Earlier today I paid a visit to Vivendi Universal who were in town to show off their upcoming holiday releases. I checked out the latest Spyro and the latest Crash Bandicoot (finally, free roaming movement and no more on-rails only action). Both games feature a “secret” which anyone who’s even remotely paid attention to the news (or even the recent GBA releases for both series) can easily figure out.
They also had a few other titles there, such as Fight Club, the video game, which no one bothered to show me, and thank God for that.
Going in, my editor at Nick Mag told me that VU was supposed to have some super secret game on hand, but couldn’t get any details from the publicist. Well I saw it: a game based upon Robots, which is a new CGI motion picture by the makers of Ice Age.
Even at its extremely early stage (it was pre-pre-beta) the game is an impressive package, with great looking characters, nice animation, and excellent environments. I was told that Blue Sky (the animation studio behind the film) has taken an extremely active role in the making of the game (which is being done in the UK by Eurocom) by providing an unheard of amount of assets to the game designers. It seems the creator of the film is quite adamant that his creation be treated right.
I spoke at length with the game’s producer who was rather proud of the work on display and even said that when it was shown to Fox movie executives, they were so awestruck that they were “shitting green apples”. Sound great, but if you think about it, I’m almost certain most film execs haven’t seen a game since the days of Super Nintendo, hence anything is going to drop their jaws.
The film itself is pretty much a secret to most, and I only know of it’s existence because Blue Sky stopped by the school to check out some work and dropped off postcards featuring the title character (named Rodney, I think). Apparently a trailer was supposed to debut in front of Garfield, but was pulled at the last minute for some unknown reason. I saw it, and the film looks… decent. It’s no where near Pixar quality, but still looks far more entertaining than any of those Shrek films.
Here’s the crazy thing… the producer claims that Fox intends to put more money into Robots’ advertising than any other film in the studio’s history. Even more than Star Wars. That I find almost impossible to believe. He inferred that by spring, you’re going to see Robots shit everywhere…. when I mentioned the inevitable Happy Meal toys, he was quick to correct me by saying Burger King Kids Club.
