Tonic Trouble

Moby ID: 2765
Nintendo 64 Specs
Buy on Nintendo 64
$22.00 used on Amazon
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Description official descriptions

In the tradition of Rayman (a platform jumper) comes another whacky adventure from Ubisoft!

Ed, the friendly alien space janitor, accidentally dropped a can of "tonic" on Earth, causing a great ecological disaster. Everything started mutating! Ed is ordered to clean up the place and retrieve the tonic, but someone got hold of it first... And he declared himself Master of Earth! Can Ed survive attack of the killer vegetables, find the six items he needs to fix Earth, and retrieve the Tonic can from Grogh the Hellish, and finally get out from Tonic Trouble?

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Credits (Nintendo 64 version)

138 People (127 developers, 11 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 71% (based on 25 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.4 out of 5 (based on 17 ratings with 2 reviews)

Not as great as Rayman 2, but still good.

The Good
The game starts with a funny cinematic, marking the beginning of a crazy story. Ed, a friendly alien, accidentally drops a can of Tonic on the Earth, where it begins to mutate everything: rivers run full of sangria, vegetables turn into monsters.... You guide Ed on his journey all over the Earth to retrieve the can. You encounter some pretty bizarre creatures, and travel to crazy worlds. Like in the Rayman games, you gradually gain powers in the game, like a bow-tie used to fly and a pogo-stick.

The Bad
This game is from the creators of Rayman 2, and most people expect it to be as good. However, it's slightly worse. The graphics are not as good, and Ed moves with a weird slowness. It's also a bit of a rip-off; like Rayman, all characters are limbless.

The Bottom Line
Don't let Rayman 2 cloud your judgment, Tonic Trouble is an enjoyable game!

Windows · by Qlberts (58) · 2003

Ed, Tonic, Hands, Feet, Body, Head.

The Good
The game is loony like, and wacky with a Rayman style added. Another fun fact was that the game saves by itself (as long as you have a controller pack) whenever you go through a portal or section. Character design is pretty good, the characters look funny too, like for example, Ed! Sound is also cartoony, which adds the immersion in a goofed-up world. story adds greatly through the game, I like the levels too, medium-long and filled with puzzles and enemies to lay waste to. Overall the game is well over average resulting with Tonic fun.

The Bad
sometimes it gets hard, like in glacier Cocktail, it can take hours to get out of an area, another hard puzzle is well, a puzzle literally, something you really need to work at. Enemies can be tough, especially for the newbies. And for the people who can't read, this game is not suggested, because the characters use those sentence boxes that some games use. P.S You are not reading this review if you can't read.

The Bottom Line
Highly suggested for those big time Rayman fans, but wackier, you'll have fun smashing enemies, gaining new abilities and just havin' a wild ride, now buy it, it's only about $20 new and only $5 used! Have fun.

Nintendo 64 · by Chase Bowen (35) · 2004

Trivia

Some development history and other trivia from the official homepage:

Q: Who created Tonic Trouble? How many people were on the team?

Tonic Trouble was co-conceived by Michel Ancel, the primary creator behind Ubi Soft's blockbuster Rayman action-adventure game, which recently was named one of Sony PlayStation's Greatest Hits. Now 27, Ancel joined Ubi Soft when he was 17, designing early games such as Pick'n'pile and Jeu des Bêtes. He originally handled both programming and game design himself. By the time he developed Rayman, he headed up a 16-person creative team. For Tonic Trouble, which required the development of a new 3D integration tool, the staff ultimately comprised 120 people

Q: How long has the game been in development?

Pre-production began in July 1996.

Q: What innovations did Ubi Soft's new 3D integration tool bring to Tonic Trouble?

Says Grégoire Gobbi, World Wide Project Manager for Tonic Trouble, "The game was built with a proprietary 3D integration tool and modular, scaleable engine developed by 50 Ubi Soft developers over an 18-month period at a cost of $4 million. We have since named this tool 'Architecture Commune Programmation (ACP)' which puts creative control in the hands of the game designers rather than the programming team." The result produces more complex characters, graphical environments and problem-solving challenges. Characters change behavior and expressions; game settings are richer; gameplay becomes more interactive.

Q: What were the game's designers trying to achieve?

Says game designer Pierre Olivier Clément, "Games like Duke and Quake are my favorite games at the moment, but even in these games, the main goal is only to kill the enemy. As a gamer, I want to be able to think, to rationalize my every move. I want characters who are more intelligent than any other game. I want to engage in puzzles that require trial and error and deep thought in order to solve. With Tonic Trouble, the game design team was able to do whatever we wanted to reach these goals."

Q: How were the graphical worlds created?

All graphical environments are texture mapped. The graphists first made roughs on paper, then they scan them into computer format and used software such as Painter and PhotoShop to define the colors. The team then used two 200MHz PCs with 3D Studio Max to modelize the maps. The textures were created on PhotoShop. The last step was to settle the light in each scene. Says team member Geoffroy DeCrecy, "Our inspiration came essentially from the cartoons of the 60s. We wanted the simplicity, energy and efficiency you can find in this kind of graphic universe."

Q: What advances does Tonic Trouble offer in the arena of game music?

Typically, games have several tracks which repeat over and over. Typically, the music changes based only on the player's place in the game. Tonic Trouble offers 10 long tracks, and the music changes to reflect the character's responses to the action. During fighting scenes, the music is intense and nerve-wracking; when the player is frightened and alone, the music is slow and melancholy. The Tonic Trouble music is the product of one musician, five in-house sound editors, and six months of work. In addition to these features, the PC version of Tonic Trouble utilizes Dolby sound to further the game's "total immersion" process.

Q: What is different about the game's introduction?

Tonic Trouble begins with a six-minute introduction that looks like an animated film for the PC version. For the N64 version, the introduction is approximately 2 minutes, and one of the only N64 titles to boast such a sequence.

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Kasey Chang.

Nintendo 64 added by Kartanym.

Additional contributors: Accatone, DreinIX.

Game added December 8, 2000. Last modified March 24, 2024.