of raw game the question was was would it work I hooked it up to a few different game boys and the results were

anticlimactic previously it was my understanding that simply plugging it into the game boy's Link cable port and turning it on would allow me to access its features that was how it was presented in games Master's piece back in the day and that was also Frank's recollection of how it functioned but when I plugged it in basically nothing happened the Game Boy wasn't visibly Affected in any way regardless of whether or not I had a carridge inserted there was one sign of life however plugging it into a powered on Game Boy caused the work boy to

emit a fairly loud beep out of the speaker on its Underside I caught up with Eddie Gil whose comprehensive knowledge of the device allowed us to diagnose the issue that noise the work boy was making was actually its alarm function being tripped the work boy had its own clock And speaker allowing for the Game Boy to serve as an alarm clock this was possibly a bug that had yet to be smoed out of this prototype unit it was at this point that it also became clear why the work boy wasn't working prior to our discussion

Frank had emphasized to me that his memory of the device might be less than perfect and as it turned out he was right to do so because this keyboard was only one piece of the puzzle as Eddie explained a separate Carage was required to access its software where in hindsight this might seem obvious but this was the first mention of a cartridge being included that I had come across none of the original literature from the project referenced one nor did any of the magazine write upside had seen I went back to the drawing board and

started reaching out to some other former developers to see if by some remote chance someone still had the software we Needed it was then that one of these game industry alumni raised a possibility I had only briefly considered starting in April 2020 following a number of high-profile security breaches in the previous 2 years the contents of some hacked Nintendo servers leaked online the files originally linked to on forchan encompassed a mammoth horde of data going back decades this gigantic dump of illicitly obtained intellectual Property was christened as the gigal leque while gaming historians the world

over Revel to in the discovery of previously unseen and unused assets from classic Nintendo games my mind was elsewhere it occurred to me what if by some strange twist of fate these hackers had inadvertently obtained the work Boy software it was a remote possibility but not something that I could rely upon several weeks after recovering the pereral the dust was settling on the Most significant Nintendo data leak up until that point I was waiting to hear back from a potential potential lead when the final piece of the puzzle slid into place on the 9th of

September 2020 another big leak of Nintendo data Spilled Out onto the internet and enthusiasts quickly began rifling through it I was put in touch with one such individual a contributor to The Cutting Room floor known only as Waluigi they had excavated a ROM from the latest Drop originating from source and Fabtech it was none other than the very work Boy software I had been searching for after 28 years of essentially nothing the software had leaked within only a few weeks of me obtaining the Prototype Hardware this wild coincidence wasn't lost on myself and the members

of The Source team I'd been speaking to for his ethically questionable as these leaks were one upside was that they were reuniting former developers with their Long-lost work Eddie Gil for instance later told me that he never imagined having a copy of this software again in the hours after after this data was posted a small handful of interested parties began tinkering around with the workboy ROM though initial attempts to emulate the software were met with mixed results the title screen and a menu displaying several different options were accessible but the applications themselves crashed upon selection

the Only one that worked as intended was the calculator app where users could move a cursor around the screen and push buttons it is as I mentioned earlier this software is only one piece of the puzzle it was built to be used by a peripheral the work boy keyboard is not just an accessory it is intrinsic to the software on a programming level without modifications raw emulation could only take us so far it was built to be navigated using the buttons on this Keyboard the game boy's inputs had limited functionality furthermore the Game Boy does

not have a built-in clock the work boy keyboard does without the add-on there is no way for the clock app to be able to read the time there were other complications to weigh up as well Eddie shared that the game cart they were developing contained a small amount of memory as did the work boy keyboard itself with all of this said the time had finally come to put the device to The test and introduced software to Hardware after close to three decades of dorcy there was no guarantee that this potentially the last remaining work boy

would still work I burned the ROM to a rewritable cartridge iner both cart and add-on then powered it on the work boy's usual beeping came out of the speaker once again but as I booted up the software the alarm gave way to silence a push of the keyboard's return button confirmed that it was functional in fact It worked without any issues the buttons across the top of the keyboard allowed instantaneous access to each application switching between them was a Swift and easy process all of the errors present in emulation were gone the clock did think

that it had been awakened in the year 2055 but aside from that it was working as were all the other apps the work boy had lived in total the software features 12 individual applications and most of Them have secondary functions within them the most straightforward of these is the clock which displays the time in both analog and digital formats it has an alarm feature as well there is a basic calculator which you operate by pressing different letters on on the quiry keyboard since it lacks dedicated number buttons the keys are labeled above them with their

alternate functions in the calculator app the address book app would have allowed Users to record phone numbers and other info in a database although its functionality in this build is limited by inputting phone numbers into the work Boy Players could use it as a digital phone book and automatically dial numbers by playing the dial tones into a phone the work boy Sports a variety of conversion related applications too for one you can view the difference between Fahrenheit and Celsius temperature scales with its interactive thermometer Another app offers conversion between metric and Imperial systems with a

plethora of different options like inches to centimeters feet to meters and pounds to kilogram on top of that the device even offers currency conversion although it requires an added degree of input on the part of the user the user must manually insert the exchange rate between the two different currencies before the work boy can begin crunching the numbers this is of course because The device has no way of automatically updating the rates itself on the topic of money the workboy also has facilities for helping manage savings users can manually input their income and expenditure to

keep track of their finances data inputed can be saved to the work boys records and reviewed later the remainder of the work boys tools relate to world geography and languages the world functions app includes what it calls a translator these are can search Individual words or Peru a glossery of subjects to choose from such as greetings travel food weather medical and emergency each category includes a number of common words and phrases that can be translated between English German French Spanish and Italian the rest of the work boy fully supports these same five languages as well

lastly is the world map which allows users to Peru the different countries of the world simply type in the name of a country and the Map will be highlighted with its location as a bonus a select handful of Major World Nations even include an Abridged 8bit rendition of their respective national anthems that will play when selected [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] the work boy contains around a dozen national anthems in total and there you Have it the work boy is real it works and this build labeled 8.87 is very close to a finished product Eddie Gill

believes that this version recovered from Nintendo's servers was one of several prototypes sent to them during development only a few elements remained unclear such as the devic's targeted ability to connect to personal computers which would have supposedly allowed it to receive contact information and other data the question Remains then why was it never put into production the decision ultimately came down to the head of Fabtech Frank Belo just months before the launch of the work boy Frank pulled the plug when he learned that plans were in motion at Nintendo to slash the price of the

Game Boy in light of this Frank worried that the work boy could not be priced competitively enough to succeed the work boy itself could have retailed for as much as $89.95 in the US the original Launch price of the Game Boy was $89.99 post price cut the work boy could have potentially been more expensive than the handheld itself in a worst case scenario the work boy planned early launch in late 92 at games master live didn't move forward and in around 1993 the project was effectively scrapped according to Eddie Gail had it not been there

were other hurdles laying ahead that the device would have had to contend with with in July of 93 around When it was once intended to be in production a large explosion ripped through a factory making material for computer chips in Japan at the time the Sumit Tomo chemical Co facility in niama produced more than half of the world supply of an epoxy resin called kle This is used to make protective cases for computer chips in particular dram the form of memory which would have been used in the work boy as a direct result of This

Disaster the price of dram sword Had the device been in production this would have been just one of the challenges Fabtech would have had to navigate in spite of this Frank told me that he does believe the work boy would have been successful and that he has his regrets about cancelling it it was at that time that I made that brilliant brilliant decision that I kicked myself in a butt for that I pulled the plug and we didn't go forward because I still think at that price we we could have Sold some units on it

so you you regret it to to to a certain extent yes I'm I'm looking o over in my bookcase one of the original work boys just just sitting there and uh you know it it it it it could have been something a couple of years following the consolation Frank's time at Fabtech came to an end as he transferred ownership of the company to his wife at the time and moved on to pastures new Eddie gil on the other hand continued to Toe with the idea of the Work boy his original design helped inspire a new

device he patented in 1994 for a personal Communicator with a keyboard and touchscreen Gil later licensed this design to Nokia it became the basis for the Nokia 9000 series of devices that launched in 1996 a few years later Eddie became a design consultant at Nintendo where he helped draw plans for a number of accessories that also never came to be among his was a revamped work boy for The Game Boy Advance which held the tentative name workboy 2 it encompassed many of the same features of its predecessor and was planned to have online functionality of

some kind such as email and web browsing as well as a word processor production on the workboy 2 never moved forward and no prototype was ever built All That Remains of it are these Concepts showing the keyboard and shell that would have attached to the handheld Eddie left Nintendo in 2001 Marking the end of his decade long Endeavors to bring a productivity add-on to the Game Boy many of the work boy features are today taken for granted in modern devices but it isn't hard to appreciate the novelty it would have held back in the early

'90s in an era before widespread internet access and smartphones this was a Swiss army knife of productivity applications running on something as simple as the original Game Boy whether or not it would have found In audience however is something we will never know by the late '90s Nintendo was enjoying a comfortable lead over the hantel video game Market with Sega Al but vanquished in this corner of the industry the Game Boy and its successor the Game Boy Color were dominating it was in light of these high sales that Nintendo had been exploring a number of

ways to expand upon the Game Boy line through peripherals and add-ons and in 1999 the Company Hit Upon an opportunity approached by a former executive of theirs and an inventor from the UK Nintendo of America was presented with a chance to realize one of the most ambitious Game Boy attachments of all time this first party addon was poised to open up a World of Wireless communication to Game Boy Color users including email web browsing photo messaging and much more the story behind this device has remained an obscure Secret of Nintendo history for over 20 years

until now in this episode of game history secrets I reveal the never-before seen Nintendo page boy and what happened to [Music] it Source research and development was a game studio in Leeds England in the early '90s the company developed a relationship with Nintendo of America when their founder Eddie Gail invented a productivity add-on for the original Game Boy the work boy as it was called was made in a close partnership between Nintendo Source R&D and Fabtech a game publisher run by former Nintendo executive Frank Belo despite leaving a lasting impression on Gamers and the few

press Outlets that sampled the device the work boy ultimately never made it to Market this multifunctional keyboard add-on was deemed too risky of an investment by Fabtech founder Frank Belo after he learned that Nintendo is Planning to drop the price of the Game Boy had the work boy launched it may have cost as much as the Game Boy system itself a potential comparison that was unfavorable enough for blue to shelf the whole project in 1993 for inventor Eddie gil on the other hand the ideas behind the work boy would live on the concept inspired him

to create an original design for a mobile phone and Communicator as head of research and development at a company named Maxim Phillips in 1995 the gadget was bought by Nokia and was eventually turned into the Nokia 9000 series of devices the work boy was never able to see an official release but Eddie's drive to develop a Game Boy addon was far from extinguished it was in late 1997 that he left his position at Max and Phillips to pursue what he considered to be a spiritual continuation of the work boy with new ideas of its own

he independently started work on this new Project drawing plans for a Game Boy Color add-on based around communication the project however required plenty of technological Savvy and for that Eddie reached out to his brother Christopher Gail an experienced programmer and digital artist while Eddie's speciality was ideas he told me Chris excelled in realizing those ideas from a technical standpoint Chris had previously worked alongside Eddie at Source on the work boy in a similar Arrangement where he Was responsible for graphic design while the work boy was essentially a third-party add-on with close ties to Nintendo it

was apparent to the Gil brothers that they would need Nintendo to fully Embrace their new device as a product of their own in order for it to reach its potential the scale of their ambition with this new Gadget was immense Eddie envisioned an add-on for the Game Boy Color that would allow users to communicate with one another Over long distances they could send each other messages photos emails they could view the internet to get news updates and all of this would be accomplished completely wirelessly from almost anywhere in the world years before Nintendo even considered

impl men in such technology into their handels the addon aimed to revolutionize communication between Game Boy owners with a distinctly Nintendo flourish the communication worked via radio waves Using the same frequency implied by most two-way Pages at the time in honor of this fact Eddie named the device page boy the group formed to create this new product would come to be known simply as wizard their plans for the page boy were extensive but could only be realized through Nintendo full support according to Eddie gaining their cooperation would be easier said than done since wizard had

no formal inroads with the tech Giants at the time however they had an Ace up their sleeve in the form of EX Nintendo executive Frank Belo having joined forces for the work boys several years earlier Eddie hoped that Frank would help him get his foot in the door once again as he attempted to sell them on this New Concept after hearing the details of the Project Blue quickly agreed to get them an introduction with the higher up sat Nintendo of America the branch at which he had previously worked a meeting was set up in 1999

in Which Eddie presented their proposal to Nintendo of America's heads those in attendance included NOA president minor araka chairman Howard Lincoln and Engineering head Wayne alen Sherk the pitch was meticulous in its research presenting in great detail how it would work this included a technical breakdown of how the pige boy would transfer data by way of radio telemetry and concept images of both hardware and software not only did they have documents and art Showing what it would look like wizard had commissioned the creation of physical models of the device via serious model making and of

