Tiny Toons Adventure (why Telegames and not TWI)

[The Helper]

Time Warner did Primal Rage and Power Drive Rally. They also did the co-jag thing with Area 51 and the other games. My question is why in the world would Telegames be doing stuff for Tiny Toons and not Time Warner which owned the license anyway? Tiny Toons was an early release planned game and after some reading on some Tiny Toons project management notes the game was killed basically because Warner would not approve the art. The only reason I bring this up is because Warner did games for the Jag (both CD and cart), plus they helped out with licenses on Vid Grid and the Jag CD promo rollout.

 

I would like to hear something, somewhere about how the relationship with Atari and Warner was back in the day. This Tiny Toons thing is killing me.

Edited January 14, 2008 by The Helper

[ovalbugmann]

I've heard Telegames is only a publisher and contracts out development work. Maybe Time-Warner didn't want to make a TinyToons game for the Jag, so a license to develop one using TinyToons characters was bought from TG. Not sure really.

 

I would like to read those project managment notes on TT also , where may I find them? Are they on JS2 or here or elsewhere?

[JagChris]

probably because TWI didnt want to waste resources making the game and would of rather just made whatever money off the Jag version. Give Atari the ok to go ahead and let Atari worry about gathering the resources to develop it.

 

TWI wasnt Atari's friend as much as Sam Tramiel let on. They talked the same smack and spread the same misinfo on the Jag as everyone else.

[The Helper]

I've heard Telegames is only a publisher and contracts out development work. Maybe Time-Warner didn't want to make a TinyToons game for the Jag, so a license to develop one using TinyToons characters was bought from TG. Not sure really.

 

I would like to read those project managment notes on TT also , where may I find them? Are they on JS2 or here or elsewhere?

 

I sent you a PM about it.

[atarifan49]

Tiny Toons was a title early in development for the Jaguar (1993 time frame). I don't recall if Atari Games / TWI were even on-board before the launch of the Jaguar as developers.

 

So, what kind of interesting info are you learning from the memos?

 

Glenn

[walter_J64bit]

Tiny Toons was a title early in development for the Jaguar (1993 time frame). I don't recall if Atari Games / TWI were even on-board before the launch of the Jaguar as developers.

 

So, what kind of interesting info are you learning from the memos?

 

Glenn

I think Jaysmith2000 has them on JS2. I think it's in the "Atari Jaguar Prototype" forums.

[gusbucket13]

Tiny Toons was a title early in development for the Jaguar (1993 time frame). I don't recall if Atari Games / TWI were even on-board before the launch of the Jaguar as developers.

 

So, what kind of interesting info are you learning from the memos?

 

Glenn

I think Jaysmith2000 has them on JS2. I think it's in the "Atari Jaguar Prototype" forums.

Yes I think it was me who posted some there relating to tiny toons - they came from the hard drive of a Stacey 4 Portable I purchased from Ted Tahquechi, heres a relevant one I posted that might explain things a bit: Warning its a bit long and the spelling mistakes are all originals

 

QUOTE

 

Tiny Toons adventures

Case History

April 13, 1995

 

The game was taken over from Julie Wade in November of 1//5. The game was is poor shape. At this time, the game had been through several revisions. The Jaguar was in it's infancy, and nobody was entirely sure what the Jaguar was capable of. The decision was made to go with twenty four bit art for the player characters and the backgrounds. There was not enough room in a two megabyte cartridge for the art requirements. The decision was made to go for a photorealistic background with two five six color graphics for the player character.

 

John Skruch asked for a Taz style game when he was first talking to Telegames for the project. Telegames came up with the idea to put the player against Montana Max on a distant planet so that they could use a tile based world, and not have to worry about real live objects. This would save on cartridge space and still make for a good game.

 

The game in it's present form,, programmed by Edward Salvo, and directed by Terry Grantham continued to milestone three. At this time, it was realized that the current vision of the game was not what everyone wanted to see. The project was stopped and reviewed. The photo realistic background with the 256 color character and forground sprites looked very out of place. Telegames insisted that they were doing what they were told, and the game is exactily what they were asked to do.

 

The game was not what Atari wanted for the Tiny Toons game. It looked too realistic, and out of place. I took over the project at this time. The game was in great need of a new look. There was nothing to work from for the original design. The game design consisted of a small two page summary of the plot outline. There was only one map generated for the game, and this was done under protest because I has insusted that they do it. I told Telegames that they could not make a good game without planning it out on paper first to have a foundation to work from.

 

Unhappy with the original two page game design I set out to write another script that was closer to the original television series. The previous design was not based on any Tiny Toons episodes. It was very much, build and engine and insert your favorite licensed character here. After many weeks, Farran Thomason and myself hashed out a eight page script for a game. This script was turned into Warner for approval and given to Telegames for them to generate maps and level designs, and make the game. A new programmer was assigned to the game. His name is David Mahaffey. David told us that he had expierience in programming games from way back in the days of Colecovision. David went through his list of accomplishments. None of the games had ever been released to the market, but he atributed this to the fact that the big crash of 1983 killed the Colecovision system before the games could be released.

