Making the Game (lost build of cancelled Game Boy Color game; 2000-2001)

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Making-the-Game-Project TEMP.jpg

Mock up box art of the game.

Status: Lost

Making The Game was the codename of a cancelled Game Boy Color title developed by a group referring to themselves as Savage Pixel between 2000 and 2001. The game was produced by IGN editor Craig Harris, who also wrote a series of eponymous articles documenting the game's development.

Development

The first Making The Game article was released on September 25th, 2000, and featured Craig Harris describing his idea of building a Game Boy Color game from scratch, and documenting the entire process through various articles.[1] This was followed up by a second article the next day in which Craig attempted to look for a Game Boy Color programmer and artist to work on the title.[2] The people who would be working on the title was then revealed on November 6th, 2000, consisting of Craig, programmer Bob Koon, and artist Keith Erickson.[3] The new development team then held a poll to decide their name, which was revealed as being Savage Pixel on November 20th, 2000, with this same announcement also revealing the premise of the game. The game would have revolved around giant monsters rampaging around a bustling metropolis destroying everything in their path,[4] and featured three playable characters; a giant raccoon, a giant bunny rabbit, and a giant wolf. Readers were asked to send in their suggestions for names for the characters, but no names were ever revealed.[5]

The game is known to have gotten quite far into development, with numerous different sprites and animations being created for each of the characters,[6][7] and a rough demo of the game being created in which you could slide the raccoon around the field in front of and behind the wolf, pedestrian and vehicle sprites.[8]

On March 5th, 2001, it was announced that the game had been cancelled due to its budget being frozen and the dwindling interest in the Game Boy Color market as a whole.[9] However, it was later announced on April 4th of the same year that development of the game would continue on a much smaller scale, with what work that had been done being used to create a minigame version of the project that would be released through other means as opposed to a physical release. Bob Koon had left the project by this point to do programming work on a Game Boy Advance game, so he was replaced by hobbyist programmer Randy Mongenel.[10]

Ironically, this announcement of the continuation of the game's development was one of the last pieces of information related to it to be shared online, with no further Making The Game articles being produced after this, and the game itself not being known to have been released in any form.

On February 9th, 2019, Craig Harris revealed that he had acquired the rom and assets of the game from Bob Koon's archives, with gameplay footage being uploaded to his Twitter account as evidence.[11] He later revealed that he had also obtained the source code of the game,[12] but that it was unlikely to be uploaded online,[13] leaving the game still lost.

Savage Pixel Development Team

  • Craig Harris - Producer, Lead Designer, Making the Game Writer.
  • Bob Koon - Programmer (November 2000 - March 2001).
  • Randy Mongenel - Programmer (April 2001).
  • Keith Erickson - Art Director, Artist, Animator.

Gallery

References