To be honest, I didn’t think I’d be writing about this game. But both Cool World and Who Framed Roger Rabbit are already present on our website, and therefore it would simply be wrong not to add Toonstruck to this set. Along with the two mentioned films, this game is one of the major examples of an extremely unusual and damn interesting art direction that mixes hand-drawn animation and live action – and, as far as I know, it is the only representative of this approach from the world of video games.
The specifics of the nineties
The thing is, if you think about it, Toonstruck is an amazing combination of very different circumstances. For example, hand-drawn animation is extremely rare nowadays: even cartoons are now drawn on a computer, let alone video games. But just thirty years ago, 3D models were just emerging, and games were often limited to 16-bit microprocessors, which made hand-drawn sprites and backdrops still seem quite competitive, and moreover much more familiar to developers.
Plus, in the early 90s, an extremely peculiar thing called full motion video or FMV got a second wind: the volume of optical discs that had just entered the market finally made it possible to cram filmed video into the game in acceptable quality, and the processors managed to become powerful enough to process frames quickly enough. In other words, an actor on a green screen suddenly became a perfectly acceptable substitute for a hand-drawn sprite again, and screensavers in the form of videos with real people, even at 640×320 resolution, looked many times better than what a dozen Pentiums could render. Thus, live action has become an integral part of many video games.
But the most important nuance is that in ’93 there were still VHS cassettes with the movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit on store shelves, and therefore the idea of repeating about the same thing, but in the format of a video game seemed very good. All the necessary technologies were in use, 3D still seemed like an outsider rather than a harbinger of the next decade, and FMV games were becoming bestsellers one after another. What could have gone wrong?
About how Toonstruck was created
As you probably already realized, something did go wrong. Namely, the fact that Toonstruck is, de facto, only half of the game. A delightful half, but still only half. And before I start praising her as she deserves, let me tell you how such a curiosity came out. The fact is that the developer was a very large company at that time, Virgin Interactive Entertainment, just inspired by the success of the recent The 7th Guest. Blinded by the triumph, Virgin promised to single-handedly advance CD-ROM technology “even further” and, having started developing Toonstruck in October 93, the company’s leaders gave the developers of the new game complete freedom, promising to pay for everything they came up with. Having received such generosity, the creative team completely focused on interesting and exciting ideas, without thinking at all about the budget and deadlines.
Thus came the 96th year. The game’s budget crept up to eight million dollars, the developers managed to change the engine and killed 18 months on debugging and rewriting the game’s code, the success of The 7th Guest suddenly turned out to be somewhere far behind, and Virgin, having postponed Toonstruck twice, firmly decided not to change the release date for the third time. Along the way, someone decided that eight million dollars for one game was clearly too much, and the development team suddenly received a strict order: the project should be divided into two parts. With a grunt of surprise, the team wrote and shot new material in a very short time, and the programmers sawed the code in half, after which, in November 96, Toonstruck finally came out.
About how Toonstruck was sold
When Toonstruck appeared on the shelves, it turned out to be an absolute commercial failure, despite the extremely high ratings of most critics. The reasons for this result can be very different: one of the producers, for example, believed that too little money was allocated for marketing, and therefore the game had too little advertising. And lead designer Richard Hare called the game’s cover the main problem, which he found extremely unattractive. And, of course, it’s impossible not to mention the fact that in the three years that Toonstruck was in development, 3D modeling had developed to such an extent that it became clear to everyone where the future was and where the past was, and FMV games were rapidly losing popularity. So… Man, Pixar released Toy Story back in ’95, and in terms of games, Quake came out in June ’96, you know? Toonstruck came out after Kwaka. The end of the story.
Covers of American and British editions. Of course, it wasn't fire, but to be honest, I don't think they could have had much effect on the number of copies sold.
