Crank the Weasel

Thanks for doing this. How far along did the game get? What sort of stuff do you have?

 

Send me a PM if you need any help with stuff Glad you have stopped by.

 

It was playable with a number of levels pretty far along. I've been looking at a pile of old dev stuff lately and I had forgotten how far along the game was. I will scan some stuff tonight and post it.

 

I'm glad too. Actually it made my day.

 

Dont think I ever sent you a message, but I know I reached out to some other team members who were willing to talk, and things never happened hah. Didn't help that at least one of them seemed to be in crunch.

 

I will do my best to make it up to you.

 

Thanks for coming by, Eric. Anything you have for this title would be incredible to see. Looking forward to it!

 

@Eric Browning, it's great to have you on board and you could provide a massive service that everyone here will love and appreciate. I really hope new light gets shed on this very interesting title

 

Sketch of the harbor, this area was playable.

 

awesome stuff! Such a shame this game never saw the light of day

 

Storyboard, opening panel that would have been the intro cinematic. To my knowledge none of these images have been seen outside of Midway.

 

Well, at least the storyboard. The harbor may even be on this forum, the pinup was an early version and I doubt we showed it.

 

Thank you Also, there could be life in this corpse yet.

 

Wow, that art is fantastic. You managed the art direction of this project? Love the style. Kind of like old Fleischer animation. Would have loved to see this is motion!

 

Fleischer was our biggest inspiration! Yes, art directed, but it was a small team so I did tons of concept work, the character design and most of the texture painting in game.

 

What's cool about a small team like that is you really see the individual artistic voice come through in the product.

Crank the Weasel looks like it would have been one of the most visually creative works coming out of Midway, especially when compared to the predominantly "gritty fighter/fps" stuff the head office in Chicago produced.

Mind fielding a few Qs from me?

1) How far along was the project before cancelation?

2) what was the reason for cancelation?

3) "There may be life in this corpse yet" Sounds like you might be hinting at something here! Any clues?

4) Got any additional marital you'd be able to share? Loved what you've shown so far.


Thanks again.

 

Here's some more, I can fill in details but I figured just getting stuff posted would be more fun for you.

 

Eric, I really appreciate you taking the time to stop by and doing all this. And the images are great!

 

1&2) How far along it was is hard to nail down since Midway decided to do an 11th hour redesign on it. The higher ups had a really hard time with any game that wasn't in an already existing genre (this was the studio that turned Tony Hawk away- literally the man himself- because no one wants a "skateboard game"). I've come to peace with that- it's easy to make risky game design choices when it's not your $$$. There were a number of levels built, and a lot of gameplay roughed in. When Midway brought in an outside designer to make the game basically another mascot character platformer, the light went out on our team. It was canceled soon after.
3)Brian Silva and I have been friends since meeting at Visual Concepts somewhere around 91-92, we had a game there called Floigan Brothers that shared a similar fate (later resurrected by VC and completely redesigned). So we both still feel like we have a game to put out, and even recently have been talking about it. Making a game now, especially a risky one, is just so much more plausible. Both of us have done a lot since then and have learned a lot. If we do something I intend to approach it completely counter to how games are currently done at a big studio.
4)I posted some stuff earlier, and I'll keep doing that. I think I may use my instagram or something eventually and make a home for this stuff. It hurt a lot to lose that project- humiliating- and I couldn't even look at my work from Weasel for years. I'm over it.