Retronauts - 761: Shiny Entertainment

Episode Date: April 13, 2026

After making their mark on the world with the Earthworm Jim series, Shiny Entertainment set out to create bold, weird video games that weren't specifically engineered to sell action figures and Saturday morning cartoons. As the '90s rolled on, the developer released unique creations like MDK, Messiah, and Sacrifice, but the shift to the 21st century saw the studio transform into just another maker of movie tie-ins. And, as responsible, thoughtful podcasters, we can only ask "What the hell happened?" On this episode of Retronauts, join Bob Mackey, Stuart Gipp, and Digital Foundry's John Linneman as the crew digs into Shiny's eclectic catalog to discover the joys of playing as chubby angels and snipers with incredibly odd heads.Retronauts is a completely fan-funded operation. To support the show, and get two full-length exclusive episodes every month, as well as access to 100+ previous bonus episodes, please visit the official Retronauts Patreon at patreon.com/retronauts.

This week on Retronauts, we're shiny happy podcasters holding hands. Hello everybody. Welcome to another episode of Retronauts. I'm your host for this one, Bob Mackey. And this week we are talking about Shiny Entertainment, the developer that created Earthworm Jim, and then struggled to find a hit afterwards, even if the rest of their output was just as weird. So none of these games could sustain an entire Retronauts episode, but I figured it was only fair to round them all up for a single discussion because Shiny made some interesting,

if very flawed video games that merits our treatment. Before I go on any further, who is here with me today in this Zencaster room? Hello, it's John Lundeman from Digital Foundry. I'm excited to talk about this. I love some shiny. And no, Tommy Talerico did not compose Earthroom Jim. Just going to say it. Someone else did all the work on that, but we can at least point listeners in that direction.

Yes, please. Who else is here with us today? Yeah, hi, I'm Stuart Jeth, and I'm happy to continue holding hands. This is nice. You know, I don't know we do this. We should do it more often as people. I mean, they tried hands across America. It didn't really work, but maybe we can get it going again in 2026.

Before I go on any further, though, I'll give my own personal experience, but I want to know your experience with Shiny's games. Let's go to John. John, how about you and Shiny? So I've essentially played nearly every one of these games at the time. So when they were new, I experienced them. You know, starting, I did actually play some of the prior games, but probably, I guess, Aladdin is the first one.

it's not technically shiny, but you know, the legacy that we'll get to. But Earthroom Jim, I was there right away, multiple versions. We'll talk about that, including a PC version later. MDK was a game I was actually super hyped for, and I followed that very closely. It's actually one of my favorite PC games from that era like ever. I think it's super interesting and also technically outstanding. And then, of course, I actually had a soft spot for Wild 9, but I do think it was a, you know, know, we'll get to that, but it's a little bit of a step down from MDK in a lot of ways.

Absolutely. I guess the other ones, like, R.C. Stuncopers, one I didn't really spend much time with, but Messiah was definitely, if you were into the PC space, it got a ton of hype at the time for its, I guess you could say, like, the technology they were using, right? Which is very, very unique. That was the magic word back then. Very dynamic tessellation was the idea. And it didn't really work that well. But the game itself, it's pretty broken, but pretty interesting. And then, yeah, like, I actually, looking at the list here, I guess I did play some of the other ones.

I didn't love the Matrix stuff, but it was interesting. Sacrifice was good. But then the golden compass, I didn't even realize that was shiny. So I learned something new. So I'm excited to see all of this stuff and talk about it. They really go out with a whimper. And I think you said broken, but interesting, that really describes a lot of their output. A lot of their output, yeah, big time.

And how about you, Stuart? You and Shiny Entertainment. Yeah, I mean, I hadn't played all of them before I came to do this, but of whom Jim, we've obviously talked about. MDK was pretty hyped back in the day, and I really enjoyed what I played a bit. I've never gotten super far into the game, but I always think it looks and sounds and plays pretty great. And when I looked at it again today, I was like, yeah, this is a John Lenneman thing, I think.

He's going to have a lot to say about this tech. I did a video on it. Yeah, I'll got to see that. I might have seen that, actually. Yeah, Wild Nye and I played the demo back in the day, and playing it for this was an interesting experience because I could see a lot more of the direct connections between it and Earthworm Jim,

compared to all the other games, I would say. And then, honestly, the rest of these, I played for this, apart from some briefs of Jones into the Matrix games, which I think are really interesting, but very flawed. especially path of Neo, which has something incredible in there,

but we'll get to that. Yeah, and as for me, I, of course, liked and played the Earthworm Jim games. And then a friend of mine had MDK, so I played a lot of that at his place on his Mac. And then I played the demo for Messiah, and I thought I might be done with Shiny.

So I just kind of, I removed them from my radar, unfortunately did not play sacrifice, which seems like a really good game. We'll talk about it, of course. And then I was part of the Gawkers who were looking at the failure of the Matrix games, everyone tearing them apart.

And of course, John, you're talking about the era of big hype over PC games. That was really their time to shine, no pun intended. Because with MDK and with Messiah, I think there were a lot of people who wanted to see them succeed, but there were also a lot of people who wanted to see them fail spectacularly. Like a lot of these big PC game designers with big egos like John Romero and Peter Malinue and what have you. Like David Perry was part of that crowd seemingly at the time. The thing is, though, is like I'm not sure. sure if you guys have experience with it, but there was the tangent.

A lot of the shiny guys, including Nick Brutty, split off to do giant citizen Cabuto in 2001 around them, which was outstanding. And that actually continued the legacy. I always considered that like a shiny game at heart. You know what I mean? That's blown my mind because I was coming into this and I was going to do sacrifice. I'm like, oh, this is the game with the big, topless blue lady. That was giant citizen cabuto.

That's giant. And that turns out to also be kind of a shiny game. Oh my God. It is. It's... It's... It's all the diagram just freaking out right now.

It's actually why Shiny couldn't make MDK2 because Nick Broody was working on Giant Citizen Cabuto. So that's why BioWare, weirdly enough. BioWare. It's so strange. Oh, yeah.

So you mentioned that Nick... So, okay, we'll get into all the figures here. Nick Broody was David Perry's partner in crime. David Perry is like the shiny guy. Nick Brody spun off to make which developer who made that game? It was like Purple Moodie. I think it was called.

That sounds right. And then what I didn't mention is Doug Tenaple, a guy we love and admire. He went off and he made the development studio, The Neverhood, to make a bunch of interesting looking games that are secretly about the Bible. We won't be talking about him, but he leaves Shiny to do his own thing

and make, like I said, games that look really interesting. I'm not a huge fan of The Neverhood or Skull Monkeys and then whatever else he did after that. Indeed. Although I secretly still like the original the Neverhood at the time, but it's It's pretty flawed.

I really like Skull Monkeys, but, you know, the guy, you know. What can you do? The guy we don't talk about. I say watch a let's play and then download the soundtracks, and you're good, I think, for the... Oh, yeah, absolutely. For Christ's sake, don't play Skull Monkeys. You'll get very frustrated. There's also a PlayStation version of that original one of the neighborhood, which is...

Clayman, Clayman. Yeah. Don't forget Clayman, our hockey or whatever it's called. Oh, gosh. Incredibly obscure one. All right, we should get to Shiny, though, right? Yeah, no more Clayman. Let's get to Shiny.

Wait a minute. Klayman. Amen. The Bible again. Holy shit. I think, okay, Stuart, I think you're on to something. And I don't think you're just being a smart ass. I think that was the intent.

Okay. Yeah, I know. We're going to dig more into this in a future never-hood episode, probably. So let's move on to. to talk about Shiny, but let's go before Shiny to talk about David Perry, the key figure of Shiny. So we discussed this in our Earthworm Jim episode, but there were Shiny-style games before Earthworm Jim, and that's all to thanks to a programming super genius named David Perry.

So before he had his own studio, Shiny, he made his mark on the world with games platformers that had flashy graphics, kind of slippery controls, and they all kind of felt and executed in the same way. Those games are Global Gladiators, Cool Spot, and Aladdin, the Genesis version. And of course, a lot of the people that helped him make these games would then move on to Shiny with David Perry when he forms that company. I think of those games, Aladdin is the best of the bunch. I actually, I've always been of the opinion of the Super N.S. game is the superior game when it comes to Aladdin. Correctly.

But Aladdin is I think we're all on the same page. Is at least competent where I feel like Cool Spot and Global Gladiators are just like nonsense. I think you've always kind of said like they have a bit of that airplane hanger syndrome. going on, where it's just these big open spaces with lots of stuff to, like, collect and it feels very aimless. I'm sorry, Stu. I heard it's aye.

I'm going to view on global gladiators, but the cool spot, I've got to say, I do like me some cool spot, but then again, I add it on the math system, which is like a cut-down, smaller-scale version. Less annoying. I never like it.

But Aladdin is okay, especially, I don't know if you guys played that enhanced version that was done for the... Oh, yeah, the final cut, yeah. Yeah, the final cut, which, like, fixes a lot of the camera problems and just makes it a more enjoyable, game to play. Okay. I wasn't

sure that they had edited it in any way or like improved it anyway. Okay. Yeah, there's like a new version where they've not only sort of done that. Sorry, John, you go ahead, please. Well, it's not, it's like, they're not only did they fix a lot of the sort of tech issues, the collision issues as well, I think. They've also added like new secrets and areas to the

stages and just made it feel like a more complete polished game. It's really. And I think there was digital eclipse, which I found interesting because that's where Nick Brutty works currently. It's on that Aladdin and the Lion King Disney Clist. collection thing. The loin king?

