Productions
A few of the projects I worked on while working at Planet :
Kong
Platformer from Bam
Published end 02
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Kong has been a game with a dramatic beginning of production, and I have been quite surprised to know it had been finished. The power of money... Graphics are great, gameplay is classical, and the licence not really known to my mind :p
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V.I.P.
Shoot from Ubi Soft
Published end 02
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VIP is one of the best examples of a project with a low ambition, mutating during the production to explode its content and thus its delay. It ought to be a simple game with shoot and platform phases, and that's what it is. But with so many similar characters, and a too short tuning phase, it stayed an average game.
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Planet Monsters
Arcade from Titus
Published february 02
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One of the first games started in Planet is also the first to be released, and it almost stayed alone in this status. It wasnt the easiest though, being an isometric view arcade, with multiplayer mode. It is an old concept.
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Casper
Puzzle from Microids
Published in march 02
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Casper is strangely which went on almost not too badly in Planet. It is quite an original game, very nice, where you play the little ghost, trying to help his sleepwalking friend facing evil ghosts. You need to active mechanisms, use objects, doors, etc.
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Here is a visual resume of the projects I worked on at Kalisto :
Adibou and the Green Shadow
Adventure / educational (PC and PSX) for Coktel thats Havas thats Vivendi
Published in september 01
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The Adibou production was very special. It indeed involved four companies, Sony, as publisher, Havas, with its character Adibou, Kalisto, and Neko, as developer bringing their 3D engine. All was to be done in 6 months, and then some debugging. With the amount of elements in the game, that was a lot of work. And there was the PC version !
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Halloween
Arcade (PSX2 and GC) for Wanadoo
To be published end of 02
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Halloween is in the spirit of a Crash Bandicoot game, or also Medieval. A good deal of the objective is to create an atmosphere with witches, skeletons and stuff. With also two playable and attractive characters. I managed the project until the middle of the production phase. The 3D engine used is Kalisto's, Totem, of excellent quality.
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New York Race GBC
Course (GBC) de Wanadoo
Published october 01
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The CBC version of the game is of course lightweight to the quality of the PS2 or PC versions... But the game is nice, with a good difficulty curve.
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Here is a quick visual resume of the projects I worked on at Ubi Soft :
Seven Kingdoms 2
Realtime strategy (PC) from Enlight Software (Honk Kong)
Released in october 99
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A good and solid, original strategy game, a nice move forward from the previous release. On the production side, I had time to work on the tutorials only, and instead of having 80 half-screens of non-interactive texts, you now have small, reactive instructions.
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Suzuki Alstare Extreme Racing
Moto racing (Dreamcast) from Criterion (England)
Released in october 99
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Suzuki is the rework and conversion from Redline Racer PC. Having the Suzuki Alstare licence also helped pushing the developer towards a funnier, more playable version of the game. I think the final result was very good, and it was the first motoracer game on DC.
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Papyrus
Arcade (Gameboy Color) from Planet (France)
Released in november 99
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Papyrus is great :). It was the first game where I worked 100% from scratch to finish. It has great gfx, superb gameplay, cool music, AND it was released on time ! 3 days before the deadline, actually. One drawback though : its a bit too easy. Working with Planet was a great experience. We also introduced a cool cross-games features : the Ubi Key, that you can share to other Ubi gameboy titles, opening extra levels and gameplay.
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Les Visiteurs
Arcade (Gameboy) (french only) from Planet (France)
Released in november 99
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Les Visiteurs is great :). A bit darker and a bit more difficult than Papyrus, especially with paying passwords and some tricky levels. For french people who saw the movie, its a must buy. Production-wise, both Planet GB titles were being worked on at the very same time by the same people, which wasnt easy to manage. I was quite lucky to have them both in store in time.
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Suzuki Alstare Extreme Racing
Moto racing (Gameboy Color) from Visual Impact (France)
Released in november 99
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The GBC version of Suzuki is certainly the best racing game on the gameboy. I dont think it was beaten before the E3 2000, but I didnt saw all the GB games there. Anyway, it is really spectacular and fun. And everything went almost perfectly with Visual Impact, always on time for milestones, always a good result...
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Tonic Trouble
Arcade (Gameboy Color) from RFX Interactive (France)
Released in march 2000
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Tonic is a great game ! Buy it ! Buy it again ! Go fetch some mushrooms !
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Theocracy
Realtime strategy (PC) from Philos Labs (Hungary)
Released in march 2000
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Theocracy had a long debug phase. But it was planned for march, and was released, like, the 30th of march. I should check on the warez :). It has some original design choice (time scale, one long mission, massive battles).
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Arcatera
Adventure (PC + Dreamcast) from Weskta (Germany)
Released in june 2000 (PC), planned Q3 (DC)
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I've been working on Arcatera for a looong time. One and a half year, and I wasnt part of the development team. Let's say I know this game quite well by now, and I am happy to see it coming out, at last. I worked a lot on it, and I think it was positive for the project. Here again, a lot of original design choices (NPC AI, dialogs, time and space limit, 3D/2D display...) was placed on a classical system (point and click adventure). The result is good globally, after a long debug phase. The town atmosphere and mystery is well rendered.
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Deep Fighter
Action / adventure (PC + Dreamcast) from Criterion (England)
Release planned in july 2000 (PC and DC)
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Deep Fighter was also a very long running project. In fact it also took one and a half year to get in and then get out of the 3rd party, and you have to add one year of development before that, as for Arcatera. The result is nice. It has a special feeling, being underwater, as for Sub Culture. We made videos for the game in december, and I appear somewhere in the briefings :)
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Heroes of Might and Magic 3
Turn by turn strategy, port (Dreamcast) by Westka (Germany)
Release planned in Q3 2000
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Stretching a PC screen and mouse control on a TV+pad isnt easy. I think control-wise, its a good result, perhaps better (faster) than on PC. As I write this the game isnt finished, so I'll keep fingers crossed.