a company in leads England as well as all of this the group had built a visual demonstration in Microsoft PowerPoint previewing what the page boy would look like in action all of its major targeted features were on this display in this interactive tour of the proposed software such as messaging and internet access in my Research I was able to recover a version of the demo used to sell their ideas to Nintendo the software was heavily themed around the company's iconic mascot Mario complete with Wizard's own take on the music from the Mario games and even

some voice acting to start off with the title screen art featured the character posing with a version of the page Boy logo next to a graphic of planet Earth and several game boys there was also ask Mario a proposed Nintendo search engine Optimized for the page boy where users could lock up various queries such as items for sale Mario would have appeared throughout these applications speaking to the user briefly as they transition between them I find it there was even the idea to have them whistle the world one1 theme from Super Mario Brothers as content

was loading it's the coming [Music] I find it they were keenly aware that getting access to the Mario IP was a long shot Eddie Gil told me but they were leaving no stone unturned in their efforts to win anyway over the page boy really held nothing back when it came to embracing Nintendo as a brand for example one suggest Ed part of its software imagine making a version of the officially licensed magazine Nintendo Power available for users to read page boy owners would have been able to read Up on the latest game news and reviews

all on the handout in addition to this was a highly ambitious feature named Game Boy TV this was intended to be a part of the software that could receive a live broadcast from Nintendo that would display exclusive information on upcoming products in real time it was envisioned as a potential Avenue for the company to announce new games directly to Consumers anytime they want it if that sounds familiar then yes Gil was Essentially attempting an early version of the Nintendo Direct on the Game Boy Color well over a decade before those Live Events were introduced many

possibilities were being explored of Game Boy TV such as the idea of players submitting their game scores via page boy and those with the highest would have their names displayed during broadcasts all of these app would have been aided by the implementation of animations Graphics fonts and sounds Being pre-installed on the device itself this would have allowed for minimal data usage and quicker loading speeds with a targeted rate of around 400 characters per minute alongside gaming previews and reviews page boy users were also supposed to be able to get access to World News sports results

and weather forecasts the latest weather information would have been accessed via a scrolling map not not as similar to the interface Nintendo later employed for the Wiis Wether channel the add-on's premier feature however was its two-way messaging users would have been able to type out a message on their system then choose pre-stored animations music and themes to bring it to life for instance they could select a letter with a happy birthday song and an animation of a birthday cake it was also suggested that the page boy would have been able to connect to existing Game

Boy peripherals to expand its capabilities was it hoped That owners of the Game Boy camera could take photographs of themselves using its front-facing camera and share them with one another in other words they wanted to allow users to message selfies to one another years before the mobile phone industry came to realize this concept furthermore they were hoping that the page boy would be able to save images and messages received and then print them using the Game Boy printer in order to make this work the page boy would Have fitted into the game boy's cartridge slot

and then would have had its own additional cartridge slot on top of it this would allow users to have the add-on attached to their Game Boy and still be able to play games or for the page boy to interface directly with other peripherals in such a scenario page boy itself would have been accessed by pressing down on the d-pad upon startup the developers were even proposing a phone system that could be Used to email page boys consumers who wanted to interact with one without using a page boy directly were intended to be able to call

a phone service specify a message and theme before giving the operator a particular page boy address this would have been the only paid element of the product aside from The Upfront cost of the device at retail using page boy's onboard features such as messaging or Game Boy TV would have been entirely free no subscriptions Or accounts were required either all of this and Maul was presented to Nintendo of America at their initial meeting and the response was one of immediate Fascination according to Eddie anyway president Manor arakawa took a particular interest believing it had the

potential to be a commercial success he responded by greenlighting an internal investigation and Nintendo as to how they would get the product to market the wizard group's efforts 10 months of Rigorous research had paid off as Nintendo agreed to work with them directly on this new project Edie signed on at Nintendo of America as design consultant in summer 1999 and from that point on the page boy was being looked at as an internally made first party add-on for the Game Boy line of systems as per the suggestion of Peter E Nintendo of America's director of

network products the project was given the code name cheetah for the following Months Eddie worked with a team at Nintendo of America further exploring the many possibilities of the add-on among these were considerations for allowing the device to unlock additional content in games for example players could theoretically access an exclusive level or item if they had the page boy attached using it to radio capabilities to allow for live authentication on the other hand its planned clock app was reminiscent of the work boy with Essentially the same set of functions the time displayed in analog and

digital formats as well as an alarm capability in another Leaf out of the work booy's book The Page boy would have required its own batteries two aa's in this case and would have had its own built-in memory some thought had been given as to how it would function as a physical product also in addition to the physical models that were made made the team was weighing up the option of adding a clip That would allow the page boy to be attached to a belt or over item of clothing documents indicate that the device would have

vibrated when a new message was received Nintendo's investigation into the page boy spaned about 3 years starting in 1999 and coming to a close in summer 2002 during this time Eddie had gained the interest of pageart a company based in Dallas Texas which operated a narrow band P personal Communications service network That allowed for two-way paging after the Network's launch in 1998 pagemart was set to become a major player in the communications market and was having preliminary talks with Eddie's team to provide the network service that would be the backbone of the page boy Nintendo's

Peter E eventually took over negotiations as they progressed a great deal of time was spent deliberating over how the aong would send photographs over the air from the Game Boy camera Nintendo brought in their own experts to examine the situation who Express concerns about file compression however Eddie was able to reduce the size of pictures imported from the camera by removing every other line of pixels from the screen the end result he said bore a resemblance to 1960s television displays it was an unconventional solution that impressed Nintendo and allowed the team to hit their file

siiz Target what had initially sold Nintendo On the page boy in general was its potential as a product for international audiences however over time it became clear that potential wasn't as strong as had been initially believed Nintendo liked it on paper by all accounts but from a technological perspective it would have only been feasible in a limited number of markets such as the US their investigation found that there were no costeffective duplex wireless data networks covering Japan or Europe At the time had the page boy move forward it would have therefore been limited to North

America it was deemed by Nintendo's management back at its Japanese headquarters that this would have gone against the core appeal of the device Nintendo wanted it to be universally available and functional around the world this they believed was key to its success the page boy was shelv for good in around July 2002 the outcome was disappointing for members of The team like Eddie Gail but he told me that he was more than understanding upon learning the news and ultimately agreed with their decision the device would have been doable they believed in America but limiting its

scope to one territory essentially defeated the point of what they were trying to accomplish a ubiquitous add-on for the Game Boy color's massive user base that would have allowed consumers from all over the world to communicate with one another And for Nintendo to deliver information to each one of them directly the page boy was quite literally too ahead of its time for its own good but in many ways it foreshadowed a number of innovations that Nintendo themselves would end up adopting Game Boy live could be seen as an early precursor to the Nintendo Direct a

messaging system that worked via automatically assigned email addresses similar to the Wiis news and weather channels bonus content exclusive To those who owned a certain accessory live high scores being accessible to users in Pitch documents the page boy was even being pushed with the phrase anytime anywhere a slogan that was later used to market the Nintendo switch in the end no actual prototypes were produced for the device and all that remains of it is what I've shown you in this video it's possible Eddie Gill shared that Nintendo might have retained some of the physical models

made for the Project but nothing playable exists other than this demo presentation the page boy finds its place in Nintendo history as an add-on that could have changed the way they did business from the way playable content was distributed to how they announc games themselves had it made it to mark pocket there were thoughts about bringing it to overh handhelds like the Game Boy Pocket and whatever future platforms Nintendo was planning but without that first device Making it into production it instead joins the work boy as another Innovative accessory that will always leave us wondering

what could have [Music] been unafraid to diversify and experiment Nintendo has worn many hats over its long long history in the video game business but something that has remained consistent throughout it is their very evident affinity for peripherals whether it's the infamous Rob the robot some DK Bongos or a headset made from cardboard fans have come to expect the unexpected from their accessories as unconventional as some of them may be there have been many others that didn't make it to Market and in this video I'll be delving into a handful of them from proposals Nintendo

shot down to fully greenlit projects that were later cancelled we begin with the oldest case study on our list which takes us all the Way back to the third generation of Home consoles the NES sported its share of unusual accessories like the precious sensitive power pads or the notorious Power Glove a similar such curiosity almost joined their ranks at the start of the system's lifespan as revealed Years Later by ex Nintendo game master Howard Phillips the company had been extensively mulling over the concept of an officially licensed Nintendo knitting machine the device would have connected

To the NES to knit sweaters and users would have been able to choose from a multitude of different patterns according to Phillips it was Nintendo of America's president minor arakawa who instructed him to pitch the product to Toro's founder and chairman Charles Lazarus he was apparently given very little notice about 30 minutes in fact to prepare for the meeting his presentation included a live demonstration of the Prototype knitting Machine in action which Phillips described in a Facebook post as likely one of his least genuinely enthusiastic demos toer Russ and other retailers weren't interested nor were

attendees of 1987's winter Consumer Electronic Show who had a chance to view the machine in its one and only public appearance after flying under the radar the Nintendo knitting machine faded into obscurity and was never put into full production the GameCube went through Various iterations over the course of its conceptualization Nintendo and their Perpetual search for new Innovations tried a number of emerging Technologies during its creation this led to multiple unrealized peripherals that were considered and prototyped extensively the first was a GameCube controller which included motion sensors Nintendo's history with such technology is well documented

it the company quietly experimented with it for years before Building it into Hardware like the Wii few people outside of Nintendo were privy to their motion sensing GameCube controllers but the developers at Factor 5 Inc were among them according to a developer who worked on GameCube launch titled Star Wars Rogue Squadron 2 they had even flirted with the idea of using the motion controls in that game after Nintendo granted them access to the early prototype controllers this wasn't to be however as the technology was Vetoed by Nintendo shortly thereafter to focus on making a more

traditional console and decrease production costs another long-term Obsession of Nintendo's is 3D a Fascination which eventually culminated in the Nintendo 3DS this technology was also tested on the GameCube years earlier although these attempts got much further than their affer mentioned accelerometers Nintendo was once planning to release a small LCD screen which could be attached To the GameCube alleviating the need for a television and enabling a greater level of portability this add-on made only one public appearance at e302 it could be seen behind glass displaying demos for games like Fantasy Star online and Metroid Prime unbeknown

to attendees the Prototype unit had a hidden feature which remained a company's secret until former Nintendo president sator water revealed all years later it was fully capable of displaying Glasses lless 3D via the same method of auto stereoscopy used by the 3DS in 2001 producer Hideki Kono had been involved in creating a 3D version of Luigi's Mansion that would use this device it had depth so it really pulled you into the world of the game I thought it was great Coro said despite this positive internal reception it was held back from release by production costs

Liquid Crystal was still expensive back then and no matter how new and experience we Could provide through the games there would have been a need for players to buy the LCD as an accessory there was even talk that it could turn out to be more expensive than the console itself while Nintendo's version never came to Market third party manufacturers stepped up to the plate with their own LCD screens minus 3D and battery packs allowing the GameCube to be fully portable in 2007 Factor 5 Inc proposed to Nintendo rebooting some of their long Doan franchises like

kis and pilot wings for the last the studio envisioned an original peripheral to be released alongside it this was a pair of glasses with two infrared lights mounted on them a gadget inspired by a 2007 viral video from computer scientist Johnny Lee in the video Lee demonstrated a setup using a Wii Remote and infrared glasses that could produce a 3d effect as well as tracking the user's head movements the User would position a Wii remote facing away from their screen towards them the Wii remote's eye camera would then detect the infrared lights in the glasses

transmitting this information to a computer program the end result was the user's ability to adjust their view of the camera in the program by moving around the room and tilting their head Factor 5 wanted to adopt Le concept and use the peripheral in their Wii games players would have been able to Seamlessly adjust the in-game camera via headtracking presenting a possible solution to the Wii remotes and nunu's lack of a second unlock stick according to the Studio's president Julian egre they were talking with Nintendo in 2008 to potentially produce the device although they weren't interested

in making either of their proposed reboots the heads of factor 5 persisted nevertheless and decided to develop their pilot Wings game as an original Ip Called we fly another publisher named zoo games picked the game up and with it their wi glasses peripheral according to zoo gamees co-founder Lee Cummings they had planned to produce the glasses in house and were holding discussions with potential manufacturers in order to do so in the meantime the team was creating prototypes using parts from disassembled Wii sensor bars however the rocky economic climate of late 2008 forced zoo games to

go out of business leaving Their Factor 5 projects without funding a previously interested Nintendo declined to intervene and Factor 5 Inc unable to pay its workers closed in December 2008 the wi Head trucking glasses would never see the light of day as a result the two games that did support it we fly and Star Wars Rogue leaders Rogue Squadron Wii never saw release either one Nintendo accessory that did eventually launch was the Wii zapper This plastic mold could house the Wii Remote and nunchuk to mimic the feel of an arcade light gun debuting alongside Zelda

