American McGee's Alice

Alice statue

Rogue Entertainment still has one of these aforementioned Alice statues, along with the Cheshire cat, in its Dallas offices. Only three (of Alice and the Cheshire cat) were created.

Cancelled port

A PS2 version was also in development but was canceled causing Rouge Entertainment to shut down, a decision which infuriated American McGee.

Extras

• The game came with a "Casebook" that described how Alice got admitted to the mental asylum and how her doctor tried to cure her.
• EA supplied an Alice statue to selected retail outlets for promotion. It was an evil looking Alice bearing a butcher's knife in bloody hands, and her skirt was bloody, too. In Germany however, the knife and blood were gone, instead, she was holding some playing cards.

Cover art

Later releases of the game in the U.S. had an altered cover art. In the original, Alice was seen on the cover holding a bloody knife, with blood stains all over her apron. There were two revisions to this; in the first one she can be seen holding an ice wand, and in the second revision she's holding a deck of cards. In both of them her apron is stain-free. The Cheshire Cat next to her even looks less skeletal in the new cover art.

Cut content

An early version of the game gave you the chance to summon the Cheshire Cat to fight by your side, but this feature was removed from the final game. You can still find some early pre-release screenshots around the net that showed this however.

Merchandise

As of 2004 a line of action figures based on the game is currently in stores.

Ratings

According to an Wired interview with American McGee this game was Electronic Art's first 'M' rated release

References

On the "load/save" screen, you get three buttons to load, save or delete a game. Next to each button is a one-letter abbreviation of it's function. Did you notice that this spells out "LSD"?

Sales

According to an interview with American McGee, Alice sold over 1 million copies on the PC platform alone, contrary to reports saying it sold poorly.

Soundtrack

• The original musical score for Alice was created by Chris Vrenna, former drummer for the band Nine Inch Nails.
• There was a soundtrack for the game released when the game came out, which included music from the game, with dialogue from the various characters. As of 2004 you can still buy it from various retailers for $10, brand new.
• The name of the soundtracks in the musical score are not completely correct. For instance, the musical score features a track named Battle with the Red Queen, but actually that track appears in the Skool level.
• The musical score feature an "extra" track called Taking tea in Dreamland (the reason why it is called "extra" is that it doesn't appear in any levels throughout the game.

Awards

• GameSpy
  • 2000 – Special Award for Graphics
  • 2000 – Special Award for Music
• PC Powerplay (Germany)
  • Issue 11/2005 - #6 Game Which Absolutely Needs A Sequel (it eventually got one in 2011)

Information was also contributed by Foxhack, Lev Epshteyn, Karthik KANE, phlux, S M, Roger Wilco, Zack Green and Zovni