Heavy Metal: F.A.K.K. 2

Cover art

The art for the box cover was made by famed fantasy artist and Heavy Metal (the magazine) regular cover illustrator Luis Royo. The original illustrations for the front and back cover can be found on Royo's illustration book Evolution (Published by Norma ed.) as well as some sketches and alternate layouts of it.

Cut content

Heavy Metal: F.A.K.K. 2 became famous for a level in an early demo shown at E3 1999, which contained a row of lactating breast statues. Due to pressure from retail chains such as Wal-Mart, they did not end up in the final product.

Development

Kevin Eastman, co-creator of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, used his late 80's cash windfall to purchase the franchise rights to "Heavy Metal", an adult graphic magazine that was the basis for the 1981 animated movie/cult classic of the same name. While promoting his comic work, he met and eventually married Julie Strain. Along with being a former Penthouse Pet and fetish model, Julie is a modern queen of B-movies with over 70 films to her credit (including writing and directing 1998's Lingere Kickboxer).

When Kevin decided to resurrect Heavy Metal for the year 2000 in a new animated film, he built the entire story around Julie's sci-fi badass persona. They also worked closely with GOD and Ritual to simultaneously produce F.A.K.K.2 as a sequel to the film. The movie went straight to Video and the Starz channel which meant that in some areas, the "sequel" game was available before the film itself. If you watch the film closely, as Julie docks her ship at the space station, you can see a billboard in the background advertising the F.A.K.K.2 game.

References

In the Eden Marketplace, there is a man who is working on building a movie theater. If you talk to him more than once, he reveals that one of his favorite movies is "Star Conflicts," although the last episode was pretty "disappointing." Finally, he'll comment "And what is up with that Bar Bar Jinks? Pee-yu!", a not-so-subtle jab at the Jar Jar Binks character in Star Wars: Episode I, which came out as the game was in development.

Story

Kevin Eastman, the owner of Heavy Metal, was so impressed with the team's initial story ideas that he gave them carte blanche for the game.

Title

F.A.K.K. stands for Federation Assigned Ketogenic Killzone.

Awards

• ETAINA (European Entertainment Award)
  • 2000 - Best Graphics in a Computer Game
• GameStar (Germany)
  • Issue 02/2001 - Best Graphics in 2000
• PC Player (Germany)
  • Issue 01/2001 - The Lara Memorial Award

Information also contributed by NeoMoose, psychofish, Steve Hessel and Zovni