The loin king, yes. Sorry, I was distracted by my DVDs. Yes, John, you're totally right. He does work for that company, and we know Chris Kohler. I could have just asked for Nick Brutie's email and gotten a lot of answers to these questions I had. Right. I was, yeah, last year I was at their office with talking to Chris and he's like, oh, that's like,

that's Nick Brutie's desk. And I'm like, what? Yes, a follow up, we'll do a follow up where it's like talking to Brutie. But let's go back to David Perry here. So he is of that generation of UK-based computing wonderkins that essentially was part of the programming scene.

So he made a name for himself back in the day for writing programs and then sending them into magazines back when the code was small enough that you could have a magazine, print your code, and then have people then type their code into their computers and have a game. And I believe he was mostly writing programs for the Sinclair series of microcomputers. I think that was his bag back in the day. In the UK. Yeah. In the early 80s.

and he made a name for himself as like a hobbyist programmer and then before he turned 18 he was still I guess technically a minor he moved to London and this is where he works on games in a professional capacity so he works on spectrum ports of games like Konami's Teenage Mutin Ninja Turtles and Paperboy 2 but then he was eventually able to develop his own games

with the previously mentioned Nick Broody we can cover a few of these here just to give you a taste of like the general vibe of Perry where I feel like looking at his games, looking at what he's into, he likes technical tricks. He likes getting the most out of hardware, and he is never content to stay with one kind of game forever. So that is why the output of Shiny and the output of Nick Perry is so varied over the years in terms of the kinds of games he likes to make. Indeed. You can definitely see that in a lot of those games. And I think one of the ones that I was still caught my eye even today is Savage.

Savage. Yes. Savage, 1988. So you can look up a lot of videos of the many different ports of this, which I guess it was a minor hit if it was ported so much, or there was a man for this kind of a game. But you play this big, beefy barbarian type.

You blast enemies on screen with a lot of projectiles, weirdly enough. And it's just a game where things are constantly moving around on the screen. And then there are these levels that are essentially a rip-off of space harrier, very popular game to copy at the time. and it's doing the best it can with that gameplay style on a spectrum. So really just like a bag of technical tricks with this game. I played the spectrum version myself,

and I was impressed by the amount that he was thrown around the screen without. I mean, obviously, the colors are clashing and it's fluttering. It's a spectrum game. It's not, like, you know, good. But you've got crazy amounts of stuff happening at all times. It's psychotically difficult, obviously. So I didn't get past like the first level. But I was able to play the Space Harry one because I just loaded the second tape.

And I was very impressed by that. It reminded me of, I think the game's called 3D Death Chase on the spectrum, which is similarly impressive. But I also wasn't able to get past that. I sort of dodged these totem heads that were coming towards me for about seven minutes. And I was like, when's this going to end? And it didn't. But I think it's something, it's a bit like one of like, I don't know,

like Battletotent Double Dragon, and it's most impressive on the oldest sort of hardware because they're managing to ring that out of it. Whereas the version that's like on Gog, the PC version or the Amiga version, And it's like, yeah, the Amiga can do this. So it's less remarkable, but it's still got some great stuff going on. So one thing, Stu, that really seems out to me is you mentioned the color clash, but I was actually going to say compared to most specky games, it's actually really good

at avoiding it. Yeah. Like the way they color the scenery and the individual items, like it manages to look far more colorful and yet not like noisy, like a spectrum game. Yeah. So they did a really great job there. It's there. It's usually an avoid.

avoidably there, but it is remarkable looking. It's one of the better looking and faster moving spectrum games like I've seen. But you mentioned the Amiga game. Yeah. And my goodness, do I love that version. It is so insane. It feels like a game that just, it's like the old, you know, the Bones Storm thing from The Simpsons. It really does feel like a game. It's just like you put the disc in it. It punches you in the face. It's just like screaming lyrics at you. Like the music is just like going to blow up your speakers. Like, just stuff doesn't stop. You're just moving across the level. It's so ridiculous. and that makes it like weirdly delightful.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I'm glad you said Bonestorm because that was my idea in terms of how this game feels. It feels like a parody of video games that someone would make for a TV show in the early 90s. Like, aren't video games stupid and loud and violent? And there's a man in the background who keeps saying savage. Savage. Oh, savage. It was the everybody dance now of barbarian video game music.

That's simple. Dude, it's just, it's incredible. Yeah, and it just goes. It's honestly hard to believe that it even exists when you play it today. But I love it. Their next game, so Perry's next game, very, very different. Over here in the States or North America, it's called Overlord, and the UK had a much more provocative title, Supremacy, Your Will Be Done.

And I understand you don't want a game with the word supremacy when you're releasing it in America. I know UK has got its own problems, but that game, That title has very connotations here that are different. But this game is a space RTS with some stabs at what I would call 4X gameplay. It's not quite there. But like with a lot of shiny games I notice and a lot of David Parr games I notice, he's arriving to ideas before a lot of other people do, but does not have the hindsight to develop them in a way that's satisfying or that holds up today.

Yeah, this one, this is a tricky one, but it is fascinating because this is, Right around the time when, like, you were starting to see a lot more PC stuff, like, play around with 4X strategy. I think Siv was out and big at that point already. I can't remember, actually. Definitely around then. If the second one was like 92 or something, I could be wrong about that. Yeah, no, Siv, I think, was actually 91. Right, right.

But either way, like, yes, the PC was, like, the place for sort of strategy games like this. Computers, I guess I should say. What I didn't know is that apparently is for Sivor. a port to the NES. Yeah, a very late port in 93. And by the time this shows up on the NES, people have played things like SimC City in Dune 2 and other 4X style games, RTS style games. So this felt very dated and the NES controller was not the best way to play it.

So it reviewed pretty horribly. It's so strange. One thing I will say about the name change, you know, I always love discovering these regional differences about what you can and cannot call something. as I discovered Victor Island's famous company Spaz only to learn that in the UK after attempting to use it in a script for Digital Foundry my boss was like, we don't say that here.

I was like, wait, what do you mean? And then I figured it out. Yeah, that's about one. Yeah. I think we're basically all on the same page about that word between the U.S. and the UK these days. You guys ride to it first. Yeah, not back then, of course.

But all, yeah, I should have said name differences. of course, David Perry worked on Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles. Right. When he worked on that game. Of course, T.M. Oh, man. In Japan, it was like Gekikikame Ninja Den initially. And then, like, everybody, nobody wanted to call them just straight up the Teenage Muti Ninja Turtles out of the gate.

So. But, yeah, that's another topic. We should be very afraid of nunchucks and they were right to be. But we talked about, yeah, swords too. We talked about, sorry, supremacy, overlord. We talked about Savage. And he goes on to work on some other games Like the Genesis version of the Terminator, the first movie, that adaptation This Catches the Eye of Virgin's Games

Who is the publisher for some of this work that Perry is doing They recently opened a branch at the time in America And they're like, David Perry, you are so good at making games, so fast We need a game about the McDonald's character Well, not necessarily McDonald's characters We have the McDonald's license And we're going to do a kind of sequel to MC Kids But same characters, different kind of

vibe and that is one of the first things he works on in America. He flies over and that's where he sets up shop and that's where he gets to work on games for Virgin games like the ones we mentioned, Cool Spots and this one, Global Gladiators. So my question about Global Gladiators is like a lot of brands at the time were very much into creating licensed games, right? Obviously there's SchoolPot, Cool Spot, there was the Noid, all that kind of stuff. But somehow McDonald's ended up with two games, right? completely different games.

You had this, but you also had, I think it was like McKids and other stuff as well, but then there was the Japanese treasure developed Treasure Land game. Right? Yeah, and for the Famicom, there was Donald Land, which is, never came out over here.

So, like, there's a ton of, like, random McDonald's games from all different developers, and I really would always, I always wanted to know, like, who at McDonald's was driving this. Yeah. Somebody clearly liked it. Because they couldn't put the food in the game,

MC Kids had the characters And then Global Gladiators Has an interesting but very strange environmentalist bent to it Right That was also This was the era of Captain Planet And awesome possum

Yeah I mean These evil aliens are polluting the planet Only we may pollute the planet And destroy them With the amount of cows McDonald's goes through I don't think they're really interested in saving the planet But it was very trendy to hop on that bandwagon In the early 90s

And I guess We never got a Mac to Nike game though. Oh man. We did get Grimmis' birthday game a couple of years ago. Hmm. Oh. I will say about Global Gladiators, even though it's horrible. The music on the

Megadry version is astonishing. It's like up there with Savage in terms of just what are you doing, like, levels of obnoxiousness in a good way. I recommend it. Yeah, I never played the Global Gladiators, but I do like MC Kids. It's weirdly good. Yeah. And so

after David Perry's work at Virgin Games is complete, he goes off to establish shiny. He decides, like, I don't want to go back to the UK. I want to stay in Southern California. Very odd. Very odd behavior. So we cover this in the Earthworm Gym episode, but with some funding from the toy company Playmates, Shiny is formed. Remember, Earthworm Gym is created to sell toys in a TMNT landscape. And then they name their company after the famous R.m. song, Shiny Happy People, which is, I think, the most Gen X decision on record to do that. Yes, I agree. So, John, you were not here

for our Earthworm Jim episode. Do you have any thoughts on this? Because we're not going to cover these games in detail here. Go back to that episode. I believe it's a Patreon exclusive. But, John, like, what is your take on these games? You say you like them. I do actually like them.

