Crank the Weasel

Wow, thanks a ton for sharing not only a great collection of artwork (which is amazing--"Bipolarbot" sounds hilarious and terrifying), but also a bit of your personal history on the project. Any creative endeavor like this inevitably ends up being something that one invests a great deal of themselves into, so I can appreciate how difficult it must have been to have the project go off the rails.

But you're right about risky games; there are more people making more games--and more types of games--on more platforms than ever in this medium's history, so if there ever was a time to try something unexpected and unique, it would be now! I greatly look forward to any project you and Brian may work together on. Keep us in the loop on that, huh?

As always, looking forward to your next excavation of the Weasel archives.

 

Ha! Those pinups girls reminds me of the old 40's Tex Avery cartoons. Mostly due to reminding me of Red Hot Riding Hood. And it's great that you would want to move forward to make your own game. I do like how nowadays there is the trend of making video games despite not having a big studio. It's very inspiring to someone who wants to become a video game designer such as myself (it's the major I'm currently working on).

 

Thank you for sharing all these great documents and the information. It's such a shame this game was cancelled. It looked great.

 

Where are you going to school for game design? You can message me if you don't like to put that info out on a forum.

 

Bipolarbot was my favorite, there was a a pretty fun mechanic tied to him.

 

Thanks for showing us all this art work, I really like the art direction here. It definitely looks like it could have been a game I'd love to play. I've always loved old cartoons.. All this CG crap out there today makes me sad.

 

That sounds like something I want to know more about! ha ha

How "mature" was the tone of this game, would you say? From your art, it seems fairly gritty--equal parts Conker's Bad Furday and Who Framed Roger Rabbit. But sometimes things get the edges shaved down a bit when they go into the final product, I guess.

And does any video of the game exist? Haven't been able to find anything at all. It's a shame, because this looks like it would be beautiful in motion.

 

First, here's a few seconds of the original demo we used to pitch the idea of Weasel:

Eventually I'll post something with sound and running around. Just got a hold of this and haven't had a lot of time to put something together yet.

 

The video is private, but thanks for taking the time to put it up!

 

Try again,should work now

 

Oh wow, very cool to see the game in motion!

 

I can dig it. The version in that video, what platform is being used?

 

That's the PC build, which ran on the Xbox and later on PS2 concurrently. I think it's a variation on the Hydro Thunder engine. Everything was written in-house, including tools.

 

Pretty cool honestly. Any chance of seeing a public release in the future?

 

That video is.......beautiful. But in all seriousness I think it's very awesome that you're able to take your time to show the game in action. Even as a pitch demo the build has a lot o neat things. I like the fact that it's lively as in you can see characters/objects moving around. And I like Crank's animations.

 

Wow, that world looks really, well, animated! I love Weasel's idle animation and all the moving elements.

Eric, was this an Xvideo/target render, or was this running in-engine? Looks like everything on the screen draws a lot from your art direction, too. You must have been involved from the very beginning, then?

 

The demo was playable- I'll grab a better clip and post it. You can go all over place, and there a few more characters.

 

This is it running in-engine. Yes, involved from the begining. I miss it!

 

We're talking about it, the legality is a bit hazy with Midway dead and sold for parts.

 

Send me a message if necessary. At the very least, I do have some great hardware to make better quality videos for any platform, and Im always willing to agree to your terms.