Maui Mallard Story: A Giant Interview with the Creators (part 2)

The final part of my exclusive interview with the creators of the Maui Mallard game for its 25th anniversary. The first part is here.

Русский перевод (Russian translation) интервью доступен здесь

PART 1

(Previous article)

Artists / Designers
Animators
Programmer

PART 2

(This article)

Music and sounds

• Patrick Collins

Producers

• Patrick Gilmore
• David Bergantino
• Mat Sneap (Eurocom)
• Craig Allen

Afterword

How this project came about

Music and sounds

Artifacts inside:
• Internal documents with the planned dates of deadlines and releases of all versions of the original game and its sequel

Unfortunately, despite all my efforts, I was not able to communicate with the game's composer Michael Giacchino. He is now a highly sought after film composer and Oscar winner. However, the game's sound designer, Patrick Collins, kindly told me a lot.

Patrick Collins

sound designer and compositions'co-author

Hi, Patrick. I carefully read your 2011 interview, where you voiced the odd position of Disney Interactive marketers regarding Donald's disappearance from American game releases. Can you tell us more?

As I think I said in my 2011 interview, our marketing dept had some weird idea that Donald Duck wasn't cool in the US, so I can only assume they were waiting to see how the game did in Europe. My recollection was again that the marketing dept thought "Donald Duck starring in Maui Mallard" wasn't hip enough, so they renamed the game to Cold Shadow. I thought that was really dumb at the time, and voiced myself but no one listened.

I think our PC release was just a port of the Genesis version because we created the Genesis game in house. Eurocom created the SNES version so they had their own creative spin on certain things. Some of it again I think I didn't agree with, but we were so busy trying to focus on what we were going. I personally was working on Gargoyles (SNES and Genesis), Maui Mallard (Genesis), and Pocahontas (Genesis) all simultaneously, so especially for me, it was difficult to find the time or energy to even critique what we were doing.

When did the marketing department suggest changing the name of the game? At what stage? After the release of the original game in Europe? In the March 1996 issue of the American magazine EGM, where the game was announced for Genesis in the fall of that year, it was still billed as Maui Mallard.

Umm... This was so long ago, so I am trying my best to remember the sequence of events. But I am pretty certain it was after the original release. I remember after working so hard to get all the remaining music composed as well as all the SFX, in addition to the work on the other games I was working on simultaneously. All those things had to be done for the 1995 Christmas release. Maui was the game I was the most excited about. And then they told me the U.S. release was being delayed or canceled. And I was so annoyed.

I remember going to the marketing people and being like "WHAT?!?!" and that's when I heard "Donald Duck just isn't hip in the United States like he is Europe". And I voiced my opinion that they were wrong about that, but didn't matter. So anyway, I let that go. And then in 1996 I was composing for Nightmare Ned, and I got interrupted on that project and was told we were doing a PC version of Maui and I believe that's when I was told "it's going to be called Cold Shadow". And I remember going to Patrick Gilmore and saying "WHAT?!!?!? COLD SHADOW IS SO LAME!!!" And we had a discussion and there was nothing that could be done about it.

Anyway so I got asked to supply all the audio for the game as high quality since the PC game could do redbook audio (44.1 khz CD quality). Since Michael Giacchino and I had both originally composed our tracks with synthesizers and samplers, there were already high quality versions. So I just gave those to the programmer to use. And since I had created all the sound effects from scratch directly with the Genesis' sound chip, I just recorded all of those off of the Genesis and we reused them in the PC version. And it wasn't until the game was released and I was given a copy, I played it, and got to the boss level, and was like WHAT!?! The song I had composed for the boss music on all the levels… I had somehow accidentally delivered it to the programmer as a 48khz audio file, and the audio playback was at 44khz, so the result is that particular track sounds slower than it should. And I was sooooo annoyed that no one noticed, and also so annoyed at myself for not checking all the audio before it got released.

Anyway, that's my recollection of 1995/1996, in 2020.

Oh yeah. also.. Haha.. Yeah, I also delivered the WRONG version of The Mojo Stronghold music. That also really annoyed me. So two mistakes, that I missed because I didn't double check, and no one else noticed, and to this day I am like ARRRRRRGH!

The Mojo Stronghold music that I made utilized a few of the thematic material Michael had composed in other tracks, and towards the end of the track, I incorporated the haunted mansion theme, but on an early version of the song, I tried keeping it in the minor mode, but if you listen to the Genesis version, it is in the major mode there, and way better.

I was amused a lot by your story about the recording of the cry "GET HIM!" from an interview in 2011 :) Are all muddrakes phrases sounded in your voice? What other characters in the game have you voiced yourself?

Yeah, everything vocal in the game was using my voice. The witch doctor, all the mudrake lines, and there even is a scream embedded in the explosion sfx when you kill anything in the game, that was my scream as well. The only thing that I can think of that wasn't my voice was the actual "quack" when Maui takes damage.

After Michael Giacchino left the company, were there any unwritten tracks to the levels that you had to create from scratch yourself?

Michael was already on his way out by the time I had started. I think I only saw him in the office for my first few weeks, though I knew him previously. Prior to my time at Disney, I worked at Westwood Studios, a game studio in Las Vegas. Westwood developed the Lion King SNES game. So I worked on the music for that. Michael and Patrick Gilmore would come down on occasion to review the progress of the game, and so I spent a bit of time with them, and that's how I ended up working at Disney Interactive.

So there were a handful of musical pieces that were needed after he had left, and so I composed these: Mojo Stronghold, Boss Battle, Level Complete, Ending - Part 1 (Hernae monologue), Continue and Game Over themes.

I tried to incorporate the existing thematic material from the various levels where ever musically made sense.

You also said in a 2011 interview that "Michael Giacchino had left on kind of bad terms, so he wasn't invited to the party." What caused this departure? I can't help but ask, since you mentioned this yourself.