And part of this might be, like, just having extreme, having played them a lot as a kid and essentially learn the game, I'm at the point where I can have basically one-c-c-de-game, which is pretty nuts for Earth from Jim 1, as it is quite a challenging game. initially played it. I played it mostly on Sega Genesis, but a friend of mine had a super NES version.

I remember noticing the lens flares in stage one, by the way, thinking, wow, that's cool. But because of my obsession with this, I ended up buying it on PC as well because it got a really awesome, so it got two ports to PC, one from Activision, which is good,

and then another from Rainbow, which had done like the Turric stuff as well. We're involved with that. They did a DOS port of Earth from Jim 1 and 2. And you mentioned that Playmates had this thing about toys. The DOS version of that actually included a specific EXE you could run that was literally just called Toy Show. And it would actually demonstrate all the toys for you on screen. It also had an EXE to show a video of the introduction and part of an episode, I guess, of the Earth from Jim animated show. Oh, very nice. So they crammed all that in there. And it had

great visuals, but I always thought it was an eccentric game with difficulty being amped up by the focus on animation. But I felt like compared to Aladdin and prior stuff that Dave Perry had worked on, the actual level design, while complicated initially, at least perceptually, is actually pretty simple and laid out in a more logical way. It wasn't airplane hangar-style level design. It was like, all right, here's the path you take. And sometimes you have an upper path and a lower path. And once you master the mechanics, you can kind of really enjoy just like the, the vibes and the,

the animation quality and everything that's going on and the weirdness. I will say, I do think Earthworm Jim 1 is really good, but Earthworm Jim 2 is much less so because this is a point where they became obsessed with, like, just cramming variety in there. So there's like a million different mechanics. And I would actually say that DOS version of Earthworm Jim 2 is my favorite version. because they strip out some of the stuff. Yeah.

Like they took out the, the, what is it? It's the Lorenzo Soil stage, which I, which is like one of the worst ideas for a second level. I do like that level, but it is weird that they mix it up that early in the game. It's okay, but it shouldn't be staged. It's called conceptually, but executing it just so arduous, I find. It just takes so long. There was also, I don't know, I'm sure you guys talked about it, but, and I picked this up as well eventually, but there's like the Earthworm Jim 2 for Saturn and also PlayStation,

where they redid a lot of the graphics with like pre-rendered graphics, which is a horrible idea, given the style of Earthroom Jim is meant to be hand animated cartoon graphics. Like, let's put some CGI in here. That'll work. That'll work. It does not work. So, but still, Earthroom Jim 1 as a whole, like music, gameplay, visual design. I think it's a really interesting and fun game. And in the end, the version I end up playing the most, weirdly enough, is the Sega CD version, or from Jim's special edition, which has some extra levels, it has the great CD music, and it's easy to pop into a Sega CD.

Yeah, it is really tragic how Shiny and a lot of developers where they're excelling at this 2D art. And then immediately they have to transition to the ugliest era of polygons, known to man. I will say the art direction on shiny games helps their late 90s games excel when it comes. to overcoming just the general vibe of early polygonal games. But it is very tragic that they could never work in 2D again after letting go of Jim. I know, right? Like, ah, the 2D work was so good. But yeah, that's, you know, sign of the times.

But at least their next game, MDK, which we're about to get to, is a stunner. And I have a certain fondness for, I guess, the voodoo 3D FX era of 3D graphics. But I'm glad that, I mean, it was, it was like impressive at the time, but it quickly. quickly got a little ugly to look at. I'm glad we arrived where we are now, but it just stinks to have to let let go of all of the lessons we learned about 2D animation and

2D game design and then jump immediately a new entire format entirely. Yeah, let's talk about MDK from 1997, mostly a PC game, although there was a PlayStation port. So how does Shiny follow up this very cartoony platformer series meant to sell kids' toys in a TV show?

Well, they create a third-person shooter that looks like an avant-garde music video. And it even ends with like a French pop song music video. And this was all intentional. Nick Brutie and David Perry said they wanted to get as far away from Jim as possible. And they had been working on these cartooning games for like half of a decade. So here is the exact opposite. It's not a 2D game. There are, I guess, silly, cheeky elements to it.

But it's pretty far from Earthworm, Jim, even though you play a guy with a weird head in this one as well. Yeah, I mean, it is pretty far from it, but I mean, you've kind of got the same gun, you've got the same hovering sort of thing. It's not a million miles away, I would argue, but it's definitely distinctive. It's interesting that when it was first shown off, even being called murder, death kill, even though they play around with what that means. They showed a 2D segment. I don't know if you guys saw that, but the initial reveal trailers for this actually showed like 2D Pixar, MDK action, before transitioning. to 3D, which I thought was fun because it gives you a taste of what it might have looked

like, but ended up going 3D. I don't know when you want to get into it, but I have a lot to say about the technology and the style and what they're doing with this game that makes it so unique. Oh, sure. Yeah, I do want to go over just the kind of general premise and how it plays, but you mentioned

MDK, they were very cheek to use that word again about the meaning of the title, but I guess it always was meant to evoke murder, death, kill. But But they could possibly have had a toy deal with this game, and the toy manufacturers did not want to put murder, death, kill on the toy packaging. So they ran with MDK. Nick Brutie did confirm that in a 2011 interview, despite the fact that they were always very vague about what it could have been. It's like, oh, it means everything and it means nothing. It means whatever you want it to mean, essentially.

It's got to be, I mean, demolition man reference for sure. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Without a doubt. But then, yeah, they played with it. This is a third-person shooter in which you are playing a guy named Kurt Hectic. you're invading these alien ships, but first you drop onto them. So the first element of every stage is you skydiving down to the level, picking up power-ups along the way while avoiding enemy missiles.

And then you do a lot of platforming, you do a lot of shooting, you do a lot of sniping. It is like we have not figured out a lot of the problems when it comes to 3D platforming and 3D games at this point, but it is very ahead of its time in terms of it feeling very cool to play. and feeling like not as clunky as other games of the era. Absolutely. And part of this stems from a very interesting and key decision they made. Kurt is a sprite, right? Yeah, a very fluidly animated high-resolution sprites.

And that's so, yeah, basically this is a third-person shooter at its core, but it's also just like a third-person everything game. It's constantly shifting what you're doing, each section of a map, and it's all broken up into these section, with these tunnels. The tunnel's designed to give the game sort of a seamless feel, right? Where you're moving between each area. And you can have, like, just the first level alone, you're going from, like, shooting bad guys. And then there's this giant open area where you're doing, like, a bombing run on a field. Then there's, like, sniping. There's underground sections.

You know, it's just constantly shifting what you're doing gameplay-wise. And they have a lot of unique, like, objects and such. That, and this is where, I guess, the shiny humor comes out and I like this about it. Like the game is very dark and it feels serious and like not a good place, but there's a ton of comical elements that are just like weird. Like I think, I mean, obviously it's the power up stuff like the whatever they call. It's like the blow up Kurt doll that you throw and the enemies are attracted to that, right? Yeah.

But then there's that one level that opens where you like drop into what looks like a children's television show like on the stage. And it's, but all the textures are like cartoony looking intentionally. And you end up like knocking down the walls and there's like the stuff happening behind there. And they're just toy around with all these different concepts to create levels that feel exceptionally just different than anything that was happening at the time. And a lot of this is down to the technology. So they build a custom engine for this. It's also a game that requires a Pentium processor.

I mentioned this in my video, but it's the only game I can think of where if you try to run this on a 486 PC, it will not work. It actually has a, it will just straight up throw an error message and say you need a Pentium. So I assume it has something to do with floating point operations

or something that the 486 just can't do. And so, it's also a game that runs, initially it was designed to run in software mode. It runs in 640 by 480. So basically four times the pixels of what consoles were doing at the time. So very, very sharp graphics.

It can do wide open spaces with a mix of perspective correct polygon texturing. But, and this is what makes it really weird, they combine this with a lot of flat shaded polygons, right? Where they rely on big spaces that just have color. And you guys notice that, right? Or it's like not everything is textured. Yeah.

It's that contrast of texture with non-textured surfaces, plus like really dark shadows and strange colors that gives it a vibe that I think feels like, like anything else out there is. I think the art direction, like, even when it's a result to some extent of technical limitations,

I mean, I feel's bad saying limitations considering what they're doing here, but I think avant-garde is the right way to describe it. It's got an abstract sort of, I'm going to say it, I think it's got kind of an S&M vibe. Is that weird to say? I think, yeah, you're right on that. I mean, you

wear essentially like an S&M suit, like kind of like a Gimp suit for lack of a better word. I always felt like this game, even though it's mostly kind of comical and the violence is quite OTT and abstract again, because the enemies don't really look like anything

vaguely human at all. I always thought this game had kind of a dangerous atmosphere when I was younger. There was something about it. The opening of each stage where the mind crawler, I think they're called, is absolutely destroying the surface of a planet as you parachute down to it. And then when you land,

you're just in kind of like I don't even know how to describe it. It's like nothing else. I literally cannot think of anything else that looks like this game that came up before it. It's just like this completely new world and the experience. I think part of it that actually really contributes to this, and I've always thought this was weird,

but they deploy a technique that was made popular during the NES era. And by that I mean, they use a lot of black space. And this is really unusual for a 3D Polygon game. But there's a lot of spaces in this game. where they just have a completely blank wall. There's no texture on it. It's just black.

