Good-bye Monkeytropolis...

Monkeytropolis, unfortunately, has gone out of business. As you may or may not know, Monkeytropolis was formed by most of the members of The Neverhood and Blue Sky Software, two companies I respected that met untimely deaths. The people in these companies are enormously talented and it's unfortunate that they can't catch a break for too long; I can't even recall anything Monkeytropolis has done, even though the monkey motif is most certainly cool. (They're pretty nice guys too since they answered a few of my questions about Blue Sky quite openly.)

On a related note, Doug TenNapel, who was part of Blue Sky Software, Shiny, and The Neverhood left the video game business quite a while ago and does graphic novels now, of which Creature Tech I especially enjoy. It's being made into a movie, so that's good.

Oh, well. Just thought they should get their dues.

This happened months ago, and it pissed me off then, and it pisses me off now. Damn, I really wish those guys would go back to shiny. They are brilliant artists, but they don't know jack about gameplay. The Neverhood was almost the entirety of the Aladdin/Earthworm Jim staff minus Dave Perry. I think Monkeytroplis picked up some of the Vectorman folks too, though it was mostly Neverhood.

I always wondered what happened to the team at Blue Sky. The development house was terminated when Sega of Japan took the reins in the Saturn years, right?

A shame, two of the most talented houses in American gaming, brillant platformers in Skullmonkeys and Vectorman. *-neo

This is pretty old news. Monkeytropolis planned to make an *actual* Neverhood 2. I only know though that they worked on it for a couple of months before it got canned.. Don't take my word for it, but it was supposed to be a 3D-exploring-whatnot-game starring Klaymen. I only saw one picture that Ellis Goodson drew back there, of Klaymen being pushed into a bubbling pool of stuff by a couple spears coming from a wall..

Doug TenNapel didn't have AS much to do with it as the Monkeytropolis folks had (like Dave, Mark or Ellis).

Speaking if Doug, here's a brand-new interview with him: http://www.slushfactory.com/content/...VVrvxvqqIT.php

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Originally posted by neoalphazero
The development house was terminated when Sega of Japan took the reins in the Saturn years, right?

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Actually, they were terminated in December 2000, after a few years of tension when Titus bought them.

Are you kidding me?! Man. That sucks. I wonder who owns the Klaymen propereties... DreamWorks?

P.S. Creature Tech is excellent. :D

The Neverhood guys, especially Doug TenNapel, own the rights to The Neverhood and its characters, not Dreamworks.

Haven't read Creature Tech yet, but Gear was very good.

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Originally posted by Dolemite
The Neverhood guys, especially Doug TenNapel, own the rights to The Neverhood and its characters, not Dreamworks.

Haven't read Creature Tech yet, but Gear was very good.

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Well then they should really do something with it.

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Originally posted by Captain Vegetable
Well then they should really do something with it.

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I agree 100%, but they gotta find someone willing to pay them for it.