Croc 3: Stone of the Gobbos [Cancelled (Rumor) – PSX / PS2 / XBOX / GameCube]

Croc 3: Stone of the Gobbos [Cancelled (Rumor) – PSX / PS2 / XBOX / GameCube]

Update: OldClassicGamer sent us some info to prove that these info about Croc 3 are fake, so we’ll just leave this page as a “rumor” to let people to still find the original story and the updated info. Here is what OldClassicGamer wrote:

 I don’t know who sent you that info but whoever did it was not from Argonoaut and was probably someone with too much free time since he came with all those details.

Where is my proof? Well, first of all, here is website: www.storybox.club
This is new game from creators of Croc and they are asking for donations. They promised they will include Croc characters in-game if they get enough donated money. Here are more details you can read first post and find out everything.

Story Box developers do not own the IP, but they are currently contacting Jez to see if they can get permission to use Croc characters in their game called Story Box. Jez San is founder of Argonaut. Here, you can read all the info about Jez: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3965937.stm

And two final evidences I have are conversations with Story Box developers and Zenimax. I will attach screenshots in email as a proof. So if Zenimax confirmed themselves that they never owned Croc, then the whole story and Croc 3 playable build that cannot be leaked because Zenimax is not allowing it is fake. I would like to ask you nicely to take down that article because it is spreading lies and it can damage potentially new Croc games that will come after Story Box is successful.

Also, if game was started being developed in 2001, then how come no info was known even in 2004 befor Argonaut bankrupt. The truth is, Croc 3 was going to happen but they only started talking about it in 2004, before they went bankrupt. Prototype for game was never created since game was never in developement.

What do you think about this? Leave your comment below!

Original post:

The original Croc is a platform game published by Fox Interactive and developed by Argonaut Software (AKA Argonaut Games) in 1997 for the PlayStation and Sega Saturn. A sequel, Croc 2, was released in 1999 but the third chapter of the series was never released, even if development was started. The game was called Croc 3: Stone of the Gobbos (also known as Croc 3: Barons Revenge and Croc 3: Croc Returns! during development). It was to launch on Playstation 2, Gamecube and Xbox in 2005. The game would of been a direct sequel to the events of Croc 2, and would feature 2 player on all 3 platforms. In this game, Croc was to yet again, be faced with stopping Baron Dante and saving the Gobbos. However this time Dante has a spell that is not able to be stopped unless Croc finds the Sacred “Stone of the Gobbos”.

Sadly after Argonaut Software closed in 2004, the IP for Croc was sold to Zenimax Media Inc, and Zenimax Media had Mud Duck Productions continue development of Croc 3: Stone Of The Gobbos. However, the game was cancelled after trouble with the developer and thus, ended the Croc Franchise.

The world shown in the render below is the Croc 3 castle hub. In Croc 3, rather than the former games, Argonaut Software were using Full Explorable Hub Worlds sorta like Spyro The Dragon. This way it was more easy for younger kids to play the game. Some of the Croc 3 inspiration was coming from Spyro Year Of The Dragon (One of the biggest being hub worlds with portals).

croc 3 cancelled

Croc 3 started development in the summer of 2001. Argonaut Software had split into three teams to work on their big games, Malice (Which started development in the 90`s but later bumped dev up to PS2), other small projects (like Carve), and Croc 3. Croc 3 was having trouble finding a publisher. They had contacted Fox, and they wanted no part of Croc 3 due to the sales of Croc 2. Argonaut then contacted EA and they said they would publish it, but their fees were too high. The Publisher they stuck with was Activision, who said they would publish it and help Argonaut work around their budget. With a team of only 10 people working on the project, Croc 3 went through many changes.

First it was in development for Dreamcast, Playstation, Playstation 2, Xbox, Gamecube and PC, however with the failing sales of Dreamcast (And due to Croc 2 never appearing on sega), Argonaut stopped working on the Dreamcast version and focused more on the PS,PS2,XB and GC versions. They later cancelled the PC version as well.

The next problem Argonaut ran into was the voice actor for croc had no wish to return to the role. So they would need to recast. The engine they were developing on was an unstable version of their in house engine, BRender, which also powered Malice and a couple of other Argonaut games. This version was a new updated one exclusive to Croc 3 to allow for certain things to try to push the 4 consoles to their limits.