And then you have like high contrast colors. Like there's a room with these orange translucent platforms and windows out into the weird sky world. But the walls are mostly just pure black except for like one of them. Right. And they do this all over the place, which gives it this like weird shadowy, like difficult to comprehend design. Yeah. That I think is super evocative. Yeah.

The levels feel very big, and they are very big, especially at a time when these 3D environments, they were either not big or they were big, but the game couldn't actually show you things beyond the fog wall. And this game relies a lot on sniping, and you have 100 times magnification scope on your rifle. So you can zoom very far across the level. And I feel like this game is arriving at things you'd be doing in third person and first person shooters a lot. So we have sniping, not the first game to have sniping, but the first game to really go all out with it, it feels like. We have things you would see in Fortnite and other games where you're dropping into a level first. And also you can do airstrikes in this game, which is a common feature of things like Call of Duty. So like Perry and Broody and other folks, they're arriving at these ideas kind of first and then other people will develop them with the better technology as it comes along.

But we couldn't really do things in games until MDK, these specific things. Absolutely. We also had what I want to call it, snowboarding, metalboarding. there's a stage where you're actually literally riding like a board down all these tunnels while shooting enemies that I always thought was super fascinating It was 97 every game needed snowboarding Even Final Fantasy 7 I'd have a snowboarding stage

I feel like it's one of those games where It manages to be cohesive But also it has that feel where everyone who's working on it It's just super like oh and we could do this We could do this put this in put this in Yeah yeah yeah It feels so just alive with ideas the whole time Oh it's one of the shiny games

And I think this is their general mentality, at least with these small development staffs. They would have one level designer per level. So like everybody, even though I'm sure they're talking with each other and meeting with each other, they're all like doing their own conceptual thing with each stage instead of just like all deciding together. We're all going to spread the work around. So that's why you get such unique takes on levels. And some levels are better than others, of course. And part of the reason this works and one of the things they rely on a lot is the platforming, right?

Sort of. which was very difficult to do at the time, 3D platforming like this. And what they did was you have the pre-rendered sprite, but they have a shadow below him that maps pretty well under the environment, plus your, I don't know what to call a ribbon cape, whatever it is, which allows you to essentially glide.

So between the gliding and the shadow, it's actually pretty easy to figure out your position within the 3D world and engage in the platform. mean it's it's it's it helps that it's all pretty smooth i mean even the ps1 version is targeting 60 right it feels like it oh no no no in fact no uh no version target 60 really uh but you got to remember when this came out like 30 frames per second this targets a stable 30 fps and on most pentium systems it delivers but like 30 fps was not an easy thing to achieve in 3d at the time and the playstation version is not that stable and it's missing a bunch of

of like a sprite data and but it was done by neversoft which is cool you know that would go on to do tony hox pro skater but one interesting thing though is that this game was patched to support things like 3d effects voodoo but because of how the art was designed it's actually worse and the reason is uh those graphics cars like the voodoo have a limit of so the texture size that it can support the maximum texture size is 2506 pixels by 256 pixels. But MDK used 512 by 512 pixel textures in a lot of its environments in the software mode. So if you play in voodoo mode, you got texture filtering and possibly smoother performance,

but the textures were stretched out and blurrier, which is interesting. And I really think I maintain that this game is meant to be played without texture filtering. You just want those raw pixels. Yeah, and we should mention this, and it seems obvious, but I do want to point out that the reason that they were going so crazy with this game in terms of creativity and just kind of anything goes is for five years their lead platform was the Mega Drive slash Genesis and now they are working for the PC with the new Pentium technology so suddenly like anything is possible and they were kind of making anything become possible on the Genesis

back in the early 90s but now it's like okay we have just so many tools we have so many technologies helping us like what can we do with this and I feel like MDK is just like we're in this playground and we can just make any kind of fun ride for the player. Exactly, exactly. In addition, one thing I want to mention is the music. I think that the soundtrack to this game is extremely good. It's a very evocative, dark marching music that's like super fitting to the game, but occasionally it goes into weird directions.

Obviously, there's the ending bit, but there's other moments where it becomes like strange or silly. And sometimes there's sections where it's just pure ambiance. It's credited to Tommy Talleyco Studios, but it's likely the work of Joey Kyrrhus or Ted Todd Dennis based on what we know now. Either way, whoever did the music did a fantastic job, I would say. We'll talk a bit more about Tommy Talariko when we get to Messiah, which put that game back on the map. the somewhat recent scandal with him and unveiling what he's actually done for the industry. So it seems like this game was kind of a hit for Shiny

or at least it established them, reestablished them as, oh, now they are a cutting-edge PC developer. Look what they can do. The people that made Orthrum Gym are now working in a new medium and doing new things. And it's a very nice example of late 90s cool, like, oh, cutting-edge technology,

very cool, like music video aesthetic. And I forgot about this, but the game Trojan horse its way into many homes because it was one of two games that shipped with the original iMac in 1998. So that's why my friend had a copy. He got an iMac in high school, and we were able to play MBK on it because it just was like, oh, what's one of the coolest games you can give Mac users?

MDK. So I imagine a lot of the audience came from people buying this very popular version of the Mac, this very user-friendly. That's so cool. I didn't actually realize or remember that this had an actual Mac port, but that's fantastic. Yeah, that's the one I played mostly, and it seemed fine to me.

me. And we mentioned this. So this is available on Steam and Gog. And I guess MDK was popular enough to get a sequel. But by the time they wanted to make a sequel, Nick Broody, of course, is working on Giant Citizen Cabuto. So oddly enough, BioWare gets to make MDK2. A game people like in a game that did get an HD remake in 2012, I have never played this one. But I think there's a lot of funness for it because it was a Dreamcast game. Yeah, I bought it day one on Dreamcast actually. And I did like it. but I've always felt that it's significantly less interesting than what Shiny did. Like, it's,

it's fun, it's funny, it's got good gameplay to it, but it absolutely lacks the sheer bizarreness of the original MDK, and the art direction just isn't even anywhere near close. Yeah, you could definitely tell. Oh,

go ahead, Stuart. No, I was just going to say, I kind of pointedly avoided it because even seeing it, it just looked a bit like, and I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad thing, but it kind of looked like they'd kind of pick sort of it a bit,

and they'd gone, let's make this a bit more conventional and more, sort of like a comedy rather than this bizarre, abstract thing that we got before. Maybe it's good. I should play it one of these days, but it's not shiny, so I didn't fit this. Yeah, it felt like the original MDK was trying to be inscrutable in a cool way, but MDK2 feels a little more marketable, just based on the cover alone. Exactly, and you really feel it.

And they kind of go a bit more into the humor direction, but the humor in MDK2 is like more direct, whereas in the original MDK, it's a little more absolute. abstract, I might argue. But the thing that's interesting is that, you know, buyerware wasn't necessarily an RPG first developer yet, right? Yeah. They did Shattered Steel, which was that Vauxhall-based MEC game. Then they worked on Baldur's Gate as well around the same time was this MDK2 thing, right? And it's really only after the gigantic success of Baldur's Gate, uh, that they kind of like essentially became an RPG developer. Yeah. And I think by the time MDK,

too was being developed. The computer RPG was seen as, you know, not the best or most fruitful way to make money out of game developers. Right. Yeah. Exactly. So are we okay to move on to the next game? Do we have any final MBK thoughts? It's a really cool game and I think it does hold up. Obviously, a 1997 3D shooter slash platformer is not going to be as users or friendly as you might want it to be, but I feel like it's a very unique game that's worth playing. I would say it's a game as well that's really, it's weirdly made for playing on a keyboard. It just plays great on a keyboard. smacking that space bar to zoom it, you know, bring out the sniper view, feels just good. And I really wish that this would receive, like, a night dive style re-release on modern platforms. That would be nice. I mean, they remade MDK2,

so I feel like, why not? Why not remake MDKK? Right, exactly. Heck yeah. We're going to move on to Wild 9, 1998, for the PlayStation. So this has shiny heading back to more familiar territory. This is kind of like an earthworm

Jim spiritual sequel with a PlayStation Edge to it. So we have a 2.5D platformer, so it's a 2D game, but with 3D graphics. And along with the standard running and jumping and shooting of Earthworm Jim, the main mechanic is the rig, which is essentially a

bolt of plasma or like an energy lasso that lets you grab enemies, slam them back and forth, toss them around, and use them to solve puzzles within the environment. And it's an interesting thing. It's an interesting concept, but it feels like a lot of this is used in practice to create a lot of escort

levels, which I feel like Shiny was very fixated on, especially in Earthworm Gym too. I feel like that was their way to make the most out of a design level, like make you go through it as slowly as possible while following something else or having something follow you. Yeah, it's a game that, as well as the sort of escorting stuff, which there's one in the second level, which is just, it's annoying because the rig, the thing you use to move this guy through the stage. It just isn't reliable enough to get him where you want and you're going to drop him, you're going to have to repeat terrain. But also

the game is really fixated on making you do things three times. Like to destroy certain things, you need to put three enemies into them. And it's like, why? I'm not doing anything interesting. I'm just going back a bit getting an enemy returning and shoving into a minza. Is shoving enemies into a minza fun? Yes, yes it is. We've all

played Resident Evil 9. But it's just not that fun in this. I wish I liked it more. than I do because I love the grungy look of it. I love the music that's in there. Oh, yeah. But it just, it gets old quickly, basically. Yeah, I'm kind of with you, Stu, where I like this game, and I actually liked it back

in the day. And I'm probably a increasingly fond memories of it only due to planes at the beach back in the day, because I used to bring my PlayStation down to Florida. It's like, swim in the morning, PlayStation the afternoon. And I played Wild Nine down there. And I liked it. a lot, but I always felt it was a bit slower than I might have liked. And I do remember there being like a ton of tutorial pop-ups, which I found kind of like infuriating back then.