He left on bad terms because he and Ron Fortier (director of software, Cary's direct manager in fact) left Disney to go start their own video game studio called Mission Control in Burbank, California. So Disney saw this as competition, and also there were concerns of poaching talent from our group.

Have you in any way participated in creation of SNES version together with Eurocom? Or did you just give all the developments to Steve Duckworth, and he already made the changes at his discretion?

Yeah... I had zero communication with Eurocom.

In the SNES version, 5 original melodies were thrown out at once: the Boss theme, Ending – Part 1 (Hernae monologue before the kiss), the Flying Duckman theme, Continue and Game Over themes. Instead, 2 alternative tracks were written: an introduction for the cut-scenes before each of the main levels (in the original game there was a melody from the level itself) and a new track for Flying Duckman. Do you know anything about the reasons for this replacement? How did you take it?

On occasion I would see the builds they shipped over for us to test, and I remember thinking what they were doing was so different than what we were doing for the Genesis. I was not asked to review the audio work that they had done, so I was pretty much just out of the loop. In fact, I never even received a SNES cartridge of the final product after it was released, so I am overall very unfamiliar with it. I just have a handful of memories going over to Patrick Gilmore's office and he would be playing through it, and like I said, I just would comment on how different it was. When I have listened to some of the SNES music, I do notice that a lot of the notes are very different, and that almost made me wonder if they didn't use our original midi files, but just listened to the recordings and made their own version by ear and that's why there are different notes in the various parts. I'm not really sure though.

Due to the exclusion of the melody in the final cut-scene a stupid mistake arose in the logic of the musical accompaniment of the entire ending of the game in the SNES version.

In the final cut-scene of the original Sega game, after defeating the Witch Doctor, the High Sorceress Hernae starts her monologue, at the end of which she kisses Donald to the opening notes of Felix Mendelssohn's "Wedding March". This musical insert hints to the player about the emergence of a love relationship between both characters.

But in the SNES version Wedding March starts playing from the very first seconds of the cut-scene, when a stone idol falls on Donald's head. Long before the kiss with Hernae. Did you know about this? Did Eurocom not understand how music and what is happening on the screen are connected in such an important scene?

Haha! I don't know why it happened.

I had a guess why the SNES version did not include 2 tracks from the original game, namely Boss theme and Ending – Part 1 (Story in PC version). You said earlier that you wrote them yourself along with several pieces of music. However, the Mojo Stronghold theme, created by you from fragments of Michael's developments, was included in the SNES version. What if, these missing tracks that you created were simply ready only after all the original music had been sent to Eurocom? And they just didn't know about the existence of these tracks. Do you remember if the Boss theme and Ending – Part 1 tracks were created at the same time as Mojo Stronghold, or much later?

Continue and Game Over themes created by you are also absent in SNES version. It turns out that you created all these tracks later than the music for the Mojo Stronghold level. And they were simply not sent to Eurocom with all the tracks to the levels. What do you think?

I am pretty sure I created the Mojo Stronghold music last. Like I said before, I was so busy with everything I had no idea what was going on with Eurocom. Could just be that because I was working directly with the Genesis team, the boss music and other tracks got forgotten about and never sent to Eurocom.

Do you have any files or any other artifacts left over from that project?

Here is the cry of muddrake and the voice of the zombie. I just found those from a backup floppy I had of various Disney projects I worked on. It's making me wonder if somewhere in my bin of tapes I still have the original recordings I did for the sound effects.

Are these original sounds before compressing them to the Genesis limits?

Those two files I attached were the compressed files. Files that were given to Cary to add to the game.

I also have 4 promo cards, which I keep in a frame under the glass.

Great. This is the first time I see the bottom card on the left. Joe Santos, who scanned 3 others for me, did not have this one. Can you scan it?

I can't take mine out of the glass without destroying the frame. I tried scanning mine with the glass, but it looks blurry and terrible. But I can take a picture of it under glass. Here you go!

Thank you, Patrick!

There is more for you. I found internal Disney Interactive documents for this project. Enjoy!

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Whoa! It's just a treasure trove of information! Do you know who could have drawn up those documents that you posted?

You are welcome! Although I'm not sure who made these docs.

You mentioned above that along with your work on Maui Mallard, you also worked on Gargoyles and Pocahontas at the same time. Did Disney Interactive originally hire you on a project with Donald, or all three?

When I interviewed, they just told me I'd be working on a Donald Duck game. After I started working, the first track I worked on was the Babaluau Baby theme:

After I finished that track, another project manager came to me and asked me to also work on Gargoyles. I actually started on the SNES version of Gargoyles and did a few tracks for that, but there were problems with the programming for that project, so they eventually had me switch over to the Genesis for that as well. Shortly after I was working on both of those, yet another project manager came to me and asked me to review music that had been delivered from an independent contractor for Pocahontas.

I thought it was terrible, so I gave them some feedback and I think they delivered a 2nd version which I thought was also terrible, and so the project manager asked me if I would do the music for the game too... So I did.. And actually there was also Toy Story for the Genesis going on simultaneously though they had someone else doing the music for that but they ended up needed "You've Got a Friend in Me" transcribed for that as well, so I also did a version of that song for the Genesis release of Toy Story.. There was a period toward the end where I stayed up 3 days straight trying to finish everything to meet all the deadlines for those four games.

Did you or Steve Duckworth work on transferring music to the PC version of the game? From the credits of the PC version, it is not clear who exactly created these new arrangements. If it was you, then whose voices were added to the melodies of the levels (in particular, in Mojo Mansion, the voice clearly says "Nobody's home").

No, when Michael and I composed our tracks for the game, we used high end studio gear and ample libraries to achieve the full vision of what the track should be. It was that high quality version which was then presented to Patrick Gilmore for approval, and then from there it was adapted to the Sega Genesis. The voices like "nobody home" was actually Michael's voice slowed down.