What started to take more time was the Playstation 1 version. This was due to the fact that Argonaut were using croc 1/2 version of BRender because BRender for Croc 3 was not compatible on Playstation 1 due to the “Next Gen” graphics. The new console versions would feature top of the line graphics developed in house to push them to their limits, while the PS1 version was simply the same graphics as croc 2. The reason Argonaut were insisting to release Croc 3 on PS1 was to keep the trilogy in line with each other on Playstation. The series was always planned as a trilogy and the third was supposed to be the final one.

Croc 3 on PS2, GC and Xbox would of been 2 player. Player 1 was Croc, and player 2 was a new crocodile named Ginger, who was a love interest to croc. (Kinda like a Amy/Sonic relationship). To appease players who hated multiplayer, Ginger would only appear in the story IF you were in 2 player. If not, she would disappear. As for the soundtrack, Justin Scharvona from croc 1, who composed the C1 soundtrack would make a return to compose it in this game.
Thanks to former Argonaut Employees from the Croc 3 Team for the contribution!


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24 thoughts on “Croc 3: Stone of the Gobbos [Cancelled (Rumor) – PSX / PS2 / XBOX / GameCube]

  1. Haruka

    This is a wonderful piece of information about the canceled Croc 3, that nobody had any idea of how it consisted. Thank you so much for sharing this!

    The close of Argonaut Software back in 2004 was a shock for me, since I was and I still am a very big Croc fan.

  2. rogerscameron95

    Mono will update the post eventually, as I had a guy im in contact with from the former croc 3 dev team email him.

    Croc 3 was also planned for Playstation and Dreamcast.
    However, dreamcast was discontinued during croc 3 development, ultimately ending that development.

    The other, playstation, would of released on time in 2005 as one of the final PS1 games.
    However as it was, Croc 3 was cancelled due to the company closing. Eventually though, zenimax bought the license because they got interested. Mud Duck was given greenlight to complete the development, but mud duck was taking too long and making little progress. So with that, Croc 3 was canned by Zenimax, which was also fatal for mud duck which in time closed them because croc 3 got canned.

    Very very shameful. I loved this series and would of at least loved to of had a final game. Croc 3 was going to end the series anyways. (James told me it was planned as a trilogy from the get go).

    James has a proto but he is legally not allowed to show info on it because zenimax contacted him and told him that he cant share it just incase they decide to in the future revive croc for future use. So he cant share much, only a possible very very small amount of images, but he can share info.

  3. Forte Wily

    Hello there. I run a Croc-specific website, and was pointed to this article by a member of my site’s forum. I was skeptical to say the least of the original version of this article, as it did not stack up against the facts. Another member pointed out that the article has since been changed, and as it still doesn’t jive with the facts, I feel compelled to comment on it.

    Now, I should qualify this by noting that as a youngster, I was such a Croc fan that I won a contest run by a UK magazine, in which the prize was an all-expenses-paid trip to visit Argonaut Software Ltd., and see and play the then-release-candidate version of Croc 2 (specifically, the one from early May, which exhibited a few small bugs that were to be fixed prior to sending the game to Sony for approval a few days later). The crew there were lovely, and after this event, I remained in contact with some of them for several years.

    I hate to begin with something for which I do not have a citation, especially since I’m commenting on a suspicious article that has none itself, but my last contact with the company was in late 2004, a couple of months before Argonaut went bust, at which time I enquired as to whether another Croc game would ever be seen. I received a response – but sadly never saw any reason to keep it after Argonaut went under, or else I would provide it (I’ll make up for this in the rest of my comment!) – which basically stated that it was something under consideration, and would most likely be for the PlayStation 2 “now that it’s getting into younger hands”, or otherwise one of the two then-new handheld platforms (the Nintendo DS and the Sony PlayStation Portable), which Argonaut had at that time just added mention to their website of being licensed to develop for. My understanding from what was said (I’ve paraphrased it above to the best of my recollection) was that the PlayStation 2 was being considered because older siblings were moving to other hardware (or had little time for gaming at all due to growing up) and the consoles were being handed down to the group that was considered to be the target market for the Croc games.

    That said, what I learned back then is corroborated by some posts made by a chap called Borman here, who seems to have encountered information that matches up to the e-mail I had – http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/showthread.php?45494-Croc-3-may-soon-leak .