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Carl Lewis Athletics 2000
Sport (Gameboy Color) from Planet (France)
Release planned in september 2000
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Another outstanding work from Planet, showing all the quality of their coders and artists. This will be the best sport game on GBC, easily. The size of sprites, with the traditional olympic games arcade gameplay, its rocks ! And you can also play two on one gameboy (on racing events), this is really fun ! We had to cut down the career mode to keep on target sadly, I hope it'll make some comeback in a sequel.
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Capitalism 2
Management (PC) from Enlight (Honk Kong)
Release planned in Q1 2001
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Capitalism 2 is my pet project ^_^. I always dreamed of making a sequel on the first game ever since I finished it, years ago. At this period I couldnt even figure people would be paid to make games. It was like, to work on such games you have to pay ! But no, here I am, producing AND designing this title, hoping I will have it living up to my own dreams. The main objective is to bring its quality to many gamers, with a large and easy entry door, and a long and rich gameplay afterwards.
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I also took part to a lesser extent on :
Taxi 2
Car racing (Gameboy Color) (french only) from Visual Impact (France)
Released in april 2000
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Simply take Suzuki, improve the engine, add realtime gameboy cinematics (yes!) and put a very strong licence (for France), and you have a great title, with a good difficulty balance. Valérie Beaufils was producer, and I gave a hand at some points, especially at the start and with Nintendo, as I now have some experience with the big N and the small machine.
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Spirou
Arcade (Gameboy Color) from Planet (France)
Released in may 2000
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I launched the project and worked on the design with Planet until Thibaut Fron took over and finished the title. Its another good platformer. On the positive side, we have comics-like strip "cells" into which the player is moving, animating everything to life as he arrives.
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Taxi 2
Car racing (PC + Dreamcast) from Blue Sphere (France)
Release planned in june 2000 (PC), Q3 2000 (DC)
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With all our recommendations, Taxi 2, the PC version, was produced with Blue Sphere. As I'm writing this, they completed the game in time, as it was planned. They have even been more efficient and professional than english developers, but without the annoying and painful downside. I did and
am again envying Valérie who worked with them all along the way, as we did the story-rewrite, checked the gameplay, and then during the rest of the productive meetings and excellent atmosphere.
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Hype
Arcade (Gameboy Color) from Planet (France)
Release planned in june 2000
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Hype is in fact the port from the Ubi internal PC version of the title. Porting on gameboy means that you follow the story of the first game, the characters and the backgrounds. All the rest, enemies, gameplay, levels, has to be made up from scratch. Globally its a good job, that was produced by Thibaut, I took over at the end of the production and through the Nintendo submission.
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Total Soccer Manager
Foot management (Gameboy Color) from LiveMedia (England)
Release planned in august 2000
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This game is a bit peculiar to me, as I never had anything to do with producing it. But at some point, I was requested to do the submission of the first version, the action game Total Soccer. Then I had to manage the specific spanish version "Barca Total". Then came the Manager version, TSM, that I had to check and submit. And then will come the spanish version, "Barca Manager". All in all thats four games that I was never supposed to see, as my skills in foot managers are below the sea level :) - but I'm scoring a goal on the screenshot ! -.
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Les Visiteurs
Action/adventure (PSX + PC) from Silmarils (France)
Release planned in Q3 2000 (PC and PSX)
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We made contact with age-old Silmarils a long time before working on "Visiteurs". It was for their own project "Sultan", back in mid-99. Although the game name was crap, I thought the title itself had some good points, pretty much Prince of Persia-like, with nice graphics and gameplay. But I didnt manage to turn up the heat in the department for Sultan. Now it is being published as "Arabian Nights", with episodic releases, a very smart move. Then when we were looking for a PSX developer to produce this version of the "Visiteurs" licence, Silmarils was a good pick. I started the project and gave control to Valérie, who should also care about the PC port.
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Inspector Gadget
Puzzle/Action (PSX) from Vision Media (Allemagne)
Release planned in Q3 2000
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The PSX version of Gadget had to be produced very quickly, so an existing game engine was needed. Vision Media proposed to us a puzzle/arcade kind of game that could, with a stretch, be home to Gadget and Co. We made the stretch, and the newbie developer has a full scale title now.
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In Cold Blood
Action/adventure (PC + PSX) from Revolution (England)
Release planned in Q3 2000
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Among the few experienced developers we manage, Revolution is a good benchmark, with Broken Sword 1 and 2 under their belt. In cold blood is a mix between Goldeneye and Metal Gear, hopefully taking the best of the two titles. Let there be gaming !
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Stupid Invaders
Adventure (PC + Dreamcast + IMac) from Xilam (France)
Release planned in Q4 2000
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"Newbie" developer Gaumont (recently renamed Xilam) produced nice cartoony graphics. I hope it is fun. I managed the starting relationship (initially scheduled for november 99 release), then Valérie took over, then Raphael Levi.
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Peacemakers
Realtime strategy (PC + Dreamcast) from MASA (France)
Release planned in Q4 2000
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Peacemakers is one of the most ambitious titles we have here, and the developer is also quite ambitious (too much ?), with the AI being the core promise of the title. The rest, 3D realtime strategy, is now basic, although the tech tree is based on image and medias, which is a good twist. Looking at recent 3D RTS though, I feel the game's interest is mostly linked with tweaking the controls and interface. Graphics matter, but easy management matters more. Oh, and storyline too. I started contact and production, but handed it over with regrets to Raphael.
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