Peanuts for the Sony Playstation
Good day, I am Manfred Piaget. I'm a former British game journalist for Underground Gamers and developer for the Peanuts video game which was supposed to be released on the Sony PlayStation back in 1998, which got delayed several times due to development hell throughout 6 years in development. It started with a 90 second homemade cartoon created back in 1993 with the idea of a floating head of Lucy Van Pelt chasing Charlie Brown down an endless hallway. Then I decided to make it into a video game by asking Sony if I could pitch in to make the game and I'm surprised that they accepted me into their headquarters.
So I started developing the game back in October of 1995 with the Sony Team. It started to get fun at first developing the game, it was simple and easy like peaches and cream. We were expected to have a 1997 release when we first started making the game, then thought it would be better to release it summer of 1998. We thought about having 10 levels and having bosses in even numbered levels. The infamous orange cat next door was featured as the first boss. The three boys that were in Race for Your Life Charlie Brown were featured in the boss level before the finale. Ten comics had to be collected in each level because 100 of them were stolen by a possessed Lucy. The game was supposed to be a 2D adventure game with Charlie Brown as a playable character saving the world. You're probably wondering why comics have to be collected, because 100 of these comics have created characters like Garfield, Batman, Thor, Flintstones, and Felix the Cat. Without those comics, these characters will be extinct.
Things started to go out of hand near release starting in January 1997. Some guy who didn't know anything about copyright infringement was hired in the same month. His name was David and he started adding elements highly similar to Mario 64 like the HUD and title screen. I had no clue what Mario 64 was at the time and went along with it. About the Lucy boss, it is sometimes confused with the Wario Apparition story that spread across the internet. It may have some similarities, but it's not exactly the same. In the final boss, you are supposed to run away from Lucy. During your running session, you will be greeted with some power ups such as a bike, slippery jelly in the boss's eyes, and some delicious Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich to gain health. The characters in the final boss do not face the screen, they are actually facing the right side of the screen. They were facing the camera in earlier builds but was taken out due to constant crashing.
Eventually, I found out about Mario 64 with it's title screen. I was very disappointed because that certain employee was plagiarizing from Nintendo. So David was fired in May 1997, and we changed the HUD and title screen. The game was getting to the point where it would have to be pushed back to a Spring 1999 release. I captured countless videos of the game and its level, and as of now I am uploading these to YouTube. We had plans to bring the game to other consoles, but that turned into a scrapped idea. We did decide to make copies for the Sega Dreamcast though.
People started to come up with bizarre and scary ideas for the game, but I wasn't sure if I wanted to do that because the game was targeted for little kids and Schulz would get really mad. This whole thing is like the Black Friday Reel for Toy Story. The employees were thinking about dark forest levels at the end of the game, zombies of forgotten Peanuts characters, and a depressing bad ending. I decided to test out the game in March 1998 and all of those things I listed were there in the game. I was not happy with the result because this was way too dark for a kids game and then I threatened to fire the employees if they kept adding morbid things in the game.
So we had to redo the whole game to make it less dark and intimidating. The release date was then pushed back to May 2000 because of all that nonsense. After the incident happened, I decided to make a company for the game called "Underground Gamers". The logo features a snake with a war helmet. The company became defunct in 2008 due to low popularity.
At this point, I was starting to lose interest in developing the game because I was having to go through development hell and things getting haywire. One day, I was play-testing the game and a strange full motion video played when I got a game over. For some reason, we decided that you get an instant game over when Lucy kills you. This unnerving scene plays where Charlie Brown is dead on the ground and they just scold him for not saving the world. Everyone else leaves and Lucy pulls off the Micheal Jackson thriller ending scene with a red sky, flashing lights appearing before she laughs maniacally. A threatening game over screen appears right after the full motion video ends. I started to ask myself where I went wrong with this. I played the game again the same night, then I got to a certain of the bad ending and took a picture of it.
The next morning, I went to the headquarters fuming with anger. I showed my employees the picture I took the night before, and asked if they minded explaining that. They told me it was a bad ending for the game before the game over screen occurs. I said to them, "Charles Schulz made Peanuts to entertain kids, not to give them horrible nightmares. I can't believe you would take an innocent franchise and add fuel to the negativity." They were apologizing for all of that because they said they wanted to add more action into the game. I gave the employees one last chance to make the game at least enjoyable for families.
I decided to push the release date back exactly one more year, which was May 2001. I also found out that a second installment for the PlayStation consoles were coming out, so I demanded a port for the PlayStation 2. We started making commercials for the game as well, but I didn't find out until last minute that they forgot to air the commercials. We started to do great again with the game's development throughout the last 2 years of making the game. In February, I found out that Charles Schulz has died. The employees were sad to find that out, so we did a tribute ceremony to give some love and respect to Charles M Schulz.
It was almost time to release the game and sell them to a bunch of stores. The game was enjoyable enough for families and was perfect for American advertising. The employees were excited for when May hit and it put a smile in my heart when the day was getting closer. We were getting ready to sell the games and then they wouldn't accept those games because we didn't air any commercials. That was when I found out no commercials were released, I was really devastated that day. I talked to my employees and said "Why didn't you guys air the commercials, we worked so hard on this game." They said that they thought they aired it which in reality they pushed a wrong button and the commercials were not submitted to these television networks. I started to get really bad anxiety and thought about giving up hope.
I had this idea where I invite my family to come play this game in a game testing area and let them play the whole game. The employees loved that idea. When I invited my family to the Sony Headquarters, they got a really happy surprise. My employees were there and shouted surprise. The TV was right in front of them and when my kids saw Charlie Brown on screen, they jumped for joy and started playing the game. When the kids beat the game, all of us threw a celebration party for my family and the employees for 6 years of hard work finally paying off. We had a lovely night with me and my family, also including the employees. It didn't matter whether the game is sold to the public or not, all that matters that I warmed my family's heart.
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Credited to ManfredPiaget1997
Originally uploaded on May 31, 2022
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