spin-off Link's crossbow training it would go on to be supported by only a handful of games throughout the generation the original vision for this peripheral was quite different from the final product however initial designs imagined a device with slightly higher production quality that would have effectively served as an add-on for the Wii remotes more akin to the nunchuk a prototype model for this iteration of the Zappa was shown off at E3 2006 unlike the finished design it more closely resembled a shotgun as opposed to a submachine gun the device would connect to the Wii remotes

connect contion port and had its own control stick built in it also had a trigger hole with one large button instead of the nunchuks two shoulder buttons called Zed and C respectively as development Went on this prototype zapper was given its own independent Rumble feature players could insert one additional ablea battery into the device which would provide Rumble feedback to the whole zapper when players successfully hit a Target in their demo Nintendo sources explained that concerns about pricing were to blame for this version of the zapper Being Ned a comment from Nintendo designer shuru mamoto

in a aada asks interview seems to support this Suggestion we decided against it because we really didn't want customers to have to buy the extra batteries that's one of the reasons developing this product took so long its Rumble functionality and control stick stripped out the Wii Zappa was essentially reduced to a plastic shell it was finally released in Lay 2007 in January 2008 Israeli Tech firm 3dv systems announced a new webcam called the zcam this was buil as a desktop camera with an infrared sensor For tracking the movements of its users it was capable of

sensing depth allowing it to detect how close users were to it as well as their exact gestures with low levels of latency the device made a few appearances at trade shows throughout 2008 including the Consumer Electronic Show its primary application was for video games and 3dv demonstrated this with a boxing game Prototype responses among attendees were said to have been positive sites like IGN expressed their Admiration for the accuracy of its controls what wasn't known at the time was that prior to these public showings the zom was originally proposed to Nintendo as a potential peripheral

for the Wii 3dv presented their ideas to the higher ups of Nintendo in late 2007 according to CVG that their presentation is said to have left an impression on the company's management including satoru they apparently showed off their affer mentioned boxing demo and a Prototype of the zcam with voice recognition functionality they presented it as a new Twist on the motion controls that Nintendo had pioneered reasoning that it would be a natural fit for the platform's audience although their presentation is said to have impressed them Nintendo ultimately did not agree according to a source from

the Kyoto HQ AATA himself raised concerns about input lag and that it would be too costly to sell as an additional accessory for Context the zcam was later set to be sold as a standalone product for PCs at an estimated price of $100 the two parties consequently went their separate ways and the zcam would never officially be released Microsoft bought 3dv out in March 2009 and 3 months later they revealed project Nal an Xbox 360 peripheral using essentially the same Tech technology after some cost cutting measures which downgraded the hardware it was released as connect

in late 2010 one of Nintendo's more Infamous unreleased peripherals is the well publicized Wii Vitality sensor this gadget was unveiled by satoru wat at e309 where he briefly discussed its potential applications the Vitality sensor was a small device which could read the user pulse from their index finger it would connect to the Wii remote notes and sent this information to the Wii console allowing games to monitor their pulse during gameplay if A's comments or any indication Nintendo saw the accessory primarily being used as an aid to lower the players's heart rate and help them relax

he also discussed it being used to extrapolate other information from inside the body such as mood and anxiety the company even fora the potential for software using it that would help people fall asleep easier at its reveal no release information for the Wii vitality sensor was provided but internal estimates Expected it to arrive in late 2010 following E3 2009 no further details were provided for some time to come the lack of news was acknowledged by former Nintendo of America president Reggie F in a March 2010 interview with Kaku the first thing we need to do

is show our vision for how the Vitality sensor can be used for a new and unique experience and we recognize we haven't done that yet he said our focus is to bring to life how you could utilize the Vitality Sensor and our goal is to do that sometime around E3 that goal would go unrealized the Vitality sensor did not appear at e3210 their then EVP of sales and marketing Kami dunway provided game set watch with a justification as to why this was as we thought about what we wanted to bring to E3 we realized we

had a really packed agenda we also thought about the atmosphere at E3 which is noisy and adrenaline filled and loud and stressful and it just did didn't seem Like the best environment to introduce a product that's really about relaxing so we decided we'd think about other venues that would be more appropriate as time went on this pledge wasn't followed through on either and updates from Nintendo on the accessory stopped rumors swirled about its cancellation in 2010 but it would be another 3 years before the company would officially reveal its fate the project and its related

software had been shelved amid concerns About the devic's reliability and its VI ability as a commercial product in July 2013 sator AATA explained to Nintendo's investors we could not get it to work as we expected and it was of narrower application than we had originally thought Nintendo had carried out extensive trials for the accessory throughout the Twilight years of the Wii within the company 100 employees tested the Vitality sensor but it was found that it only functioned as intended for 90 of them the device was supposed to work by observing the waves produced by the

pulse and interpreting this information to quantify how tense or relaxed users were however the technology was too simplistic to do that accurately for 100% of users it therefore fell short of a water standards although he expressed the company's desire to one day try again if the technology allowed it we would like to launch it into the market of Technology advancements enable 999 of 1,000 people to use it without any problems not only 90 of 100 people I actually think it must be 1,000 of a thousand people but it is a little bit of a stretch

to make it applicable to every single person Rayman 4 was the original title of the game which later evolved into Rayman Raving rits beginning Life as a traditional 3D platformer at Ubisoft monell in late 2005 before growing into A party game for the Nintendo Wii however this was not the only project developed under the title of Raymond 4 in early 2005 Phoenix interactive entertainment became the first development Studio to ever tackle a main series Raymond game outside of Ubisoft mon pelier this little known developer was entrusted with the rights as the Mont pellia Branch was

engaged with work on a video game adaptation of Peter Jackson's King Kong movie Phoenix gained Access to the license with a proposal that supposedly captured the imagination of ubisoft's higher ups the pitch presented story ideas high in ambition that aspired to break new ground not only for raymon but the medium itself according to the design documents worked on over the course of development it would have opened in a training camp for Video Game Heroes the player controls Rayman where they learn the basic controls and way to be chosen by a Player in the real world

from this point it would have been revealed that in a very meta twist every inhabitant of the game is completely self-aware that they exist within a video game the premise was such that almost every character in The Realm of the game was being controlled by a player in the outside world thus the behavior of each character you meet is in part of reflection of each individual player's personality in the real world one Example given was a seriously ill child controlling another rayon each of the rayon characters inside the game was essentially a piece of data

similar to the movie Tron for instance however they were also a blank slate for the players who would control them in the outside world who were each tapping into into a shared realm of gaming when they played what was to them the latest raymon game with Pixar as their main source of inspiration for the plot Phoenix wanted To explore the relationship between player and video game using Raymond as a template around which they could build a rich story with humanity posos and depth humor was another big focus of theirs too outside of the general concept

a great deal of the story had yet to be figured out there was no main villain in place the closest that they had come to Anan was an antagonist encountered later in the game which was dark Raymond a returning character introduced in the Original raymon game instead of being a creation of Mr dark as he was in the first Rayman dark Rayman was intended to be a manifestation of corrupt data inside the video game a rogue glitch that the game designers had neglected to stamp out and had adopted the form of the game's hero one

goal which Phoenix held dear with the project was keeping a Reliance on cutscenes for storytelling to a minimum it was instead thought of as having its story unfold dynamically In real time using subtle techniques like small changes in the envir environments to convey information to the players despite its working title rayon 4 the game was intended to be a full frontal reboot of the series it was conceived as a Revival of raymon that took the majority of its inspiration for design and tone from the first two games they wanted to recapture the off-the-wall style of

the earlier enturies and bring the series back to Its roots in order to accomplish this the vast majority of the game would have reimagined past levels from Rayman 1 and Two For the First Time Players would have been able will explore stages from the original game such as bandland in new 3D interpretations returning from Rayman 3 huddam Havoc powerups played a major role in Rayman 4 stages although many of these never got as far as making it into any build of the game Phoenix had in store a very diverse roster of Quirky Transformations for players

to acquire with the hope that this would inject plenty of variety into the game play another mechanic that they were planning for was Vehicles these included a submarine and a giant man shape Mech that he would have been able to Pilot at various points throughout the game Ubisoft and Phoenix were aiming to capture as big of an audience as possible of Rayman 4 Not only was it set to land across several different Platforms the PC PS2 Xbox and GameCube they were also hoping to increase the Mass Appeal of the series with it Rayman 4 would

have therefore been slightly easier than past installments Phoenix even explicitly outlined in their design docks that 100% of players should be able to finish it overall the project was in development for around 10 months a great deal of pre-production had been spent carefully crafting the art of each level prototyping had been underway for Some time as well as we can see from this early build Rayman 4 was ultimately able to reach a more complete State than this with a handful of levels fully functioning but in late 2005 all work on the title ground to a

very sudden halt at E3 2005 in May Nintendo had unveiled to the world the new system Cod name Revolution the announcement had been fully expected but had still managed to discretly worry certain members of Ubisoft fearing the success of their Late GameCube projects including Raymond 4 if this new console was to launch sooner than anticipated along with the incoming Xbox 360 would it all have a negative effect on the performance of these games this was very much the concern at hand then later in the year Ubisoft began receiving the first batch of development kits for

the revolution as work on the King Kong movie game and mon pellier was drawing to a close as the creative director of the King Kong Video game Michelle onel creator of the Raymond series had previously been too busy to contribute towards Phoenix's Raymond 4 game however as development Was preparing to wrap on the project he began exploring new ideas for the next Rayman he would be at the helm of it was at this point that ubisoft's management very suddenly relayed to Phoenix interactive that they had made the decision to ccel their version of Raymond 4

the affer mentioned sales Concerns and wanting to focus on building something from the ground up for Nintendo's next system I said it have been two major factors that played into the decision for Phoenix it had been the largest game the company had ever taken on and they had relied on ubisoft's funding to maintain their day-to-day operations without any prior indication of the project being in danger Phoenix had no choice but to lay off the vast majority of their staff Soon after the duty of creating the next man then reverted to Ubisoft mon pelier where they

started work on it towards the end of King Kong's development a lot of Phoenix's greater plan for the game like how exactly they would have presented certain aspects of its highly self-referential plot had yet to be entirely figured out the mon pellier team started aresh with their own New Vision for what the next entry in the series would be and Phoenix's elaborate Ideas for Reviving Rayman were discarded almost completely all that Ubisoft would ever use from the project was some of its level Concepts which were reworked into the Game Boy advanced version of Rayman Raving

rabbits Phoenix interactive entertainment went on to develop one more game for Ubisoft but due to another series of complications it met the same fade as Raymond 4 this time the constellation had even more serious ramifications for the studio and Left them unable to continue in 2009 with the contract lost the company was forced to close its doors for good in the late 2000s a torrent of rumors swept the internet about a Revival of Nintendo's long dant Kika series on the Wii a number of small sites claimed that such a game was in development before IGN's

M Casten acknowledged its existence on the site's Nintendo podcast according to him the game was set to be unveiled at E308 but as the event came and went Kiku was nowhere to be seen the hea would persist for years later without the title ever surfacing and a curious lack of development coming out of the woodwork to verify its existence thus we are left with many questions did such a project ever truly exist if so what was it and what happened to it to make sense of it all we must first revisit the history of one

of Nintendo's recurring Partners throughout the '90s Factor 5 Inc was the US arm of game developer Factor 5 based in San Rafael California the company built a strong relationship with Nintendo around the turn of the 21st century the full extent of this collaboration was never divulged officially but the two grew close after the Star Wars Rogue Squadron series came about the first released in 1998 on Windows on Nintendo 64 finding success with Nintendo's machine Factor 5 then pledged its sequel Rog leader as a GameCube exclusive which released alongside the console the GameCube ultimately didn't take

off in quite the way they had hoped for but Nintendo gave credit to factor 5's launch effort as one of the reasons for it finding initial success as their partnership proved fruitful Factor 5 ended up being contracted for a first party project using one of their IPs a third rug Squadron game Rebel strike was released in 2003 and his work was underway on Their secret of Nintendo game the company began planning a fourth installment the developers at Factor 5 were determined to make the next game radically different and Believe The Logical way forward for the

series was the introduction of online play unfort Ely for them this was not an Avenue which Nintendo was majorly interested in pursuing they refused to embrace online in any meaningful way with the GameCube and showed Fair reluctance as they Planned their next system adamant that this was still the correct path to keeping Rogue Squadron fresh Factor 5 all bed on good terms drifted apart from Nintendo and their remaining GameCube game was cancelled from there they partnered with Microsoft who offered to help them realize their vision for Rogue Squadron 4 using Xbox Live this was one

of a few projects on the table during their days developing for Xbox though in the end none of them would come to be With unforeseen shifts in the management of Microsoft game studios Factor 5 lost support for their games in development in 2004 with their Microsoft contracts falling apart they were soon tapped by shui yosida to collaborate with Sony the two entered a partnership deal Midway through the air which was intended to produce multiple exclusive titles for the Playstation 3 however this was yet another Alliance that eventually turned sour Le their flight combat game made

