Posted: Mon Jul 30, 2012 7:08 pm Post subject: The Adventures Of Pinocchio (Game Boy)
I just came across a ROM of this game, which GoodGB labels as being a Japanese release, but it turned out that I couldn't find any info on it, anywhere.
It already seemed quite odd that you can gain more lives but can't lose any, and that you can skip levels when pausing and pressing up or down... Not to mention that it's not listed on the developer's game list.
So it does seem to be an unreleased game. I guess nobody here knows the story behind this one?
Last edited by ICEknight on Wed Aug 01, 2012 12:18 am; edited 3 times in total
Joined: 26 Aug 2003 Posts: 4192 Location: Oakland, CA
Posted: Mon Jul 30, 2012 8:00 pm Post subject:
Oh cool, I kinda like these guys, I'll have to check that game out. Their games aren't amazing but they're perfect if you want to play a platformer that you'll beat in a couple hours and never think about again.
Interestingly, turns out that this game was later polished and released five years later as "Otto's Ottifanten: Baby Bruno's Nightmare".
It still has the same menus, music and many of the room layouts intact, from what I've played, only featuring a much more pleasant presentation with bigger sprites and seemingly better gameplay.
This makes me wonder if Bit Managers had any other games with their characters interchanged for licensed ones during development, Kemco style. Baby Felix (which uses Turok 2's platforming engine) looks like a good candidate...
By the way, for those interested, Die Maus was released one year before Baby Bruno's and seems to feature this same polished version of the engine, only with levels designed around the possibility of controlling two characters with different abilities.
Last edited by ICEknight on Wed Aug 01, 2012 12:19 am; edited 1 time in total
Regarding Sylvester and Tweety, it wasn't the first game Bit Managers made in "Isidrometric" 3D. Zydro wanted to make a "Filmation" game for the Game Boy as soon as he got his hands on it, and managed to develop the engine when we were still known as New Frontier, in 91. The first prototype of the game was going to have the El Zorro license for Infogrames, but it was discarded in the end. Later, it was accorded to use the Pinocchio license, but ended up being discarded as well. I think there's a prototype of The Adventures of Pinocchio around the net.
We then completed the game on our own with an in-house character and script, but Infogrames wasn't interested in releasing it without a known license. Time passed and we could finally publish a few games with that engine: Die Maus and Sylvester and Tweety.
With all the experience gained with those games we went back to making an improved version of ours, but Infogrames still didn't want to release it without a license. Regardless, they really liked the new game, so they looked for a license to release it with, and thus Otto's Ottifanten - Baby Bruno's Nightmare was born. That game is the reincarnation of the first one we made, but vastly improved and with its graphics adapted to the new license. It still retains the music I composed for Pinocchio.
EDIT: Also, from the comments:
Zydro wrote:
Just wanted to add that the first filmation game we sold, the Ottifants one, was bought by a German company called Laguna. We had tried selling a game with that engine to Infogrames for years, changing the characters and script many times. When the deal was closed with the Germans, a few days later, our contact from Infogrames called us: "IsidgĂł, you know what? Infogrames has bought Laguna..." In the end, the game wasn't bought by Infogrames, but was indirectly published by them because they bought the publisher, and I think they saw it was a good and profitable product, so much that they ordered two more games using that engine.
I can't believe I hadn't read that neat interview before. I even used to work for that site a while ago. =|
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