It turns out that all the music (except for sound effects) was created even before work on adapting the tracks for Genesis was started? So working on the soundtrack during the preparation of the PC version in 1996 was no longer worth any additional effort, right? You just transferred the original tracks in high quality and sound effects created from scratch using the Genesis chip. Before the interview with you, I was firmly convinced that the tracks were specially re-recorded in the best quality, as it was with the improvement of graphics.

Yes, that is correct about the PC music. Literally the original mixes were just used and that's why I said originally I was so upset, because when I gave my tracks, I didn't realize that Michael's tracks were recorded at 44.1khz, and some of mine were at 48khz. So the boss level and the finale music sound slower than they should on the PC version, and I was so busy working on other stuff that I didn't review the audio before the game was released. And also that other point I brought out about the Mojo Stronghold music being the wrong version where the haunted mansion stays in the minor mode. That also was a mistake.

Talking about Genesis sound effects in the PC version. The PC version had at least one sound that was not in the original Sega game. In the underwater level The Flying Duckman, a certain hum is looped throughout the gameplay. It does not turn off in the settings when the music is turned off, but refers specifically to sound effects (it turns off with effects), although it does not sound any specific action. Was it originally created for the Genesis game, and for some reason did not get into it?

As far as the Flying Duckman goes, both versions have ambient sounds looping.
The PC version sounds like something I would have made with the Roland JD-990 synthesizer. I don't remember the details of why this is different. My guess is, the Genesis instrument was programmed to do a random pitch, so every time it was played it was different. And probably the game code was just doing the same thing over and over, so it wouldn't have been possible for me to record the Genesis unless I was ok with a really really long SFX file. So I probably just made something custom for that which was loopable. That would be my best guess, but we'd have to go back in time and ask me in 1996 to really know for sure.

Really. In the original Genesis game, the sound is also looped. But there it is not so obvious. The fact is that in the PC version, after the end of the track, before the start of its connecting playback, there is complete silence for a couple of seconds, in which that ambient sound stands out especially.

Yes, what I am saying is with the Genesis, that instrument probably was setup so that everytime a note was played it was a different pitch. There would be no way to do that with a recorded audio file (that the PC used), so that's probably why I made a different sound.

I have a funny hunch about the sounds that the organ makes. Each of his steps, when touched by Donald, emits a different note (I better perceive this by ear in the original Megadrive game). If you jump on them sequentially as their height, then you get some kind of melody. I thought I heard the beginning of "Old MacDonald Had a Farm" (or "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star"). Did you randomly assign notes to the organ steps, or was there really some melody hidden there?

Random. Don't remember if the Genesis is actually randomly choosing tones, or if I just made a handful of individual tone clusters that Cary programmed to randomly be chosen. But there was definitely not a hidden melody.

Thank you very much for your assistance, Patrick.

I was glad to help.

Producers

Artifacts inside:
• Late version of the Game Design Document (April 1995) with a detailed description of the game mechanics of the levels, including two unrealized ones. The description of all levels is quite different from the final ones.
• Character concepts from the original game by Teddy Newton
• Presentation for the sequel of the game from 89 slides

Patrick Gilmore

senior producer

Nice to meet you, Patrick. In the Weekly Creative Production Report (dated June 15, 1995) that Patrick Collins sent me, the release date of the Sega version in the United States is scheduled for June 1, 1996, while in Europe on MegaDrive its release was scheduled for October 15, 1995 (on European shelves, judging by press reviews, it appeared only in late November or early December 1995). What can explain such a large time gap in the release dates of the same version for two continents? As many as 7 and a half months! Wasn't releasing the game on Genesis in the US a priority?

Hi Max! The Sega Genesis version of the game was the lead SKU, developed at Disney Interactive by a team that included many of the people you’ve spoken to — John, Patrick Collins, Oliver Wade, Cary and several more. I think the important thing to know is that Disney, at the time, was not a licensed publisher for either the Genesis or Super Nintendo platforms. Up to that point, we had shipped games for PC (Stunt Island, Rocketeer and others), and had co-developed games with licensed publishers; however, to release a game on console, we would need to either sign Sega/Nintendo’s publishing agreements, or find a partners with whom we could co-publish Maui. The differences in dates reflect the timing of different publishing arrangements for different SKUs in different territories.

I can hear you now: Wait… what? There was no publisher…? Remember that this was a time of expansion for Disney. It was dubbed internally by Michael Eisner “The Disney Decade,” a time of exponential growth in the parks, consumer products, and feature animation. You could say it was ushered in by the release of The Little Mermaid, which shattered expectations for an animated film when it was released in November 1989. Little Mermaid was followed up by Beauty and the Beast, and, of course, Aladdin.

The Sega Genesis version of Aladdin was the first game co-developed by Disney and a publishing partner (as opposed to a licensing relationship in which the publisher has sole responsibility for development and release of the game), and was the first game ever to utilize hand animation created by Disney feature animators. Aladdin became one of the most successful games ever to be released for Sega Genesis (years later I was told by a producer at Sega that it outsold Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic 3, both of which were packed in with the hardware). The impact of Aladdin’s success was seismic. Combined with the dizzying success that accompanied the Disney Decade, there became a sense of urgency to do even better.

In all the conversations of that time, it became clear that Disney would never have any trouble licensing the rights to upcoming feature blockbusters. Reaching outside of that, there was a desire to do more with the classic characters, which were more difficult to license, but still experiencing a kind of renaissance in Disney Consumer products and in the parks. Maui was born out of a desire to create something bold with Disney characters, in a way that only Disney could. Internally, our admiration of Disney himself, of the Nine Old Men and the amazing risks they took, was a massive motivation. Here we were, at the headwaters of a brand new kind of media, trying to figure out what role we would play, and hoping we could achieve a fraction of what the pioneers who came before us did.

