I had this really cool "control a flying stuntman cowboy shot out of cannon" Java game on my / dad's Sony CR800 or something. It's from around the same time. I have a suspicion your company worked on that game too! Some hidden gems from that era.
@@acuteavocado1962not all of them 😅 that why explaining helps and no this has nothing to do with ‘superiority’. Not sure why you said that 🤨 age is just age. Everyone is equal.
According to one of the mods on the Insomniac Server, I wanna say it was Cron, about a year ago. Clone home was actually sparsely released, and cancelled very shortly after. "Clone Home had a very limited release window with a few select providers (including Bell in Canada) before being pulled. I was actively downloading it on my old phone when it was taken down mid-download Something like less than 2 weeks in select countries" Still, there's nothing to be found on it though
It's not a super high bar to cross, but when you get to those top few games it gets pretty close! This and the Doom RPGs are really the only ones at the top, I'd say.
This was fascinating! as a massive Ratchet fan since i was a young kid not knowing of this game's existence is a surreal concept but I'm very glad you've brought it to my attention. Thank you for the great video as always!
Thank _you_ for the kind words, I'm glad I could bring something new in the Ratchet series to you! I've got a few more ideas for lesser-known Ratchet topics that I'd like to cover in the next couple months, so hopefully I can do it again soon!
Hey, I was the designer on this game (I wasn't the developer spoken to, and I don't know who was). Super enthusiastic to see this video, but I want to correct a few things that you mentioned... A) that Insomniac would regularly check in on our progress. We ended up making the game without any interaction with Insomniac, even though we would have been eager to collaborate. Sony themselves would sometimes give us feedback, but they were less familiar with the license than everyone on the team at handheld (I personally played through the first 3 games as research for this one). Specifically our producer was a big fan, and wouldn't have let us do anything other than be true to the source material. B) that Ratchet was the last game handheld developed for Sony... We actually took over a Zorro game for them that another developer was unable to finish in time, which I ended up as designer for as well. I was told that despite Spiderman and especially Ratchet being big successes, Sony was asking for each game to be made cheaper and faster than the last, until it was no longer feasible. Otherwise our relationship with Sony was great. It's also worth mentioning that your emulator seems to be running a little bit faster than the game was meant to, especially with regards to the rate of fire of those turrets. It shouldn't have been as fast and chaotic (given that mobile controls at that time were very cumbersome). The arena is therefore much more tense than you might be giving it credit for. I also have to respectfully disagree on the usefulness of the circuit jammer though, given that you would be playing without a joypad, it was often much more useful to have a homing weapon get enemies above or below you, rather than try to jump then turn, then attack. I find it as the best weapon for the last boss, once the outer shell has been removed. Head on, it is pretty useless, but that was the objective was always to make it an interesting niche weapon rather than a replacement for something else. But given that competing platformers on mobile were unplayable, we ended up getting IGN awards for Wireless Platformer of the year 2005 Editors choice, as well as the same award in Player's choice. We also won best action game of 2005 from Gamespot's "mobies" awards. We really benefitted from ratchet having a triple jump and hover, which allowed the player to move forwards and jump at the same time, when most phones didn't register more than one button press at a time (you wouldn't be able to run and shoot like you were doing, which is why the melee attack moves you forward). I was the designer on Spiderman as well, and the footage you show is footage of me playing the game on an emulator, during development... probably to show Sony our progress. Its possible that some folks still have the game or the code (I could check my hard drives). I certainly still have maps that were drawn of the environments to plan out the character path. We were looking at Symphony of the Night as a model, for an environment that involves lots of backtracking, once you get new abilities that allow you to reach previously unreachable spots. There was only one tileset though, so the art for all the areas looked pretty similar. I was also the designer on what I think is a really good ghostbusters game that Handheld did for Sony, before Spiderman. I'm sure some that some assets and videos can still be dug up somewhere, if not the jar file itself. ua-cam.com/video/Gl1TiQAEcak/v-deo.html
Hey there, Brad! This is even more awesome info to read through, thank you for sharing! I'd tried to reach out to you as well on Twitter, when I was first putting my notes together and gathering research, so it's awesome to hear from you. I'm assuming your former co-worker may have misremembered re: Insomniac's involvement, then - I'm sure things get lost after 14+ years after all! I figured there were a few things the emulator would get a bit wrong, so I gave the game a bit of slack (or at least a bit of credit, the controls transferred incredibly well to a "real" gamepad!). Also, on the Spider-Man footage, what a small world! I assumed it was just some random dude on the internet, that's amazing. I would've loved to be able to look at that game a bit more, it seemed like it was a very competent game too, and I'm sure there would've been some bits that were taken from it later on and used to improve Ratchet. Ah well. If you've got anything else to add about Going Mobile, I'd love to hear more about it - I only found out after posting this that Clone Home was actually _finished_ by whatever team worked on it, and that it got an incredibly limited release for about two weeks in Canada. That kind of stuff is like the holy grail for a nerd like me, so now I've got a new challenge to chase!
@@TheGoldenBolt Sadly I've never myself seen or played Clone Home. I was under the impression that Sony used our code and our editor, and just made new art and levels themselves (not that they looped us in on this plan at all)... This may have been in violation of contracts that we had with them, so I suspect that our very litigious CEO would have gone to battle with them upon learning about it. The casino level artwork in going mobile was done by an in-house Sony artist, who didn't like the art we produced, so that's why I believe that they did a lot of it in-house rather than hiring another developer... The clone home art does seem to match that visual style of higher-res photoshop art scaled down, rather than the pixel-first artwork that we were making. Although we had a great relationship with Sony, I was under the impression that they were asking for less and less money and time for each consecutive project... which explains why the relationship fell apart, and perhaps why Sony would have felt they had no choice but to make the sequel with someone else. What a shame! I had also been asked to start some early design ideas for a Sly Cooper game we were going to pitch, but that never went very far. Apologies for not interacting with Twitter very much, I keep forgetting my pledge to be a more active participant there. I only accidentally discovered this video while looking for promotional going home art, for my portfolio 😅 Great detective work, finding other developers and me.