Many weeks went by. Telegames said that everything was going great. They were happy to have a new script to work from. They did not like the original idea much in the first place. They continued to insist that they had produced a game that we had asked for.

 

Later, I took a trip to Texas to visit Telegames and assertain as to why they had missed a few milestone dates. It was many months now, and they had yet to meet the first milestone requirements. At this time, they said that they did not have an idea of what we wanted the game to look like. David Mahaffey and I went through the game design and came to the conclusion that they has more than enough information to do the game. It was puzzling to me that they had not gotten farther than they were in the given amount of time.

 

Telegames decided to begin again on the art. We had received a few versions of the art background, with a static frame of plucky moving around the screen. This is where the game development stopped for many months. The art for the characters and the backgrounds were not up to Warner specification. The art was not colorful and bright as the Tiny Toons art in the television series. We supplied many tapes to them for example, as welll as a Warner style guide and line drawings. The style guide went through exactily how to draw each of the characters. Instead of drawing the characters, the artists working on the project decided to use frame captures from the television series. This way they could be sure that we would be happy with the art and Wartner would approve it. During the process, the images got corrupted in one way or another. some of the images would get stretched in strange and unuseable ways.

 

After two years, Atari came to the decision that Telegames could not find artist that would be capable of doing Warner style art. We came to the conclusion that if we continued on the present course of Telegames finding and firing artists that we were not happy with, that the game could easily take another year to develop, if it happened at all. Susan McBride suggested that we contract an outside artist to do the art to Warner spec and give it to Telegames. After much debate and discussion, we decided on Digital Delirium, founded and owned by Tony Gascon. Tony was willing to do what it took to complete the game in a timely manner. He gave us many schedules with numerous options. We supplied Tony with the necessary items he needed to get the work done. We gve him the game design, style guide and many videotapes of episodes to work from. Digital Delirium had many questions and needs. They required many more tapes to work from, so we coordinated through Warner to get the tapes. These tapes were delivered shortly after the project had begun.

 

The first round of art we got from Digital Delirium was not to Warner specification. This was determined by our art director and tiny toons fan Susan McBride. Susan had worked with Warner in the oast and was familiar with what they looked for in their critisizm of art. This service proved invaluable later down the road in the project. Digital Delirium continued to deliver art that was not on Warner specification. We asked them to start doing pencil tests of the art for our approval beofre they put them onto the computer. This way, we could approve any frames that were acceptable and alter to our satisfaction the ones that needed help. The approval and alteration time became long and upon later reflection, seemed to be a bad idea. The addition of pencil tests added about two and a half months to the long art process. This was an unantisipated delay, which stemmed from the art department having too many things to do and not enough people to do them. The two people that were supposed to work on the pencil tests got pulled from Tiny Toons and put onto other projects, namely Highlander and Aliens Versus Predator.

 

By December 1994, we had delivered to Telegames the complete art for world one and two. This left one world to be completed. Telegames said that they did not need the art at that time anyway, so the delay would not cause them a problem. After nearly a year, Telegames had still not met the requirements for milestone one, even though they had the art for the milestone many months before it was scheduled to go into the game.

 

Towards the end of the project, we had many problems with Digital Delirium. They had shortages of money and manpower. They threatened to stop working if they did not get a partial payment of the final miestone. We refused, and they stopped working for a couple of months. We felt that this would not affect the overall schedule, as Telegames had still not met the milestone requirements for the first milestone.

 

Telegames at this time decided to give us a new milestone schedule with many provisions. The provisions were that they would give us a milestone only after we have them a fully laid out level on paper. Please note: Telegames had the art and mock up screens for many months before thay asked for this. It seemed to be a stalling tactic.

 

Jeffery Gatrall, the artist assigned to complete the level designs was fired shortly after this. We were stuck. With my workload, there was no way I could do the level designs and do my normal .work. Som we decided to bring Digital Delirium in house to help us complete the gamedesign levels and tile the worlds. It was at this time, that we heard for the first time the music thjat Telegames has paid for. The music was sent to us in .WAV format. James Grunke and I reviewed the music and found it to be fully unacceptable for the game. The style of the music did not meet the style of music that was done in the Tiny Toons cartoon series.

 

END of QUOTE

 

So there you have it straight from the horses mouth so to speak. Several other interesting documents relevant to tiny toons were also posted in the same thread, plus numerous others about other games in development.

 

Cheers

GB13

[DracIsBack]

Wow - complete development hell. I always wondered what was going on. Thanks!

[Pocket]

very interesting story

[atarifan49]

Man, Ted had to put up with a producer's nightmare on that. At least he gave a gallant effort to try and complete the game. But between incompetent artists, developers, and an uncooperative Warner it makes sense why this game never made it out.

 

Thanks for sharing that. That is definitely the Paul Harvey edition of Tiny Toons mystery.

 

Glenn