The idea was to take a classic character and create an all new adventure, not just tap into nostalgia or milk past classics. We would build the game internally, with the first video game team ever formed inside of Disney (it might be proper to say “tied for first” since the other, Gargoyles, was in development at the same time). Then, game in hand, we would make a different kind of licensing deal with any number of our publishing partners.

As a quick internet search will show you, rights to Maui were broken down across platforms and territories. There was no worldwide “master publisher.” And so, the crazy dates you see reflect the crazy process of creating something wonderful, then trying to figure out a plan to get it into people’s hands after the fact.

Was the original idea of this game (its world, setting, levels, mechanics) yours? If so, please tell us how you came up with such an unusual and rather risky project by Disney standards.

One of the first games I worked on at Disney was Quackshot, built by the same amazing creative team that had created Castle of Illusion with Mickey Mouse. When I first saw the storyboards for Quackshot, it didn’t seem that inspired. Donald played a sort of Indiana Jones kind of character who used a gun which appeared to be loaded with a toilet bowl plunger, which I thought seemed like an obvious effort to sidestep issues of video game violence. Then, I played a build and was knocked out—the fast pace, the globetrotting inspiration, the period setting, the Megaman-style branching story, and the core sticky dart mechanic made possible by the toilet bowl plunger—I thought it was all pretty brilliant. Quackshot was also hugely risky—if for no other reason than that the developers had given one of the classic characters a gun.

Quackshot, of course, is a play on the phrase “Crack Shot,” a phrase used to describe an expert marksman. Playing around with the crack/quack rhyme, I started thinking of old pulp “Crack Detective” adventure magazines of the same era as Indiana Jones. I collected reprints of Doc Savage pulp novels, and loved the hard-boiled detective yarns of the same era.

So “Crack Detective” became “Quack Detective,” and since Donald as a gumshoe was less interesting than Indiana Jones, we soon had him in a Hawaiian shirt in a kind of Magnum P.I. role, which seemed a much better fit.

Although that was the start of it, given the creative environment we were all in at the time, I don’t think anyone can claim sole ownership of any ideas that came from there. Like any great concept, Maui is really the collision of many great concepts that worked well together, because they were unified by the time period, and the island environment. I was the producer of the game, and like to think I drove and synthesized a lot of the main vision, but ideas were constantly flying around, many of which were incorporated into the game.

John, in his interview, pointed out inspirations like Magnum P.I., Gunstar Heroes and ninja movies. While we wanted to take risks, we also wanted Maui to feel like he belonged to Disney, so we took inspiration from big Disney properties like The Haunted Mansion, the Tiki Room and Pirates of the Caribbean. There was also Michael, with his love of swing era music, and strong influence of 30’s-era visual design. There was pop culture, with bungee jumping and zombies.

To tie all this together, we wanted Donald to be treated as a movie star, playing a role other than himself, which is a tradition that goes way, way back in Disney Animation (Mickey Mouse portrays Steamboat Willie, for example). We felt like this gave us some safe distance from the specific character of Donald Duck—he wasn’t Donald, but rather, Donald portraying a new character: Maui Mallard, Quack Detective.

Do I understand correctly that the release of the game on Genesis in the US was delayed so far (June 1, 1996) to first check how the game would be sold in Europe on MegaDrive (late 1995)?

The Genesis game was delayed because Disney did not have a US publishing partner. If you’re referring to dates on an internal publishing plan, they were likely estimates, and subject to change based upon negotiations and a partner portfolio.

Do you know that the official release of the original game in Europe on MegaDrive was an unfinished early version of the game with a lot of minor flaws? While the Genesis version was only released in Brazil in 1997. It kept dozens of minor differences (other passwords, screens with prompts on the first two levels, dust under Donald's feet, etc.) from the version for Megadrive, but all these differences have already appeared in the PC version released earlier in 1996.

I think all this took place after my time at Disney, so don’t have good answers for you here.

What do you know about the preparation of the sequel to the game? What has already been done at the time of its cancellation?

I was not heavily involved in the sequel to Maui, having decided to explore opportunities at the newly formed Dreamworks Interactive. As I recall, the plan was to develop and expand on mechanics from the first game—the bug gun, Maui’s ninja powers, and situations which might require players to rapidly switch contexts from one to another. I know in early development we were working on a level with a lighthouse in the background. We were going to develop some tech to transform the level from bright (within the light) to dark (once the light swept away) and part of the challenge for Maui would be to deal with transforming monsters as the level changed, forging ahead in the light, and fighting a sort of guarded retreat in the darkness.

Do you still have any materials for the game?

I still have a bunch of drawn animation frames and Teddy Newton original designs in my garage. Plus probably the last surviving ROM from the Genesis Gold Master.

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Attached are some photos. They are primarily designs for the Voodoo Priestess, designs for a sort of mad scientist flame enemy for the volcano level, and some crazy ideation for enemies in the haunted mojo tower level.

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I turned my garage upside down but didn’t find the Maui cartridge. It was custom-burned. Might be lost to antiquity!

Previously Joe Santos sent me some pages of the Game Design Doc which is dated July 18, 1994. It says that "Maui can use the staff itself to swing from stone outcroppings". Until this moment, I was firmly convinced that the MM creators borrowed the mechanics of grasping with staff from Earthworm Jim (as well as bungee jumping). But Earthworm Jim did not go on sale until October 12, 1994. It turns out that you came up with this swing mechanic without looking back at Earthworm Jim? Or were you inspired by the beta screenshots that have been published in the gaming press since June 1994?

The ninja swinging wasn’t inspired by Earthworm Jim; however, I think it’s fair to say that BOTH Maui and Earthworm Jim were inspired by Jungle Book, which was created by the same team which worked with Disney on Aladdin, and later left to form Shiny Entertainment, to create Earthworm Jim.

