You guys remember Toonstruck video game?

Still got it boxed. Unique game with the mix of a live actor with cartoon characters. Christopher Lloyd was perfect for the role having been in Roger Rabbit.

It's been on the GOG user-made Wanted/Wishlist area for a long time. I remember upvoting it.
http://www.gog.com/en/wishlist/games/toonstruck

Apparently the first Toonstruck was only half the game. The amount of content/video etc. had to be halved and they had originally planned for there to be a sequel containing the rest. According to this post on GOG forums it sounds like the current owner of the license is planning to re-release Toonstruck themself. But dunno what the current status is.

April 2011:

Thanks for your mail, and support for Toonstruck. We are currently evaluating several options to re-release the game, and hope to have news shortly. GoG seems like a great community, and this may be a good direction for a PC version of the game. We will also be evaluating the 2nd half of the game soon, and hopefully if TS1 does well, we can move onto the sequel.

Thanks again for your support, and I hope to have news soon!

Best -
Keith Arem
PCB Productions

http://www.gog.com/en/forum/general/toonstruck_info

More info on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toonstruck#Sequel

Dunno whats happening with it right now though. I'd love for it to be re-released on GOG or some other way so that more people can play it. And a sequel would be cool, I assume there's unused footage and such of Christopher Lloyd they'll be using, it's a shame for it to go unused.

Toonstruck was an AMAZING game, its shocking how few people know about it. It basically had some of the biggest voice acting and film acting talents in the industry at the time working on it, and yet it still flopped. The game itself is nothing short of amazing as well, a very creative approach to adventure games, the art style is brilliant. The story is brilliant..

Why the game flopped could pretty much be weighed up to the fact that at the time gamers had become dickheads that only played 3d FPS titles, it was the era of the Quakes, so people didn't like Adventure games at this point.

14 years on, people are crying about that there's no new Anamaniacs cartoons or that the Simpsons sucks... forking PLAY TOONSTRUCK AND SHUT THE fork UP lol.

This is one of my favorite games tbh, I paid $2 for it back in the day, still have the box. Was shocked at how good the game was for the price- and then I learned why it was so cheap.

What the hell is wrong with this industry....

I hope they do finally do the big announcement for Toonstruck HD on the Iphone and Toonstruck 2 eventually.

According to Wikipedia:

Although receiving mostly positive reviews from game critics, the game wasn't overly successful due to the rise of new 3-D games and poor marketing.

I think the poor marketing probably didn't help, much like with Pandora Directive. I think with both games I only found them once they were in a 2nd hand shop. Toonstruck was very much by chance.

I've heard via the internet some were put off by the cover too, thinking it was some psychotic horror game.



Some example comments:

Seeing the UK version in particular on the kiddy shelves was hilarious - the cover art had the clown stabbing a rabbit in the eye with a needle. The shop guys had obviously only taken a very, very, quick look at the packaging...

The reason why toonstruck failed is the same reason that many other great games did...poor marketing. I mean, take a look at any of the ads, including the box cover. All they showed were some of the more "strange" characters, like the clown (who had such a small role), and the Malevolated cow. This led me and others I know to believe that the game was extremely disturbed, and not to buy it. Of course, they barely mentioned all of the talented voice actors.

Later, I saw the game in a bargain bin, and decided to take a chance. But I didn't buy it the first time because of how the game was depicted.

I agree - Toonstruck had to have the worst marketing in the world. I also didn't buy it at first because of the very strange ads - made it seem like a really perverted game. I finally got it after trying a demo that I got on a CD. Its too bad, it was a great game.

If i remember the box art was pretty odd. Wierd distorted picture of the mental clown you meet. ("baloooooooon?") I think that may have put a lot of people off.

The box art didn't bother me when I first found it (2nd hand bargain). But I can definitely see how it can misrepresent the game. Toonstruck does have some weird mature bits. But they don't encompass the whole game. I guess they wanted to go for shock value in the marketing "Hey look at this weird stuff, bet you've never seen this in a game, see if you can sneak it past your parents kids and you'll be real cool having this mature game!". It would have been good to of had Christopher Lloyd on there beside his animated sidekick with a plethora of cartoon characters behind him and then one of the game backgrounds behind that. As well as a shortlist of some of the best known voice actors along the bottom.

Toonstruck and Black Dahlia are two games that are LONG overdue for a GOG release.

Joel wrote:Toonstruck and Black Dahlia are two games that are LONG overdue for a GOG release.