From the remnants of a cancelled Rogue Squadron for the Xbox 360 encountered a plethora of issues during its development Factor five thus failed to meet the terms of their agreement with Sony which specified that L would be ready in time for the North American launch window of the PS3 in 2006 this led to the subsequent cancellation of their other Sony projects including a strategy RPG rif with bloody violence called Animal Wars and virus a shoot him Up plan for BSN while Factor 5 situation was on the decline Nintendo meanwhile Was preparing to launch the next

system the Wii at E3 2006 the next Super Smash Brothers game heading to the console brawl made its debut among the new playable characters featured during the announcement trailer was none other than Pit the central protagonist of the kadiga series this served as Pit's first major appearance in many years returning with a modernized character design and a New bow capable of dividing into twin blades What followed was a surge and F demand for kidus to return with a new game on Nintendo's upcoming platform as we know today it would be a long time before these

prayers were answered but behind the scenes Nintendo was listening by the start of 2007 the gears were already in motion and the next installment in the series was being discussed internally at length their first choice for who would develop the Game surprisingly was not a division of their own in March they contracted Factor 5 in to work with them on a Nintendo Wii Revival of kadus as leir had failed to meet the expectations of Sony's higher ups their exclusive multi-game deal had been asked Factor 5 would still be obligated to complete the game but was

now free to pursue additional ventures in March 2007 this tightly veiled kis became their first new undertaking Nintendo allowed the Developers a fair share of creative freedom as they began to experiment with the property and L's mission statement outlined that it would be the first 3D game in the series to be built for the Wii but outside of that they were more or less given free reain for the first several months a small group at fuor 5 found themselves in the thick of an extensive exploration deliberating of what a new kitus could be like according

to one member of the team who was party To the entirety of its life cycle the company's management held in Iron grip over the direction it would take and steered it in one not everyone agreed with I discussed the concepting phase of factor 5's cadus with David lamera who is one of the main artists on board the project the managerial staff as recounted by lamera pushed the game down a quote unquote more mature route the project paid close attention to the source material of the original NES game But took a bold departure from these cartoonish

retro Origins adopting a slightly darker tone recognizable characters and enemies were present yet reimagined for this new world an evolution not as similar to the one Nintendo them themselves once opted for with the Legend of Zelda series they envisioned an older more experienced pit highly skilled and hardened by combat his appearance went through a myriad of revisions ranging from a familiar toga Clad hero to a caped warrior in Black many options were under consideration as the Project's Central ideas fluctuated throughout 2007 some took the gritty angle to extremes outfitting Angelic hero in battle armor of

as imagined him in simple white robes the end product fell somewhere in the middle there were many ideas for pit weapons being tossed around too one concept inspired by his smash BR res iteration imagined his bow as being concealed in two separate Sheaths at his hips that could be combined for ranged attacks or swung in close quarters Factor 5 developed several rough ideas for a story during their time working on cadus but Aesthetics and narrative was never the Project's Focus they were all devised in service of the core gameplay experience they were hoping to create

which was dramatically different from the 2D sidescroller of old their vision for kigus saw pit taking to the skies armed With the ability to fly freely for the first time ever in their game he was no longer limited to fluttering but was an experienced flyer who could shoot down enemies with his bow and arrow in tandem introducing this element of flight combat called upon the Studio's years of experience from the Rogue Squadron games an attempt to capitalize on their strengths and put an interesting Twist on the franchise and its transition to 3D their idea of

Aging pit up to a young Adult was simply a natural leap and Logic for the story to take in order to give context to his new power in August work finally began on a prototype for the game as their time on lay came to an end and more developers became available by now it had been assigned the simple working title Icarus although that's not to say it would have admitted young pit completely before development commenced on the Prototype Nintendo had expressed a desire for the game to at least Represent in some manner their current version

of the character as seen in Smash Brothers they even went as far as having their in-house artists at NCL create a 3D character model for the demo to potentially make use of I was able to obtain a glimpse of it which shows the design was almost identical to the one seen in Super Smash Brother's brawl interestingly they included one of the three sacred Treasures from kis as objects the mirror Shield please note That this this was merely a test animation and the creature in the clip was actually from another project Factor 5 was working on

a planned reboot of turen sometimes their artists would blend assets from different projects for experiments such as this despite Nintendo's suggestion Factor 5's management decided against including it in their prototype and moved forward with making their own model of adult pit from scratch with that said their Greater plan for the theoretical full game was to have the player begin their Journey controlling him as his more traditional younger self one work in progress draft of the plot summary they had illustrates how the story might have utilized this form of the character in this iteration the game

begins with kid pit in skyw world it would have taken place not long after the original title when in mysterious circumstances he finds himself banished from Skyworld by His mistress lady palena accused of crimes against the Heavenly Kingdom years pass and he would have matured into an Adept Warrior from defending the Overworld his wings now finally strong enough for flight it is around this point at which a new Darkness would start engulfing the Earth and pit sets off to put an end to this Rising evil hopefully finding his redemption in many of the earlier Concepts

Factor 5's artist explored how to best personify His descent from palutena's Graces through his design one or two of them portrayed him with blackened wings and a demonic arm warped by dark magic another placed him in broken shackles the most common idea was a tattoo on his arm either a symbolic image or a literal inscription of a supposed crime in an ancient language this suggestion in particular was being strongly considered but eventually fell by the wayside of course these were merely rough Underdeveloped ideas for a potential game as recalled by former workers largely very little

of that is indicative of anything featured in the playable demonstration in their list of priorities the plot had always been secondary to the game play and was mostly a patchwork of of vague Concepts from staff members The Icarus prototype was developed primarily over several months by a team comprising around 20 people across different Departments of The company in the end two separate 3D models for adult pit were put together one was slightly more simple and cartoony whereas the other took a more photorealistic approach adding a scar to his right cheek both were made compatible with

the playable demo it consisted of one environment depicting a floating structure suspended in the sky for play is to explore pit faced off against two different enemies during the stage both Loosely based around Creatures from the first two games these were the bats from kakis of myths and monsters as well as an alternative version of the nlas from the NES game now with three eyes given that it was an early prototype it was relatively Bare Bones in terms of looks but was leaning towards a more gothic art style it ran in Factor 5's in-house engine

which was used for all of their original Wii projects this was an engine based around the tech technology used for L Translated for Nintendo system that was apparently capable of 60 frames per second while rendering a high number of objects on screen Julian egre the former CEO of factor 5 once described the framework as being technically the most impressive thing you would have ever seen on the console during an interview of IGN the game was controlled with the Wii's nunchuk peripheral for movement and the remote's pointer for aiming players could freely take off into the

Air at will Flying Without Limits hovering and straight moving to avoid attacks pit could launch his bow either on the ground or in midair and was equipped with a wing Dash attack allowing him to swiftly charge at foes while airborn he would also have to collect orbs Scutt it throughout the stage by March 2008 the first prototype was completed but according to David lamera and several other sources this was the point at which the project began To fall apart after a year in the works Factor 5 had delivered eus to representatives of Nintendo every former

developer I was was able to discuss the project with had their own version of events but the consensus is that NCL simply didn't like it one xfactor 5 worker for instance claimed that after some consideration the direction was deemed too unorthodox for them to continue investing in it Joe spataro a former animator who was involved with The demonstration had this to say with Icarus I feel like we were missing the point Nintendo sent us the model of kadus very much like the one that appears in Smash Brothers but we didn't use it we made our

own version and it was more mature maybe even a little dark it felt more like Devil May Cry I knew Nintendo would never go for the adult version of pit in fact i' wager they took it as an insult that we didn't use that version I reached out to Julian Egre to see if he would comment on the game although he did passingly acknowledge the developer first party Nintendo projects He was not able to comment further Mo to had some form of interaction with the project are reluctant to to describe it as simply a pitch

but rather a period of experimental pre-production between the two companies it stands today as an unconventional first attempt to revive kikus for the modern day a bold Alternative vision of the franchise that wasn't meant to be with vicus no more NCL eventually put masah hero Sakurai in charge of the next kikus Factor 5 undeterred pitched for another Nintendo IP and their good relationship continued at the same time they had embarked upon what would be one of their last major projects a multiplatform Superman game in 2011 a mysterious patent was discovered by silicon era for a

Wii remote control setup which was Registered by Nintendo of America the patent described a system whereby players would tilt the Wii remote in a horizontal position to simulate steering of vehicle controlled by handlebars such as a motorbike or a jet skape the filing was reported on by multiple sites in the gaming media but the Enigma at the heart of the story went un solved what exactly was this patent related to in 2009 Nintendo software technology was rocked by the canellation of one of Their biggest ever undertakings this was the infamous project Hammer after a troubled

5 and a half years in development the game which by that point was being referred to as we Crush fell apart amidst alleged tensions between staff the events changed Nintendo's approach towards the studio aside from the fact that over half of the subsidiary staff had left during the final years of hmer NCL became reluctant towards the idea of having them produce Over large scale projects in the future despite all of this a small group of developers at NST was still hopeful to see the company return to the type of games they were once known for

more meaningful titles using established Nintendo IP their plan was to breathe life back into one Series in particular and that was Wave Race the franchise had been absent Finelli a decade at that point with the last installment coming in the form of Wave Race Blu storm at The launch of the GameCube in the years since that game's released Nintendo's approach towards new projects had evolved internal failures such as project hmer caused them to understandably become increasingly risk averse when reviewing pictures from their developers other factors in this caution included a harsher economic climate and their

changed philosophies towards Innovation with the introduction of the Wii getting a pitch green L by NCL board had therefore become a hefty task for even the most talented of Studios if Wave Race wants to return it would have to differentiate itself reasonably well from its predecessors in order to be commissioned also was the theory Midway into 2009 while the rest of NST was busy with work on a Mario versus Donkey Kong game for the DSi minis March again planning on a pitch for waverace Wii was concurrently getting off the ground it was being Overseen by

a small team of several experienced NST Developers the two heading the project were Yun Jun Lee an engineer who' been with the company since the game boy version of cristalis in 2000 and designer Richard verod both had previously been involved heavily with blue storm Buck on the GameCube verod had contributed towards it in a variety of ways including level and physics design as well as lending his voice to the character Ricky winterborn He had since become a prominent figured NST with for instance a crucial role in the writing and design of Metroid Prime hunters for

the DS alongside Jonathan Bryant another engineer they devised a control scheme which would form the core of this New Wave Race concept it was controlled with the lone wi remote positioned on its side players would hold it in both hands mimicking the handle bars of a jet ski the speed of the craft was manipulated by twisting it And turning was handled by tilting left and right in addition there was optional support for the Wii Balance Board by using one players could add a new level of control to the game applying pressure to either side of

the board would have enabled more instantaneous aggressive turns the Wii remote would vibrate when tilted to its further supported angle to inform the player of the virtual handlebars limits another control setup that was on the table used the Wii Remote and nunchuk holding each on their side would have been used in a similar fashion to emulate the handlebars of a jet ski very much like the power cruising miname from wi Sports Resort unlike that particular mode however the controls were completely buttonless it was thought that introducing this alternate control system would allow for new heights

of immersion and quote unquote realism for Wave Race in order to illustrate their ideas to ncl's board A playable prototype was assembled it was built using a version of the engine that powered Wave Race Blu storm which had been modified to run on the way using the same water physics and visual style as development on the Prototype was ongoing Nintendo of America filed a patent to protect the new control Concepts that nsts workers had conceived of on August 27th 2009 this patent covered not only a setup for controlling jet skis but all handle bar based

Vehicles including motorcycles potentially for use in future games about 2 months later preparations were finished and the developers presented their work to Nintendo's higher ups in Japan the Untitled waver Wii project had generated considerable interest but its prototype was not entirely well-received a former NST worker suggested that the board took issue of aspects of the controls being of the opinion that it simply didn't feel right another back This narrative believing that NCL in the end saw we sports resorts mini game as a suitable alternative to a fully produced Wave Race title they added that the

proposal was ultimately not able to subvert concerns of such a game finding an audience at the time in contrast with Resort which went on to become one of the highest selling games of that year these apparent Sentiments of NCL were echoed by the words of shuru mamoto speaking speaking to IGN earlier at e308 He was quizzed about the possibility of a wavery Wii game to which he replied the power cruising game in Wii Sports is something that's going to appeal to a much broader audience and really what I'm trying to do is find a way

to bring these interactive experiences to as many people as possible with Nintendo unwilling to fund the project it was subsequently shut down and the group responsible for it instead continue to work on Mario vers Donkey Kong minis March again as NCL didn't take to the control system it was abandoned allog together and never again used by other titles as was originally a possibility banjo kazui Grant's revenge released in 2003 in the era after rare was bought out by Microsoft yet they allowed it to go forward with a release exclusively on the Game Boy Advance a

