Rat Attack

We've come to the end of my little stroll down Rat Attack Memory Lane. I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I have and have been inspired to seek out a copy of your own on Ebay or in your local charity shop. Here's a few images I found Googling 'Rat Attack' to save you having to do it your self. The image above is the cover of the PlayStation game version instructions. The game was really nicely packaged. Not many games feature different box art for different console releases. They didn't bother with this in the USA and just went with a badly rendered CGI cover as market research told the publishers that American gamers wouldn't understand a 2D rendered cover on a 3D game. You can decide for yourself below. We had to change the logo for American eyes too. Thus began my lifelong love of the homogenised world of market research - the biggest stumbling block creativity has to overcome.

Here is some of my early Scratch Cat concept work.

Here are some enemy concepts. I found a lot of these images on the IGN game site. Good to see they're still going strong in the modern age.

This is one of my attempts at using 3D Studio Max. Don't laugh, this was in the proposal that sold the game. Load of these original elements made it through to the actual finished game.

Another one of my fantastic models. King Scarab was the boss at the end of the museum level.

King Scarab looked a lot better in the actual game when a real artist had a go at it.

And here's a screen of Rat Attack in action. This the pinball level from the funhouse.

Yippy Yappy

Yippy Yappy was the first Rat Attack boss. And the amazing twist was that he was tiny. He was just a little chihuahua. See how we played with the players perception of the gaming format? I'm always ahead of the game, me.

Fans of this blog will notice I draw loads of chihuahuas, I love them. But I hardly ever draw cyan ones.

Sparky

In the original Rat Attack Sparky was the witch's cat. I remember we had to change the pentagram on his chest to a crescent moon in case we upset any Satanists. Originally I'd mistakenly drawn a Star of David there. I (or no one else) spotted that for ages.

I think I'd ramp up the magic, Diablo style if I was designing this character now. Runic patterns and glowing effects are what magic is all about these days.

Atomicat

Atomicat was another unlockable Rat Attack character. I can never remember seeing it in the game as it was an N64 exclusive but I'm sure it had an amazing effect on its textures as befits a radioactive moggy.

Pearl

One of the hidden extra playable characters in the original Rat Attack was Pearl. Her thing was that she was the fastest character thanks to her roller blades. Roller blades are still cool aren't they?

Hai Jinx

You can't have a game without some kind of Japanese martial artist in it and expect to get to number 2 in the Tesco game charts. With that in mind, here's Hai Jinx.

I found this screen shot of the Rat Attack character select screen. According to the website I found it on you can download the game here.

P.U.5.5.Y

P.U.5.5.Y was never a playable character, he was just Professor Julius's robot sidekick. I only think he appeared on the Rat Attack title sequence just floating around. Back then, he didn't even have a body but I think it would have been good if he did and you could choose to play as him.

Professor Rex Julius

I met up with my old chums from my days at Pure Entertainment the other day. It was fun to talk about the genius that was the Playstation cult smash, Rat Attack and that made me look up the game.

This chap has but a complete walkthrough on Youtube if you have no idea what I'm talking about. and want to see how PlayStations looked at the turn of the millennium. I also discovered the original Sony website from back in 2001. Check out the animations from the early days of Flash.

I'm sure the time is right for a remake but we have no idea who owns the rights. It all got messy after the first dot com bubble burst. Anyway, it got me thinking so I thought I'd see how I'd design the characters now, twelve years down the line. I already had a go at Muffy DuPont a couple of weeks back. It's interesting to see how my aesthetics have changed over the years.

Here's Professor Rex Julius, leader of the Scratch Cats. Watch this space for more possible copyright infringing updates over the following days. I can always use the fan art defence can't I....?

Muffy DuPont revisited

I thought I'd have a go at drawing a character I designed many moons ago to see how I'd approach it now. This is Muffy Dupont from celebrated PS1/N64 game Rat Attack. I'll try again in another twelve years to see how I'd change her again.
                                           

Muffy Dupont

Sadly I couldn't find any more Rat Attack goodness apart from this picture of everyones favourite French chat, Muffy Dupont. I think she was one of the fastest. I love the Rat Attack characters. Normally I go off everything I do in a matter of days, but even today I'm keen on the Scratch Cats.... I may try drawing them again after almost 10 years.

Atomicat

More Rat Attack finds. Atomicat was an unlockable, playable character in the game. This is one of the promotional postcards we did.

Rat Attack on the N64 & PlayStation1

My computer keeps telling me that my start up disk is full - it's lying it isn't so I thought I'd do a bit of, quite literally, spring cleaning to shut it up and look what I unearthed. Rat Attack was a game I designed for the PlayStation 1 and N64 many years ago. I was really proud of this as it was my first real job just after uni and I could more or less do what I wanted. Happy days, back when the UK gaming industry was the best in the world and the games weren't created by focus group led corporations with a target audience of idiots.