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 by Brad Cook Brian Greenstone could be described as the Macintosh videogame industry’s Kevin Smith. Not that the subject matter of his games is the same as the subject matter of Smith’s films, of course. The point of the comparison is that, no matter how successful Greenstone has been, he chooses to remain an independent guy adhering to his own vision, just like Smith. |
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Perhaps his experiences in the videogame industry fueled the creation of his latest game, Cro-Mag Rally. In it, you play a simple-minded caveman (or a simple-minded cavewoman — this is an equal opportunity game) who races in various cars made of rocks and sticks around tracks which range from canyons through a desert to the fabled underwater city of Atlantis. Meet the Cro-Mags “I’ve always wanted to do a racing game,” Greenstone explains. “In the beginning, [Cro-Mag Rally] was supposed to be a caveman in space game which was like a cross between Bugdom [his last game] and Diddy Kong. Due to time constraints, I decided to just do a racing game with the cavemen.” Even though the action is cartoony, this is no Flintstones rip-off. Brog and his sister Grag, the two characters you can choose between, look more like pre-production drawings from the film Quest For Fire than anything from a Hanna-Barbera cartoon. “Lay off the crack,” says artist Joshua Maruska when asked if he ever had the urge to have the characters drive with their feet. “We really didn’t want this to be related to The Flintstones. At least I didn’t, although I do have to say I watched a few episodes as inspiration.” That inspiration may have led to Maruska’s favorite aspect of the game, which he says is “this little move that the characters do when their cars go out of control. They kind of wave their hands and wiggle their toes. It makes me giggle every time.” Adds fellow artist Marcus Conge: “Throughout the process I tried to keep in mind that we needed to stay cartoon-like. I didn’t want to get too realistic with the color and texture maps.” Racing Through History Despite the cartoony nature of the game, a fair amount of historical research went into its development. As you play the game in tournament mode, you must win races on the first three tracks before you can unlock the later ones, which include such places as Crete and The Great Wall of China. “We definitely wanted to create an historical feel,” says Maruska. “At least enough of one so that the player may have their curiosity piqued and will want to go to the library and look up that weird artifact thingy that they saw while playing. “In the end, this proved more difficult than expected,” he continues. “Since we wanted everything to take place during the actual time period when it was built, but most photographic records are of the modern day ruins, we had to do a lot of interpretation. It may not be the History Channel, but it has enough to be engaging.” |
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Cro-Mag Rally available from Pangea Software Download the Demo    | ||
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