    With that out of the way, I would like to comment on particular points of note from the article on this site;

    “A sequel, Croc 2, was released in 1999 but the third chapter of the series was never released, even if development was started. The game was called Croc 3: Stone of the Gobbos (also known as Croc 3: Barons Revenge and Croc 3: Croc Returns! during development). It was to launch on Playstation 2, Gamecube and Xbox in 2005.” – A 2005 release date would have been very difficult indeed, since the very notion of it was only being *considered* in late 2004!

    “The game would of been a direct sequel to the events of Croc 2, and would feature 2 player on all 3 platforms. In this game, Croc was to yet again, be faced with stopping Baron Dante and saving the Gobbos. However this time Dante has a spell that is not able to be stopped unless Croc finds the Sacred “Stone of the Gobbos”.” – This is some interesting fan-fiction, but as far as I’m aware, that’s all it is.

    “Sadly after Argonaut Software closed in 2004, the IP for Croc was sold to Zenimax Media Inc, and Zenimax Media had Mud Duck Productions continue development of Croc 3: Stone Of The Gobbos. However, the game was cancelled after trouble with the developer and thus, ended the Croc Franchise.” – This is easily proven to be incorrect – http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3965937.stm . The IP was never sold to anyone else after Argonaut met its end. As this BBC News article points out, one week after Argonaut went bust, Jez San bought back most of the company and its assets. This included two satellite companies, and the Croc franchise. He then had one of the satellite companies – Morpheme Mobile Ltd. – make a new Croc game, “Croc Mobile: Jungle Rumble”, which was released a few months later. It was a mobile telephone title, as, back in 2004 and 2005, some were claiming that this was the future (they were, perhaps, ahead of their time).

    I was contacted about this at the time, and posted a note of it on my Croc website’s forum on January 6th 2005 – http://crocfans.proboards.com/thread/34/page/1/croc-returns .

    Below are some archived links to support the above information/dates further;

    http://web.archive.org/web/20050421032928/http://www.morpheme.co.uk/ – Morpheme’s website in early 2005. This is the first archive I could find showing Croc Mobile: Jungle Rumble (see the sidebar at the left).

    And – http://web.archive.org/web/20051219132332/http://www.morpheme.co.uk/game.jsp?projectId=23 – This is the first archive of the Croc Mobile: Jungle Rumble project page, also from 2005.

    http://web.archive.org/web/20051026180732/http://www.morpheme.co.uk/jr_microsite/index.html – To further show that the rights were not sold to Zenimax, here is the Croc Mobile: Jungle Rumble micro-site, complete with the copyright data. Note that it belonged to Morpheme Mobile Ltd.; Had the rights been sold to someone else, licensing information would have been mentioned here, but they weren’t sold to anyone else, so they’re simply correctly attributed to Jez San’s company.

    http://web.archive.org/web/20060409070546/http://www.morpheme.co.uk/ – Morpheme’s website in 2006. This is the first archive showing Croc Mobile Pinball.

    And the earliest archive I could find of the Croc Mobile Pinball project page – http://web.archive.org/web/20060513184233/http://www.morpheme.co.uk/game.jsp?projectId=25 .

    http://web.archive.org/web/20060306230826/http://www.morpheme.co.uk/newsletter7/index.html – This is a 2006 Morpheme newsletter, announcing Croc Mobile: Volcanic Panic, which was a sequel to Croc Mobile: Jungle Rumble.

    As you can see, the Croc series went on well past 2004!

    Regarding Mud Duck Productions, they have been a publisher for several years, and the last game they ever developed was released a year before Argonaut went bust, which makes it seem unlikely that they would have been involved with developing Croc 3, even if we ignore the fact that the game never began development at all, and that the rights remained with Jez San after Argonaut met its untimely demise.

    As noted above, I hate giving information for which I cannot provide a citation, but in 2007, I was contacted by Morpheme Mobile Ltd. and offered some Croc promotional items (posters, banners, and that Croc standee that used to stand in Argonaut’s lobby – I’m sure someone from Morpheme, if they saw this, could verify that they allowed me to have these items) that they were removing from their offices, because they weren’t making any further Croc Mobile games and no longer needed to promote them. When I arrived to collect them, they mentioned that the rights were now back with Jez San personally. As far as I’m aware, that’s where they still are.