Virgin, having lost a lot of money, decided to put an end to weak projects in ’97. In which, due to the failure of the first part, Toonstruck 2 was recorded. It was the age of physical media, so the company felt that buying discs, boxes, and other tinsel for a sequel to a failed game would only mean making even more losses than they had already made. That’s why the players are left with only half the story of Christopher Lloyd’s adventures in the painted world. And this is very sad, because apart from the obviously hastily crumpled ending, designed to bring together the first and second parts, the half that still reached the players is a real masterpiece – and this is even taking into account the fact that most of the meaning and allegories are based on the fact that everything that happens in the game is The main character’s attempt to resolve his creative block and regain his creativity remained in the second part.
So what is Toonstruck?
In general, Toonstruck was originally conceived as “an interactive version of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, but vice versa” in the sense that in this game a person enters a painted world.But, oddly enough, the fact that Christopher Lloyd turned out to be in the main role is, apparently, a pure coincidence. On the other hand, what difference does it make whether it’s a coincidence or not? The important thing is that Toonstruck invites you to play as Christopher Lloyd himself, with all his charisma and acting talent. And at the same time, Comrade Lloyd is only the top of the most magnificent caste. The minor protagonist of Flax Wildley is voiced by Dan Castellaneta himself, known to everyone for the role of Homer Simpson – however, you probably won’t recognize him, since Dan has an extremely rich voice range, and Flax doesn’t look like Homer at all. The antagonist of Count Nefarius is voiced by Tim Curry himself, remembered among other things for such great roles as Taurus Bulba from the animated series Black Cloak and Anatoly Cherdenko from the much more recent video game Red Alert 3. Toonstruck also offers to listen to Tress MacNeill (The Simpsons, Futurama, and the permanent voice of Daisy Duck since ’99), Dom DeLuise (All Dogs Go To Heaven, The Secret of N.I.M.H., and many other cartoons), and other extremely famous and talented actors. Toonstruck has a relatively small but truly stellar cast – perhaps the most stellar for an FMV game. I’m announcing Tim Curry’s ten seconds!
Of course, actors don’t mean much without dialogues – and fortunately, there are a lot of dialogues in Toonstruck and they are extremely good. Most of the characters have the same conversation topic with two or three different dialogues, so there’s a lot of voice acting, a lot of it, it’s pleasant, and you can talk to one NPC for quite a long time. Plus, the developers initially set out to make the world as lively and cinematic as possible – one of the results of this approach was the fact that the replicas of some characters change depending on the events taking place in the game world, and therefore you can return to them and talk a little more about a new topic. Not every game at that time could afford something like that.
And, as you might have guessed from all of the above, the game is best played in English. There was no voice acting in Russian at all, as well as official subtitles. They were unofficial: I personally have not met them, but one of my friends says that he once played a localized version. I can only guess about the quality of the translation, but according to the same friend, at least one point was translated extremely poorly: where there was a hint in the original game, everything turned out to be exactly the opposite in translation, and to understand why nothing works, while you do everything as it says. it was absolutely impossible. Actually, it was at that moment that the game ended for my friend: it was an age without the Internet, and the player either guessed what the game wanted from him or not.
But even if we assume that there are several translations for Toonstruck, and at least one of them does not contain very critical errors, it is still extremely difficult to translate the game while retaining at least most of the nuances and details. A great many dialogues and quests are based on an almost untranslatable wordplay, which includes the main quest of the game. Here’s just one example that occurs literally in the first five minutes of the game: when talking to a human-sized walking talking foot, Flaxx asks “What kind of a butler are you anyway?”. “For your information, no kind of butler at all!” the foot answers. “I think he’s a footman!” remarks Christopher Lloyd. “What? So you’re telling me a butler would be a great, big…” says Flacks with some fear in his voice. “Exactly!” interrupts Lloyd. Got the joke? If so, go ahead and play Toonstruck. If not, look for a walkthrough in advance.
By the way, look for a walkthrough anyway. Despite the fact that this is one of the easiest point-and-clicks in my memory, and most of the subjects are applied here absolutely logically, a few moments made me think for a few hours. The main reason for this is not even that they are complex, but that they are out of line with the general approach. For example, towards the end of the game, we are suddenly forced to hunt for a couple of pixels, while all the time up to this point absolutely all the plot items were large and clearly visible, and I was already one hundred percent sure that there would be no pixel hunting in this game. And a little earlier, Toonstruck suddenly applied cartoon logic – again, for the first time in the entire game. Moments like this are confusing to me personally; you may have your own kryptonite. In any case, if you suddenly feel stuck, don’t torture yourself and look at the walkthrough. This is a quest from the 90s; those who complete such games without hints deserve medals and monuments.