Nintendo system due to them having no competing hand out of their own as it turns out the gr's Revenge project began About 4 years prior in 1999 ceeding banjo 2's release by about a year and a half and roughly 2 years before the GBA had even launched at this time it was being worked on in a very early planning phase under the name banjo kazui grunty's curse what's more is that it was not originally a Game Boy Advance title but was instead set to be developed for its predecessor the Game Boy Coler design documents leaked

by a former rare employee revealed that Initial planning for the game first came together in August of 99 including a false story treatment for the remainder of the year a small team conceived of the various worlds that would make up the game as well as the creatures that would inhabit them upon closer inspection we can establish a number of cuts and changes that were made as development went on including Lost Levels according to the docs recovered there was planned originally to be a Total of eight differently themed areas in the game in the version released

on Game Boy Advance there are only six the two that didn't make the cut were named mendra banjo and fiery furnace respectively mendra banjo was set to be world number six in the game located within and around the ruins of an ancient Temple its description reads as follows deep in the jungles of the East banjo explores the ruins of the Ancients jungle trees and Vines mixed with rivers And ruins watch out for the spitting cobras that pop in and out of alcoves around the ruins moving walls with spikes make some ruined passages into forced scrolling

sections use Vines and snakes for ladders wall clings with banjo references decorate the ruins burial Chambers have coffins built into the ceilings and Floors spiders sometimes drop down or jump out of these and attack banjo a number of cut enemies are talked of like the aformentioned Spitting cobra and Scorpion enemies although the Scorpion didn't eventually appear in grund's Revenge a vaguely similar enemy named stinglash was placed in the bad magic Bayou and freezing furnace stages the other lost stage fiery furnace is described as an industrial factory zone populated by machinery and catwalks over Vats of

bubbling liquid metal while mendra Bano was dropped earlier on in the Project's life fiery furnace would live on for Some time it even made it into a prototype build of the Game Boy Advance game before being scaled back and merged with the freezing furnace level as well as removed stages the design documents reveal alternate earlier titles of those that were present in the finished product Cliff Farm was first known as Cottage Farm bad magic Bou was soggy bog swamp and freezing furnace was called freezing fii what is perhaps one of the more interesting observations to

be made About banjo grunty's curse is its story which differs quite substantially from the final game to recap Grundy's Revenge takes place 2 months after the first banjo game when Grundy's spirit is transferred to a mech suit built by kungo as she becomes Mecha grunty she then kidnaps kazui and uses her magic to travel back into time intent on preventing banjo and kazui from ever meeting Mumbo then uses his magic to send banjo back through time to thwart Her evil plan the planned narrative for grunty's curse however does not feature any elements of time travel

nor is it set so soon after the first game in this version The Story begins several years after banjo kazui and when grunty returns in her newly mechanized form she instead curses a few of the main characters first of all she turns zooie into an evil Blue Monster vision of herself who she then takes with her in a backpack not unlike banjo's then she Transforms bottles into a funny creature as the docs describe it before finally warping the mind of Mumbo into making him fight banjo a diversionary tactic while she makes her Escape banjo subsequently

defeats Mumbo causing him to break free of Mecha gry's gaze at this point a comedy set piece of some kind was planned in which Mumbo would continuously injure himself it reads Mumbo tries in vain to stop them but with every step he takes his luck gets Worse out of the his bad luck Rains Down on him first a black cat covers his face then blinded he runs straight under a ladder and as the cat jumps away a mirror lands on him and lays him out in the broken glass Mumbo gets up with a bandage on

his head this comedic interlude leaves Mumbo with amnesia forgetting all of his spells all he can recall is that banjo will need to collect a hand full of Magic ingredients to return bottles to his regular self Banjo at this juncture realizes that it has been so long since his last adventure that he has forgotten his move set and will have to relearn it since bottles the usual provider of his tutorials is indisposed in his new form he is required to seek out a new character named Grandpa Mo the father of bottles this character would later

be changed slightly as development went on he became bosai an elderly mole who banjo meets in the past and teaches him His platforming repertoire bosai in grunty's revenge is suggested as being a distant relative of bottles from an older generation but the exact Link in their family tree is never specified like it was here with Grandpa Mo towards the bottom of the plot treatment page lies an early draft of the ending which fans will notice differs in some ways from that of grunty's Revenge in this version grunty does not dispatch kungo to collect his sisters

as she does in Revenge which leads into to the event of banjo Tui instead her spirit simply returns under the rock after her defeat at the hands of banjo and kazui before it is revealed that her body has been reduced to a pile of bones it's worth noting that the final iteration did not show her physical appearance under the boulder that Revelation was held back for Tui the original story of the game eventually was altered quite dramatically as time went on however we Were able to ascertain that it is actually subtly referenced in grunty's Revenge

after the Mecha grunty boss encounter in the brial beach World banjo rescues kazui at which point he says kazui am I glad to see you I thought grunty would have made you into a monster by now narrative elements aside it's also worthy of note that the documents reveal a few Transformations for banjo that were later scrapped among these is B banjo a PowerUp that appeared In both banjo kazui and Tui it would have allowed the player to negotiate large platforming gaps by hovering indefinitely as well as the ability to fire Stingers in a straight line

the plans detail what are referred to as useless Transformations too all of which were ultimately dropped these were joke Transformations intended solely for comedic effect it is noted that probably only one of them would have been used due to storage limitations but several Different options were under consideration the first would have turned Bano into a toaster with eyes that would pop out of his head in a slice of toast another was wasab banjo a form that debuted in an kazui warping him into a washing machine the last of the three is simply named milking machine

an apparatus for milking cattle a note in the docs states that the team's useless transformation of choice would need to be fully controllable as It would likely be used as a secret code in grunty's Revenge no such transformation is known to exist banjo kazui grunty's curse was worked on into late 1999 a small group of artists at R began to create assets for the game including digital Sprites for banjo kazui and Mecca grunty not long after this development halted before work was transferred to the Game Boy Advance currently a playable prototype of grunty's curse is

not known to have ever Been produced it appears to have only ever existed as an extensive plan for a game that was never made hello and welcome to dig you know gaming extra today we'll be talking about various unreleased projects relating to the developer rare Diddy Kong Racing for the Nintendo 64 was a popular car r racer for its time selling just under 5 million units the game did so well in fact that a few developers thought about creating a sequel British Team climax Studios pitched a potential sequel to Nintendo around April of 2004 and

thanks to the video game researcher P top online a few of the game's details have been uncovered the game was tentatively titled Diddy Kong Racing adventure and its story would have had whis Pig proposing a rematch against Diddy and his friends with whis pig aiming to pave over a forest the player would have traveled through 16 different Villages each containing three courses Villages were styled after a different character within the Donkey Kong Country series with each being under the control of a different bad guy the aim was to defeat these enemies in a one-on-one race

and free the villagers the variety of vehicles would have included buggies quad bikes planes hover bikes and jet skis Full House progression would have allowed upgrades to these vehicles which would have unlocked access to more areas new game modes were also considered such As demolition derby mode and a sort of Simon Says game while the concept aimed to include many of the original characters from the N64 release it's likely that some would have been scrapped due to rare's holdon licenses such as banjo kazui and conquer's Bad Fur the original games developer rare were bought by

Microsoft in 2002 for $375 million bargain after a few attempts at traditional games the team were put forward to create titles for Microsoft's connect peripheral everyone knows how good that was they came up with different ways to use the device and a large number of prototypes were developed according to a former team member Nick Burton we were doing tons of prototypes insane things like giving it to a programmer for 48 hours and telling him to do whatever he liked one guy did a seagull simulator being able to poo on passes by another prototype the team

had worked on was Savana a concept that was Put together to provide a realistic look at raising a lion from birth to adulthood with no danger of maing according to xmember donah Murphy I can only apologize for that one I mean donah the project was put forward by artist Phil Dunn not only does he have a much easier name to say but he was also a veteran at the studio who' worked on games such as Donkey Kong Country 3 and Killer Instinct 2 Savanah never came to fruition but a video showing several Models from the

project did surface explaining the Project's lack of green lighting with Microsoft Murphy told not enough Shades it was soon clear that Microsoft were more interested in using rare to help aim at a younger Market rare was renowned for their diverse portfolio so to not be involved in making mature games was a real blow there were numerous projects that were put forward that I believe would have been huge hits but Microsoft rejected Them one after another the team were all interested in creating a sequel to Killer Instinct at this time but Microsoft weren't interested in creating

another fighting game with Murphy believing that no new Killer Instinct would ever be made it seems that he sadly left the company prior to the development of Microsoft's free-to-play Killer Instinct release and for today's random piece of trivia we'll be taking a look at sega's Arnold Palmer tournament Golf if the player hits the ball 100 times on the pitch without sinking it they'll be taken to the game over screen if the player enters the famous Konami Code at this screen the game will load up a hidden copy of the 1986 classic Sega arcade game fantasy

Zone hello and welcome to did you know gaming extra today we're taking a look at games that were never released there are tens of thousands of video games in the world today and for every game on The Shelf there was a game that was canned or perhaps even never announced many of these failed games are lost to the annals of time but occasionally some of them will resurface and have a chance to be documented one example of a cancelled game that wasn't public knowledge until decades later is Sonic's edusoft the title was developed by TX

in 1991 who began making the game after seeing Sonic's success in the gaming space details on Sonic's edusoft Development are scarce but Sega were aware of the game's existence and allowed Tex to develop it further however somewhere down the line the title's production was halted and it never made it to the approval stage as the name implies Sonic's edusoft is an educational game for the Sega Master System and includes games relating to mathematics and literacy the game also has three Min gamess none of which hold any educational value one interesting Point is that because the

Sega Game developed so shortly after the release of Sonic 1 likely just before Sega had started developing Sonic 2 in November of 1991 edusoft is probably the second Sonic game that was ever in development there's a surprising amount of cancelled games attached to high-profile or cult franchises the next scrapped game we're talking about belongs to the much loved Spyro series and is yet another educational game Spyro Ever After was a Game briefly in development by knowledge Adventure in the early 2000s and would have featured Spyro in a fairy tale setting interacting with characters from popular

fables it's not currently known why Spyro Ever After was scrapped however some fans of the series believe that Spyro's license holders didn't want the franchise marketed as something just for young children and wanted to continue marketing Spyro to a slightly older audience this would make sense Considering the direction the series took with the Legend of Spyro Trilogy another character that was popularized during the PlayStation's lifespan is Crash Bandicoot the crash franchise has a surprising amount of cancelled games but one of the more interesting scrapped crash projects is the game Crash landed crash landed appears to

have been a reboot of the series and was developed by radical entertainment for the Xbox 360 PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii with Renegade kid possibly handling the Nintendo DS version The Game's plot centered around crash trying to save primitive bandicoots named bandic cutes in the concept art from neocortex and dingo dial would have served as a secondary antagonist for the game the title was canceled after 2 years of development following Activision acquiring the rights to all of Sierra and its assets Activision decided to lay off the entire radical entertainment Studio behind crash landed and didn't

seem interested in continuing development with another Studio either and now for today's random piece of Trivia today we're talking about the Midway Arcade rail shooter KH evil although the title was well known for its graphic content and for the time life like Gore one of the game's Secrets is even more morbid inside K Evil's files as an image of serial killer Jeffrey Dharma in the image Dharma is Holding a paper bag containing the head of then CEO of Midway games Neil mccastro the unused image appears several times in various sizes within the game and was

most likely used to fill empty spaces in the game's [Music] data did you know in July of 2020 digo gaming released a video on canceled Nintendo DS games covering titles like a failed Crash Bandicoot pitch from 2008 and the formerly unreleased Metroid Dread 9 minutes and 21 seconds in we discussed a scrap SE equal to a boy and his blob released for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1989 a boy and his blob was a puzzle platforming game designed by legendary veteran developer David Crane and in 2005 majesco announced a new installment to the series developed

by Crane's new company skyworks Technologies it made a brief appearance at E3 2005 but was quietly cancelled and never heard from again a Boy and his blob for the Nintendo DS was thought to be lost or at best privately shared online in the mid2 000s that was until May of 2022 when dig youo gaming reached out to a developer who was involved in the project and wished to remain anonymous after a few days of talking the developer who will call X for the remainder of this video provided two playable versions to the DS sequel to

A boy in his blob with the permission of X dig youo gaming will be releasing Both ROMs with the fine preservationist folks at gaming Alexandria gaming Alexandria is a game preservation group and an open space for people to discuss video game history when a high-profile prototype like a boy in his blob gets found we have to do more than just releasing the files online we need to also give historical context so that everyone can understand these games and the circumstances around their development and cancellation and we're Doing that in this video but we also recommend

heading over to gaming Alexandria's writeup which can be found in the description below it includes a history of The Blob series and its creator as well as a download link for the unreleased now rediscovered Nintendo DS game the story of a boy and his blob is also the story of David Patrick crane arguably one of the first Rockstar developers in video game history over a long career that began at Atari in the Mid '70s crane has worked on countless iconic titles including Pitfall Ghostbusters and little computer people in the 80s and '90s his name would

be a selling point for many games born in Indiana in 1953 crane began tinkering with electronics at age 12 he enjoyed tearing apart old radios and learning the earliest forms of digital Logic on his 13th birthday crane didn't want any new toys or clothes instead he got a used TV for $40 and spent the following Weeks repairing it by the age of 17 crane had learned to program in three languages and was able to build his first computer out of junk parts crane graduated in 1972 and quickly entered the dev School of Technology in Phoenix