Because like, you look at their older games and it doesn't really have anything like that. You just figure it out. And this game's like constantly like, here's a box. Like, hey, hey, dude, here's how you do this thing. Yeah, if you look at the box art really big on the cover, it says, torture your enemies. And as a reminder to people out there, that's back when torture was cool in the late 90s. But that gave me the idea like, oh, I bet you can do a lot of like sick, weird stuff in this game. But unfortunately, I couldn't play this for the podcast.

But watching a let's play or a play-thru, I thought, oh, not really. You mostly just like kind of bam-bam enemies back and forth to kill them or sort of like toss them around. That's the extent of this kind of energy lasso. Spinning fan blades, you can throw them into. Setting on fire and stuff. It's just, once you've done it a few times, it's kind of like, I mean, the one novel thing I do like is when you want to get across a spike piece. you can slam enemies into it and use them as platforms. And every time you jump on them, they're like Twitch and it's horrible.

But it is at least kind of amusing and gameplay thing. My thought was always that the torture your enemies bit came from a marketing department in the way that John Romare is going to make you his bitch did, which is like this edgy marketing at the time. You do get a torture score at the end of each level. That's to be said. Yeah, that's true. It just doesn't fit.

I guess the marketing made me think it'd be more like deception. that series where you're like setting a bunch of traps and finding more like creative ways to bounce an enemy around but no it is just like sort of like Bayona Commando even down to like the swinging around which Jim also did in Earth From Jim 2 I believe in Earth from Jim 1 so I can see

a lot of similarities here the biggest issue for me is that there are interesting design elements in this game but working at this level of resolution with this many polygons I feel like Shiny could not really convey that with the PlayStation's hardware like they could with MDK like with MDK I feel like all of

their visual ideas are coming through loud and clear. Here it feels like there's like a layer between you and what they want to show you that is kind of just getting in the way. Yeah, you can see what they're trying to do. I think the backgrounds are quite beautiful and the art and texture work is pretty detailed for PlayStation, but it just doesn't quite resolve. I will say it's better than the non-shiny game that was probably released around this time, Earthworm Gym 3D, which took their old IP and turned it into something really bad.

We did talk about that, and that's a game where I could only, I bought it, like, for 10 bucks at a, on a, you know, clearance sale, and I thought I got ripped off at 10 bucks. I don't even want to finish the first level. Nope. I think, I do think that it's, I'm playing it today briefly. I thought it was interesting that you could still see the design ideas from Earthwim, Jim, sort of evolving in this. But, I mean, was there to Napele art in this as well? It really looks like his art. Because, like, the tutorial guy, it looks really a lot like Peter Puppie to me.

And the swinging is very earthworm gym. The energy that you collect looks a bit like the suit powers that you get an fom gym. And part of my brain was going, was this once an earthworm gym game? Is this a proto for earthworm gym three or something? Doug was not involved with this. No,

he wasn't. Okay. At all. Well, someone who really, really wants to buy his style was. So that's cool. Unfortunately,

you know who was involved? John Alvarado. I don't even know who that is. Does he suck as well? Was he, I think he, if it's the same John as I'm thinking, he was involved with, uh, yeah, the Intellivision of Miko. Okay. Yes. Oh, no wonder.

It all goes back to Earthworm Jim. It does. Lord. Well, yeah, that's Wild 9. This game was very panned at the time, which is why I never even rented it back when it was. I feel like this. Oh, God. That's a little unfair.

And I suspect that the reason it was so panned actually has less to do with the game's quality and more with like it's a two-d platform. I think so. too. And Konoa was also not well received. And the reason it's so rare is it didn't sell at all. Nobody cared. So, like, platformers were not the hot thing.

Yeah. I will say one embarrassing and silly thing about this game. I'm going to admit it here first. When I went to see video games live, the show that Tommy Tala Rico put on, like, in, I don't know, 2006 or seven or something, I had him sign my wild. nine manual. Unfortunately, John, it's not gone down in value. Yeah. I know.

It's appreciated him, fuzzy. I'm sorry. I was even really him who signed it? He gave it to a subcontractor to sign it for you. Who was really good at copying his signature, I will add. But hey, at least I had the, I brought my Mass Effect manual and had Jack Wall sign that. And that's some good music. Well, it was brave of you to admit that.

here. We won't hold it against you. I finally had to come out. You know. So we're going to move on to a lesser known game by Shiny R.C. Stunt Copter in 1999 for the PlayStation. And this is really the most obscure shiny game outside of their last one, probably. And this does feel like a real one for us game, even though most of Shiny's games feel like a one for us game. Because Perry had a very personal interest in RC Copters. And he felt that, oh, this dual shock, this is a is the best way to control one in a video game. And a lot of guys want to do this hobby, but they don't have the money because it's an expensive hobby.

Here's a way for you to partake in this expensive hobby in the comfort of your home by buying like a $30 or $40 PlayStation game. I played this today and I thought it was much, much more difficult than flying an actual road control helicopter. I did like it. I think there's a lot of character to it, like the voiceovers and some of the music, which is actually lifted from Earthworm Gym,

or at least arranged from Earthworm Jim, which really fascinated me. But basically, once you've cleared the tutorial, it just immediately becomes psychotically difficult. It's very hard to control this thing, which is by design, I'm sure. And there's something satisfying about that. But it's not the kind of thing I can see myself going back to, really.

They tried to make it control as much like a real RC copter as possible, and I think that might have been a mistake. But if you want to, if you want a real RC simulation, I guess this is where you go to. It was the only place to go. And I found a quote from Perry in an issue of Next Generation that was hyping up this game. And Perry says, quote, I decided to do Fly by Wire. By the way, Fly By Wire was the working title for this game.

Continuing. In order to prove that new genres of games can be developed and all that crap about it has to be like Doom or it has to be a fighting game is not only wrong, but just an excuse for companies to keep feeding us the same old stuff. So that does feel like he's not just talking about this game, but he's talking about like the ethos of Shiny in general. We're not going to do the thing. you expect from us until the Matrix comes along. Then give me the money. I'll do that.

Yeah, this is it's not a game I've spent much time with but at least the tech looks interesting. It runs at a pretty high frame rate and they're doing some fancy texture stuff at points that I thought was pretty interesting. But it is it's very not shiny. Yes. He lives up to his mission. He has accomplished it.

Whenever I look at Chinese gameography, I'm like, oh, right, this one. And it does feel like very nonchievous. shiny. There's like a laid-back Owen Wilson-style guy as the announcer for the game who's very charming. And this game came out at the wrong time completely because September of 1999, the biggest month in gaming history, many magazine said. It's the launch of things like the Dreamcast and Final Fantasy 8 and many other big titles. An RC stunt-copter game is going to get lost in the shuffle and this one certainly did. I assume that it's very rare because nobody bought it. Yeah, it's probably about right.

And yeah, that is R.C. Stunk Copper. Let's move on to another game by Shiny. Messiah 2000. So like I said up front, the early odds were about a lot of, like, notable PC gaming personalities with big egos falling flat on their faces, with ambitious titles that are going to fall far short of their mark. This is one of the big ones. And I think thanks to the H-bomber guy, Roblox, Oof, video, I think that video made people remember what Messiah even is, because this, this. is the origin of the oof sound that you might know from Roblox if you are younger than us, let's say. Or have a kid. Or have a kid, too.

You can legally know about it if you're younger or if you have a kid. Exactly. And yes. Oh, go ahead, John. I know you played this for Digital Frownery within the past couple of years. I did check out that video you put together. Oh, yeah. Let's play thing I did. Yeah.

No, I actually both played this back in the day and then later sort of revisited it again for that little video where I opened up a new copy and installed it on a proper retro PC. And as you know, Bob, this was hyped up for one weird thing, Teselation. And finally, a playable character named Bob. I was waiting for that for a very long time. That's true, Bob the angel. That's true.

It finally happened. A little cute cheruby angel. Possibly inspired by the Dancing Baby meme we don't know. But yeah, Tesolation, John, if you look at the next generation. cover story about Messiah from, I think, 1997. Very little of that cover story is about the game and what you're doing it. Most of it's about tessellation and the technology they're using the power of the game. But please continue.

So what's interesting, testillation is the idea of just sort of like altering a polygon mesh to like add additional complexity dynamically to it in a way to sort of like increase the mesh complexity as it gets closer to the camera. This is actually something that would be really common weirdly on the PlayStation 1. Like that's how you would defeat texture. warping to a degree is they actually had to like increase the complexity of the mesh near the camera but messiah's promise from what I recall was that they would dynamically alter the stuff

based on your intended frame rate target and your PC specs the idea was that depend no matter which PC you ran it on the complexity of the visuals the characters especially I believe would change uh the problem is it didn't really really worked that well. Like, it resulted in characters that looked very warbly and strange to begin with. And secondly, performance on a period-appropriate PCs was not good. Like, compared to MDK, which ran really well, this was, like, kind of a mess out of the gate. I remember struggling big time to get smooth frame rates in this game.

I think I was probably running a 733 megahertz system at the time, possibly. either way, not super smooth, but still, it looks very Y2K, wouldn't you say? And it's similar to MDK, the main character is a very smoothly rendered sprite with a lot of frames of animation. And the premise of this game, it's very vague.