I don't believe Insomniac was involved in the initial concept of the game at all. As I remember, they declined to be involved or offer feedback, whenever the opportunity was given to them. I think the initial pitch for the game was likely a collaboration between Handheld Games' CEO Thomas Fessler (who liked to pitch ideas a lot), with Handheld Games' Executive Producer Seth Rosenfeld and our Sony Producer contact Shereef Morse (the two of whom had become pretty good friends by this point, and were both usually on the same page as far as taste in games and both really knowledgeable fans of the Ratchet & Clank franchise). Shereef at Sony had also worked with us on Spiderman, and requested to Handheld that I be the designer on the project as well, given the praise that game received. The concept given to me to work off of was that Ratchet & Clank get trapped in your phone and have to escape (It sounds a lot like the sort of ideas my CEO would pitch, and I can pretty easily reimagine him telling me this). It was Seth's insistence that we make a pun out of naming the central device "McGuffin". From there it was my responsibility to plan how that would work, and what the level content would be like. The PS2 games feature a lot of revisiting of past worlds, but since this was for mobile, we wanted to make it a little more intuitive and instead settled for something that feels more like distinct levels (even though you are actually revisiting the same level files as before, just at different starting locations). We didn't really have a lot of space to work with to make immersive and diverse areas that felt memorable and alive... so I tried to at least have memorable level themes and segments that would stand out. Seth Rosenfeld also helped a lot with the early design, and improved a lot of my original dialog. He also played it a lot during development and pointed out where some of my levels weren't working. Shereef also did a great job standing up for the license and the project on Sony's end. Shereef used to also pitch all sorts of features to us he'd like to see, like wall climbing anti-gravity areas, leveraging code from Spiderman... but was quick to understand when it wasn't looking like it would work out. The artist and my close friend, Ben Hopper was also a huge fan of the series, and was a great person to bounce ideas off of for enemies, environments, and even gameplay. We had to vastly reduce the scope of the vision both of us had for the project, based on the realities of mobile phones at the time (don't try the series 40 version of the game, you played the better series 60 version). I believe the Art Director and another close friend, Peter Thurwachter may have also participated in some of the art planning and creation. We also had one of my favorite engineers on the project, Jason Flegle… who without complaint, quickly and easily implemented every idea I ever pitched him. Mike Jones recorded the theme-song, and happily took many rounds of feedback until we got something we all were enthusiastic about. A lot of the games at Handheld were built off of some previous game, which in turn was built off some game before that. Ratchet & Clank was built off the code of Spiderman, with some changes and of course with new art. Gabe (who's last name I can't seem to remember) was the engineer on that and worked with me to get a lot of the web swinging moves to look and feel good. Spiderman was built off a sidescrolling tech demo made by Joseph Bui, and I think Jin Park who were J2ME experts at the time and who didn't have another project scheduled at this time (I was busy working on ghosbusters and helping on some Nicktoons games, while their engine was coming together). I remember eating at Taco Del Mar and various Pho restaurants with Jin and Joe during this time, when the office wasn't instead playing Marvel vs Capcom 2 on our lunch breaks.
Apologies for the late reply, I think the edit/UA-cam link got your comment bumped into my spam folder and I only caught it just now. This is all incredibly fascinating info, thank you again for sharing it! I had a feeling that had I been able to play Spidey I would've noticed some inspiration and similarities, but let's just say I downloaded a dozen J2ME compilation files (totaling a few thousand games) and it just was nowhere to be found - good to know that hunch was right enough! Reading back through that edit, I had NO idea there was a Ghostbusters game too that you guys made! Everywhere I looked listed Spider-Man and Ratchet and that's it (and I think that even includes one site that listed you as a contributor, or at least somebody using your name!). I'll have to dig into that some more; while Java certainly isn't my wheelhouse, my buddy is far more into that scene - if he's interested and can find the game I could get him in touch if you'd like!
@@TheGoldenBolt well I'll look around as well. Maybe Ghostbusters and Spiderman still exist somewhere (super great that Ratchet still does). There was also a zorro game we did, using art assets that a previous company had made (but we took over after they missed their deadlines). Zorro was such a short schedule on a mostly finished game, that I don't have much resources from it laying around.
Plugs in *Xbox* controller. "It feels like a Ratchet game." This comment is blasphemous! Seriously though, I had no idea this game even existed. It seems pretty cool. When does it hit Android?
Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed the video! For the short time it lasts I think it's a great little game, I wish I would've been able to try it out on an actual phone back in the day.
I'm glad I left myself pure for your video, this seems like the ideally way to experience this oddity as someone far too lazy to bother fussing with getting this game working. It's really weird seeing an actually competent licensed java game
It was surprisingly easy to get the game working, although the button mapping took a bit of work. If nothing else it's a super neat way to spend an hour!
Honestly, even as surprising the quality is, I don't think I could play it more than twice before moving on, and I've played some games in the series upwards of 100 times!
I would have preferred stage music. MIDI files are tiny and compress awesomely, and can be pre-processed to compress even better. He's right about that generation phones not having a thorough support for simultaneous music and sound effects, but choice between music and sound effects was common enough. Also real phone keypad usually doesn't have any simultaneous button capability.
Yeah, in the end I agree, I'd rather have had music for sure! But knowing how few sound effects they went with, who knows, the music might have just gotten gratingly repetitive just as quickly! I think it's one of those choices where either could've been equally rough given the platform.
I bet there'd be a hacky workaround like pitch shifting the standard weapon effect to the midi file every frame, but I have no idea on the processor specs on these java devicesm
1:40 ohhh my god, that footage gave me back some long lost memories:) i did play with that game, and i love it (i also played with the ratchet and clank going mobile back in the day) i remember my elder brother downloaded them from the web, and we installed it from our sd card. crazy times
there was another spiderman game for the old phones if im not mistaken, inwhcih we could play as the black spiderman, im not sure whether it was the same game or not
I'm hoping to get through UYA and Deadlocked (as well as a couple other Ratchet projects) this year to get me lined up for Size Matters sooner than later! I've been currently struggling on a "focus" for UYA beyond being a traditional review, because as it stands I don't have a ton that's really unique to bring to it - that spark has been on the tip of my tongue for months now. The best I got was invoking UYA to talk about CiT, but CiT is obviously waaaay too far off to make any sense for that...anyway, I digress! More Ratchet please, I agree!
