Skull Cracker

Skull Cracker is a 1996 supernatural beat 'em up video game[1] developed by American studio CyberFlix and published by GTE Entertainment on Macintosh and Windows. It is sometimes considered a spiritual successor to the 1991 title Creepy Castle, which the game's head of technology William Appleton had previously written for Reactor Inc. Skull Cracker was conceptually designed by Ben Calica.[2]

Skull Cracker
Developer(s)CyberFlix
Publisher(s)GTE Entertainment
Director(s)Rand Cabus
Producer(s)Robb Dean
Designer(s)Robb Dean
Programmer(s)Don McCasland
Bill Appleton
Artist(s)Eric Whited
Anthony S. Taylor
Writer(s)Mark Cabus
Composer(s)Scott Scheinbaum
Platform(s)Windows, Mac OS
Release1996
Genre(s)Beat 'em up
Mode(s)Single-player

Development

After the release of Titanic: Adventure Out of Time, Cyberflix released this old project which had been sitting in the vaults for a few years.[3] The game was demoed on October 28, 1995 at the Double Tree Hotel (Crowne Plaza) in Rockville.[4] It also previewed at the 1994 Summer Consumer Electronics Show along with other Cyberflix games, presented by Paramount.[5]

Plot and gameplay

The developers described it as an "old-fashioned side-scrolling arcade game".[3] The game sees the player battle through 16 levels of the undead and monsters.[6] The game contains 50s-style monsters and 90s-style urban grit.[7]

Critical reception

GameSpot offered a scathing review, panning the title's "bad art, poor animation, limited controls, no decent action, lame gameplay".[8] MacLedge felt the game was a letdown from Cyberflix's previous work.[9] Inside Mac Games praised the title's intriguing storyline, witty humor and exciting gameplay.[10] Cyberflix head Scott Scheinbaum would later say "Every company makes mistakes, and that was ours...It should have come out a year and a half before it did", noting that 1994 technology seemed stale by 1996.[3] World Village noted the game was a departure from the history-based title Titanic.[11]

References
  1. "Chapter 23". cw.routledge.com. Retrieved 2018-04-25.
  2. "The Rules of the Game: Teach a Boy to shoot".
  3. "Metro Pulse Online: Cover Stories". 2012-10-18. Archived from the original on 2012-10-18. Retrieved 2018-04-25.CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  4. "Washington Apple Pi September 1995 General Meeting". www.wap.org.
  5. "THE 1994 SUMMER CONSUMER ELECTRONICS SHOW". www.ibiblio.org. Retrieved 2018-04-25.
  6. Gralla, Preston; Press, Ziff-Davis (1 January 1997). ZDNet Software Library 10,000. ZD Press. ISBN 9781562765378 – via Google Books.
  7. Hudak, Chris (2004-03-01). "SkullCracker Preview". GameSpot. Retrieved 2018-04-25.
  8. McDonald, Tim (31 October 1996). "SkullCracker Review".
  9. "Skull Cracker". 15 June 2000. Archived from the original on 15 June 2000.CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  10. Deniz, Tuncer (November 1994). "Sneak Peek: Skullcracker" (PDF). Inside Mac Games.
  11. "Titanic:Adventure Out of Time". archive.li. 2008-12-21. Archived from the original on 2008-12-21. Retrieved 2018-04-25.
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