Arizona he would leave 3 years later following this crane took a job at a semiconductor manufacturer where he worked with his longtime colleague Alan Miller Miller was a talented engineer from the University of California who Was one of the first programmers hired by Atari for the original VCS Home console in early 1977 while living in the same apartment complex Miller asked crane to proofread an Atari job ad and crane decided to apply he joined the VCS group months later and created four games Outlaw Canyon bomber slot machine and the unreleased Boggle unlike today day there

were barely any artists musicians or designers working at video game companies in the late 70s most Atari VCS titles were the work of a single programmer creating everything from start to finish with minimal resources many staff members thought their talent was unrecognized Miller crane along with programmers Larry Kaplan and Bob Whitehead discovered that their products were responsible for approximately 60% of cartridge sales Miller proposed a modest royalty plan to atari's new CEO Raymond casar but was quickly shot down at the time atari's Pay for programmers was slightly below industry standard whenever new programmers got hired

they often earned a higher salary than current employees this all culminated in the four programmers quitting in 1979 to start their own company with the help of marketing executive Jim Levy the team launched the first third-party video game developer an obscure little band called Activision for starters Activision heavily featured the Developers behind each game game giving a face to the Atari VCS title so many people played there was also much more focus on the graphics something Atari ignored making Activision stand out from the first party lineup Activision announced their first four games in March 1980

and released them in July these games were boxing by Bob Whitehead checkers by Alan Miller and Dragster and fishing derby by David crane as well as being a decorated programmer crane was The in-house artist at Activision doing graphics for other Developers games like Larry Kaplan Kaboom in 1981 Crane's mother was an accomplished painter who made sure that her children were trained in arts and crafts he was one of the few people in the business who excelled in both what was on screen and behind it resulting in Classics like Pitfall in September 1982 the 1983 video

game Crash gave birth to many new third-party developers trying to follow in Activision's footsteps the oversaturation of the console market led to the company turning to home computers Activision's Board of director ctors replaced CEO Jim Levy with Bruce Davis and many developers including crane felt the change was not up to par as crane told game developer in 2005 Activision became the giant of the early 80s by recognizing that a game is a creative product and requires a creative environment Bruce Davis's biggest Mistake was treating video games as Commodities rather than creative products much like what

happened at Atari several staffers left Activision to form their own Studios Kaplan left in June 1982 to co-art a game hardware company called hi Toro later called Amiga Bob Whitehead and Alan Miller left in 1984 to form Accolade in February 1986 programmer Gary kitchen along with three other members of Activision's Eastern Design Center set up an Independent developer called imagineering Inc in New Jersey soon after in August that same group started a game publishing firm absolute entertainment David crane who was out of activ division by April 1987 and spent a brief time at Hasbro was

hired at Absolute in December 1988 crane did not work at the offices in New Jersey instead he worked remotely from his home in California at Absolute entertainment games were developed at imagineering and Published under the absolute label the main five programmers would brainstorm ideas and discuss how any technical hurdles could be avoided the person that could jump that hurdle would be crowned product manager for that game at Absolute R worked on titles including super skateboarding for the Atari 7800 and Bart Simpson's Escape from Camp deadly for the Game Boy his biggest game however would be

a Nintendo Entertainment System project conceived In 1989 crane wanted to make another Pitfall Style game but this time making it a tool using Adventure he'd played other adventure games in the past and hated menus breaking up the flow of the action to jump this hurdle crane thought back to a cartoon from his childhood The Herculoids was an animated fantasy series from Hannah barara that aired from 1967 to 1969 a bizarre relic of 60 sci-fi it starred a family of space warriors on a far off Planet fighting Alongside their giant pets known as The Herculoids there

was tundro the tremendous Zach igu and gleep and gloop in the show gleep and gloop could shape shift into Shields and vehicles essentially working as a walking pair of toolboxes crane realized the potential there for a game a blob that followed the the character around like a dog instead of a boy and his dog it's a boy and his blob man's best alien friend in a June 2010 interview with retro Gamer Magazine crane remarked it's probably apparent that I have always liked puns a boy and his blob Stars a nameless teenage boy and his alien

blob friend blobert bobert's planet blobolonia has been taken over by an evil emperor it's up to him and the boy to leave Earth and save the day to avoid obstacles you can feed blobber flavored jelly beans to morph him into tools licorice jelly beans turn him into a ladder strawberry turns him into a bridge vanilla turns Him into an umbrella and coconut turns him into well a coconut and so on after trekking through the city and Earth's Caverns the duo makes it to blobolonia and defeats the evil emperor by feeding him vitamins found across the

map licensed by Nintendo in the summer of 1989 a boy in his blob's development took place over an intense 6- week period Nintendo was extremely strict with their deadlines and this brief amount of time for blob was by all Accounts the most challenging schedule anyone at Absolute entertainment had ever faced crane rented a flop house a block away from the offices and worked 16-hour days with no breaks for the last 2 weeks of development he worked 20-hour days going back and forth to the Consumer Electronics Show in Los Vegas to present demos with barely any

sleep at the very end of development absolute flew another programmer to a hotel across the street from Nintendo of America headquarters the absolute members in New Jersey sent him the final code via modem to burn on to epoms and hand deliver them this gave them one extra day of work versus FedEx shipping the impossibly short deadline ruined any bigger plans crane had for a boy in his blob as crane told retro gamer in my vision a boy in his blob was going to be the first video game to be simultaneously released as a game toy

and animated film we went so far to Bring in the supervising producer of the first animated Transformers movie Jay backal to work on the film's development but that was another casualty of the tight schedule it would have been difficult to concentrate enough resources simultaneously on those three diverse development tasks a boy and his blob would be released in late 1989 right before Christmas the game was one of the most played titles within Nintendo of America and received an Internal rating of 28 out of 40 blob sold 250,000 units and received several positive reviews front covers

of magazines a Parents Choice Award and a 1991 Game Boy sequel the rescue of Princess bobette the hard work David crane Gary kitchen and the rest of absolute entertainment put into their game paid off and although the feature film plans fell through the future of the series still seemed bright however absolute entertainment ceased operations In November 1995 and was liquidated under Chapter 7 bankruptcy but this didn't stifle plans to reboot a boy in his blob in the following years most of their library was picked up by publisher majesco who re-released several games in the late

1990s for the Game Gear Genesis and SNES David Crane and Gary kitchen started a new company skyworks Technologies which focused on producing websites and online brand sponsored games or adver games they did work for Dozens of Fortune 500 clients including Ford Buick Toyota BMW craft Pepsi McDonald smaroff and John Deere several X absolute m were brought on board as well as Alan Miller Crane's old companion from Atari and Activision it was very much a reunion for Crane who by this point had been in the industry for over 25 years in the early 2000s skywork started

developing games for the Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS the company had a good connection to majesco through Gary kitchen's brother Dan another absolute founder who was currently majesco VP of development and majesco published most of skywork titles in August of 2004 majesco announced their first three games in collaboration with skyworks Texas holdom poker monster trucks and F-18 Super Hornet before mesco connected with skyworks majesco had attempted to bring back a boy and his blob inh house in 2001 they announced a Game Boy Advance reboot Subtitled Jelly's Cosmic Adventure which featured older hipper versions of

the boy and bobbert majesco internal development team pipe dream interactive would handle development and the game was intended to release in December of 2002 very little from Jelly's Cosmic Adventure remains aside from a few remnants on websites like IGN no screenshots or gameplay footage is known to exist and it's unknown how far the project even got it's entirely possible That the game never even started this is where our Anonymous contributor X comes in X joined production in between the cancellation of Jelly's Cosmic adventure and the partnership with skyworks majesco staff got a heads up in

late 2004 that skyworks was going to develop a new entry for the Nintendo DS since simply called a boy and his blob in this game the nameless boy is now 16 years old and still no one believes him about his old alien friend blobert before he Can move on from the past a spaceship crash lands in his City it's blobert and he's come back to warn everyone about the evil emperor of blobolonia who is planning to enslave the human race it's up to the boy and blobert to save the day everyone at majesco was excited

that Crane and kitchen were supposedly leading the project crane was the special guest at their Christmas party that year and he announced he'd be supervising development to keep it true To the spirit of the original according to x this was a lie crane had very little involvement in the project and his name was mostly just for publicity in a 2018 interview with the British website retro games master crane said that he almost got involved in the Revival which could mean that he attempted to step in later on in late February 2005 majesco got the first

proof of concept demo and it was received very poorly the levels were Barren and lifeless and the gigantic 3D character redesigns were seen as unappealing feedback was sent to skyworks and majesco was assured things would improve but according to x they didn't we had a meeting with the devs that summer and at that point we could see the writing on the wall we probed if there is any way to improve the game and make it more game likee but we're told something like it is what it is and at this point we can only polish

it and add More levels most levels were just long empty hallways with an occasional static enemy with which you had to punch with the boxing glove blob even with this little happening the game constantly slowed down to a crawl a very early 20% completed demo was shown off at E3 2005 and was met with most of the same complaints IGN called the artwork Stark and simple and said They wish the game had more life blobert was an unappealing shade of green in the demo and skyworks Changed the design after the show to look more like

the NES original majesco internally referred to this redesign as a boy and as con Whitefish changing blobber from green to White was seemingly the largest change skyworks would make and the game continued to be a slog majesco quietly canned the title in late 2005 over quality concerns following This Disaster Dan kitchen lost his job as VP of development in January 2006 and the company never collaborated With skyworks again that leads us to today where we find ourselves with two prototype builds of a boy and's blob for Nintendo DS the builds are 2 months apart the

latter being the final build majesco ever received let's take a look at both surviving ROMs and see if they truly deserve to be called off the first build is dated May 16th 2005 2 days before E3 and immediately drops the player into the first level unlike the NES original which contains one massive Map the DS game is split into levels the player is in the Heart of the City and is equipped with four jelly beans vanilla Licorice and two new flavors ketchup and kiwi catchup can be placed anywhere to make blobber respawn or catch up

kiwi can be fed to blobert Turning him into a massive boxing glove that can kill enemies in the NES game there were no enemies in the DS game thugs robbers and blue aliens are lightly scattered all over the map and Can be killed with the Kiwi jelly beam and just as a reminder the person you're playing as is a 16-year-old boy the biggest problem with the first build is blobber when the player uses the licorice Jelly Bean and climbs to the top of the ladder he does not follow you have to climb up the ladder

feed him the ketchup Jelly Bean and then continue this becomes a chore constantly feeding blobber ketchup jelly beans to revert him back to his original Self slows Things down considerably you can't whistle at him because he'll spawn on the ground rather than the platform this is thankfully fixed in the second build after collecting the Kiwi jelly beans and getting past the enemy you grab a treasure chest and are are rewarded a sparkly hot pink completion message you're then placed back at the start repeating the level for all eternity the first build is essentially a proof

of concept and is only a taste of things to Come the second final build is dated July 21st and is much closer to the finished product up front there's a title screen and a level select for five different worlds don't be fooled though the levels end after World 2 with everything past that leading to a black screen although there's 20 different jelly beans on the bottom screen only five are usable vanilla licorice ketchup strawberry and replacing kiwi fruit punch even for prototypes both builds Are incredibly limited big modern cities and schools are empty and consist

of seemingly endless straight paths the puzzles are rare and simplistic the hardest thing you'll do is climb up a ladder and descend with an umbrella the seldom seen enemies just stand there menacingly it's never not apparent that this is a very unfinished product a boy and his blob for Nintendo DS brings nothing new to the table hardly expanding upon the NES game from 15 Years ago a good Revival adds new elements while still retaining the best parts of the original this doesn't Nei it adds nothing new and the large challenging puzzles of the NES game

are replaced with walking down hallways and occasionally climbing up a ladder with skyworks and Dan kitchen no longer working with majesco The Blob franchise seemed dead however a few few years later things changed the company way forward and its director Shawn Velasco Were fans of the NES game and felt the series had plenty of potential already having a good relationship with majesco the studio pitched their own Revival that focused on the boy and bobert's friendship and used soft 2D handdrawn animation majesco loved the pitch and green lit the production for a new a boy and

his blob for the Nintendo Wii the game would release in October of 2009 and was met with very positive reviews many critics praised the compelling Gameplay and its faithfulness to Crane's original game it's since been ported to Windows Xbox One PS4 and Nintendo switch skyworks Technologies changed its name to skyworks interactive in 2008 self-publishing arcade games for iOS devices and Nintendo DSi David Crane and Gary kitchen left the company in 2009 in 2021 the duo started audacity games a publisher focused on De veloping new games for the Atari VCS a console neither had made a

game for since the Early 80s their first game circus Convoy was released in March 2021 Crane and kitchen have both seen long prosperous lives in the game industry a boy and his blob for Nintendo DS was a small bump in their otherwise smooth careers a link to both ROMs and gaming Alexandria's writeup can be found in the description below if you want to try this game out for yourself sell damage was a vehicular combat game created by pseudo interactive and published by Electronic Arts it first released on the Xbox in late 2001 before hitting the