This was an awesome video - I hadn't the slightest clue that this game existed, and to see it in action along with hearing what you were able to dig up about it was quite the treat. Keep up the great work!
Agreed! I've been trying to find the Clank browser flash game that was made to promote A Crack in Time, that's about ad close as we've gotten to a 2D Ratchet since this!
@@TheGoldenBolt Yo,just wanted to inform you that the a crack in time flash game has been recovered. I have a video with a download link on my channel,and it can be played with Bluemaxima's Flashpoint
I'm glad the comments section has determined the next game you have to review. Since that is out of the way, I am surprised at this game. It isn't something I personally would enjoy, but it looks pretty neat for what it is.
It's not a game I can really recommend of course, but as a piece of history it's just fascinating to me. Even still, by the low standard of Java games, it's probably in the top two or three ever released on these phones!
Imagine if this was someone’s first impression of a ratchet and clank game. This game is way above what I remember getting as games on phones and I can see myself being really into it. Just imagine then walking into a real one lol.
I played this game not too long ago for the first time ever after seeing it advertised for years in the back of the Ratchet Deadlocked manual and being curious about it. I played it on a Java emulator on my PSP and tried to map the buttons to work like a traditional Ratchet & Clank game. I wouldn't say it was particularly great but it was definitely an interesting experience. I'm glad somebody made an in-depth UA-cam video about it! I must have missed your Deadlocked skins somehow though because I don't remember getting a code for any. Too bad there's almost nothing of clone home on the internet. though playing the game did make me really curious to see what a side-scrolling Ratchet and Clank a game on a more powerful platform could be like.
Agreed, there's a lot of room for the series to work with in 2D, I would've loved to see more! I remember there was a Clank flash game in the style of Crack in Time's Clank missions, to promote that game, but that and Into the Nexus's Clank levels are really as close as we got sadly.
@@TheGoldenBolt Oh, didn't know about that flash game! I've been trying to play through the whole series recently, I would have played through the flash game if I'd known about it. If it's still available that is.
You're gonna love me, I think I just found a playable archive of it! I'm not home to verify that the game itself is cached but it looks like it very well might be. This stuff is like the Holy Grail for a Ratchet nerd like me! web.archive.org/web/20091115081353/ratchetandclankthegame.com/en_GB/minigame/
@@TheGoldenBolt I don't know what happened, but somehow I'm only now seeing your reply 2 years later! Regardless I do appreciate it, I definitely want to check it out! And if you do still happen to see this reply 2 years later, I just made a very interesting discovery! There's another version of Ratchet & Clank Going Mobile that if I assume is for the lesser powerful mobile phones of the day and seems to be like a more stripped down version of Going Mobile! It's more or less the same game but the levels, UI, menus and some dialog are all different!
There are some truly impressive J2ME games, the Sonic 1 port in particular comes to mind, but this one is a gem and stands out compared to most other Java games that was released for the platform.
Ah, Going Mobile. I remember seeing this game on the back of the manual for my copy of Ratchet Deadlocked, but never knew what it was about because I didn't have a Java Phone like all the cool kids had, I just figured it was a Going Commando style game or something.
I used to look at that manual all the time, every now and then I'd even text that number to see if my phone magically became compatible. It was even on the back cover of the ToD manual, two years later!
knew of this game but never played it either, i just remember staring at the ad on the back of my UYA booklet and wanting a phone really bad just so i could play it
Thanks so much, I'm glad to have you on board! Obviously not every video will be Ratchet-related but I do plan to come back to the series a couple more times sooner rather than later!
I still await your retrospectives on Size Matters and Secret Anent Clank. I'm currently playing through the series while watching your videos, and I was sad to see you have yet to cover them. So far if I had to rate them, it would be 2>3>DL>SM>F:AQfB>1>F:ToD>SAC.
Quick update: I can confirm that Clone Home was made by Javaground,since Steven Lawson,one of the companies employees has a Ratchet and Clank game listed under projects made by Javaground. I have a sheet with all the progress made to find the game,wich i'll share in a reply.
I discovered this a while ago, but clone home actually finished development. I managed to contact a Javaground employee and thats what they said. This makes the cancelation even more strange. Why cancel a game wich has already gone golden?
Wow, amazing! You're doing God's work and nobody's even seen it! Since the game actually got finished, it would be awesome if somebody could actually realease it on the internet so we could actually play it!
@@Inujake7 We are incredibly close now. We managed to contact a developer who extracted a copy of the game from their old phone, but it was encrypted, so someone from the Ratchet and Clank modding server bought the same kind of phone to figure out the encryption
Man, Java phone games were weird as hell. Some were surprisingly good, though. I remember riding out the bulk of Hurricane Ike by huddling up in a safe spot of my parents' place and playing Tetris on my old flip phone!
Tetris calms all storms, it's a proven fact. In my search for that missing Spider-Man game, I ended up finding a massive filedump of about 500 other Java games, so there's _definitely_ a lot of weird still out there!
I thought I remembered there being a sequel to this game. I tried looking it up and couldn't find anything. It's good to know I wasn't actually losing my mind. 😅 Now I'll just need find a way to play this one...
I just remember when I was playing up your arsenal there was a flier for the game in the case where you text a code to a number and it downloaded the game on my dads phone and he was mad at me because he thought I bought it
Am I the only one who would love a 2.5D or sprite based Ratchet and Clank game with an actual budget behind it? I always imagined something like that would play a bit like Mega Turrican on the Genesis.
