THE MAKING OF CLAW
In the mid-nineties, as PC gaming entered a bold new, 3D era, cutting-edge startup Monolith Productions went against the grain, determined to create the perfect 2D sidescroller. The developers spent so long on their masterpiece that by the time of its release, the world had moved on
In 1994, as Doom took the world by storm, Windows 95 emerged with the promise of a glorious new era of PC gaming. While most developers hurled all their resources into churning out ’Doom clones’, a small startup operating out of Kirkland, Washington, did something else entirely. It took two steps into the future, and one into the past – harnessing the full power of cutting-edge Microsoft Directx technology, and using it to breathe new life into the world of 2D platforming.
Monolith Productions’ first big break came in the form of the inauspiciously titled Games Sampler 2 for Windows 95. Cofounder Brian Goble recalls, “There was an underground team at Microsoft that was making gaming technology for Windows, and they wanted to get everyone excited about it, so they came up with the Sampler CD – which was basically a bunch of demos from other publishers.” Though the company was young, it had already developed a stellar 3D engine for Windows, which the team used to build a virtual world for the Sampler CD. “The user could go into the world, go into a room, see the game demos and launch them from within the world.” The project not only demonstrated Monolith’s mastery of Directx but introduced it to a huge number of publishers – and Microsoft kept sending people the studio’s way.
Buoyed by the success, Brian felt it was time for the startup to develop its own flagship game, and he knew exactly where to start. Before Monolith, he had been a programmer at educational software company Edmark, where he worked with artist and Monolith cofounder Garett Price on an animated dragon. “As soon as I saw it, I was like, ‘Oh, we’ve got to make it breathe fire,’” he remembers. Though they worked on opposite sides of the building, bound by mutual enthusiasm, they struck up a friendship, and Garret shared his portfolio. Among the most curious illustrations were those of a pirate cat, called Nathaniel J Claw.
Garrett first developed the Captain Claw concept in art school. “He’s a bit of a loner, and an actionoriented leader that his crew loves and will follow anywhere,” he says. “He may do a few bad things now and then, but probably feels like he’s doing them for the right reasons.” While Claw was not based on one particular pirate, Garret tells us,
“If I was pressed on the issue, I’d say probably someone like Captain Kidd.” On the contrary,
Garrett drew inspiration from the most unexpected of places – the pirate fashion of new wave band Adam And The Ants, and the animated film, The Secret Of Nimh, featuring sword-wielding anthropomorphic rodents.
Brian, who always dreamed of developing a side-scroller, had already created a 2D scrolling engine for his game The Adventures Of Microman. For all the hype, the tide had yet to turn in favour of the emerging 3D revolution, and the 2D platformer Jazz Jackrabbit side-scroller had just proved the genre could work on PC. Brian says, “Directx had just come out and one of the demos was this really cool parallax side-scrolling demo called Foxbear. You just couldn’t do that in Windows prior to that.”
As Brian busied himself building the engine, Monolith began bringing in new talent, even hiring a team of ex-disney animators to produce 23 minutes of cutscenes. At a time where fullscreen animation itself was rare, it was a novel move – accompanied by an orchestral score, and a cast of voice actors that included some members of the team and their families. The story revolved around Captain Claw, who winds up imprisoned after his crew is attacked by the Cocker-spaniards. In his dungeon, he finds a treasure map, indicating the locations of the various parts of the mythical Amulet Of Nine Lives – which grants its wearer immortality. Breaking free, Claw embarks upon a quest to rescue his crew and secure the amulet before his rival, the lion Red Tail.
Each level is fraught with violent enemies and perils, such as moving platforms and crumbling bricks, fatal spiked pits and hot tar. Claw himself is armed with a sword, gun, stock of dynamite and magic claw, which fires off into the distance somewhat like a hadoken. He can also throw his enemies to their demise. Along the way, he discovers time-limited special powers, such as lightning, fire and ice swords, obliterating all enemies in his path. Many of the levels culminate in a boss fight, each requiring a different strategy to overcome.
Among those to be brought in was Brian’s family friend Chris Hewett – who was working as a flight test engineer at Boeing. Though he had designed some levels for Wolfenstein, he was new to programming and working at a gaming company still felt like a pipe dream. He asked Brian, “What do I have to do to become a programmer? I’ll do anything – I’ll take out the trash.” After spending a day familiarising himself with Brian’s level editor, he went away and produced a design for the first dungeon stage on a dot matrix printer – a savvy move that earned him a part-time job, and a further 20 hours on top of his 60-hour work week.
Although Monolith had begun working on a Doom-like FPS, Blood, Chris was impressed by the way Claw paired an ‘old-school’ genre with intricate design, a rich story, high colour artwork, parallaxing
“Claw is a bit of a loner, and an action-oriented leader that his crew loves and will follow anywhere. He may do a few bad things now and then, but probably feels like he’s doing them for the right reasons” Garett Price