The Lost Temple of DOHO - The DOHO Strikes Back

More Dot-Matrix Animations That Never Were

Temple Curator: Scott Matrix


Heads on Spears

It's been a long time looking at stuff from Indiana Jones, so you'll have to forgive me on this one. I don't remember if the skull animation above is in the game or not. If it isn't, great. If it is, well, then you can see the original proposed version above it. It comes a little closer to the original movie sequence, but turned out to be a little too gruesome for a game. It was then 'de-fleshed' into just a skull effect below it. I must say that it is pretty funny watching them CHUNK! over and over again in the animated GIF format.

Museum Destruction

This is one of those animations that got a bit out of hand. Looking for a multiball start animation from the tapes of Demolition Man for Museum Multiball, I came across this scene. Sylvester shoots a lamp with his shotgun, which falls down next to Wesley Snipes, and breaks the glass floor, and Wesley falls down to the basement below. It went fast on tape, and seemed to be one of the more interesting segments of the film (from a pinball standpoint).

Unfortunately, as each shot was put into 'Dotmation,' it became clear that another shot would have to be added to make clear what the previous shot was. And then that new shot needed another shot to explain itself, and then... HOLY MONTAGE, BATMAN!

So, this little multiball effect was growing by leaps and bounds, and I saw no end to it. I halted progress at this point, convinced I had to find a better way. But where else can you see Wesley Snipes in three shades of orange (even if only for 3 frames).

SHOWTIME!

A lost Addams Family effect. At one point, this effect was actually in the game. It was taken out, I believe, because it is kinda ugly, and it doesn't have the impact that a multiball start effect should have. At least my faces have gotten better over time. And even though it looks like he is chewing gum in this format, he does say "SHOWTIME" when the frames are timed properly. Honest.

The Mountain Road

For all those who have enjoyed the video mode in The Getaway, this is for you. Here are the road segments that were drawn up and never made it into the game.

Getaway was the game that pushed the memory ROM from 2megs to 4megs, mostly because of the video mode. After that, all games in the pipeline and afterwards became 4megs to fit in the dots. As originally concieved, the video mode was to have a road that twists and turns, you get closer to the mountains, you go into a tunnel, you come out of the tunnel on a road that is now on the side of the mountain as shown here. Driving into the guard rail sent you off the road, and down the side of the mountain in a fireball.

Once the basic mechanics of the game were worked out with the strightaway currently in the game, however, it was decided that what we were working on was a pinball game and not a video driving game at the resolution of 128 X 32 pixels. Plus, memory was getting scarce. That's why it's a one color animation.

And for those sharp viewers out there: no, we weren't working on a panarama display system. The image of the road actually panned back and forth.

Actually, most video modes in Steve Ritchie games start out being a lotmore ambitious than their final version. Usually, Steve would want 3, 4, or 5 videomodes in a game until the realization came in that, hey, that's a lot of ball time being used up there. Which leads us to next the animation, another proposed video mode thatnever made it into a Steve Ritchie game.

Yet Another Video Mode

This was one of three modes Steve wanted in the holodeck for Star Trek:The Next Generation. It was basically a Tempest/Gyruss-typeof video game. This was the demo I put together. I also happened to find a couple of the pieces for the Worf side-scrolling punch/kick game, too. But the development of that never went very far. Ah, memories...

Mutant Spinach

I love most of the animations I did for Popeye. Along with the multiball lock sequence stuff, I really liked this one. Unfortunately, this mode never got into the game because of time constraints. The speech for this was great.

For those of you who don't know, we routinely make videotapes for our distributors and for trade shows showing our new games. In the videotape for Popeye, they even mention Mutant Spinach multiball. Oh well, the mode that got away...

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All images, animations, and text copyright © 1999, Williams Electronics Games, Inc..
The Getaway: High Speed 2 is a trademark of Williams Electronics Games, Inc.
Indiana Jones TM & © 1993 Lucasfilm, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Used under authorization.
Demolition Man is a trademark of Warner Bros. © 1993
Popeye TM The Hearst Corporation. © 1993 King Features Syndicate, Inc. Used by permission.
STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION and THE ADDAMS FAMILY are Registered Trademarks of Paramount Pictures.