Anyone else heard of the lost sequel to this called Clone Home? I don't know WHY the fuck I remember that but it just popped into my head. I think I might have been seen it on a list of RAC games on wikipedia or the table at the end of a wikipedia page
honestly, they should make this a actual insomniac game. remember the vid comic lvls in up your arsenal? they should make it in that style, ps4 graphics, and sell it on pan for like 10 bucks. Bam! Not only would I finally be able to play this game but it will be considered canon as well!
I'm not sure if you will see my comment, but I have been hearing some rumors that a Playstation All Stars Sequel might be in development for the launch of the PS5. I thought you should know!
I've heard the rumblings too! I don't think I really believe them though, the original source referred to a 4chan leak without actually showing the leak, then moved onto a roster wishlist, which itself misspelled "roster" as "poster." The PSAS fandom has done this before in hopes that it'll drum interest and _actually_ lead to a game, so until it's actually announced I won't get my hopes up!
Now that I know it's actually a finished product, I'm planning on searching for the mysterious developer! There's not a ton of hope but if even one person has their old hard drives saved there's a chance
@@TheGoldenBolt hi! This is a very late reply lol. Do you have any news about this game? I talked with the music artist who made the soundtrack for Going Mobile (he was hard to find because he isn't in the credits) long story short even he didn't know which studio made clone home and he never got asked for making music for another part. So this game is actually a big mystery xD
Right now, I'm trying to gather my exact thoughts in a way that's more interesting than just a review, and UYA is such a big game for me personally that I've been struggling to get it _juuust_ right. I'm hoping to tackle one or two other Ratchet things before UYA this summer, so hopefully UYA will be mid- to late-summer?
@@Inujake7 it got removed from Play Store, maybe because it's only suitable for Android 2 or like that (same with iOS, but with their version) and nowadays, most phone use Android 10
HOLY FUCKING SHIT I HAD COMPLETEKY FORGOTTEN ABOUT THAT SPIDERMAN GAME! I ony played the demo because I didn't find the game all that great but still...cool
You can download a mobile phone emulator to your PSP and play it that way, that's what did! You can even remap the buttons to be more like a traditional Ratchet and Clank game. Closest thing to an official PlayStation port you'll get. I suppose you could also try playing it through an emulator on the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play phone, which has PlayStation buttons on it.
I have a leaflet from rachet and clank 3 about this game you have to text rachet to 88888. Probably dont work and not sure if thats the number. I know it was gamster or something. I will look for the leaflet
Lol I think now is the good time for them to actually make a "Ratchet and Clank mobile" Since everything is going to mobile Lol.... hopefully it won't be infested with 9yo kids
![Ratchet & Clank - Life of Pie [ 2021 4K ] Animated cartoon](/img/n.gif)
I was the lead artist and animator on this game! Thanks for giving it some love after all these years!
I had the same role on the Spider-Man game!
@@benhopper3363 Were you also one of the artists on Cory in the House? I don't remember that one very well.
I'm glad I could shine a bit of light on it - hopefully I did it some justice, you guys did a killer job!
I had this really cool "control a flying stuntman cowboy shot out of cannon" Java game on my / dad's Sony CR800 or something. It's from around the same time. I have a suspicion your company worked on that game too! Some hidden gems from that era.
Thanks for helping create one of my favorite childhood games!
The fact that we have to explain what cell phones were like before the iPhone makes me feel extremely old
You and me both, my friend!
you dont have to, you assume you have to to feel superior. kids are not as stupid as you think. they know what old tech was.
And now 4 more years have passsed
@@Wiejeben the fact that I don't remember posting this comment makes me feel extremely old
@@acuteavocado1962not all of them 😅 that why explaining helps and no this has nothing to do with ‘superiority’. Not sure why you said that 🤨 age is just age. Everyone is equal.
It feels good to get back to Ratchet! I'm hoping to hop back on the Ratchet train a few more times in the next few months, it's been too long.
Top 6 Ratchet racing games when
First I have to cover Jak X, silly
Yay!
The Golden Bolt Hopefully, you’ll get more R&C material to cover sooner or later.
According to one of the mods on the Insomniac Server, I wanna say it was Cron, about a year ago. Clone home was actually sparsely released, and cancelled very shortly after.
"Clone Home had a very limited release window with a few select providers (including Bell in Canada) before being pulled. I was actively downloading it on my old phone when it was taken down mid-download
Something like less than 2 weeks in select countries"
Still, there's nothing to be found on it though
*epic music in the backgrond*
Ratchet: *Shoots something*
Music: Am i a joke to you?
Been a WHILE since I played this, but it might just be the best mobile game ever. Wouldn't take much.
It's not a super high bar to cross, but when you get to those top few games it gets pretty close! This and the Doom RPGs are really the only ones at the top, I'd say.
This was fascinating! as a massive Ratchet fan since i was a young kid not knowing of this game's existence is a surreal concept but I'm very glad you've brought it to my attention. Thank you for the great video as always!
Thank _you_ for the kind words, I'm glad I could bring something new in the Ratchet series to you! I've got a few more ideas for lesser-known Ratchet topics that I'd like to cover in the next couple months, so hopefully I can do it again soon!
Hey, I was the designer on this game (I wasn't the developer spoken to, and I don't know who was). Super enthusiastic to see this video, but I want to correct a few things that you mentioned...
A) that Insomniac would regularly check in on our progress. We ended up making the game without any interaction with Insomniac, even though we would have been eager to collaborate. Sony themselves would sometimes give us feedback, but they were less familiar with the license than everyone on the team at handheld (I personally played through the first 3 games as research for this one). Specifically our producer was a big fan, and wouldn't have let us do anything other than be true to the source material.
B) that Ratchet was the last game handheld developed for Sony... We actually took over a Zorro game for them that another developer was unable to finish in time, which I ended up as designer for as well. I was told that despite Spiderman and especially Ratchet being big successes, Sony was asking for each game to be made cheaper and faster than the last, until it was no longer feasible. Otherwise our relationship with Sony was great.