Nintendo GameCube in May of the following year and later being updated for the PS2 under the title cell damage overdrive the game had its detractors being subject to mixed reviews from critics but over time developed a modest fan following enough to Warrant an HD re-release years later although the game would attain some success in the long term there was once a time when pseudo Interactive's plans for cell damage were much greater this included a sequel the company only officially acknowledged this project once during a postm article written for GMA Sutra in 2002 by their CEO

David Woo he mentioned that cell damage 2 would be one of their next projects in development and would launch in late 2003 I contacted woo and a number of his former colleagues from pseudo to bring to light why this never came True Preparatory work towards cell damage 2 commenced in around the second quarter of 2002 this was after the first game had already arrived on Xbox and around the time of its launch on GameCube it was to some extent a time of self-reflection for pseudo interactive as they looked back on its development hence David Woo's

postmortem article they were evaluating the finished product picking it apart to decide what they believed worked and where there was Room for improvement this manner of self-examination is emblematic of the cell damage 2 project as a whole it was the team's attempt to write the wrongs of the first game polishing and building upon the pre-established formula to the best of their ability they paid attention to its critical reception and feedback sourced from fans to hone in on what needed to change the opening of that main pitch documents to Publishers serves as evidence of this aspects

that Customers felt didn't work will be improved one of their first concerns was the matter of accessibility for a start it was going to aim for a simultaneous launch on all major consoles at the time Xbox GameCube and PS2 damage 2 would have focused on welcoming newcomers to the series and being less intimidating in general they planned on adding training missions and mini games to give players a safe environment in which they could learn the game mechanics the Entry-level difficulty was plann to be made easier although they still wanted to maintain the much more challenging

settings for more adep players pseudo was also working to reduce one hit kills and random deaths to fairly prominent aspects of the first game that were subject to criticism they wanted to allow players more time to plan and react hopefully making battles fairer and more satisfying in order to do this they were introducing a health bar along With dynamically rendered damage effects for vehicles your vehicle's Health was able to slowly regenerate over time too this wouldn't have cut one hit kills out of the equation completely however they would have just been reserved for the most

powerful weapons they were attempting to inject more depth and strategy into the mechanics through a few big additions like this for the first time players were able to exit their vehicles and proceed on foot Generally you wouldn't have been encouraged to do this as it would leave you vulnerable but occasionally it might have been worth venturing out to for instance reach an area inaccessible of vehicles now when a player's vehicle was destroyed they wouldn't simply respawn right away in another one instead they would land on the ground and would even have to survive until another

became available and dropped in or hijack someone else's they were also rning Alternative firing modes as they refer to them to the majority of weapons this meant they could be used in a couple of different ways as opposed to just one additionally there were brand new weapon pickups including a cloaking device and a lightning gun there were some reasonably substantial shakeups to the core gameplay but at the same time they were hoping to Simply make the sequel bigger packed with more content than the first game this me levels were now more Expansive and larger in

number they drew concepts for a few different settings over the course of development including a post apocalyptic sci-fi world and the inside of a volcanic coven to name a couple only one was used for the protot type build they made to pitch the game to Publishers a prehistoric Landmark named Dinosaur Island it featured a fully drivable underwater section complete with robot sharks the character roster in cell damage 2 was like Everything else receiving a bit of a shakeup in the way of returning characters there was cinder Violet Dominique and foul mouth two of The Boss

characters from the original were being brought back too and unlike before they would have been unlocked from the start these were count Earl and wack Angus they would have been joined by four brand new bosses images of which pseudo interactor former heads were glad to dig up for the purposes of this video Unfortunately the names of these characters have become lost to time the names that were proposed have been completely forgotten by those that worked on it and weren't preserved in any of the recovered documents representing the dinosaur Islands theme was a caveman character wielding

a bone Club there was a new robot character an Egyptian princess and a sheep King all three modes from the original cell damage gate relay flag rally and smack Attack will upon to return and this time with Team variants for example the mode they were testing was team smack attack players would assemble a group of four contestants of their choice and compete against a rival team with a shared pool of hits being counted up we will never know how it might have turned out had it ever been made but its early design documents offer us

insight into a project that was meant to be larger in scope and heavier on ambition it was Being realized during a place in time when pseudoactive had confidence in cell damage to become something grander a series and a potentially valuable IP their Partners however didn't view it in the same light as the publisher of the first game it was electronic art who they first approached to help them bring the sequel to life EA met with them saw their prototype and came to the conclusion that they would not be investing in it for an assortment of

Different reasons one of their main issues was related to sales data at the time it was being pitched they had yet to Port the first game to PS2 meanwhile its performance on the two platforms it was available on was slow failing to meet EA's targets they also had reservations about the very nature of the game and its marketability despite efforts to switch up the visual style a bit its cartoonish look made it a hard sell for some according to David Woo a Caron style title without a wellestablished property behind it from the likes of Disney

or DreamWorks was a tough pill to swallow for Publishers at the time then there was the matter of placement as a game in the car combat sub genre it was feared that its appeal might not extend beyond a fairly Niche audience it wasn't quite a racing game and it wasn't quite a shooter it existed in a midpoint viewed by some Executives as too awkward and difficult for the Mass marker to pick up and play pseudo was very clearly outlining its Endeavors to make cell damage more accessible but Electronic Arts couldn't be swayed and they weren't

the only ones due to the open conditions of their partnership with EA pseudo interactive was able to maintain full ownership of the cell damage IP meaning they could now sell the sequel to a new publisher after an unsuccessful first proposal they began to pitch the project to a number of Other companies including Sega Ubisoft Midway and others ultimately for the same reasons as Electronic Arts cell damage 2 was deemed unlikely to be a viable investment by these other Publishers eventually sell damage was able to sell through the entirety of its stock over the remainder of

the generation after its release on PS2 still this wasn't enough for the developers to revive its sequel without the resources to finance it themselves Pseudo and interactive killed the project for good in 2002 and moved on to of Adventures Heist was a sidescrolling stealth Action game worked on by independent Studio trapdoor Inc in 2012 it was planned to potentially be released digitally via Xbox Live arcade PlayStation Network and PC trapdoor was a small Canadian company founded in 2008 which included a handful of Industry veterans formerly of larger development houses such as Ubisoft Montreal and Gameloft

its founder Ken Shaker started the business to make his own projects outside of the existing video game publishing system according to a former employee its mission statement was to independently produce digital games with AAA production values established in early 2011 Heist was one of the first and only projects that the studio was ever able to work on it entered development almost immediately after its other major project did Another stealth Action game named warp little of heist's plot was ever figured out during its relatively short life span but it is known to have revolved around a

thief who is equipped with an array of high-tech burglary tools controlling him players would sneakily infiltrate various High Security Buildings to steal valuable items of Interest before escaping as quickly as possible a gam play would have focused on utilizing the various futuristic Gadgetry at your disposal including gravity defying shoes that would allow you to stick the surfaces and walk on ceilings stealth was a requirement meaning players would need to even neutralize guards with combat or Zip by undetected after several months of preliminary pre-production trapdoor had put together a small proof of concept prototype to put

their ideas into practice it was developed in a very short period of time using a multitude Of assets from war in order to cut costs lasting just over a minute the demo was fully playable and ran in onreal engine 3 a former artist revealed to me that heist's art was designed initially to be slick inspired by classic James spond films the earliest form of the protagonist as he appeared in this early build Was A well-dressed white male in a scarf and sunglasses once the first prototype was finished however the art Direction continued to evolve as

the Team attempted to make it more unique tiar daisen who was an artist on the game told me that the main character was changed to a young mixed racan of South American descent tiar explained when you are a small Studio you need to create original material and interesting visuals to get away from the more common AAA realistic titles not only should the gaml be more creative but the graphics as well in addition to our hero were Side characters including his father and A shorthaired love interest both of which were also experienced burglar the latter of

the two according to daisen was planned to be the game's second playable character elaborating on his ideas he said I wanted to do something different for the heroes love interest to move on from the traditional sexist and stere stereotype representation and the female tropes in the game industry she was supposed to be a thief too probably better stroke more fun than him However I didn't have enough time to spend on Research such a shame she was my favorite character after around 6 months of exploration Heist came to a premature end despite being pleased with the

results the project was producing trapdor soon came to realize that they would not be able to proceed with full production due to Simply how expensive it would have been been trapdoor had begun to interpret that the digital game Market on consoles was weakening meaning For them the level of risk was too high this assessment later rang true when warp was released in early 2012 it didn't perform as well as they had hoped despite positive reviews and a co-publishing deal with Electronic Arts aside from the acclaimed Fez which trapped or was able to rescue from cancellation

with its own financial aid warp was the only game it was able to co-publish other small projects were attempted as 2012 went on but on December 16th the company quietly shut down all of its staff laid off the economic conditions surrounding the development of digital games for consoles had become too harsh for them to overcome [Music] seeing huge success in the mid 2000s Activision's Guitar Hero ballooned into a music rhythm Juggernaut it didn't take long before a myriad of spin-offs were in production branching out from the Premise of the original series soon came alternative takes

like the portable Guitar Hero on tour DJ Hero ban hero and all of their respective follow-ups by 2010 the hero Mega franchise was set to expand even further with other new undertakings like the ultimately unreleased sing hero in the works around this time FreeStyle games was gearing up to develop the third major installment of DJ Hero the team behind it was seeking to find new ways to innovate Upon the formula and keep it fresh the third time around the previous game DJ Hero 2 is known to have derived some of its ideas from a rejected

spin-off pitch By Zoe mode named Afterparty so this was to be freestyle first attempt at drafting a sequel completely from scratch as they were working on DJ Hero 3 their General concept for the title was in a state of flux their owners Activision was struggling to determine the direction it should take many of the Ideas proposed were shot down causing into evolve constantly mid development eventually about a year before it was due to be delivered in 2011 freestyle started developing a new proposal for the publisher that was tailored to appease them it was apparently heavy

on buzzwords and trying to capitalize on popular trends at the time like Facebook games what freestyle wanted to do however extended well beyond the next DJ Hero and even their company they mapped Out a pitch for a s project with a deep connection to not only DJ Hero 3 but also potentially every other future title under Activision's hero umbrella they proposed a platform accessible via web browsers that would be intrinsically linked to any future releases at a time when the hero series was splintering off more and more this online extension for players of the games

would in theory bridge the gap between them all this ambitious task wasn't suitable for Freestyle itself though they weren't really in position to develop it due to their ongoing obligations to DJ Hero and lack of experience with constructing something of this nature the job instead went to Virtual Fairground a Dutch development house in Amsterdam the company was known for creating Club Galactic an MMO based around the French animated TV show Galactic football this new project would use the same engine which they built internally called the Ride their technology was the main reason why virtual Fairground

which was relatively unheard of was able to score such a big contract for browser based games the ride was years ahead of a lot of its competition it could render Advanced 3D effects without compromising performance even on weaker computers they'd also made a system that would automatically purchase extra servers during peak times and shut them off when they weren't in use making their Software efficient and cost effective to run virtual Fairgrounds initial proposal for freestyle came together over several months towards the end of 20110 it involved two interl Services a browser based MMO game with