You play at Angel Name Bob. You're sent to this dystopian earth in order to cleanse it of sin. And the gameplay involves jumping into the bodies of both hostile and friendly NPCs in order to solve puzzles with their unique actions.

Most of the time, they are just keys that will open doors. And if anyone sees Bob in his true form, a naked little angel, they will try to murder him. So you're in your weakest state

when you are an angel form. And I guess depending on the difficulty, that will determine how hard it is to jump into another body. I think if on the hardest difficulty, you have to jump in from behind the enemy or the MPC. That's right.

It's actually a very interesting mechanic, I think, because it is essentially an action puzzle game, right? Where you're just going through these worlds and trying to figure out almost stealth, like, like, how do I actually proceed here? How do I get through this section? And it usually amounts to finding the right dude to possess and utilize them to get through it. And of course, there's like scientists, there's combat guys you can possess, all these different types of characters.

And that's what you got to do. The problem is, though, it's like it also has a lot of, like, weird fiddly platforming. You can die very easily. It's a game where you kind of, you'll be manually bringing up the menu and hitting save, like, a lot. Because it's, it's very trial and error. Yeah. I mean, to be honest, I would love to say more about this, but I have this on Gog, and this game does not work. Like, I, I managed to get it working for, like, 20 minutes. And when I left the game and came back to it, it no longer worked anymore. I, see, there are fixes out there, but good luck getting

this one running. I had big problems and I couldn't find like a repack or something that just did it for me. So good, I don't know. Rough times. This game though, the premise is fascinating to me and I wish the way it executed was much better because you have this idea of okay, jump in anybody

solve puzzles and it seems great, but I feel like they didn't have time or they couldn't think of anything more interesting to do than you know, using certain people to open certain doors, shooting, and a lot of platforming. And this this might be an unfair comparison, but I think something like the modern Hitman games are a much better version of this. I mean, obviously they look better.

But those games are all about, okay, who do I need to become in order to solve this puzzle within the environment? And of course, the modern Hitman games have the advantage of coming out like 15 years after this with a lot more technology at their fingertips and much bigger staffs to work with. But I think like that is the ideal version of what Mustaya was establishing. And I mean, Hitman 1 actually came out in two. the year 2000 as well. That's right, yeah. And that is essentially the same idea. It's about utilizing characters in an environment to like get past obstacles and puzzles, except for Hitman doesn't have like platformy and stuff like that.

I do wish I could have played more of this because what I did get to play, I thought seemed really kind of up my street. It's odd. It's grungy again. I think it's got Fairfactory music in the soundtrack as well, which is really cool. Boy, does the game's logo scream. that kind of era for music as well. That's when I got that running, I was so hyped. I was like, finally,

this insane logo just like bursting music at you. I was very excited about that. I wish Nightdive would do this as well, but there's no game. I wish Nightdive wouldn't do. Yeah, I agree. I would love to see this sort of like remade and polished up somewhat, just like fix its issues. But I think like you kind of insinuated Bob. Compared to something like

MDK, I just don't think the idea is here or as well executed. Yeah. They didn't have the creative of juices to power through all the way to the end. And this didn't get a console port right. It was going to get one, I think, or it was announced or something. Yeah, it was PC only, and I think it was, because it was a failure, it did not come out on anything else. Was it?

There may have been, I feel like this, I recall this being announced as a Dreamcast game. Yeah, I remember that happening as well. I think there was a playing Dreamcast port at some point. This sold very poorly, though, for the... Yeah, it's sold poorly, and it's... Yeah, it probably wouldn't have run that well in Dreamcast. Yeah. There is a funny comparison, though, I want to...

A thing to note is that the one of the composers for this, Beyond Joey, of course, from Tommy Teller Hager Studios, was Jesper Kid, who would become known for his amazing work on the Hitman series. So he worked on both Hitman and Messiah, and weirdly enough MDK2 all in that same year. So the dude was on fire at the time and obviously would continue to ramp up

and do like incredible music in time. Yeah, these are good soundtracks. And we keep bringing up the era of the big PC game developer with the big ego. And that's essentially what's going on with Perry at this era because there's that next generation cover story.

I did read it. He is very, he's got a big ego in that. I'm paraphrasing here. but he essentially says like, oh, game developers that can't do what we're doing are just lazy. Things like that that are angering people. And then you keep hearing Messiah coming up in the press at the time as, oh, it's going to be the next big game. This game gets delayed for two and a half years. It is originally a quarter one 98 game that gets pushed into the end of the year 2000.

And I think everyone was just rooting for the downfall of David Perry and Shiny. And of course, the game cheekily titled Messiah, it's meant to evoke like, oh, this is the second coming of video games. like Christ is coming back to Earth and he's bringing you Messiah. So they were kind of setting themselves up to fail here, I guess, with the game this bowl that they clearly did not fully, you know, they pulled it out of the oven a lot too early, even though it was in there for three years, four years. Interesting, this was also the year, I believe, of Dai Katana finally coming out. And I actually think Dai Katana is quite a good game once you patch it up. At launch, it was pretty rough. but I always thought about this, the rock star developers of the 90s and like what that,

what that resulted in. But then you look at like John Romero today and he's just like one of like the coolest dudes in the industry like super kind, super just like just an amazing guy. And I've always wondered if like his sort of like brush with fame and then being swatted down back to earth in the late 90s ended up sort of making him the person he is today. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. Some of them made it at the other end okay.

Some of them are Cliffy B. I mean, yeah, I mean, it comes and goes, you know. But I haven't kept tabs on Dave Perry other than I know he went and did stuff with like meta on VR. Oh, the VR work was awesome. Yeah. It was going great, though, Stu. That's the problem. And then Mark Zuckerberg's just like, ah, fuck this.

We're done with it. Well, I have a little coda to this that will let you know where David Perry ended up. It's not like something I personally wish he was doing. But we'll talk about that when we talk about like post-shiny stuff. So, yeah, that is Messiah, a very rough game. And then we get the last real shiny game in 2000 alongside Messiah as sacrifice. So this is an RTS. So it's sort of like they're jump from Savage to Overlord.

Like, let's do something completely weird and different. Let's go back to our roots in a way. And this is inspired by an old spectrum game where wizards battle each other too. So they're really drawing from their past game development. And this is an RTS that's all about. combat. There's no base building. Instead, it's an all-out wizard battle that involves micromanaging troops, and then the sacrifice can be found in how you reap the souls of enemies in order to generate more of your own troops. So this is essentially

Pickman a year before Pickman. And that is my argument here. I'm not like an RTS guy, but I played this a little bit, and it reminded me very much of brutal legend, the way that you manually control your guy while sort of ordering your folks around. Though it does have a more traditional RTS, like drag a box around all your bros, and then... Army Corps of Hill for PSVita. Oh, yeah. No, actually, I do have something to say about this because this is, I believe, a continuation of what was briefly known as the distraction genre, the strategy action genre.

And this was something that was really popular during this period. And it was kind of started by a game called Uprising from 3DO of all companies. And then Activision did Battlezone, which was utilizing the old 80s IP to create a new game. And what made these unique and quote unquote distraction is that you would control a unit and that unit could engage in actual like action, right? You could battle. You could like engage with the environment. You're running around either first or third person. But you're also commanding units.

So it basically puts you on the battlefield. And that was a big difference from like the typical overhead RTS games. And I really liked this idea. especially Battlezone 1998 is just a really awesome game because you can climb into any unit, any vehicle and take charge of it while also ordering things around. And sacrifice is very much that sort of thing. And also Giant Citizen Cabuto, which is being made at the same time by Nick Brutian crew, also has a lot of extraction elements in it.

And yeah, obviously you mentioned brutal legend. you know army corps of hell as well like it still sometimes exists but this this command the units while you know directly controlling the character pickman as well obviously yeah it's a really cool idea and i think sacrifice is actually a pretty good game and it's it's underrated i would say i like the humor that's laced through it it's very very shiny basically and the graphics again it's not as grungy but it does still have that same vibe

and I appreciate that about it. Yeah maybe it's just how the game looks and the fantasy vibe to it and the sense of humor reminds me a bit of a bullfrog game like if Bullfrog were to make an RTS this is how it would execute I think yeah I mean magic carpet's

kind of a abstraction game right yep in a way in a way yeah you're right that's a good point and this is another shiny game with a very long development cycle so it was originally worked on by a team of four people

That, of course, ballooned over time. But screenshots for this one were in magazines as early as 97. And like Messiah, the game comes out in late 2000. So this one is stewing development for a while. It's not incredibly strange for a game to be in development that long at that time period. But it seems like they were having development issues within Shinyy, with these two big games sort of coming out side by side in the year 2000. Absolutely.

But you're right. So this kind of is like the end of classic Shiny, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. And I guess people look back on it fondly. People didn't really know how to take this when the game came out. Like we're not sure what you're doing here. We kind of like it. And now if you look at what are the best 100 games on PC. This will normally be on that list within like the 80 to 90 range. People do look at this fondly thinking like it was ahead of its time. We didn't give it a chance. This is the last real shiny game. So I think it is now viewed in those terms. Like, oh, they kind of had something here. Exactly. Exactly. People didn't realize what they had at the time. And they certainly didn't see what was coming. No, no. Next. Yeah, and again, it's another one of the, I wanted to play this one again.