Joe Santos mentioned that you kind of animated the exploding rocks that appear when the duck statue hits the wall. It's true? Do you have experience in animation?

As for the rock wall, yes, I did animate that. Cary, our lead engineer, created a sprite animation tool that recorded offset animations for sprites. I always try to make some small artistic contribution to every game I work on (even though I’m not an artist). In Maui, it was the sprite animation of the breaking wall, using the tool that Cary created.

How is it that the game originally created for Genesis in the US (certainly one of the best games on the Sega console on par with Earthworm Jim) never came out on it? How and why was its release in the States canceled?

I am not sure it’s right to say the release was “cancelled,” since that would imply that a release was planned, and, to some extent, committed. The basic strategy was to leverage capabilities we had created through our co-development of Aladdin, Lion King and others, applying those skills to Disney’s classic characters to create a better value proposition for publishing partners like Sega, Virgin and Capcom. The challenge was that partners often invested because a relationship with Disney came with the promise of a sort of cultural event from a marketing standpoint—a push to relaunch a character, or to release the next big theatrical tentpole. Indeed, big theatrical releases are called “tentpoles” as a metaphor for the single piece of entertainment—the pole—supporting a much larger ecosystem of businesses, including games—the tent.

As I understand it, when Disney business leaders met with prospective publishing partners to discuss Maui, the question often was, “What initiative is Maui a part of?” “What’s the marketing campaign?” “Is this part of a larger launch?” The answer, of course, was that Maui was a one-off, not part of a new TV series, movie, character relaunch, Disney Store initiative, or any other potential synergy a publisher might use as a platform to gain a marketing advantage with retailers. My recollection is spotty (and I was not in any of the publishing conversations), but I believe there were a number of proposals, all of which required Disney to put up marketing funds, which the division wasn’t funded to do. As a result, a deal never came together.

How did you feel when it became clear that the game would not be released on Genesis in the US?

As to how I felt, although I remember the exact moment, I don’t recall feeling upset. I was invited to meet with Steve McBeth, head of Disney Consumer Products North America, and the founding president of Disney Interactive. It was a one-on-one meeting, and Steve, who is a true gentleman and expert businessman, seemed to care that it was handled with sensitivity. He told me they had exhausted efforts to find a publishing partner who would take on some of the risk of releasing Maui. He said he felt it was, “a great game, a truly great game,” and that the team had accomplished their goal to build an original product worthy of Disney. He said he didn’t see a path to publishing it in the US, but that they would not give up on Maui in any territory where they found a meaningful opportunity.

I asked some questions, but I didn’t come up with a hail Mary that saved the game, or anything particularly wise or insightful to say. Our strategy had always been, “If you build it, they will come.” We only ever worried about the game being fun; it didn’t occur to any of us that, in a company the size of Disney, bringing a great product to market would present a challenge.

For the briefest moment, I remember thinking, “Why didn’t they know this earlier?” Almost immediately, I realized that if they had known earlier, the smart thing to do would have been to shut down the team. We never would have had the experience of making the game. So it was impossible for me to feel anger or resentment. All I really felt was gratitude that we had gotten to see it through, and faith in the knowledge that nothing good stays buried forever.

Thanks a lot, Patrick!

Those were meaty questions. Good luck on the article!

David Bergantino

assistant producer

Hi, David. I have a few questions for you about the Maui Mallard project.

Hi Max. I’d be happy to talk to you about Maui Mallard. It was one of the first two video games I ever worked on! Hopefully, I can provide a few more details but you certainly have the meat of it covered with the other people of our team.

As an associate producer, I had little insight into the business side of things. I was just focused on the game design and story for the most part, although, as in the case with the name, sometimes the business decisions affected me. So I was part of the group that came up with the name Cold Shadow (among other alternate titles).

Do I understand correctly that the release of the game on Genesis in the US was delayed so far (June 1, 1996) to first check how the game would be sold in Europe on MegaDrive (late 1995)?

I don’t have direct knowledge of this, but I do remember that for the most part, the game was released in the US a full year after we completed it, and that this was due to the company waffling on whether they wanted to release it at all. When they finally decided to, 16-bit was dying, which made it seem like a failure of a game. Had it been released earlier, our feeling was that it would have been a top-selling game for 16-bit.

Do you know that the official release of the original game in Europe on MegaDrive was an unfinished early version of the game with a lot of minor flaws? While the Genesis version was only released in Brazil in 1997. It kept dozens of minor differences from the version for Megadrive.

I wasn’t aware of this. This was in the early days of Disney doing games publishing and production for the first time, and I remember in general, there was a good deal of disconnect between our creative aspirations (and results) and the “business”’s ability to operate effectively and efficiently in this new world. But the specific details you recount above are news to me.

After many years of dense web surfing of the gaming press scans (hundreds of issues of dozens of gaming magazines), I saw advertisements for the original game in only one German magazine. By the way, I haven't seen many more advertisements for the SNES version either. At the same time, ads for Mickey Mania or Toy Story came across to me VERY often. I even saw Gargoyles advertisements several times in magazines (though American ones). From this, I draw a disappointing conclusion that the marketing department of DI practically let the fate of Maui Mallard take its course. How true is it to say that the company's marketers, with their strange decisions, simply ruined the potential hit of 16-bit consoles and thereby deprived the game of a well-deserved sequel?

Your last sentence is more or less true from my recollection. In a way, the “failure” of the first game was a self-fulfilling prophecy that, indeed, torpedoed the sequel. Rather than address or acknowledge the reasons for Cold Shadow’s weak performance (ambivalence on the part of the company), and fix that to create success, the game’s sales were simply used as a bullet point to prove making games (in general, let alone for Cold Shadow itself) was a losing business.

