Toonstruck
Toonstruck is a graphic adventure video game developed by Burst Studios, published by Virgin Interactive Entertainment and released in 1996 for DOS. The game features hand-drawn imagery and animated characters, but the protagonist Drew Blanc (played by Christopher Lloyd) is represented as a video-captured live action character interacting with the cartoon world around him. In the game, Blanc is transported into the cartoon world he created while suffering from a creative block. Blanc is accompanied by his animated sidekick Flux Wildly.
| Toonstruck | |
|---|---|
Toonstruck European cover | |
| Developer(s) | Burst Studios |
| Publisher(s) | Virgin Interactive Entertainment |
| Producer(s) | Ron Allen Dana Hanna |
| Designer(s) | Richard Hare Jennifer McWilliams |
| Programmer(s) | Douglas Hare Gary Priest |
| Artist(s) | William Skirvin |
| Writer(s) | Mark Drop Richard Hare Jennifer McWilliams |
| Composer(s) | Keith Arem |
| Platform(s) | DOS |
| Release | |
| Genre(s) | Graphic adventure |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
Conceived in 1993 as a game geared towards children, Toonstruck was later re-written to be more adult-oriented. Virgin Interactive invested huge amounts of money into the game, which ended up costing in excess of US$8 million. In addition to Lloyd, the cast includes several well-known actors and voice actors such as Tim Curry, David Ogden Stiers and Dom DeLuise. Toonstruck features scan-line compressed FMV that is composited with hand-drawn animated sequences produced by Burst, Nelvana and Rainbow Animation.
Toonstruck was well received by gaming critics, who mostly praised the quality of the animation and the design of the puzzles, but it was a financial disappointment for Virgin. It has since been included in several lists of the best adventure games of all time, and has been re-released for modern computers through GOG.com and Steam.