I think I played it back in the day like a demo or something, but on Steam, it's like $25. And it did not go on sale in the spring sale that's happening now. So I don't know what's happening. I don't know who owns these games, but I'm going to say, settle down, please. Yeah, it's, I mean, they were, Pop Interplay had these, right? Because they've gone now, right, or they've been resurrected or something. But I know that when I bought that sacrifice and Messiah on good old games, they were something like two pounds. 50s. So they are not

that anymore. Okay, it is on sale. I mean, if you want to spend 16 pounds on a game that doesn't work. I think Messiah, you know, go for it. Yeah, I mean, I was able to run Messiah 15 years ago on my old PC. I don't know if it would run now, but the important thing is, Stuart, I also paid like $3 for it. So no skin off my nose. Let's move on to the final

era for Shiny, their third act, as it were. So we have entered the Matrix, a year 2000 game for all the major platforms of that era. So, in a way they're stooping to masing a license game but this is a great opportunity for the studio because the original The Matrix was seen by Warner Brothers as a weird movie

that was probably going to fail. They had no idea it was going to be this like this gigantic hit for them that would influence culture for decades to come which is why the original Matrix did not have any merchandise or any tie-in video games. They were not prepared for what it would become. So that's why all

of the focus on merchandising is put on the sequels and that is why Shiny is then hired to make the next, or sorry, the first Matrix game, which is announced at E3 2000, the perfect time to announce your Matrix game. We're all waiting for those sequels. And Shiny is going to make an essential part of the Matrix story.

It's not going to be an adaptation of the games. It is going to be a part of the larger story with individual cinema sequences that are filmed by the Wichowski's. So there are about 42 minutes of this game that are original, movie style cutscenes filmed in live action with characters from the films. Yeah, I mean, I'm going to hold my hands up here and say, I really

like The Matrix. I'm well aware of the floors and the reception, but I think, I love the Wachowski's and I think that they got a vision and I respect that. I like this game because of that, but it is a hot mess to play. It's cool.

There are cool things in this game. I do like the way the combat does genuinely feel quite dynamic. I was playing it today, and I noted At one point, I had an enemy swing a kick at me, and the character actually grabs the leg and swings them around into the wall. And all I'd done is hit grab. And it's like, wait a minute, you knew, it's not just like a kind of a, I don't know how to describe it. Like, I just a dialing grab. I grabbed the enemy the way they were attacking me.

And I thought that just seemed really cool and dynamic. But then obviously the camera went to shit. So I don't know what happened after that. Yeah. So this, you mentioned, you know, the idea of making another license game, right? something Dave Perry was certainly no stranger to, as we know, but this was because of the direct involvement of the Wachowski's kind of like a unique opportunity for them.

And I do understand why they went for it. It sounds like the Wachowski's actually wanted to work with them. Although I think they also talked to Konami at some point. But basically, they wanted to make a video game and Shiny ended up being the one that got picked. They became the one. Yes. Yeah, I didn't mean to be dismissive when I said they stooped to making a license game because...

Sure, sure, sure. I know. We get what you get. We get exactly what you mean. The Wachowski's did not intend for this to be just another license game. They were trying to elevate the idea of the license game by saying this is not just a toy tied into the releases of our movies. This is an essential part of the story. And at the time, Shinyy was viewed as like, oh, this cutting edge cool developer that makes like weird, interesting things, they fit the vibe of the Wichowski's perfectly, especially something.

like MDK is on par with the matrix in terms of like what are all these weird ideas I've never seen before. But my guess, and I don't know all the history here of this, is that the fact that it needed to be tied into the movies probably hurt the project pretty badly. Because it's clear that Shiny often needed a little more time to get their games done. Especially during these years. And I feel like this is a game that still needed to ship around the time of the films in order to, you know, complete the whole marketing thing. And because of that, it ended up in kind of a state. They also had to ship it on many platforms on day one,

which is something they didn't normally do. In fact, up to this point, I'm not sure they ever did any sort of like massive multi-platform release. No, I guess it's a phone gym, but that's still only like two or three platforms, isn't it? Yeah. I mean, that did get ports, but it wasn't always. by them and at first it was just those two right so but this was like all the current platforms and the PC

and it had a lot of weird tech things I will say on the tech side it was one of those rare Xbox games that supported 1080I which is like was unusual and that I always remember that being one of the talking points and something I tested when I finally got an HD set it's like oh you can play this in HD but compared to the other games that they had worked on it's very rough The visuals are not great. The frame rate's all over the place. It's got a lot of strange things going on. That just feel super unpolished and janky.

So even though there is cool stuff in here, it's also really rough. I mean, the level design as well, a lot of it is just identical empty offices. Like, Oni. It's crazy. I will say, like, I did like the hacking minigame that's in there. You can access, like, a kind of a prompt, and you can do a little rudimentary kind of mini game by figuring out sort of passwords and unlock some features that way,

which is cute. I think you can even plug a keyboard in for it, which is fun. But if you want the, if you are a Matrix head and you want to experience the story in this game, all the footage is on the box set, like the Blu-ray set and the DVD set of the Matrix game. So you do not need to play the game.

I'm glad it's been, and I honestly wouldn't recommend that you do. I'm glad it's been literally. I don't know, man. I feel like it might be worth playing just because it's so weird. If you're, if you're a fan of his. historical curiosities is worth checking out, especially because they do try to mix up genres in there.

They got like rail shooting sections, cars sections, all kinds of weird little different areas throughout the game. Yeah, it's not like it's difficult either. You can get through it quite effective. Now, the PC version, I actually did a video with my colleague Alex once where we looked at the out-of-the-box PC experience versus like PlayStation 2 and the PC version of this initially. and this actually made the game famous for a little bit. Had serious problems with how it would draw its geometry in some scenes. Famously, the car had square wheels. If you've seen that floating around, and it just looks hilarious.

Yeah, I don't think this is available today in any way, I guess, because of licensing. And I will say unfair and unfortunate, but Shiny announces this game in, I guess, June of 2000. And then between that announcement and the release, a game, called Max Payne is released. That is the Matrix game. And when I'm watching footage of this game, I'm like, I should play Max Payne again. That was fun. I know they were biting into what the Matrix had offered in 99, but they just did it better by ripping it off before they could release the, you know, the sincere license version of the Matrix.

So it's too bad for Shiny on that one. To be fair, though, Max Payne is pure gunplay, whereas Enter the Matrix has like a lot of the martial arts stuff as well. Yeah, it's a very sloppy, unfortunately unfinished game, but when you hit focus and you run up to an enemy, hit the kick and your character actually pivotes off a bit of scenery and kicks them in the face, it

is badass. I've got to say, it is badass. Yeah, this game was really ripped into by the press for being buggy, seeming rushed and unfinished. And their big problem was, like, we can't play as Neo, the coolest guy in the Matrix, or the guy who's the hero of the Matrix. And that problem, I guess, is solved in the Matrix

Path of Neo, a 2005 video, game, which is a more by the numbers license game. They're not providing you in a behind the scenes look at the Matrix or an essential part of the story. Essentially they're saying, here are some key neo moments. We're going to let you play them.

Two years after the movies come out when I think everyone had really turned on them. Now I think they're being re-evaluated, but this is a peak era of we hate sequels and prequels. You've ruined everything we've ever loved. And people were not ready to receive this game, I think, in 2005. And that's a shame.

Because this game is bonkers. And it's also a return to form for shiny in terms of the tech. Like they are doing some awesome stuff with this game's like technology, especially on PlayStation 2. Like famously this is one of the only, like possibly only game that they try to simulate like per pixel lighting and, bump map textures and such in certain scenes that you just, the system just can't normally do. it has a lot of cool

visual effects and reflective surfaces and just all kinds of neat stuff and I think it's such a big leap from Enter the Matrix on that front at least the presentation side I mean I'm sorry but I really want to talk about the ending Oh please do

Stu I know it has an infamous ending sequence and I did fast forward to the end of a playthrough Before you talk about that Just note that most of the game is It's following the movies right Yes that's right You're doing sort of, as you've mentioned, both of the greatest hits, more or less.

Exactly. And so that means the gameplay is constantly shifting. Like there's points where it's like, oh, now you're Neo, like going through the cubicles, trying to get out of the building on the phone with Morpheus, right? And it's totally different gameplay from like some other section

where you're like doing kung fu and all that. But then the ending. Yeah. Now, if you'll remember in the Matrix Revolutions, they have what I believe is called the Superbrawl, which is essentially Goku and, I don't know, cell, what happens in that,

smashing against each other over and over again. And what happens in this game is when that scene is about to take place, it sort of stops and zooms out into like a sort of a white void. And I'm probably misremembering this slightly, so do Google it or whatever. And you've got representations, pixel art representations, like really small, like Atari style of the Wichowski's, and they stop and they say, like, essentially,

well, that ending wouldn't really work for a video game. It wouldn't, like, really have the sort of climactic feel that we want. So we've devised this completely new ending. And then what happens is the Agent Smiths all merge into this giant like kind of Godzilla Mega Smith thing that then reaches over to a advert for sunglasses that he then takes the massive pair of sunglasses off and puts on his own giant kaiju face. And then you beat the shit out of him and the Queen's song, We Are the Champions Place. It is unbelievable. And I mean that in a good way. It's so cool and meta and interesting way to end the game.

You know, Stuart, I have not actually ever watched the Matrix 2 and 3 movies. And because of this, the ending of this video game, I assume that was the ending of the third movie. You're telling me it's not. It's not at all. No, no, no, no, no. Darn it. Now I probably won't ever watch it. Sorry, sorry, go ahead, Stuart.