    In fact… http://www.zenimax.com/legal_info.htm – Argonaut’s only link with Zenimax is this. Zenimax merely published a couple of Argonaut’s Xbox games – albeit in North America only – before Argonaut went bust.

    “The world shown in the render below is the Croc 3 castle hub. In Croc 3, rather than the former games, Argonaut Software were using Full Explorable Hub Worlds sorta like Spyro The Dragon. This way it was more easy for younger kids to play the game. Some of the Croc 3 inspiration was coming from Spyro Year Of The Dragon (One of the biggest being hub worlds with portals).” – But Croc 2 had these hub worlds, already. Moreover, the image provided isn’t especially convincing – it isn’t difficult to apply an “oil paint” filter to something in order to obscure its origins, after all.

    “Croc 3 started development in the summer of 2001.” – Not according to the e-mail exchange I had in 2004, which, as noted earlier, is corroborated by those posts by Borman that I linked to above.

    “Croc 3 was having trouble finding a publisher.” – Not at all likely. Fox Interactive, as far as I know, would have continued publishing Croc titles, as the series had been a good seller.

    “They had contacted Fox, and they wanted no part of Croc 3 due to the sales of Croc 2.” – This is not likely. Croc 2 sold over one million copies, and whilst this is less than Croc: Legend of the Gobbos’ 3 to 4 million, it’s still nothing to sneeze at!

    “First it was in development for Dreamcast, Playstation, Playstation 2, Xbox, Gamecube and PC, however with the failing sales of Dreamcast (And due to Croc 2 never appearing on sega), Argonaut stopped working on the Dreamcast version and focused more on the PS,PS2,XB and GC versions. They later cancelled the PC version as well.” – To the best of my knowledge, Argonaut dropped support for the Dreamcast in 2000, after releasing only two games for it. The Dreamcast port of Croc 2 would have been their third. There is very little chance that a further Croc game would have been developed for the Dreamcast after the Dreamcast port of Croc 2 was cancelled ( http://uk.ign.com/articles/2000/08/04/fox-confirms-croc-2-cancellation ), as, if my memory serves me correctly, that port was meant to test the waters on the machine for games like that. It’s self-evident that it didn’t work out.

    “The next problem Argonaut ran into was the voice actor for croc had no wish to return to the role. So they would need to recast.” – This is highly unlikely. As Nic Cusworth (lead designer of Croc: Legend of the Gobbos), under his handle “medulla”, commented here – http://crocfans.proboards.com/thread/8/ginger-soda – Jonathan Aris was proud of his work.

    “What started to take more time was the Playstation 1 version. This was due to the fact that Argonaut were using croc 1/2 version of BRender because BRender for Croc 3 was not compatible on Playstation 1 due to the “Next Gen” graphics. The new console versions would feature top of the line graphics developed in house to push them to their limits, while the PS1 version was simply the same graphics as croc 2.” – It was only ever considered for the PlayStation 2, and possibly the then-new DS and PSP, for which Argonaut had just recently become licensed to develop for in late 2004.

    “The reason Argonaut were insisting to release Croc 3 on PS1 was to keep the trilogy in line with each other on Playstation. The series was always planned as a trilogy and the third was supposed to be the final one.” – This is incorrect. The series was not planned to be a trilogy at all, to the very best of my knowledge and personal experience. When I visited Argonaut, as noted at the beginning of my comment, myself and the others present were informed at one point during the studio tour that Croc: Legend of the Gobbos (the first game) came about as a result of re-working a Yoshi game (described to us as a “dinosaur racing game”) for the SNES CD. I have a note of this on my website: http://croc.5u.com/facts.htm ; This page was later commented on – and, where necessary, corrected by (and you’ll note that no correction was raised with regard to the Yoshi game note) – Nic Cusworth: http://crocfans.proboards.com/thread/8/ginger-soda . The first Croc game got a sequel because it sold well, not because any trilogy was planned, and Croc 2’s credits hint at more games because it, too, was expected to be successful, as I understand it. Moreover, the fact that three more Croc titles were made after Croc 2/Argonaut going bust/Jez San buying back Argonaut’s assets would seem to disprove the notion that they intended to stop making them.

