Saturn

Incredible Idiots in Space is a cancelled comedy action adventure that was in development by Magnet Interactive Studios around 1995 / 1996, planned to be released on Playstation, Sega Saturn and PC. The game was going to be published by ASC Games / American Softworks Corporation, based on an original cartoon series conceived by David Burke who had a number of artists develop a few cartoon properties to pitch them to TV networks, animation studios and the game industry. As recalled by David:

“I pitched my cartoon properties to game publishers, selling them on the notion that by licensing and co-developing my original properties, they would have a significant interest in the TV and merchandising rights, instead of none if they continued spending millions on licensing existing franchises. Sold a few: Psycho Mice, X-Duck 2000. X-Duck-2000 had lots of promise (hilarious script and great graphics), but mid-project, the developer / publisher (R. Greenberg Associates Interactive – a well-known NY special effect house), abandoned the “interactive” part of business.”

Later David licensed the game rights to “Incredible Idiots in Space” (a property created as a TV cartoon) to ASC, collaborating with cartoon artist Lane Reichart (“Reboot” and other toons) to finalize their character design. David wrote the script and sketched the basic character designs, and Lane fleshed out the world, and supplied the finished artwork. Magnet Interactive’s 3D artists rendered backgrounds and characters well, but development immediately proved to be problematic.

Incredible Idiots in Space would have featured some ambitious gameplay for its time, with 3D exploration through a large universe and multiple dialogue interactions between more than 30 unique aliens (requiring a complex script following each branching path). Story would have been told using pre-rendered cutscenes and voice overs, with gameplay also offering an alien version of Kung Fu combat, and all sorts of original puzzle-solving. Designs for the entire game world, the many alien characters, the ships, and the props, were all completed, and all the elaborate interactive game scripts were written. Unfortunately coding proved challenging. After waiting too long for playable prototypes ASC just pulled the plug.

Thanks to Pachuka & Celine for the contributions. Huge thanks to David for sharing with us some memories of his canned project.

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