What do you know about the preparation of the sequel to the game? What has already been done at the time of its cancellation?

This is probably the thing I know the most about, as I was (at least I believe I was) the lead on this, besides Craig. I worked closely with Eurocom on the story (which I barely remember) and especially the design. I seem to think we had a pretty solid vertical slice of the game done, with the key “new mechanic” being that you could jump into the background of the screen for mini-platform and puzzle sections. I went back and forth with a team to Derby a few times over several months, and we were super bummed when the company pulled the plug on it. But then, it wasn’t long after that the company pulled the plug on the entire division.

Do you have any materials, documents, concepts, or graphics for the game?

I looked through all my archives and unfortunately, I don’t have any materials from my Disney days. Sorry ‘bout that.

Do you remember any interesting facts about the game or funny stories that happened during its development?

There are a few amusing stories related to this game

1) One of the alternate titles proposed for the game was Mojo Rising. But the company nixed it because they were afraid people would interpret it in a sexual way. They were also afraid it looked like we were endorsing voodooism. This is why we came up with Cold Shadow, something that sounded Asian and martial arts oriented, but was essentially meaningly. When we made t-shirts and spelled Cold Shadow in Chinese characters, we had to re-design the characters and prove that they didn’t mean anything to ensure we weren’t trying to trick Disney into printing t-shirts with an obscene word spelled in Chinese characters!

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2) You probably know that Maui Mallard was originally meant to be Donald Duck’s cousin and an original character created just for the game. Then, of course, it became Donald Duck as Maui Mallard in Cold Shadow, which we all thought was unwieldy. This was the result of a meeting with Disney’s internal “Duck Committee” that managed all the duck characters in the Disney universe. It busted me up that there was a group whose remit was JUST to manage ducks. I was at that meeting… and it was a very serious one… and it was decided that Maui Mallard as a new character was one duck too many, which is why he became Donald Duck playing a role.

3) We traveled all over the world and stayed at the best hotels. We were like a startup inside a big corporation. Which was awesome, especially for those of us for whom it was our first industry jobs. The strangest trip was when we brought a small group of producers, artists and animators on a 10-day trip to the UK to meet with the developer and discuss “the Disney way to squash and stretch a duck.” Yep. That was the main stated purpose of the long and very expensive trip. Ah, the salad days…

Thank you, David.

I hope this helps. A lot more has faded from my memory in the last 25 years than I would have expected.

Mat Sneap

SNES version producer and co-founder of Eurocom

Hi Mat. Getting your contacts turned out to be a real quest (the MM team from Disney Interactive didn't have your mail). In addition, I know almost nothing about the creation of the SNES version of Maui Mallard until now. Therefore, I am especially glad that I managed to contact you.

Hi, Max. I'm glad you found me. I am ready to answer your questions.

How did a third-party company like Eurocom from England get involved in this Disney Interactive project?

So as Eurocom we’d developed Jungle Book for Virgin Interactive on NES, Gameboy and we took over the Sega Genesis version when Dave Perry was asked to concentrate on Aladdin. This lead to us being commissioned by Disney Interactive to develop the SNES version of Maui Mallard, which was in production for the Genesis in the US.

Why was the SNES version made so different from the original Genesis/MegaDrive game? There literally everything was different: level decorations, bonus level, ammunition, combat system, enemies, bosses, music and even gameplay itself! Who made these decisions? Was there any control or direction from Disney Interactive or did Eurocom change the original game at its sole discretion?

As John touched on (Hi John! Hope you’re well!), development back then was very different, there was very little in the way of the kind of direct messaging/zoom calls that we enjoy today. I seem to remember the odd weekly conference call, where we’d be told what the guys in the US were working on.

So really we were tasked with «Here’s a bunch of Genesis graphics that we’ve not implemented yet, but are working on... make something cool with them up for SNES».

You probably notice that the graphics had been redrawn, this was partly because of extra colours available and pixel ratios on screen. We used a more standard messy dither as the SNES pixels were wider so the effect they used on the Genesis didn’t work.

I have a number of questions about the differences between the SNES version and the original Genesis game:

1) The speed-dash move (or teleport) of the ninja in the MegaDrive/PC version (hold down the A + push forward twice) has become one of the brightest advantages of the game. Was this not implemented in the SNES version due to hardware limitations of the console itself or for some other reason?

2) How did it happen that in the SNES version, Donald's combo attacks in ninja guise were impossible? Ninja-enemies, contrary to logic, began to interrupt them after the first blow. Which led to the inability to fight hand-to-hand without damage to oneself in any other way except a sitting position.

3) Why did the SNES version completely redo the bonus level? In MegaDrive/PC, Donald rides a monocycle among Muddrakes and unique characters (Amazon Warriors and Torch Tossers). In the SNES version, Donald just jumps on the stars alone.

4) Some of the boss battles have been changed a lot in terms of gameplay. For example, a fight with a Frog or a metal spider. But the most controversial change is the volcano boss. Instead of a devilishly scary head with a spine in the original Genesis game, in the SNES version it was replaced by some kind of snake from fireballs. Why was the original boss changed so much?

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Thanks for the questions, rather than repeat myself over and over again, let me explain how the development of the SNES version went. A lot of your questions are simply answered by the fact we were working blind, the guys in the US were up against it and so were we, there literally wasn’t time for us to wait and see what they did and then convert it.

I seem to remember Jon Williams (lead coder) and I working crazy hours to get it done. He fell asleep on his keyboard one night and managed to draw a line of random blocks across a level with his nose... he honestly did that.

Lloyd Baker deserves a mention too, he was a machine at cranking out high quality pixel art, had a lovely style to his work.