    “Croc 3 on PS2, GC and Xbox would of been 2 player. Player 1 was Croc, and player 2 was a new crocodile named Ginger, who was a love interest to croc. (Kinda like a Amy/Sonic relationship). To appease players who hated multiplayer, Ginger would only appear in the story IF you were in 2 player. If not, she would disappear.” – As with the earlier part about the game’s title, plot, and so on, this is some interesting fan-fiction, but there is nothing proving that it is any more than that, and a number of things suggesting that it is just that.

    “As for the soundtrack, Justin Scharvona from croc 1, who composed the C1 soundtrack would make a return to compose it in this game.” – This is the only likely comment in the entire article. ;)

    “Thanks to former Argonaut Employees from the Croc 3 Team for the contribution!” – It would certainly be interesting to know who these team members are…

    I note that the comment above mine seems to allude to some involvement with this article, so I’d like to comment on a couple of things about that, too, if that’s quite alright;

    “Eventually though, zenimax bought the license because they got interested.” – As noted above, with citations, after Argonaut went bust, Jez San bought it all back.

    “Mud Duck was given greenlight to complete the development, but mud duck was taking too long and making little progress. So with that, Croc 3 was canned by Zenimax, which was also fatal for mud duck which in time closed them because croc 3 got canned.” – But Zenimax never owned Croc, and Mud Duck are still around… http://www.mudduckgames.com/

    “James has a proto but he is legally not allowed to show info on it because zenimax contacted him and told him that he cant share it just incase they decide to in the future revive croc for future use. So he cant share much, only a possible very very small amount of images, but he can share info.” – I’m sorry to say that, as I’m sure many on a site such as this have, I’ve heard the “I know a person who has a prototype but isn’t allowed to share it, but can tell you stuff about it” yarn more times than I can count (I’m amazed that it still keeps on going!). Given all of the information and citations provided above, I would have to say that I find the existence of a prototype of a game that was only talked about by its owners, that’s supposedly come from a company that didn’t buy the rights to it because the owners of the rights kept them, with the non-owners asking for the prototype not to be talked about, in case they revive a franchise that they don’t own in the future, to be very unlikely, I’m afraid.

    1. monokoma Post author

      Thanks a lot for all these info Forte! We often get info from developers that wants to remain anonymous, so we cannot share our source and also we cannot be sure if the source has the correct information, so your help is welcome! :D

  4. Forte Wily

    Your anonymity policy is very sensible. It’s just a shame that it seems to be being taken advantage of in this case, in order to create an article that seems to be a complete work of fiction.

    Anyway, I’m glad to have been able to provide you some facts, with citations. ;)

    1. rogerscameron95

      This is actually not fiction. If you go digging in some old posts on Assembler, there was a former employee of the company who verified (Via ID) he was a member of the Croc 3 dev team. This game was really in development, but due to the issues arising with them around 03-04 they kept it low profile. And yes, Zenimax does own croc. They were one of the people who bought Argonaut stocks. There was an Article about it on Joystiq long ago.

      1. OCG

        I won’t post it here publically but I would really like if I could talk with you about this on instant messaging site. Google Hangouts or something like that perhaps?

  5. Nic Cusworth

    Hi all… I was the lead designer on Croc 1/2 and just wanted to let you know that the closest Croc 3 got to development was a 2 page proposal I put together for an XBOX sequel. I left the company about 9 months or so before it went under and was in close contact with a lot of the people that worked there and I’m pretty sure they would have told me if something was in development. It also would have looked a lot better than the screen shot above :)

    As for the rights, Jez definitely owns them. And yes – I’d love to make another Croc game!

    Nic.

      1. Nic Cusworth

        I remember it well. It took the form of some demo videos put together by Pete Day who was the Lead Animator on Croc 1/2. It was part racing, part platformer and saw Yoshi running through iconic Mario environments that were rendered in 3D. It actually looked a lot like Mario 64 in terms of style but long before anyone had seen anything of Mario 64.

        We had a good relationship with Nintendo but my guess would be they already had Mario 64 in production and it would be a competing product. I’ve always wondered what the reception was at Nintendo to seeing the demo as (well as memory serves me) did look very similar.

