MediEvil (1998): Difference between revisions

Development of MediEvil started in 1995 at independent developer [[Millennium Interactive]]. Creative director Chris Sorrell said that the first design proposal for the game had the working title ‘Dead Man Dan’ and described a game that was a fusion of Capcom's Ghost'n Goblins with the art style of Tim Burton– especially the look and feel of The Nightmare Before Christmas. Both cases were things that he was a huge fan of back in the mid ’90s. Lead artist Jason Wilson shared his interest in dark, gothic influenced artwork and they worked together to define the look and feel of the game. In addition to bringing together a brand new team – none of whom had really made a 3D game of this scale before – they were in ‘sell’ mode almost from day one, with the future of the studio riding on their ability to attract a major publishing deal as quickly as possible. They were initially working on multiple platforms including Windows and Sega Saturn as well as PlayStation before finally having the chance to pitch an early demo to Sony, who were so impressed with their work that they bought the whole studio in order to have the team work exclusively for Sony.

Sorrell said that MediEvil presented a mountain of challenges due to the fact that, like many other developers at the time, they were still very new to 3D gaming. Things like camera and character control presented many interesting new challenges and required the team to try out a number of approaches before settling on solutions that seemed to work. Even so, he said that the game still came very close to the original concept and he was most proud of how the team pulled together to finish the game without compromising on the quirky attention to detail or scope of the game.