Development
Atari Corporation was impressed enough by Beyond Games' BattleWheels (1993) on the Atari Lynx that they invited Beyond Games founder Kris N. Johnson to see their upcoming home video game console (the Jaguar) in development. Beyond Games was preparing to move onto another platform and develop new projects at the time, so Johnson visited and was intrigued by the hardware specifications on the new console. Beyond Games signed with Atari Corp. to be one of the first third-party developers for the console and they received software development kits that included several demos for it months later.[7][8][9] Johnson began to disassemble the demo source code to slowly build an understanding of the hardware architecture, eventually managing to make a scrolling background demo with full-color support.
Beyond Games originally had plans to release an updated conversion of BattleWheels as one of their first titles for the Jaguar. However, Atari requested them to create a fighting game instead. After the success of both Street Fighter II: The World Warrior and Mortal Kombat, the team decided that a digitized one-on-one fighter would serve as a positive showcase for the hardware and their creative efforts.[7][8]
During a brainstorming session, Johnson and designer Curt Hatch determined that some of their ideas for the company's next project would be unachievable with digitized actors. Hatch and artist William Clark Walker were developing computer-animated character concepts, which lead the team in creating a fighting game project by combining digitized actors along with stop-motion models and computer-animated characters that would become Ultra Vortek, albeit with limited resources.[7] Moving from hand-drawn graphics to digitized images, motion capture and 3D modeling represented a big leap for Beyond Games. Johnson contacted artist Jim "Meats" Meier, who was experimenting with 3D art, to recruit him after seeing his artwork locally and the project became Jim Meier's first work in the video game industry.
The development of Ultra Vortek reportedly took over a year with an estimated budget of nearly US$100,000. It was described by writer Tim Huntsman as "very indie", as most of the team had several roles during this process.[6][10][11] Johnson served as the game's sole programmer in addition to being producer. His background with martial arts helped during the design and creation of the characters.[6] Jim Meier was art director and responsible for the stage artwork and cover art.[6][7][10] Both Hatch and Walker, as well as D. Christopher Salmon and Chris Hansen, designed the characters and costumes used by the actors.[6]
After the characters were designed and Jim Meier began working on backgrounds early in development, the team started filming the actors with a blue screen at a warehouse. There were several problems that occurred during this phase, such as with the lighting equipment, that led to various character costume elements being scrapped. They eventually moved to the "Bar and Grill" nightclub owned by Johnson, due to its large space that allowed actors to move more freely.[7][13] Four of the playable characters were digitized live-action actors, two of whom had no previous experience in martial arts. Both Buzzsaw and Lucius were played by Huntsman and Clark Stacey respectively, while former bouncer Lamont Hanna portrayed Dreadloc and volleyball player Toni Fitzgerald acted as Volcana. Fitzgerald also brought some of her own costumes for the character as well.[7][12][13]
Both Grok and Mercury were pre-rendered 3D characters by Hatch and Walker, while Skullcrusher and The Guardian were made by Chris Salmon as 14-inch models that would later be filmed through the process of stop motion animation.[7][10][13] Afterwards, both Huntsman and Dale Meier edited and cleaned the films to provide the necessary frames to animate the characters within the game. Bruce Johnson applied finishing touches to some scenes.[7][10]
Atari Lynx version
A version of Ultra Vortek featuring hand-drawn graphics was in development by Beyond Games for the Atari Lynx under its original Ultra Vortex name. It was intended to be released as part of a planned relaunch of the Lynx if the Jaguar proved to be successful on the market. The game was only displayed for versus play once at Atari's booth during Summer CES in 1994, where it featured one stage and two playable characters.[15]
The Lynx version was left unreleased due to the Jaguar's lack of commercial and critical success. Carl Forhan of Songbird Productions, who had interest in completing the project, contacted Johnson in regards to his unfinished projects for the system and eventually picked up their rights for distribution.[16] Johnson sold his original development equipment and source code to the company, and the game was renamed to Ultravore.[17][18][19] A prototype of this incarnation also exists but has yet to be released online.