        We were working on tech for the Saturn and PS1 at the time and didn’t have access to the N64 yet so once the Nintendo deal was a no go, Croc was born on the Saturn as something completely different to the released game :) He had a head for a start! :D

        1. monokoma Post author

          Do you think Pete or someone else could still have a copy of that Yoshi demo video? It would be great to preserve it :) Here’s our email for every need: [email protected]
          We have a page about beta Croc, but i have to update it one day, i saved some old concept arts that could be archived in there too (and i just found out that the beta videos in there are broken, i hope to have a backup somewhere :O )

          1. Nic Cusworth

            Unfortunately I’m not in touch with Pete anymore and I don’t have copies of the Yoshi demo vids…. I will ask around to see if anyone else has them!

  6. Ross Sillifant

    Message for Nic:

    Hi, huge thanks for the info.

    According to Dave Stalker (Fox Interactive) Croc actually started out in 1994 with the original concept of it being a Dinosuar based racing game (multiplayer) but at same time, Argonaut’s R+D development group had come up with a game engine that could deliver ‘full 3D at 30 FPS’, which would ideal for players to have full freedom to explore a game world, so 2 ideas were brought together.

    Work started on Croc in Oct’95 well before anyone had seen Mario 64.

    Even when it was decided to be a 3D Platform game, lead role was still open, various ideas inc:Dino’s, Hippo’s, Rodents, Aliens etc.

    Any truth to any/all of these claims?.

    1. Nic Cusworth

      I think the dinosaur racer was the Yoshi demo (Yoshi is a dinosaur). Those demos would have been around that time. It’s hard to remember when Fox Interactive go involved in Croc (it was a LONG time ago), however I seem to remember that Mitsui were the original publisher but decided that they weren’t strong enough to publish in the US so Fox picked up the game and also EA published (with Fox) in Europe.

      The first iteration of Croc was running as a Saturn tech demo but he went through a few subtle changes before the final version you see in the game. I’m not actually sure how the choice of character came about as the tech demo was really just Lewis and Tony (Croc programmers) testing out the system. But he was a Croc from pretty much day one. I’m sure there were discussions about if it was the right creature or not – but we never implemented any other characters.

      FYI: The Saturn tech demo was Croc running down snowy half pipes I seem to remember… a bit like the Snow level in Croc 2 when you’re on top of the snowball.

      The game started to come together when we moved over to the PS1 and started building the editor and scripting language (which went on to power a bunch of Argonauts PS1 games – and the scripting language was used all the way up to the final projects, but heavily modified).

      We really hadn’t got a clue how we were going to build the worlds so we took the approach of a 2D tile system used for 2D platformers and gave it a 3rd dimension.

      What was great about the engine is you could get levels up and running really quickly via the editor and the scripts. I’d literally have an idea in the evening and then build it the next day. A lot of the later levels (in the castle) came from pushing what the scripting language could do.

      It was an interesting time because there weren’t really any 3D platformers when we started work on the game. Jumping Flash would have been the closest example. So we were developing Croc and at the same time we’d start to see all these different approaches – like Crash’s highly detailed but linear approach and then ultimately Mario 64 which blew us all away. It was a very different approach and not something that was achievable on the PS1 at the time. I’m sure towards the end of it’s life cycle, once all the tricks had been discovered you could get something close to it.

      I’m rambling now :)

      1. monokoma Post author

        Thanks a lot for your memories Nic, you are the best :) I’m super happy when developers help to preserve lost memories from their old games <3

      2. Apples555

        Nic,

        I don’t know if you will ever read this, but I was always very curious about the Saturn port and why it was so different from the other ports. It was released later, but appears to be based on a different version entirely. It just doesn’t look like Croc was developed on PS1 then ported to Saturn and PC as commonly believed.

        Thank you for your time and your memories.

  7. Ross Sillifant

    Huge thanks Nic, you ramble away, please.Nothing beats insider info.

    Were you at Argonauts during the 3DO/CD-i/Jaguar era? i have to ask, as Jez San’s memory seems to be all over the shop :-) 1st saying Argonaut never did any Jaguar CD games, as platform too risky, now all he can remember of Creature Shock is it was their 1st CD Game., it’s been claimed Creature Shock on Jag CD was’nt started, was, but not very much done, it was nearly finished etc etc.So far we’ve had Jez YES/No..err, hazy..Edge and RG interviews (good few years apart), Alexander Holland, Mike Fulton converting generic FMV from it, Darryl Still saying Atari could’nt sign Jez up as a Jaguar developer.

    If you or anyone you know could add an extra voice, it’d be much appreciated.

