Mr. Nutz: Hoppin' Mad
| Mr. Nutz: Hoppin' Mad | |
|---|---|
 Front cover of Mr. Nutz Hoppin' Mad | |
| Developer(s) | Kaiko, Neon Studios |
| Publisher(s) | Ocean |
| Designer(s) | Peter Thierolf |
| Composer(s) | Rudolf Stember |
| Platform(s) | Amiga 500, Amiga 600, Mega Drive/Genesis (unpublished) |
| Release |
Amiga Mega Drive/Genesis
|
| Genre(s) | Side-scrolling, 2D platform |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
Mr. Nutz: Hoppin' Mad is a side scrolling 2D platformer video game published by Ocean Software for the Amiga and first released in 1994.
The player controls the one player character, Mr. Nutz who is an anthropomorphic red squirrel wearing shoes, gloves and a cap, who must stop chickens from outer space that are trying to take over the world. The game shares similarities with other platformers of the same time, jumping is the main technique used in the game to navigate platforms and defeat or avoid most enemies. There is an overworld map in overhead view in which a small amount of gameplay takes place, and from which the player selects which levels to play. Most gameplay takes place within the levels which are the common 2D platform view.
Development
The game started out as Timet: the Flying Squirrel by a group of people in Kaiko who later formed the Neon Studios company. When the publishing rights of the game were granted to Ocean, the main character of Timet, a slimmer flying squirrel, was replaced with the already existing character of Mr. Nutz, a fluffier red squirrel portrayed by Ocean in the iconic mascot era of the Nineties. The game was then renamed as Mr. Nutz: Hoppin' Mad, though all of the level and enemy design remained as it was before. Hoppin' Mad was developed by Neon Studios and published in Europe by Ocean for the Amiga 500 and Amiga 600 in 1994.
Ocean had previously released a game on multiple consoles under the shorter name of Mr. Nutz, featuring the same titular character but with different, slower and more linear gameplay, unrelated levels and enemies, another story, and the absence of an overworld map to select the levels, with only a linear mini-map to follow the course of action instead. Hoppin' Mad uses a slightly revised spriteset of Mr. Nutz from that game in order to represent him.
Mega Drive/Genesis version
Sometime after its original Amiga releases, the Neon Studios game was eventually stated to be ported to the Sega Mega Drive and released in Europe in 1995 as Mr. Nutz 2,[1][2] acting as the sequel of the console Mr. Nutz game which had already been released in this particular system. However, despite being fully completed by the developer and even tested by European press reviewers, the Mega Drive port of Mr. Nutz: Hoppin' Mad was never published because of Ocean's diminishing support of the platform.
In 2009, an uncompiled source code of the Mega Drive version of the game was leaked on the Internet by an unknown source. Three years after, a Russian romhacker managed to compile the source code into a playable build. While the beta features the game in a complete state, it is an earlier build to the finished unreleased product which is still titled Mr. Nutz: Hoppin' Mad.
Reception
Italian magazine The Games Machine gave the game 93.[3]