In the SNES version, 5 original melodies were thrown out at once: the Boss theme, Ending – Part 1 (Hernae monologue before the kiss), the Flying Duckman theme, Continue and Game Over themes. Instead, 2 alternative tracks were written: an introduction for the cut-scenes before each of the main levels (in the original game there was a melody from the level itself) and a new track for Flying Duckman. Do you know anything about the reasons for this replacement?

With the removal of the so-called Ending — Part 1 theme an illogical error occurred in the SNES version. The fact is that this fragment in the original game sounded in the final cut-scene, when the High Sorceress Hernae gives her long monologue, addressing Donald. And only after its completion, she kisses him to the opening notes of Mendelssohn's Wedding March, with which the next composition begins (Ending Part 2). This musical insert hints to the player about the emergence of a love relationship between both characters.

Here is the original ending with two alternating tunes in the Genesis version. In the SNES version due to the lack of the first melody Wedding March starts playing from the very first seconds of the cut-scene, when a stone idol falls on Donald's head. Long before the kiss with Hernae which completely ruins the logic of music. Why did it happen?

I’m not too sure why there were differences there, again maybe a time thing. Of course Steve Duckworth did a great job with the music as well.

In Europe and Japan, the SNES version was released under its original name: Maui Mallard. However, the North American release (November 1996) it was renamed Maui Mallard in Cold Shadow. The new name Cold Shadow appeared not only on the boxes and manual, but in the splash screen of the game itself. Was this due to a similar name change for the PC version of the game (released in the end of 1996)? How do you feel about the change in the name for the US market and the disappearance of all references to Donald from there?

After it was all done, it all fell a bit flat, I’ve been in dev long enough to realise that you can pour your heart and soul into something and then the marketing guys just decide, nah...it doesn’t fit. It’s hard to swallow as hitting some of these deadlines takes a massive effort (as anyone that’s been through ‘crunch’ will tell you). But you go away and put your life back together, come back and start the next project.

Have you heard anything about the desire of Disney Interactive to port the SNES version to PC after the original Genesis version?

I wasn’t aware of any plans to port the SNES version to the PC... at least I can’t remember anything about that.

Do you know anything about preparing the sequel to Maui Mallard?

So after Maui, Disney asked us to develop Maui 2 on the Playstation..

We had a demo up and running, it was 2.5d....so simple 3d with lots of texture work...to make it look like pixel art, but you were fixed to a limited depth in the screen. This was going for a few months then we had the call that Disney needed a game developed for Hercules. So that was that Maui2 morphed into Hercules.

I’m afraid I don’t have any of the assets for Maui2... I’d love to be able to share them with you if I had.

From what I can remember we’d started work on something like an aeroplane graveyard. Lee (Ames) was another pixel artist at Eurocom and he’d done some nice stuff with bits of planes as platforms. Apart from that we’d just converted the SNES sprites over and we’re getting the mechanics working.

John may have not been aware of it to be fair to him, I’m not sure how much what we were doing as a remote studio got back to the guys in dev at the US.

We’d had a couple of visits from Disney management to look at progress and then were told to move everyone onto Hercules.

One small request: could you send me a modern photo of yourself? Internet searches showed me only a few old photos.

Here you go... That’s what 35 years of game dev does to you!!!

Wow! Thanks for your participation, Mat!

You are welcome! Hope this helps.

Craig Allen

Associate Producer

Hi Craig! Glad I got you on this project.

Hi, Max. I will try to help you, because the origin story must be told.

I still can't really understand why it was necessary to change the name of the game for the release on Windows. Moreover, the PC version is exactly (except for improved graphics and music) repeats the original Genesis game. One and the same game goes by completely different names.

Even the SNES version, which was radically different from the original game, was released in Europe under the original name. It got to the point that the game on its Wikipedia page (apparently written by American users) is not named by its original name. Didn't the decision to change the name for the PC release add unnecessary confusion?

I know examples when a game of the 90s could be called differently in different markets (Europe, USA, Japan). But I don't remember a single example where the name change was dictated only by the platform change. This is very strange, isn't it?

The nature of the 16-bit version distribution of Maui Mallard was mainly due to business dealings between Disney, platform holders (like Nintendo) and distributors which had different cost/risk profiles than a CD-ROM game Disney could self-publish with enjoy larger margins as the cost of goods was so much less than having to work with platform holders to manufacture cartridges.

In Europe, it was felt strongly that Donald Duck as a primary selling point so the game was marketed as Donald Duck in Maui Mallard… however.. in the US it was felt that Donald Duck would skew the game too young for the targeted gaming audience and there would be greater value from launching a new franchise.

After many marketing meetings, it was decided the franchise name would be COLD SHADOW.

So the PC version - COLD SHADOW - was released after an ‘enhanced port’ of the 16-bit to take advantage of being able to improve graphics, music and do more generally refinement in the game experience.

This was also part of a Disney initiative to create a “POWER PLAY” line of games which would be adapted from other titles - such as TOY STORY - in order to create a new kids’ gaming category.

According to the information I have, PC version of the game was released in the States only at the end of 1996 (probably December, based on the last revision date in October that Cary told me). By that time, Disney Interactive had canceled the US release of the game on 16-bit consoles (Nintendo apparently released it on SNES on its own) but spent additional efforts on improving the graphics. Not to mention the excellent design of the PC edition, advertising in the press and even on television (at least one video has survived). Did I understand correctly that outside of the 16-bit format there was no particular difficulty in publishing this game?

Yup! The PC Platform was able to be a more controlled Disney line of business with much lower fees for publishing so lower risk. In those days, you paid for the cartridges as a fixed cost of goods whether the game sold or not.. so where unsold inventory of a PC game might have a $3-7 cost of goods depending on packaging … compared to $30+ per game for a cartridge line…

Do you have any materials left for the original game?

I have this Game Design Document here. Enjoy!

Awesome! Your Game Design Doc doesn't look like the one Joe Santos sent me. Here's a later version, dated April 1995.