    As for 1st 3D platformer on PS1, Mev Dinc makes similar claim with Hodja, him, Rowlands, Raff Cecco etc.Seems there could of been 2 Pre-Mario 64 platformers out if things had been different.

    1. Nic Cusworth

      Wow – Mev Dinc isn’t a name I heard in a long time. I’m not familiar with what they were working on but I remember Street Racer being a lot of fun.

      I’m definitely not claiming we were the first to do a 3D platformer. I seem to remember Bubsy 3D came out during Croc’s development and probably a few others. I do remember discussions coming up during the Super FX era about how we would make a platform game work in 3D but I’m not sure what we could have achieved on that hardware… would be a good game jam challenge. 3D platformer in less than 200 polys :D

      As for the Jag. I know we had dev kit/s. I remember them coming in. I remember the tech department were looking at them but I’m not sure they went out to the dev teams. Creature Shock was being ported to anything with a CD and I do think porting work probably started for the Jag.

      I can’t speak for Jez but I would assume it never surfaced for a few reasons. We were probably asking a bunch of money for the port and also Jez was smart in always seeing the next thing, and the Jag wasn’t it.

      Creature Shock was an interesting project and definitely of it’s time. Wouldn’t say it was a great game by any stretch of the imagination but I remember seeing a very early demo of it when I did my interview Argonaut and it was like nothing I’d ever seen before. I was a big fan of Galaxian 3 at the time and we did some development on a game a bit like that, with FMV backgrounds and polys overlaid but it never saw the light of day.

  8. Ross Sillifant

    JS: We developed Red Dog for the DC, but we’re not working on any other DC games at this time. And no, we do not intend to develop more for the DC, as there is little or no publisher interest in doing so. Even the staunch DC supporters have stopped. As a developer, we know the machine intimately and would love to continue, but without publisher support, the format is doomed.
    Croc 2 isn’t being developed on the DC, sorry. It was canned because there was discussion as to how economic it would be to produce a PC port versus a new game engine. We are a cross platform company, but we are not developing any more Dreamcast games. [The primary reason is] because of how dismally the system has done, and particularly how badly our game Red Dog was marketed by Sega. We are 100 percent focused on the currently successful formats such as the PC, the PS2, and soon, the Xbox and the Dolphin.

    Jez there talking to Gamespot about why no Croc 2 on DC.

  9. Daniel Rasmussen

    I was alerted to this article by rogerscameron95 who also goes by ccrogers15. He contacted me over Facebook about this a couple years ago to quash this rumor and I never got back to him or commented here so I feel like I should so people don’t finger him as being the one who made this up. Croc 3 Stone Of The Gobbos was not an official title by argonaut games.
    Here’s the full story:
    I was 25 years old when I originally published this rumor on assembler games. I was trying to gain attention for a title I was developing at the time which would have heavily been inspired by Croc. As a way of building interest for croc again, I made up this rumor to build hype so if I went forward with this croc inspired game, people would have interest in the game due to its similarities. It was a plan that was executed poorly (sorry, I was young and dumb). I was fresh out of college and had a major in game design and was going to basically take advantage of Croc and use it to my advantage for my game. I made up the croc stone of the Gobbos rumor on assembler games forums (now defunct) and rogerscameron95/ccrogers15, who was 16 or 17 at the time, believed it as he was just a kid and spread the rumor around. One of the places he spread it to was this site (unseen64) after he contacted the webmaster. He was young and didn’t know and I had lied about it and made him believe me. That image shown in the article was also made by me. It was a random castle model I took from some 3D model site and placed it on the ground and took a screenshot. The engine was literally Unity3D. I manipulated that kid into spreading my rumor for me as a way to build hype and I apologize. I came out to the kid later on and told him I made it up and he contacted me back in 2018 to dispell and come clean and I ignored him but here I am doing so. Why? Because I have terminal cancer and I want to make amends for alot of the people I wronged. I apologize.

    So, TLDR: Croc 3 was NEVER in development by argonaut. I made it up. This entire article is a lie. I am coming clean so fans of croc can have closure. I’m sorry.

    1. Mike Rhyes

      Hi Daniel,
      Thank you for coming clean. Could you please provide proof of your conversation with Rogerscameron95? I believe this will be the final piece to lay Croc 3 to rest. If you like you can email me at [email protected]

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