It's also worth mentioning that your emulator seems to be running a little bit faster than the game was meant to, especially with regards to the rate of fire of those turrets. It shouldn't have been as fast and chaotic (given that mobile controls at that time were very cumbersome). The arena is therefore much more tense than you might be giving it credit for. I also have to respectfully disagree on the usefulness of the circuit jammer though, given that you would be playing without a joypad, it was often much more useful to have a homing weapon get enemies above or below you, rather than try to jump then turn, then attack. I find it as the best weapon for the last boss, once the outer shell has been removed. Head on, it is pretty useless, but that was the objective was always to make it an interesting niche weapon rather than a replacement for something else.
But given that competing platformers on mobile were unplayable, we ended up getting IGN awards for Wireless Platformer of the year 2005 Editors choice, as well as the same award in Player's choice. We also won best action game of 2005 from Gamespot's "mobies" awards. We really benefitted from ratchet having a triple jump and hover, which allowed the player to move forwards and jump at the same time, when most phones didn't register more than one button press at a time (you wouldn't be able to run and shoot like you were doing, which is why the melee attack moves you forward).
I was the designer on Spiderman as well, and the footage you show is footage of me playing the game on an emulator, during development... probably to show Sony our progress. Its possible that some folks still have the game or the code (I could check my hard drives). I certainly still have maps that were drawn of the environments to plan out the character path. We were looking at Symphony of the Night as a model, for an environment that involves lots of backtracking, once you get new abilities that allow you to reach previously unreachable spots. There was only one tileset though, so the art for all the areas looked pretty similar.
I was also the designer on what I think is a really good ghostbusters game that Handheld did for Sony, before Spiderman. I'm sure some that some assets and videos can still be dug up somewhere, if not the jar file itself. ua-cam.com/video/Gl1TiQAEcak/v-deo.html
Hey there, Brad! This is even more awesome info to read through, thank you for sharing! I'd tried to reach out to you as well on Twitter, when I was first putting my notes together and gathering research, so it's awesome to hear from you. I'm assuming your former co-worker may have misremembered re: Insomniac's involvement, then - I'm sure things get lost after 14+ years after all! I figured there were a few things the emulator would get a bit wrong, so I gave the game a bit of slack (or at least a bit of credit, the controls transferred incredibly well to a "real" gamepad!).
Also, on the Spider-Man footage, what a small world! I assumed it was just some random dude on the internet, that's amazing. I would've loved to be able to look at that game a bit more, it seemed like it was a very competent game too, and I'm sure there would've been some bits that were taken from it later on and used to improve Ratchet. Ah well. If you've got anything else to add about Going Mobile, I'd love to hear more about it - I only found out after posting this that Clone Home was actually _finished_ by whatever team worked on it, and that it got an incredibly limited release for about two weeks in Canada. That kind of stuff is like the holy grail for a nerd like me, so now I've got a new challenge to chase!
@@TheGoldenBolt Sadly I've never myself seen or played Clone Home. I was under the impression that Sony used our code and our editor, and just made new art and levels themselves (not that they looped us in on this plan at all)... This may have been in violation of contracts that we had with them, so I suspect that our very litigious CEO would have gone to battle with them upon learning about it. The casino level artwork in going mobile was done by an in-house Sony artist, who didn't like the art we produced, so that's why I believe that they did a lot of it in-house rather than hiring another developer... The clone home art does seem to match that visual style of higher-res photoshop art scaled down, rather than the pixel-first artwork that we were making.
Although we had a great relationship with Sony, I was under the impression that they were asking for less and less money and time for each consecutive project... which explains why the relationship fell apart, and perhaps why Sony would have felt they had no choice but to make the sequel with someone else. What a shame! I had also been asked to start some early design ideas for a Sly Cooper game we were going to pitch, but that never went very far.
Apologies for not interacting with Twitter very much, I keep forgetting my pledge to be a more active participant there. I only accidentally discovered this video while looking for promotional going home art, for my portfolio 😅
Great detective work, finding other developers and me.
I don't believe Insomniac was involved in the initial concept of the game at all. As I remember, they declined to be involved or offer feedback, whenever the opportunity was given to them. I think the initial pitch for the game was likely a collaboration between Handheld Games' CEO Thomas Fessler (who liked to pitch ideas a lot), with Handheld Games' Executive Producer Seth Rosenfeld and our Sony Producer contact Shereef Morse (the two of whom had become pretty good friends by this point, and were both usually on the same page as far as taste in games and both really knowledgeable fans of the Ratchet & Clank franchise).
Shereef at Sony had also worked with us on Spiderman, and requested to Handheld that I be the designer on the project as well, given the praise that game received. The concept given to me to work off of was that Ratchet & Clank get trapped in your phone and have to escape (It sounds a lot like the sort of ideas my CEO would pitch, and I can pretty easily reimagine him telling me this). It was Seth's insistence that we make a pun out of naming the central device "McGuffin". From there it was my responsibility to plan how that would work, and what the level content would be like. The PS2 games feature a lot of revisiting of past worlds, but since this was for mobile, we wanted to make it a little more intuitive and instead settled for something that feels more like distinct levels (even though you are actually revisiting the same level files as before, just at different starting locations). We didn't really have a lot of space to work with to make immersive and diverse areas that felt memorable and alive... so I tried to at least have memorable level themes and segments that would stand out.
Seth Rosenfeld also helped a lot with the early design, and improved a lot of my original dialog. He also played it a lot during development and pointed out where some of my levels weren't working. Shereef also did a great job standing up for the license and the project on Sony's end. Shereef used to also pitch all sorts of features to us he'd like to see, like wall climbing anti-gravity areas, leveraging code from Spiderman... but was quick to understand when it wasn't looking like it would work out.
The artist and my close friend, Ben Hopper was also a huge fan of the series, and was a great person to bounce ideas off of for enemies, environments, and even gameplay. We had to vastly reduce the scope of the vision both of us had for the project, based on the realities of mobile phones at the time (don't try the series 40 version of the game, you played the better series 60 version). I believe the Art Director and another close friend, Peter Thurwachter may have also participated in some of the art planning and creation. We also had one of my favorite engineers on the project, Jason Flegle… who without complaint, quickly and easily implemented every idea I ever pitched him. Mike Jones recorded the theme-song, and happily took many rounds of feedback until we got something we all were enthusiastic about.
