Scooby Doo: Mystery of the Fun Park Phantom is a 1999 mystery computer game
developed by Engineering Animation, Inc. (EAI) and published by SouthPeak Interactive. The game
was released for Microsoft Windows
and was, in fact, the first commercial Scooby-Doo game
for the Windows
operating system. It is intended for young children up to young teens.
Backstory
The “Mystery Inc.” gang find themselves stranded near an old farmhouse adjacent to an apparently abandoned amusement park. Approaching the farmhouse for help with their van, the gang learns that the Gobs, the residents of the home, own the adjacent park, Gobs O’ Fun. However, the park is being haunted by a phantom, scaring customers away. Without any customers, the Gobs are on the brink of bankruptcy, which will force them to sell the park.
The gang agrees to help the Gobs find the culprit in exchange for help getting their van repaired.
Development
Designed by Rick Raymer, the game
was originally slated to be called Scooby Doo: Mystery of the Gobs O’ Fun Ghoul, but was changed by SouthPeak during development.
SouthPeak, with an arrangement with Time-Warner, provided the team with videotapes of all 25 original half-hour episodes of Scooby-Doo to help them inject the game
with an authentic feel.
After the initial game
design was complete, Raymer designed a full board game
of the proposed computer game
. An entire game
board complete with game
pieces representing the Scooby characters was produced by the art team. Mike Hasson, director of EAI, later exclaimed this to be a terrific waste of time and resources. The development team brought in a group of the target demographic, children between the ages of seven and eleven, in order to test the game
. Raymer acted as the gamemaster, performing the management of the game
that would eventually be handled by the computer. One member of the development team paired up with each player and acted as a mentor, helping them know what could and couldn’t be done each turn.
The focus group was lukewarm to the gameplay, the rewards and the general feel of the game
. Only minor modifications were needed before executing the proposed design.
Though the characters for the game
were derived from rendered 3D models, the game
is 2D, using sprites derived from renderings of the 3D models. The models were also used to generate the game
’s FMV sequences. While most game
companies were fully embracing the 3D capabilities of PCs at this time, EAI opted for outdated sprite-based animation but marketed it as “2?-D” hoping to cash in on the hype.
A major feature for the game
was dynamic lighting for the park. With this feature enabled, the game
evokes a mysterious, creepy tone authentic to the cartoon series.
The development team for Mystery of the Fun Park Phantom was almost identical to that for Clue, also by EAI, but published by Hasbro Interactive. The notable addition to the team was Romalus Taylor, who programmed some AI and network code for the game
. In addition, the game
used the same in-house game
engine for Mystery, EAGLE. It was heavily modified and enhanced over the year of development to support the new game
.
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