Ah, the early 90s! Grunge was rocking out on the radio, Seinfeld was all the rage, and the SNES and Genesis were duking it out for the top console (what, no Turbo-Grafix 16 love?).
And a very young BMAN was working on some of those games! In 1993 I moved into a Lead Artist and Co-Lead Designer spot on a side scroller based on a new animated show called Phantom 2040. The show’s concept took the classic Lee Falk comic strip and updated it with a futuristic, dystopian setting. Peter Chung of Aeon Flux fame was providing the slick character designs, and actors like Mark Hamill, Margot Kidder, and Ron Perlman were voicing the characters.
Being a fan of all things cyberpunk and anime, I jumped right in.
Of course, you can see all the character, mecha, and creature designs I created for the game right here on Twilight Tangents, but I was recently contacted by Joe at Chronicle Chamber, who was looking for more information about this retro game for the “Phans.”
Their retrospective on the Phantom 2040 is up now, with an in-depth interview with your’s truly. It was fun to turn the Way-Back machine waaaay back and dig up some memories about how we made games in the early 90s, how we got away with diverging from the show, and how licensed games were treated back in the day (hint: not well).
Check it out now on Chronicle Chamber:
Part One: Behind the Scenes of the Phantom 2040