A lot of the games at Handheld were built off of some previous game, which in turn was built off some game before that. Ratchet & Clank was built off the code of Spiderman, with some changes and of course with new art. Gabe (who's last name I can't seem to remember) was the engineer on that and worked with me to get a lot of the web swinging moves to look and feel good. Spiderman was built off a sidescrolling tech demo made by Joseph Bui, and I think Jin Park who were J2ME experts at the time and who didn't have another project scheduled at this time (I was busy working on ghosbusters and helping on some Nicktoons games, while their engine was coming together). I remember eating at Taco Del Mar and various Pho restaurants with Jin and Joe during this time, when the office wasn't instead playing Marvel vs Capcom 2 on our lunch breaks.
Apologies for the late reply, I think the edit/UA-cam link got your comment bumped into my spam folder and I only caught it just now. This is all incredibly fascinating info, thank you again for sharing it! I had a feeling that had I been able to play Spidey I would've noticed some inspiration and similarities, but let's just say I downloaded a dozen J2ME compilation files (totaling a few thousand games) and it just was nowhere to be found - good to know that hunch was right enough!
Reading back through that edit, I had NO idea there was a Ghostbusters game too that you guys made! Everywhere I looked listed Spider-Man and Ratchet and that's it (and I think that even includes one site that listed you as a contributor, or at least somebody using your name!). I'll have to dig into that some more; while Java certainly isn't my wheelhouse, my buddy is far more into that scene - if he's interested and can find the game I could get him in touch if you'd like!
@@TheGoldenBolt well I'll look around as well. Maybe Ghostbusters and Spiderman still exist somewhere (super great that Ratchet still does). There was also a zorro game we did, using art assets that a previous company had made (but we took over after they missed their deadlines). Zorro was such a short schedule on a mostly finished game, that I don't have much resources from it laying around.
Plugs in *Xbox* controller. "It feels like a Ratchet game."
This comment is blasphemous!
Seriously though, I had no idea this game even existed. It seems pretty cool. When does it hit Android?
Every time I try plugging my DualShocks in they like to act up, so I just went with the easy option. I almost went with my Switch Pro Controller!
Hopefully some day Sony releases a remaster or remake
How you played it? I would love to play the Game on my PC with a real controller.
@@AlryFireBlade You can play it on PC with a controler using Kemulator (a java phone emulator)
I remember playing this a bunch on my old Sony W350i and really enjoyed it, super interesting to see the history behind it. Great video! :)
Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed the video! For the short time it lasts I think it's a great little game, I wish I would've been able to try it out on an actual phone back in the day.
WHAT IS THIS!!!! A REAL GOLDEN BOLT VIDEO!!!!! THE MADMAN
I am inevitable
I'm glad I left myself pure for your video, this seems like the ideally way to experience this oddity as someone far too lazy to bother fussing with getting this game working. It's really weird seeing an actually competent licensed java game
It was surprisingly easy to get the game working, although the button mapping took a bit of work. If nothing else it's a super neat way to spend an hour!
Great, now I need to track down this game and play it ten times over
Honestly, even as surprising the quality is, I don't think I could play it more than twice before moving on, and I've played some games in the series upwards of 100 times!
I would have preferred stage music. MIDI files are tiny and compress awesomely, and can be pre-processed to compress even better. He's right about that generation phones not having a thorough support for simultaneous music and sound effects, but choice between music and sound effects was common enough.
Also real phone keypad usually doesn't have any simultaneous button capability.
Yeah, in the end I agree, I'd rather have had music for sure! But knowing how few sound effects they went with, who knows, the music might have just gotten gratingly repetitive just as quickly! I think it's one of those choices where either could've been equally rough given the platform.
I bet there'd be a hacky workaround like pitch shifting the standard weapon effect to the midi file every frame, but I have no idea on the processor specs on these java devicesm
I thought I knew everything about Ratchet and Clank. Loved this video!
I'd bet there's even more R&C surprises that I can hit you with pretty soon, too! I've got a few things cooking up in this same vein.
8:38 I laughed at the ASMR Titanium bolt whispering into my ear
1:40 ohhh my god, that footage gave me back some long lost memories:) i did play with that game, and i love it (i also played with the ratchet and clank going mobile back in the day) i remember my elder brother downloaded them from the web, and we installed it from our sd card. crazy times
there was another spiderman game for the old phones if im not mistaken, inwhcih we could play as the black spiderman, im not sure whether it was the same game or not
WE NEED ANOTHER RATCHET AND CLANK GAME!
Also we need your review of "Size Matters"
I'm hoping to get through UYA and Deadlocked (as well as a couple other Ratchet projects) this year to get me lined up for Size Matters sooner than later! I've been currently struggling on a "focus" for UYA beyond being a traditional review, because as it stands I don't have a ton that's really unique to bring to it - that spark has been on the tip of my tongue for months now. The best I got was invoking UYA to talk about CiT, but CiT is obviously waaaay too far off to make any sense for that...anyway, I digress! More Ratchet please, I agree!
Rift apart
@@TheGoldenBolt If you play size matters, play the psp version. Also the final boss is rage inducing unless you use the wrench against him
This was an awesome video - I hadn't the slightest clue that this game existed, and to see it in action along with hearing what you were able to dig up about it was quite the treat. Keep up the great work!
Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed it so much! More stuff like this will hopefully be on the way _very_ soon 😃
Nice trip to the past with unique info.
Great work there Bolt ✌😸
Thank you, my friend!
I had this on my phone back in the day! It was honestly quite fun to play on the go as a Ratchet fan
I remember the Crash of the Titans Java mobile game, and I loved the sprite work and animation on that game.
You know, I didn't even know that existed, but I'm not surprised
Well i glad to see this , I have 9 of the 17 games..still searching.. Thanks for this.
Really wish they try doing another 2D Ratchet & Clank.
Agreed! I've been trying to find the Clank browser flash game that was made to promote A Crack in Time, that's about ad close as we've gotten to a 2D Ratchet since this!