But there is also something that you can enjoy regardless of your understanding of riddles and knowledge of languages. And this is exactly why Toonstruck should be on our website. Yes, it’s an animation! There is not a single famous name on the list of those responsible for it – and this is an extremely sad fact, as it means that none of the animators managed to break through to the top. It’s a pity, because the guys clearly had talent. All the animation in Toonstruck is hand-drawn, it’s classic and original at the same time, and it’s beautiful! Most of the drawing dates back to the first half of the twentieth century, and when you look at the screen, it seems that this is exactly what video games would look like if they were released in the 1940s. Some of the characters look like they were personally drawn by Chuck Jones and Tex Avery. The originality is achieved by adding some more modern touches – such as, for example, Warp and Woof, which were painted in a much later style – as well as depicting very adult themes that simply could not be imagined on the screen in the 40s. There are few such moments, and their relevance can be argued, but they undoubtedly make Toonstruck a very special representative of classic American animation.
It remains only to briefly tell you about the soundtrack and voice acting. Well, that is, everything has already been said about the voice acting of the characters, but I want to pay attention for a moment to all the other sounds of the game, as they are beautiful, and a considerable number of samples are taken directly from well-known cartoons. And here’s the soundtrack… absolutely grey. The game had its own composer, Keith Arem, and he kind of even wrote something, but either he was too lazy, or they decided to save money on music – a considerable part of the OST was taken from free public sources. It turned out well, but there is nothing outstanding either: apart from a couple of free compositions from immortal geniuses, there is absolutely nothing that catches the ear.The music is completely background: it plays, it doesn’t bother… he passes by and is instantly forgotten. In general, if I assume why most critics at one time gave the game 9 out of 10, and not all 10, I’ll bet that it’s because of the soundtrack.
Listening to the dialogues between Drew and Flax is a pleasure. Here's just one phrase performed by Drew as an example: "Hey, Flaxx. I hate pain. Could you kindly pierce yourself with these thorns and get me this pepper?"
In conclusion
Of course, this article is just my opinion, and every player may not like this or that moment of the game. Even at the time of the release, there were critics who did not like Christopher Lloyd’s game and dialogues, while others admired Lloyd and the company, but found the drawing extremely casual and unremarkable… But the bottom line is that I have not yet met a single person who would not like Toonstruck from the word at all. Literally everyone finds something in this game that they like. Something for which he goes through to the end and remains satisfied with the game. As one of the critics Ron Dahlin said at the time:
“…the animation is great, of course, but it’s not a brain explosion, and the dialogues aren’t that funny. But what’s great about Toonstruck is that none of these disadvantages matter; the developers have made a great game, creating an adventure that can both entertain and make you think, without becoming too easy or annoying.”
If you decide to play Toonstruck, then I hasten to make you happy: GOG has released a version that is fully prepared for modern systems running on ScummVM – and this is an extremely good thing, since even on Windows XP Toonstruck refused to start without dancing with a tambourine. Toonstruck is inexpensive, and from time to time GOG gives this game away for free. Although, of course, it is not necessary to wait for this…
And as a postscript, it’s worth saying that, oddly enough, we still have a chance to see the second part of the game. The fact is that almost all the scenes for the sequel were shot at the moment when Virgin decided to split the game in half. And the few things that are missing can be completed without any problems on modern machines. And Kit Arem, the same cat responsible for the soundtrack, currently owns the rights to all animation from the game. Including the one that was supposed to be in the sequel. Keith has expressed several times his desire to release the second part in one form or another. The last time was relatively recently, in 2016, and Comrade Arem claimed that he was struggling with the remaining copyrights in the hope of bringing the project to life. I wouldn’t say we have a lot of chances, but… I don’t know, try hitting a Whale on Twitter, for example? Who knows…
