It makes me very happy to see people comment on this game and that someone liked it! So, to anyone who played this game or has interest in it... I can answer some of the questions asked here and give a little quick background. Who am I?... I was a co-designer and the primary artist on the product. (It was also my very first professional art gig). It was originally developed at Buena Vista Software, a division of Disney in the early 90's. It took about 18 months to complete. It was (I believe) bought after completion and distributed by Maxis. The original idea was that the creatures were about 1 centimeter in length and whole colony experiments would take place on cookie sheet sized 'trays'. We wanted it to be an artificial life game about basic genetics. All of the challenges would have happened on a series of those trays. But Disney execs/marketing thought that it needed more "danger" and to be "bigger", maybe involve the military. So we had to rewrite the story that they were BIG and we needed an aircraft carrier hold or an island to play on. Unfortunately, the creatures had already been designed, built and animated. I protested, because they were designed around being tiny and trust me, they would have looked very different if I had drawn them up as elephantine threats. The user interface and pixelized creatures were all hand draw and animated using DPaint/DAnimate. There were 5 hero creature models. They were each about the same size... 11 inches wide/long and about 8 inches tall. They were made from aluminum armature wire, sculpey, miliput and plasticine clay for the soft moving parts. The hard shells were painted with acrylics and the eyes were painted 1/2 spheres from Tap plastics. There were also 5 baby 'theroids' for the birth shots. You could bend all of the limbs, tails and necks to extreme poses, but I'd end up cleaning up clay between frames when it buckled or pulled away from the structures. I learned SO much making these and animating them! There are over 300 short animations representing all of the states that a creature could be in. Fight scenes were more complicated to coordinate. The whole thing was designed/directed to be modular so I didn't have to shoot many specific verses combos. Each was shot in my bedroom, on a folding cafeteria table, with a sony handycam, digitized and touched-up at the pixel level, frame by frame on my Amiga 500. Well, each animation is only about 170x110. :) As the project came to a close, I ended my contract with Disney in Burbank Ca. and Moved to the SF Bay area to work on games at EA. The Disney producers demanded all of the models to be handed over, so I don't know what ever happened to them. I'm sure they were trashed. At least I can still see them in the game.
I've got fond memories of this game as a child. My friends and I still occasionally refer to it colloquially as 'eat-n'-f--k'. I don't think we ever mentioned the nickname in front of parents. The animations sold it. Excellent job, even with disney's attempt to turn it into budget jurassic park.
Zomg, I loved this game, just revisiting the childhood. I guess as many games of that time it was quite underrated for its originality and dynamic gameplay make it a true masterpiece.
For some odd reason, I randomly remembered this game and have been thinking about it... I didn't even remember what this game was called, I had to do some creative googling just to find out what to search for! Thank you for uploading this, I have fond nostalgia of watching my brother play this, as a youth.
I've beat this game. I think it was challenging, but considering that I was only 10 years old , it couldn't have been _THAT_ hard. It's kind of amazing what kids can learn about stuff though. It kind of amazes me that I knew every tiny detail about how this game worked despite being a young little kid. Obviously it's important to pull out all the tricks. Noisemakers/decoys, special food, selective breeding, selective culling, selective creature loading into the transports, syncing transport dropoff times together, etc.
It makes me very happy to see people comment on this game and that someone liked it!
So, to anyone who played this game or has interest in it... I can answer some of the questions asked here and give a little quick background.
Who am I?... I was a co-designer and the primary artist on the product. (It was also my very first professional art gig). It was originally developed at Buena Vista Software, a division of Disney in the early 90's. It took about 18 months to complete. It was (I believe) bought after completion and distributed by Maxis.
The original idea was that the creatures were about 1 centimeter in length and whole colony experiments would take place on cookie sheet sized 'trays'. We wanted it to be an artificial life game about basic genetics. All of the challenges would have happened on a series of those trays. But Disney execs/marketing thought that it needed more "danger" and to be "bigger", maybe involve the military. So we had to rewrite the story that they were BIG and we needed an aircraft carrier hold or an island to play on.
Unfortunately, the creatures had already been designed, built and animated. I protested, because they were designed around being tiny and trust me, they would have looked very different if I had drawn them up as elephantine threats.
The user interface and pixelized creatures were all hand draw and animated using DPaint/DAnimate. There were 5 hero creature models. They were each about the same size... 11 inches wide/long and about 8 inches tall. They were made from aluminum armature wire, sculpey, miliput and plasticine clay for the soft moving parts. The hard shells were painted with acrylics and the eyes were painted 1/2 spheres from Tap plastics. There were also 5 baby 'theroids' for the birth shots.
You could bend all of the limbs, tails and necks to extreme poses, but I'd end up cleaning up clay between frames when it buckled or pulled away from the structures. I learned SO much making these and animating them!
There are over 300 short animations representing all of the states that a creature could be in. Fight scenes were more complicated to coordinate. The whole thing was designed/directed to be modular so I didn't have to shoot many specific verses combos. Each was shot in my bedroom, on a folding cafeteria table, with a sony handycam, digitized and touched-up at the pixel level, frame by frame on my Amiga 500. Well, each animation is only about 170x110. :)
As the project came to a close, I ended my contract with Disney in Burbank Ca. and Moved to the SF Bay area to work on games at EA. The Disney producers demanded all of the models to be handed over, so I don't know what ever happened to them. I'm sure they were trashed. At least I can still see them in the game.
You did an amazing job on them. Thank you so much for telling us about it!
I've got fond memories of this game as a child. My friends and I still occasionally refer to it colloquially as 'eat-n'-f--k'. I don't think we ever mentioned the nickname in front of parents. The animations sold it. Excellent job, even with disney's attempt to turn it into budget jurassic park.
@@SLLabsKamilion this is amazing, because my producer's original pitch was f'in' and fightin' (as a joke of course). thank you for the response!!
@@nickcorea982 And thank you for your time, so many decades ago. It was a worthwhile endeavor.
Loved this game as a kid. Really interesting to hear those details on the development.
I have Dan to thank for this popping up
Grump Bump
I have a feeling this might blow up
Yup lol
I've never played this game but now I want to
Saaaaaaame?
Zomg, I loved this game, just revisiting the childhood. I guess as many games of that time it was quite underrated for its originality and dynamic gameplay make it a true masterpiece.
Yes, it was the first simulation game of my childhood. Very unique game.
GAME GRUMPS INADVERTENTLY CONTROL THE ALGORITHM
Imagine a monster taming game today with an idea like this.
For some odd reason, I randomly remembered this game and have been thinking about it... I didn't even remember what this game was called, I had to do some creative googling just to find out what to search for!
Thank you for uploading this, I have fond nostalgia of watching my brother play this, as a youth.
I've beat this game. I think it was challenging, but considering that I was only 10 years old , it couldn't have been _THAT_ hard. It's kind of amazing what kids can learn about stuff though. It kind of amazes me that I knew every tiny detail about how this game worked despite being a young little kid.
Obviously it's important to pull out all the tricks. Noisemakers/decoys, special food, selective breeding, selective culling, selective creature loading into the transports, syncing transport dropoff times together, etc.
Interesting! I've never known anyone to get past that island. Maybe I should have another Unnatural save share, see if we can finally tame that beast.
10 years olds are capable of most things if they only learn them. In fact children are actually better at learning new things than adults.
I still dont understand how to play this game
Gentlemen