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Why Simon the Sorcerer 3 (2D) was changed to Simon 3D
27th February 2001
The following interview was lead by Attila from Simonology with Andrew Brazier of Headfirst Productions and provided to Adventure-Archiv:
Hello Andrew. I would like to ask you some questions about "Simon the Sorcerer 3", the never released two-dimensional version of part 3 of the Simon-Saga. Could you tell me an the fan-community something about it? What was the reason why Simon 3 was never released?Hasbro Interactive (who were the European publisher of Simon 3D) have recently been sold and re-structured which means that the testing of Simon 3D has had numerous problems and is taking far longer than it should.
What did you feel (and the other Simon 3 programmers), as you heard, that Simon 3 would never be released?It was disappointing, as Simon (the lead designer) and I had worked on a complete design, and also our artists had started producing graphics. It was a shame to have to throw it all into the bin!
How were the reactions, when the fan-community heard about the end of Simon3 in 2D?Not many people knew we were developing Simon 3, so there wasn't much outrage when the 2D version was shelved, which was probably a good thing!
What was AdventureSoft's (Headfirst's) reaction?We were disappointed when we made the decision to drop the 2D version, but also excited as it meant we were going to make the move to realtime 3D instead.
Can you tell the reason for renaming AdventureSoft into Headfirst? The new team is Headfirst Productions, why just this name?AdventureSoft used to be an independant publisher, but the directors
realized that in the current state of the games market, it is not possible for a small
publisher to exist. Therefore we decided to stop publishing our games ourselves and switch
solely to development.
The name 'Headfirst' was chosen because our games usually involve using your brain rather
than quick reactions - hence Head-first!
We use the NetImmerse 3D engine to control the graphics. We use 3D Studio Max and Adobe Photoshop to create them.
If Simon 3 would have been published 2 years ago, would AdventureSoft still exist?Probably not - the market hasn't changed, so it's still impossible for a small independant publisher to exist amongst the likes of Eidos and Infogrames.
How many per cent was the game done? What features were unfinished (sound, locations,...)?We had written the design, and a small amount of the graphics were done (a few locations, and a number of characters). Not much programming had been done. It was about 25% complete I'd say.
Can you tell us something about the story? Was it the same as in Simon 3D?It was completely different. You played the first part of the game as a dog, after Calypso's spell to reunite Simon's soul with his body went wrong. You then got Simon's proper body back, and played the rest of the game 'as normal'. The story involved two cities which were separated by a river. Sin City was a horrible place of villains and crime, and Virtuallia was a lovely place of rainbows and birds. It would have been quite a nice location.
Which characters (and how many) were there? Will we see some of them in Simon 3D?There were about 70 characters. Some of them appear in Simon 3D, but only really the 'classic' characters such as Runt, Sordid, Calypso, and the Woodworm .
The 3D-version isn't what the fans really want. If Simon 3D sells well, will there be a possibility to get a Simon 4 in 2D/ 3D like Monkey Island 4 ?If Simon 3D sells well, then there will probably be a Simon 4. I'm not sure if it'd be 2d/3d like MI4 though, we kind of like the possibilities that a total realtime 3D world gives you.
How difficult are the puzzles ? More logical or more fantastic?They are logical, but complicated. There are some which are a bit more fantastic, but hopefully they're still solvable!
If Simon 3D sells well, will we be able to play a demoversion or a little part or the full game of Simon 3 in 2D?No...there'd be too much work needed to be done on it. We'd rather make Simon 4 instead!
In Simon Pinball and the Puzzle Pack are many, many videos and animations with the typical Simon 3 graphic engine. Are the videos and animations cut out from Simon 3?Yes, they were taken from 2D Simon 3. We put them in the Puzzle Pack because we didn't want to waste them but knew they weren't going to be used in Simon 3D.
Aside from Simon 3 and 3D, will there be other add-on games in the future, like Simon Pinball or the Game Pack?It's possible - we are currently talking to a number of publishers about expanding the Simon 3D franchise.
What is generally the reason for the long delay of Simon 3D?Let's just say 'unforeseen problems'!
Thank you very much Andrew for this interview.Copyright © Attila (Simonology) for Adventure-Archiv
Translation: slydos
Screenshots and models of the never released version
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Adventure-Archiv 27-02-01