@@TheGoldenBolt Yo,just wanted to inform you that the a crack in time flash game has been recovered.
I have a video with a download link on my channel,and it can be played with Bluemaxima's Flashpoint
That's basically what the PSP games should have been instead of what we ended up getting.
Looking back there were a lot of franchises with random forgotten java phone games.
Having a backronym for McGufin is hilarious and fits right in the Ratchet and Clank universe, holy crap
I'm glad the comments section has determined the next game you have to review. Since that is out of the way, I am surprised at this game. It isn't something I personally would enjoy, but it looks pretty neat for what it is.
It's not a game I can really recommend of course, but as a piece of history it's just fascinating to me. Even still, by the low standard of Java games, it's probably in the top two or three ever released on these phones!
Imagine if this was someone’s first impression of a ratchet and clank game. This game is way above what I remember getting as games on phones and I can see myself being really into it. Just imagine then walking into a real one lol.
0:14 Wait, is the Qwark's Spin-Off Real or only a Joke?
Now this is a Minimme knock off I can get behind :)
Bolt u there
I played this game not too long ago for the first time ever after seeing it advertised for years in the back of the Ratchet Deadlocked manual and being curious about it. I played it on a Java emulator on my PSP and tried to map the buttons to work like a traditional Ratchet & Clank game. I wouldn't say it was particularly great but it was definitely an interesting experience. I'm glad somebody made an in-depth UA-cam video about it! I must have missed your Deadlocked skins somehow though because I don't remember getting a code for any. Too bad there's almost nothing of clone home on the internet. though playing the game did make me really curious to see what a side-scrolling Ratchet and Clank a game on a more powerful platform could be like.
Agreed, there's a lot of room for the series to work with in 2D, I would've loved to see more! I remember there was a Clank flash game in the style of Crack in Time's Clank missions, to promote that game, but that and Into the Nexus's Clank levels are really as close as we got sadly.
@@TheGoldenBolt Oh, didn't know about that flash game! I've been trying to play through the whole series recently, I would have played through the flash game if I'd known about it. If it's still available that is.
You're gonna love me, I think I just found a playable archive of it! I'm not home to verify that the game itself is cached but it looks like it very well might be. This stuff is like the Holy Grail for a Ratchet nerd like me! web.archive.org/web/20091115081353/ratchetandclankthegame.com/en_GB/minigame/
@@TheGoldenBolt I don't know what happened, but somehow I'm only now seeing your reply 2 years later! Regardless I do appreciate it, I definitely want to check it out! And if you do still happen to see this reply 2 years later, I just made a very interesting discovery! There's another version of Ratchet & Clank Going Mobile that if I assume is for the lesser powerful mobile phones of the day and seems to be like a more stripped down version of Going Mobile! It's more or less the same game but the levels, UI, menus and some dialog are all different!
There are some truly impressive J2ME games, the Sonic 1 port in particular comes to mind, but this one is a gem and stands out compared to most other Java games that was released for the platform.
Ah, Going Mobile. I remember seeing this game on the back of the manual for my copy of Ratchet Deadlocked, but never knew what it was about because I didn't have a Java Phone like all the cool kids had, I just figured it was a Going Commando style game or something.
I used to look at that manual all the time, every now and then I'd even text that number to see if my phone magically became compatible. It was even on the back cover of the ToD manual, two years later!
I always wanted to play Going Mobile, it gives me “My Blaster Runs Hot” vibes but as a side scroller.
knew of this game but never played it either, i just remember staring at the ad on the back of my UYA booklet and wanting a phone really bad just so i could play it
I swear someone should start a search for that spiderman java mobile game.. cuz frankly it's a part of history.
I would like to add that some phones had a circular d-pad, and the game did in fact take advantage of that. At least on my Motorola E815
Im a fan of R&C in general I'm glad theres still people who like these games ☺️
You and me both, my friend!
You earned a sub
Thanks so much, I'm glad to have you on board! Obviously not every video will be Ratchet-related but I do plan to come back to the series a couple more times sooner rather than later!
i actually played this game a lot as a kid and completed it, was fun for what it was
With how cool I’ve seen roms work imagine if someone made this playable on a GBA
I still await your retrospectives on Size Matters and Secret Anent Clank. I'm currently playing through the series while watching your videos, and I was sad to see you have yet to cover them. So far if I had to rate them, it would be 2>3>DL>SM>F:AQfB>1>F:ToD>SAC.
I remember playing this game when I was 4 on my moms flip phone in the car
Quick update: I can confirm that Clone Home was made by Javaground,since Steven Lawson,one of the companies employees has a Ratchet and Clank game listed under projects made by Javaground.
I have a sheet with all the progress made to find the game,wich i'll share in a reply.
Clone Home progress sheet: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1CGU_3w2g7fMGVad17iOA3yERFcN91X5cO5PCBtWWDZo/edit?usp=drivesdk
I discovered this a while ago, but clone home actually finished development. I managed to contact a Javaground employee and thats what they said. This makes the cancelation even more strange. Why cancel a game wich has already gone golden?
Wow, amazing! You're doing God's work and nobody's even seen it! Since the game actually got finished, it would be awesome if somebody could actually realease it on the internet so we could actually play it!
@@Inujake7 We are incredibly close now. We managed to contact a developer who extracted a copy of the game from their old phone, but it was encrypted, so someone from the Ratchet and Clank modding server bought the same kind of phone to figure out the encryption
@@sgoc9499 Oh, that's great! Let me know if it works!
I love this game so much as a kid.
I'd play the shit outta of this if i had it back then .
I have the old advertisement for this game hanging on my wall in my bedroom
Nice, that's probably a rare poster at this point!
You have an image?
I've been trying to get any image i can of those
@@sgoc9499 its in my closet, im in school rn
@@Waspinvr oh ok
I relate to that intro too hard
Man, Java phone games were weird as hell. Some were surprisingly good, though. I remember riding out the bulk of Hurricane Ike by huddling up in a safe spot of my parents' place and playing Tetris on my old flip phone!