I was just saying, I guess you've got to watch him. Yes, eventually. I mean, it's something I'm missing in my life. I need to know what those movies are really about. The Rift Tracks will not make a difference in my life. I need to sit down with the real thing. I love those movies. I love them.

Any other final thoughts on this one before we move on to the Chinese final game? A very weird final game. I just think that this is actually really worth revisiting right now. Just to see what they were trying to do at the time. It's leagues better than into the Matrix, I would say. Oh, yeah. It's, and it looks great. It absolutely looks great. And I actually really suggest,

checking out the PS2 version specifically because they do things on that console that you just normally don't see there. So it feels like a, like a, you know, a sign off for shiny saying, yeah, we still got some technical chops. Check it out. Yeah, I think it helped them that they weren't living in the period that was leading up to the most anticipated sequels of all time. And they also had a roadmap for the kind of thing they would be making when they're just adapting existing scenes from the film. So I think that really helped them out a lot with this game. Now we're going to move on to a weird final game for a studio. and that is the Golden Compass

which was an adaptation of the adaptation of the famous children's book. I always confuse this with Narnia, but Narnia is the Christian one and the Golden Compass is the atheist one. So important distinction there. And I really have not much to say about this, except it seems to be a much worse version of Enter the Matrix

in terms of just trying a bunch of 3D action game ideas and not all of them sticking. And this one is also coming out for a lot of platforms and I think Shiny is behind all of them, even the DS one, although I could not find much about the DS version, to be sure. I didn't try the DS1. I tried this on PS3, and it kind of just made me sad because it's such a generic licensed movie tie-in game. Now, admittedly, I only did the first 20 minutes or so, admittedly. Maybe it turns into something like Guitar Man or something. But it was just the most generic, obvious, like run along a corridor, swipe at some enemies that don't put up any kind of resistance.

when you've got your bar full press circle do a special attack and it just kind of is like it's it's just kind of sad for a shiny game to be so uninspired in any way there's nothing in there the mechanically that made me go oh that's interesting it's the same as all of the other licensed games that aren't even necessarily terrible you just wouldn't play them you know it's like less involving than one of the Lego games I like those games but they are very simple games

you know it doesn't even have that it It sucks. I didn't miss out. I think while making this game, the developers were distracted by David Perry putting a lot of things in boxes. So that's why this game didn't turn out the way it should have. But, I mean,

how good could a golden compass game be in the first place? I'm not really sure. This is not, I mean, the movie made money, but this is not a well-remembered film. This is not a game people wanted to play. If they decided to do a Matrix Path of Neo,

but the golden compass, I suppose it could have been something more interesting. Let me play as Nicole Kidman. who are these kids? I didn't read the books. I'm sorry, folks. There was one thing I did like about this game, which is that you're playing as the girl Lyra on the back of a polar bear,

and when you press R1, the polar bear does a block, and it sort of gets up on its hind legs and does like a really anime-looking block move. It's kind of funny. One redeeming feature. I don't know if that's from the movie or not, but yeah. But yeah, that is their last game. And we could talk about the fate of Shiny.

So their history with publishers is very, very confusing. I try to nail it all down here. So after Jim, they were acquired by Interplay. I believe they were a Playmates company before that. Interplay folded. Shiny was acquired by Atari. They were sold off to Foundation 9.

Shiny and the Collected were merge into double Helix games. And then that was merged into Amazon Game Studios. And now Amazon Game Studios, despite not making a whole lot in their 15-ish years of existence, they are now working on the new Tomb Raider game. So potentially some shiny people could be, working on those, I'm not sure because they're not out yet. So that is just like how many times Shiny was sold and combined

and resold over the last 30 plus years. I would, as it were, double helix made some cool stuff, actually. They did that Killer Instinct reboot, and they did the 2014 version of Strider. Oh, cool.

Among others. So that's, I forgot about that. That's pretty awesome. The Killer Instinct was dope. I love that. Nick Broody, we mentioned he works for Digital Eclipse. He has been art director on things like the Wizardry remake in 2023, the Mortal Kombat Legacy Collection, and also he was art director on the 2019 medieval remake,

the medieval PlayStation Spooky Platformer series. That's some good art directing going on right there. That's a fantastic looking game. And in terms of what David Perry's been up to, I could tell you he's been up to being very rich because it seems like his thing is creating companies and then selling them for tens of millions of dollars. So he went from Shinyy in 2006,

he resigned from Shiny. He went for the gaming industry's sweetest plum, which is consultancy. That's where a lot of these guys end up doing mock reviews for games and making a lot of money because this is an important function of the gaming industry. We need to know how these games will perform when we release them. And then he becomes the Guy Kai guy guy. So Guy Kai was a very important company in terms of creating cloud computing technology. And that was acquired by Sony for a lot of money. And I believe Guy Kai Kai technology is what currently.

currently powers a lot of Sony's cloud gaming technology to this day. And right now, it seems like his latest venture is an AI video startup, and I wish him the worst for this, because this is not a place he should end up. He should be doing things that involve like hiring people to make arts, not having computers do it for him. But that is essentially what David Perry has been up to since 2006. And I guess Guy Kai, he was always like into tech more than anything, and that is very important tech. Dang, so I was mistaken. Who was I thinking of it in meta then, if it wasn't Dave Perry?

That might have been one of his many stops along the way because he likes to do a lot of stuff. So he might not just be doing the AI thing. I will say, though, going back to Nick Broody and some of the other ex-Shiny people, they all got involved. Some of them got involved with Intellivision Amico. Nick Brutie actually developed the Amico version of Astro Smash, which was complete. I've actually played it. It does exist. He finished the game.

Never released, obviously. The Amico itself is very strange machine. Not good, but I have played it. It also got, it resulted in some pretty serious issues between us and Tommy Talariko and Hans Ippish. That's great. Tommy seems so nice. We talked about it on a DF Direct Weekly, basically like the delay and issues around the Amico. just reporting stuff

and they basically started threatening us and all kinds of stuff and really like insulting us telling us telling us we should fire some of the employees at DF and like it just got really heated and nasty it was not a good time again if you want to know more about Tommy Tilariko there's a three hour video out there waiting for you

and it's very very informative and fun very fun any final thoughts on Shiny like I feel that the spirit of shiny can now be seen in the freedom of the digital marketplace in places like Steam, where so many of games that could have been a shiny box product for $50, 25 years ago, are now just a $10 or $20 product on Steam that has like a lot of, you know, more thought put behind it because it's not meant to be this be-all, end-all box product to change our lives forever.

It's like, we thought of this fun little idea. We worked with eight people for five years on it. here it is. And, you know, it just is a different landscape that I think is more friendly to these shiny style ideas. So maybe they help pave the way for weirdness in video games. Who knows? Yeah. I mean, the spirit of shiny. I really, I do look back on a lot of these games we talked about today and I still have very positive thoughts about them. I think they made some cool stuff and they attempted some cool stuff. And it's, it's kind of sad that it wound down the way it did, but, you know, they had a good run.

Yeah, I mean, for me, it's like, with the exception of the Golden Compass, which is coughing up blood big time, I don't think there's a single game on this list. I wouldn't at least say, this is interesting, this is worth seeing, this is worth playing, this is worth hearing. They never made anything that had zero value, I guess, which isn't maybe the nicest thing to say, but I'm trying to be positive. I hope people understand what I'm trying to say about them. They were good and cool, and it's sad that they are not.

Absolutely. Well, thank you, John and Stewart. This has been another episode of Retronauts, and I have been your host, Bob Mackie. And if you want to support the show and get these episodes ad-free and also get access a ton of bonus episodes behind the paywall, I believe, over 200 to date at this point. Go to patreon.com slash Retronauts and sign up there for five bucks a month. You get ad-free episodes a week ahead of time. And like I said, we have a bunch of exclusive ones.

We do two a month for people on the Patreon. They are full length about topics you love. So if you want to sign up for five bucks You can support the show and get a ton of bonus podcast on top of that That sounds like a good deal to me And I will do my own personal plugs last Let's go around the virtual room here And now we can stop holding hands finally

And let's go to John for his plugs John where can we find you online? Yes I'm at social media under Dark 1X But I'm with Digital Foundry Of course you can find us at digital foundry.net We do have a Patreon over there And if you like Richard podcast as well

I do have a retro podcast over there. Maybe someday get Bob and Stewart on there, do a little cross-pollination. It's a D.F. Retro Super Show. I love it. It's a little different than Retronauts. We have a slightly different focus, but, you know, more retro podcasts,

not a bad thing. And Stuart, how about you? I'm Stuart. You know me mostly from Retronauts, I'm sure. I did a book called All Games Are Good that you can get from Limited Run Games, and I recommend you buy it because I think it's excellent. I would do, but you know.

And you can find me on social, media, stewardgett. Dot blue sky. Dot social, but I wouldn't really recommend it because I'm annoying on there. Sorry. That's for me.

I'm sometimes annoying and you can find me on places like Blue Sky and Letterbox as Bob Servo. And of course, you probably know this, but I do other podcasts for the Talking Simpsons Network.

You can find those wherever you find podcasts. Talking Simpsons, what a cartoon, what have you. And we have a Patreon at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons.

Sign up there. You can get access to a ton of bonus episodes about shows like Futurama, King of the Hill and others. But that is it for this episode of Retronauts.

We'll see you again very soon for another episode. Take care.