Original Mr Nutz (Hoppin' Mad) artwork unveiled after 24 years!

[dreamkatcha]

Only a few grainy magazine screenshots were available previously. [ Show youtube player ] are the digital versions of Timet the Flying Squirrel, some animated. Warning: very long video ahead.

[Gzegzolka]

Cool, how did You get that original sprites?

[dreamkatcha]

I'm a bit OCD about including horrible, grainy images in videos and since that's all I had (the scans from the German mag Amiga Games) I thought I'd check with the Hoppin' Mad artist, Antony Christoulakis, to see if he still had any of the original digital assets. I didn't expect much to come from it, but within day he sent me a zip containing about 60 images including sprite sheet sets, full screenshots, and even some animated IFFs.

It turned out that he'd already gone to great lengths to rescue them from old Amiga disks for a project that didn't get off the ground in the end. Anyway I converted the static IFFs to PNG, and the animated IFFs to GIFs, split apart the resulting frames, removed the backgrounds to make them transparent, up-scaled them without anti-aliasing and then re-combined them to produce animated GIFs that could be overlayed on a background. The animated Mr Nutz sprite I used is actually from the SNES original - I constructed that one using the flat sprite set that's been around on the net for years.

[Pyromania]

Now I'm Hoppin mad!

[Gzegzolka]

Great work, You are like detective with those mysteries You have solved. I like that kind of in-depth long articles.

[mc68060]

Can you upload the archive you got from Antony?

[dreamkatcha]

Originally Posted by Pyromania

Now I'm Hoppin mad!

LOL. After animating and voicing a seagull and a chicken I can definitely sympathise.

Originally Posted by Gzegzolka

Great work, You are like detective with those mysteries You have solved. I like that kind of in-depth long articles.

Thanks, although this one wasn't really much of a mystery. The story has been known for years, I just pulled it all together and sprinkled a few cherries on top. It wasn't even my idea to cover it - Daniel Cordell suggested it in response to the Kid Chaos video. He was much more familiar with the game until I started digging and really dedicated some time to it.

I'm glad I did though, it's a great tale with too many separate threads to do them all justice. For instance Philippe Dessoly went on to draw a character called Zaps who stars in a little known mobile game. He's like Mr Nutz in a space suit. There's virtually nothing online about it.

I also found someone attempting to produce an unofficial Mr Nutz HD revamp. It only got as far as a few mock-up screens though. This was a couple of years before the official one was announced.

It would have been interesting to explore the 'where are they now?' aspect from the Neon Software angle too. Keen Games are still alive and kicking which is great to see.

Originally Posted by mc68060

Can you upload the archive you got from Antony?

Fine by me, but I want to check with him first to see if he's happy for me to make it available. I've also asked if he (or anyone else) still has a copy of the Timet demo Neon used to promote the game before it became Mr Nutz. Wouldn't that be a retro-gaming curio!

[mc68060]

Originally Posted by dreamkatcha

Fine by me, but I want to check with him first to see if he's happy for me to make it available. I've also asked if he (or anyone else) still has a copy of the Timet demo Neon used to promote the game before it became Mr Nutz. Wouldn't that be a retro-gaming curio!

That would be fantastic!

[kriz]

Thanks !!