Tetris calms all storms, it's a proven fact. In my search for that missing Spider-Man game, I ended up finding a massive filedump of about 500 other Java games, so there's _definitely_ a lot of weird still out there!
I thought I remembered there being a sequel to this game. I tried looking it up and couldn't find anything. It's good to know I wasn't actually losing my mind. 😅
Now I'll just need find a way to play this one...
I just remember when I was playing up your arsenal there was a flier for the game in the case where you text a code to a number and it downloaded the game on my dads phone and he was mad at me because he thought I bought it
Am I the only one who would love a 2.5D or sprite based Ratchet and Clank game with an actual budget behind it? I always imagined something like that would play a bit like Mega Turrican on the Genesis.
Anyone else heard of the lost sequel to this called Clone Home?
I don't know WHY the fuck I remember that but it just popped into my head. I think I might have been seen it on a list of RAC games on wikipedia or the table at the end of a wikipedia page
DAMN RIGHT MY NAME BETTER BE THERE
You know it!
I remember playing this in my flip phone
You're lucky, I tried SO hard to get this game on my crappy little Nokia back in the day!
I loved that spiderman 2 game!
The weird thing is that this game would probably do pretty well today! Thanks to the Indie-Verse Side scrollers have made a comeback!
Man, I’d love a modern fan made port of this game to pc. Give it minor quality of life changes and it looks like it’d be fun
I still have this game in my nokia
Oh shit I remember that game. Nostalgia!
i still conserve my old phone just because i have that game installed on it^^
I honestly would love a fully 3d quark game
honestly, they should make this a actual insomniac game. remember the vid comic lvls in up your arsenal? they should make it in that style, ps4 graphics, and sell it on pan for like 10 bucks. Bam! Not only would I finally be able to play this game but it will be considered canon as well!
I'd love a modern 2d Ratchet metroidvania.
I remember playing ratchet and clank on ps3 5 years ago
I would have played this back in the day!
as kid a Friend send me this with bluetooth , played a lot on my sony ericsson
I'm not sure if you will see my comment, but I have been hearing some rumors that a Playstation All Stars Sequel might be in development for the launch of the PS5. I thought you should know!
I've heard the rumblings too! I don't think I really believe them though, the original source referred to a 4chan leak without actually showing the leak, then moved onto a roster wishlist, which itself misspelled "roster" as "poster." The PSAS fandom has done this before in hopes that it'll drum interest and _actually_ lead to a game, so until it's actually announced I won't get my hopes up!
So cool!
Whens the before the nexus video?
I'm not gonna lie, I remember seeing screenshots of this game, but I thought it was a Newgrounds game
The sprite for Ratchet here almost certainly _was_ used in some flash game at some point, I remember seeing the sprite sheets online back in the day!
I still play this game xD
Just download the game at the internet and search for a jar emulator. It's still fun.
I agree, for the short time it lasts it's a fun little time!
@@TheGoldenBolt we need to find clone home
Now that I know it's actually a finished product, I'm planning on searching for the mysterious developer! There's not a ton of hope but if even one person has their old hard drives saved there's a chance
@@TheGoldenBolt true
@@TheGoldenBolt hi! This is a very late reply lol. Do you have any news about this game? I talked with the music artist who made the soundtrack for Going Mobile (he was hard to find because he isn't in the credits) long story short even he didn't know which studio made clone home and he never got asked for making music for another part. So this game is actually a big mystery xD
Who really cares if your game contradicts Size Matters? Size Matters did not care for other games, and the PS3 titles did not care for Size Matters.
When will the UYA review come out?
Right now, I'm trying to gather my exact thoughts in a way that's more interesting than just a review, and UYA is such a big game for me personally that I've been struggling to get it _juuust_ right. I'm hoping to tackle one or two other Ratchet things before UYA this summer, so hopefully UYA will be mid- to late-summer?
Don't give Ratchet a phone unless it has this game
Love it!!!!!
Ah time to do fun research ❤
1.3.24
Just asking, have y'all ever play Before the Nexus? Can it still be played rn?
I played it a couple years ago, worked fine except the feature to transfer raritanium to Into the Nexus no longer works.
@@Inujake7 it got removed from Play Store, maybe because it's only suitable for Android 2 or like that (same with iOS, but with their version) and nowadays, most phone use Android 10
@@Inujake7 well, I can only watch it via UA-cam then ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I've actually bought this before for my Moto Razr. I bought like 4 cellphone games despite what a ripoff I knew they'd be.
HOLY FUCKING SHIT I HAD COMPLETEKY FORGOTTEN ABOUT THAT SPIDERMAN GAME! I ony played the demo because I didn't find the game all that great but still...cool
Do you still have the demo?
Man it would be way funnier if we used ⌗ instead of #
Where do you enter the cheat code for the skins?
No offense but what made you do this game but not BTN or Size Matters?
Do a review on the God of War mobile game.
I'll probably defer to minimme on that one, Java stuff is far more his style than mine - but if he wants me to hop on with him I'm always happy to!
I actually like before the nexus for being creative and and simple
8:33 🤣
He sounded so plucky 5 years ago
Is there a PS port at all for this game or nah?
Sadly not. The best option is to emulate it on an Android
@@sgoc9499 Gotcha. Thanks
You can download a mobile phone emulator to your PSP and play it that way, that's what did! You can even remap the buttons to be more like a traditional Ratchet and Clank game. Closest thing to an official PlayStation port you'll get. I suppose you could also try playing it through an emulator on the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play phone, which has PlayStation buttons on it.
@@Inujake7 Yeah I have an iPhone and a PS Vita heh
I have a leaflet from rachet and clank 3 about this game you have to text rachet to 88888. Probably dont work and not sure if thats the number. I know it was gamster or something. I will look for the leaflet
I just re ently got it on an emulator
👍
at the time i wanted to play this but i had a shiity cell phone. lol
How are you able to play this game today?
An emulator
Lol I think now is the good time for them to actually make a "Ratchet and Clank mobile"
Since everything is going to mobile
Lol.... hopefully it won't be infested with 9yo kids