Yeah it'd be great to see Black Dahlia on there. I think it's another game that features live action FMV that would raise peoples opinions of the genre alongside the others already on GOG. Not that it doesn't have its flaws, but I think its a memorable game that keeps your interest despite them and has a great atmosphere with decent acting.

It's got 493 votes on the Wishlist / Wanted list so far, not bad for an obscure game:
http://www.gog.com/en/wishlist/games/black_dahlia

I wish GOG had a area where they post notes on progress in sourcing rights to Wishlist games. Even if its something small like having sent an email to the current license owners.

I'm actually kinda shocked that they didn't put Flux on the front cover tbh, given you know... he's the main bloody point of the entire forking game lol.

yeah the clown versions the one I've got. This other version though I'm surprised they didn't use.



I would buy that ^ lol

Doc Brown + Electrocution + Clown.. nuff said.

Most of Virgin's games were poorly marketed anyway. They weren't a very good publisher.. but they had AMAZING talent under their belts.



^ KEEP THIS forking THING AWAY FROM ME lol easily the most disturbing of the 3.
it looks like an animated porno.

Haha that second one is awful! They chose all the most controversial and dark characters. I doubt if a kid picked that up off the shelf their parents would be very impressed with the Madonna sheep boobies popping out the cover. Porno is right.

The first one is better. Still focusing on the dark humour side and the clown leaving out a lot of the other characters. And no mention of voice actors. But at least it actually shows the main character!

Gotta say, the whole series sounds truly weird.

Chandler wrote:Gotta say, the whole series sounds truly weird.

Like the bit in Roger Rabbit where a live action human goes to the cartoon realm, a lot of weird and wacky things do happen. Since cartoon characters can do crazy things like have an anvil drop on them with no scratches later but Christopher Lloyd on the other hand is not so used to that. There are some mature dark humour characters but there are many others you encounter that are on the lighter or slapstick side.



And those on the absurdly cutesy side (voiced by the same person who did Babs Bunny from Tiny Toon Adventures).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7As7N3Yb2Co

But at the end of the day, they're all crazy.

I think the problem with black dahlia is take two who do not exist anymore.

plumgas wrote:I think the problem with black dahlia is take two who do not exist anymore.

Following the link on Wikipedia's Black Dahlia article it seems they're still around, but they've updated their image / brand name since the 90s.
http://www.take2games.com/

Perhaps this is the hold-up (taken from the GOG forums):

Publishers that will take ages before they agree to GOG's no DRM policy

Foxhack: 2K? BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. They don't even bother to make their recent games REGION FREE. It took me YEARS before I could even glance at their catalog on Steam. Screw them.

Navagon: 2K is a subsidiary of Take Two Interactive. They're the ones who introduced extreme DRM back in 2007 with Bioshock. They also own Rockstar who were responsible for the DRM clusterfuck that was GTA 4. So if any company is going to reject GOG on DRM grounds it could well be them.

wy4786: didn't 2k released a drm-free stronghold pack? there might be hope?

http://www.gog.com/en/forum/general/pub ... drm_policy

Still Black Dhalia is so old and obscure with barely any sales likely being generated anymore, I don't see why they'd refuse. However maybe GOG is currently only pursuing their more known titles.

I've heard of Toonstruck, but never played it due it seeming out there. I'd be interested to know what this adventure game community thinks of it.

Been playing nearly all Virgin titles since Corporation (Cyber-Cop), and yet Toonstruck went completely off my radar. I suspect it was never put on the shelves over here, or very well-buried if released at all. I only heard of it over 10 years after its release.

Bjyman wrote:I've heard of Toonstruck, but never played it due it seeming out there. I'd be interested to know what this adventure game community thinks of it.

I enjoyed it. Being a fan of animation I thought the animated characters looked great and the cartoony backgrounds were creative, everything seemed exaggerated or a bit bent out of shape like a fairground crooked house. You meet a strange array of characters in the world and each of them are unique and can be pretty wild and funny (or just downright weird or mature, like you'd see in Ren and Stimpy perhaps).

The dialogue is entertaining, the main character has a sidekick who likes to make wisecracks or can be used to solve puzzles. The voice acting for each character was excellent. Christopher Lloyd was also great in the role of the main character.

Even though it was apparently half a game, there is so much content it really doesn't feel like it. I think it's a very memorable game for how unique it was, I certainly haven't played another game like it at least. Well I guess there was Koala Lumpur: Journey To The Edge adventure game for the amount of animation and wackyness, but no live actor in that.

There are a lot of clips or some full playthroughs on Youtube if you want to check it out.
Opening Cutscene (without as much scanlines): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUWBFk0erEs
Playthrough: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6mM5BZLvbo