RPG elements named Hero World and a Facebook application to accompany it the premise of the MMO in its earliest forms envisioned an online virtual world with interaction firstly with the next DJ Hero players would import their character from the hero Titles or make one from scratch and begin their Journey towards musical stardom it was said to have an adventure game style narrative in which the player is thrust into the duty of managing their own club according to their plans each feature game including the MMO the Facebook app and the for consoles would utilize a universal

in-game currency in the MMO game players would build up their own venue and then hire players from the console games to perform live Shows there over the Internet the aim would be to attract as many NPCs as possible to your club which would increase your in-game Revenue console players would be incentivized to take part at these Live Events as they would receive large payouts of in-game credits upon completion these credits could then be used to either enhance their Hero World venues or purchase items in the console games Like New clothing decks guitars and songs quite

significantly Virtual fagr In freestyle wanted this online option to be entirely crossplatform compatible removing the barriers between the different consoles hooked up to it whether you owned a Nintendo system Playstation or Xbox each would be able to play together through the MMO a former developer I spoke to from the project likened the link between Hero World and the console games to the relationship between Eve online and its companion shooter D 514 the Console titles like DJ Hero and Guitar Hero were those in the trenches Right In the Heat of the action while hero world would

be the universe build around that with elements of economy management that underpin the whole experience in Hero World itself there was however planned to be much more content available aside from its link to the console releases allowing it to function as a standalone experience the end goal in the game was to take over as much of the Overworld is Possible the more income your Venue brought in the more you could expand and grow your very own musical Empire there were certain obstacles to overcome along the way primarily an NPC faction that opposed you to compete

with this enemy players would engage them in a dance off this functioned through a turn-based bow system in which you would have to strength C dance Combos and special abilities to defeat them executing attacks required you to carefully time Your moves not as similar to The Paper Mario series for example you would have been able to dance off against other players as well in competitive matches of 1 V one or teams of three on three in a fight for more territory it's important to note that the project was being pictured as being more than a

straightforward MMO but as a whole new platform for music enthusiasts users would have been able to publish their own original songs Through the service And they'd gain in-game credits for doing so the Facebook app planned to complement the MMO on the other hand was essentially proposed as a festival management game this was similar to The Venue options in hero world but more heavy on managing an ingame economy you would construct your own stage deciding on the layout as well as the shop stands and other Dil surrounding it then you'd select your own acts which you

could do Again by hiring people from the console Games dependent upon their performance more fans would be attracted to your Festival grossing more Revenue that would enable you to organize larger festivals in the future and purchase more valuable items exclusive player items from both the Facebook game and hero world would have been compatible with all of the hero games in the future using a universal Avatar system ultimately however the Facebook game never entered prototyping virtual Fairground had been focused on devel in a playable build of Hero World so it never moved beyond the form of

design documents the company's earliest pitches to Activision were a success at the end of the contract to deliver it for a launch in late 2011 around the time of the new DJ Hero work on the game moved along fairly quickly soon the team had built an Overworld with various areas for these are to explore and F and a work in progress form with the upper Mentioned battle system the in-game art closely mimic the style of the existing games using a combination of 2D art renders for back rounds and 3D models for characters the initial appearance

of the game used a slightly cell shaded look with black outlines around characters but this was later dropped as time went on by the end extensive features for personalizing both venues and characters were in place venues especially included a fairly deep level Of customization everything from the floor to the ceiling could be decked out with new lighting equipment Furniture plants and other decorations you could also decide upon the music playing inside too and unlock more songs by completing quests the game was said to be completely free to use although it did include a small corner

of microtransactions that were designed not to imbalance the in-game economy or cheapen the overall experience using Real money Players could buy additional cosmetic enhancements for their Club but none of those would give you any actual advantage in gameplay as opposed to charging for a subscription or using a premium model hero world would have generated revenue for the developers mainly through sponsorship deals a designer who worked on the project Illustrated how this might have worked by using Club Galactic as an example with that game real football teams Sponsored the developer to include special items featuring their

branding which were available for a limited time during special events for Hero World this could have therefore potentially led to bands and music labels advertising in game using unique item giveaways like this development on Hero World lasted around 5 months between fall 2010 to the start of 2011 when troubling news arrived from Activision every last hero project currently in the Works was to be discontinued this was primarily down to an alarming decline in sales that the games were experiencing which many have since attributed to an oversaturation of releases between the start of 2009 to the

end of 2010 over 10 new installments were launched including an inundation of spin-offs like guah hero Metallica and Smash Hits as well as mobile versions another major factor that caused this unprecedented breakdown was severe development issues Encountered during some of their ongoing projects behind the scenes Guitar Hero 7 was the main victim of these difficulties problems with the game are said to have included a faulty prototype controller known as the live guitar and a critical mismanagement of the budget DJ Hero 3 was far behind schedule too all told the once Mighty Mega franchise was burning

away millions and the publisher couldn't afford to Let It Go on the subsequent death of Hero World Hit virtual Fairground hard the developers had been expecting to receive payment for the contract once the game was finished and ready to go live once the deal was scrapped activ ision paid them only a partial amount for their work since it was never finished this dealt a huge blow to the company but they remained optimistic that the previous months wouldn't be a complete loss they now plan to repurpose Hero World and sell the technology behind it To another

party first they tried to adapt it into a music publishing platform called USIC this was pitched to an Entertainment Group in Las Vegas called E320 eventually it was turned down and virtual Fairground attempted again to reuse the assets for another purpose to recoup their losses next they took the base of the MMO and made a demo for a virtual casino this was intended to be an online multiplayer gambling experience using real money the Developers submitted this early prototype to the national Indian gaming association with the hopes of receiving funding for a full project yet again

these hopes were soon dashed when the organization wasn't interested in moving forward with it regardless of its potential to live on retrofitted as something else hero world's Journey was now over what could have transferred formed the landscape of Guitar Hero DJ Hero and others would now do nothing More than Fade Into Obscurity unable to sell it off a virtual Fairground had to stop all work related to it to make matters worse the company was about to lose its main source of income in the time since they had purchased the license to use Galactic football for

the remmo a new party had privately acquired the IP from its original owners the new rights holders demanded more money for their use of the property virtual Fairgrounds management refused this Request and a lawsuit broke out in light of these circumstances the studio was now forced to close Club Galactic down this incident along with another failed project caused virtual Fairground to go bankrupt in mid 2011 Just 4 months on from the cancellation of Hero World Factor 5 was a developer that found success in the early 2000s through their partnership with LucasArts while their original studio

and Cologne Germany Rose to prominence through the Creation of its own property turen the company later found a less risky and more profitable way to produce games in their use of the Star Wars license after their operations moved over to California in 1996 the Star Wars Rogue Squadron series was born and their partnership with LucasArts started to bear fruit after the last Rogue Squadron game in 2003 they continue to seek out other opportunities to use pre-established IPS for future projects Between late 2003 and well into 2004 the studio went through a string of unsuccessful attempts

to Kickstart new games using this approach the Studio's relationship with Lucas ANS took a slight step backwards when what was supposed to be the next big project an Xbox collection of the Rogue Squadron series was conned by their new president Jim Ward for Factor 5 this was obviously unfortunate but they had no shortage of offers from other Publishers that could Help them recover the two biggest of these were Nintendo and Sony this was because both of them were now gearing up to get games into development for their next home consoles the Nintendo Revolution and Playstation

3 respectively by this point the Developers had spent several years working with Star Wars so they decided it would be creatively beneficial to try something new and go after a different property for a change as Factor 5 often Did they wanted their next game to take advantage of the experience they had gained from doing Rogue Squadron go it would need to have flight combat at its heart the team arrived at the conclusion that a Natural Evolution upon the formula which would also inject some variety into their portfolio would be a title centered around dragons they

wanted a flight combat game in which the Dragons Were ridden by humans and order to make the action and the narrative More relatable to players it was at this juncture that factor 5 realized that the Dungeons and Dragons license could be a good fit for what they had in mind in particular they wanted to use the universe of dragon Lance the rich Mythos of dragon Lance which was created originally by Laura and Tracy Hickman tells of a world dominated by dragons it was first established in the mid1 1980s through a series of Dungeons and Dragons

branded novels Factor 5 was hoping to Make a game entrenched in the dragon Lance law and met with the right to to see if it would be possible the license holders Wizards of the Coast were open to the idea on the condition that they would pay a large fee to use the property it was now up to factor 5 to sell Publishers on the idea the two that had been anxiously awaiting their next project Sony and Nintendo were each given the chance to fund the game the developers offered them it as a Potential exclusive for

their next platforms having enjoyed the benefits of focusing solely on GameCube with the Star Wars titles however both Nintendo and Sony declined the offer each of them were interested in both the project and the company behind it but the cost of the license was seen as being far too expensive with no other Publishers willing to cover the costs the NextGen Dragon Lance flight game didn't come to pass it would never move beyond the Earliest of pitch documents this didn't caus the developers to let go of their idea of doing a dragon Centric game entirely though

it was with some slight reluctance that they chose to make it into a new IP becoming Lair again both Sony and Nintendo found themselves competing to secure it for their new console there were a few different elements factoring into them deciding which to go with Chief among which were tech specs Factor 5 quite simply wanted To work with the most powerful console they could the one in which they saw the most potential for breaking new grung from a technical perspective fortunately for them they were so close with the two industry Giants that they were granted

intimate access to the details of early prototypes for their new systems according to Julian egg Factor 5 inc's former president the earlier specifications of Nintendo's Revolution were comparable to that of an Xbox 360 However Sony in his eyes was outdoing them from a technological standpoint with the PS3 cell processor Nintendo began to change Direction with the revolution around this time doubling down on the new control or as it's called selling point and opting for less powerful Hardware to cut costs the people of factor 5 who had previously pushed for Nintendo doing a more powerful console

with the GameCube were left somewhat baffled by the decision This led them towards finally choosing Sony as the new partner another big motivation for them doing this was that Sony offered them an enticing multi-game contract the developers had begun wanting to explore more original ideas and the deal would allow them to do just that in addition to Lair they were signing on to produce a few other new IPS for Sony systems including two digital projects for PSN none of these were ever finished an ex employee of Factor 5 informed me that their General concept for

the dragon Lance game described in its pitch was largely identical to what L would become minus Lay's heavy Reliance upon motion controls another former worker shared that it was essentially the same game without the convoluted Narrative of lair in its early days Lair fluttered with a few more of the fantasy tropes seen in the dragon Lance Universe than the final game itself did such as the presence of Gods overlooking the world one idea they had depicted a being known as the mother God this would have been an omnipotent creature that the player could visit and

interact with which would have altered its appearance and personality based upon happenings in the the world she had two forms one benevolent and merciful the other a violent bringer of death this concept was ultimately abandoned in pre-production Lair would remain a Sony console exclusive as per their agreement Although the engine which powered it was eventually P it to the way Factor 5 used this to develop all of their games for the system but none of them would ever be released Animal Wars was a tactical RPG in development at Factor 5 Inc in partnership with Sony

Computer Entertainment it was originally for release on PlayStation 3 following the completion of Lair the game came about as the result of a multi-game contract Factor 5 signed with Sony in 2004 which locked them in to produce several titles exclusively for PlayStation platforms Lair was the first and only game to ultimately see release through this deal as behind the scenes relations between the two companies declined work on animal was begun in 2004 in conjunction with Lair but whereas Lair exhausted a great deal of factor 5 resources from beginning to end Animal Wars was comparatively a

much Smaller project for the two years it existed in the background it was work done by no more than four people a lone programmer two designers and one dedicated artist Animal Wars took place in an alternative Universe inspired by the events of the first world war with each faction consisting of various anthropomorphized animals real world historical figures such as Arch duuk France ferdinard were parodied in this case becoming Arch duuk Bur Whose assassination at the hand of a terrorist organization of cats known as the black PA forms the colist for the Great War ahead the

campaign would have focused on a dog soldier in an aviator uniform although over playable characters were being explored for instance one stealth Mission considered earlier on would have flipped the scale of battle on its head and saw the player taking up the role of a mouse from this perspective regular soldiers would Appear as humongous Titans on the battlefield this particular stage idea however never got us far as being prototyped one of our sources likened its gameplay of which very little was completed to valkyria Chronicles it was meant to be a strategy RPG with a 10-based

battle system and a unique o painted art style which one former developer said was like Valiant Hearts in 3D its concept of anthropomorphic Warfare was deceptively innocent certain Sketches produced for the game depicted a number of particularly violent scenes including a dog Soldier standing over a freshly decapitated Pig its artistic Direction leaned dark in this respect though it did yet to be determined exactly how explicit the final product was going to be in what was said to have been a big contributing factor to Sony being willing to fund it in the first place the title

was leveraging the work Factor 5's people had done previously on The Star Wars Rogue Squadron games the publisher was Keen to capitalize on the experience they had covered from that series with its blend of ground and air vehicular combat as explained by one of our sources a central part of its overall premise was that each vehicle would have in some form built in special attributes associated with different animals into their design and functionality for example cat tanks were able to write themselves regardless of How recklessly they were driven like a cat landing on its feet

the game's development was intimate involving few people but this did nothing to limit its ambition the action was planned to take place over a set of huge Maps similar in scale to the in-game worlds of Lair enthusiasm held for Animal Wars internally was in no short supply even if it was a small project the former employees of the studio we spoke to during our research Express Considerable regret over its eventual consolation One Source went on record as saying I was more excited about animal walls than Le because it was a smaller team and upper management

left it alone upper management interference greatly contributed to L's failure in the end no amount of excitement among the developers could prevent it from being discontinued Animal Wars was worked on for two years in the background of other projects this included not only lay but Also an attempt at buing turen in 3D under the code name of project cyclop originally the contract agreed upon by Factor 5 and Sony specified that leir would be completed in time for the launch window of the PS3 but this was one promise the developer was not able to deliver on

Le's development was troubl to say the least encountering numerous hurdles along the way apart from the higher ups demanding the six axis motion sensing Tech be utilized the Team simply struggled with the console's then perplexing development environment Factor 5 was already a companied of limited resources but Le's problematic life cycle led to multiple staff departures mid development leaving them unable to fulfill their end of the deal the company therefore had to convey to Sony that they would not be able to produce lir on schedule and requested it be delayed into 2007 their response was to

cut off Animal Wars plus any other Projects ongoing and redistribute their funding into lir Factor 5 was incapable of self- financing it meaning it had to be cancelled at the time it was shelved Animal Wars had reached an early place able State a working vertical slice prototype build was well underway which included a bip plane and a massive open landscape for players to fly over Animal Wars was never officially announced nor did it ever leave pre-production