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Note: Craig's Game Design Document will be detailed in a separate article in our Maui Mallard community in early 2021

This Game Design Document contains 2 additional levels that were not included in the final game. According to it, the 5th level was supposed to be Temple of Shabuhm Shabuhm! It was for it that the Amazon Warriors with shields were created.

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Moreover, another previous level called Luau did not enter the final game either. That is, it did not enter in its original form, since the unicycle bonus level was originally part of it. And the sun in the bonus level scenery was generally conceived as a boss of the 4th level.

Thus, the Babaluau Baby (bonus level) was assembled from the developments of two levels that were not included in the final game. Joe Santos in his interview revealed that he made the bonus level at the last moment.

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Both of these canceled levels ended up on the island map that John sent me for his interview and on a redrawn variation for one of the 4 promo cards. Do you know for what reasons both of these levels were not realized? Have they been abandoned for creative reasons or because of the upcoming deadline?

Yup. It was deadlines and production cuts to get the project out the door. We also had memory limitations with fixed cart sizes so these things were left on the cutting room floor.

In the same Game Design Document you sent in, the Sacrifice of Maui level is somehow illustrated with art showing the tower from Realm Of the Dead. This is confirmed by the signature in the right corner on the original concept by Kurt Dumas, who kindly scanned it and his other concepts and sent it to me.

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Later, the same painted art of Kurt (it was no longer he who painted it) became the background for Flame Spirit from the promo card. Was this tower concept mistakenly assigned to a volcano level, or was it used because Kurt did not conceptualize Sacrifice of Maui? Kurt himself did not have all the concepts, but he replied that he created more of them.

I’m pretty sure it was just marketing grabbing an image and putting the elements together as a promo piece. Glad to hear Kurt was able to send over some of his concepts - they provided great inspiration!

I love that you are digging all this up from the Land of the Dead - and I hope you make a coffee table book out of the images and findings one day :)

From animator Rodney Bills, I learned that he worked on animations of several skeleton ducks and a hypnotized Donald. Only one skeleton pirate was included in the final game, but Rodney assured me that he was creating animations for several skeletons. Also, Donald's animation under hypnosis is not present in any of the versions of the game.

It turns out that not all the animations originally created in Creative Capers ended up in the game. How many animations were not included in it? Which ones do you remember? Could it be that some of the CC animations that were not included in the Genesis version for one reason or another were sent to Eurocom, and they themselves added them to the SNES version?

The Maui Mallard game creatively originated out of Burbank with the team working on the Genesis version. Eurocom was hired to essentially port the game over to SNES so that we could be on both platforms for release.

But as production delays occurred… If you’re a calm was to meet the timetable they needed to operate more independently - We also wanted to take advantage of what the Nintendo system could offer in terms of better graphics and what Eurocom could do to optimize the system in ways that the Genesis team might not be able to do.

So eventually Eurocom was encouraged to use the CC assets in whatever ways were best under Disney’s overall creative direction - even if it created inconsistencies or unique experiences on one platform relative to the other...

And yes! - Disney was pushing the envelope in terms of handcrafted Animation…

I believe the Maui hypnotized Animation might’ve had to do with the level where Maui needed to protect a little Maui voodoo doll from all the traps that would hurt Maui if the doll took damage (The Temple Of Shabuhm Shabuhm canceled level).

Based on reviews from the gaming press at the time, the SNES version of MM was released in December 1995 only in Germany and nowhere else in Europe or the rest of the world that year. Whereas reviews of the SNES version in French and British magazines began to appear only in October 1996. Was Germany specially selected as a special territory for the marketing research of the SNES version before the start of its sales in other countries? Is my guess correct that all other releases of the SNES version in other countries took place only at the initiative of Nintendo itself, which bought the rights to the game from Disney Interactive?

Hmm. I do not know about this.

The Genesis version of Maui Mallard (NTSC) was presented at the American CES exhibition in January 1996 in Las Vegas. I found information about this in the scans of the American EGM magazine (# 080, March 1996). The same issue contains the announcement of the Genesis version for a full spread with the promise of releasing the game in the USA in the fall of the same year.

In September last year, an avid collector of Sega games under the nickname Retroraffa bought a unique lot on eBay. It was a cartridge with Maui game for Genesis that never went on sale. According to the collector himself, it contains the same numerous changes as the version released for MegaDrive in Brazil (NTSC region). That is the official NTSC ROM for Genesis.

The collector believes that his cartridge may have come from that exhibition since he himself resides in Southern California, three hours from Las Vegas. Have you been to that CES exhibition or any other where you could announce the release of the game on Genesis? Are you familiar with this promo cartridge?

I’m not sure if I attended CES that year… I don’t think so… but the cartridge looks legit! I have a cartridge just like it so it checks out :) Photo is one I took of my son a couple years ago when we found the Sega Nomad and cartridge in a moving box.

One of the main (and most significant for gameplay) differences between the European version for Megadrive and the cancelled American version for Genesis were the screens with tips that the player saw after the death screens on the first two levels.

The first level contained clues for controlling Maui. The second provided hints for controlling the Ninja, including a non-obvious keyboard shortcut for teleport (fast running). They first appeared only in the Genesis version, that was only released in Brazil in 1997, and then were transferred to the PC version (1996). Do you remember if these hint screens were conceived and made initially for the game, or the team decided to add them only at the final stage of the game preparation?

These would have definitely been made late in the production as it would have been added at the very end of development.

I spoke with many Maui Mallard creators, but still one question gnaws at me: where did the unfinished version come from, which was released in Europe on Megadrive? Was it a beta version released by mistake, or was the Genesis version refined after the game was released in Europe? Cary found a build of the Sega game dated November 1996, but it is not fully known what version it is and how much the gameplay and content in it differs from the European release on MegaDrive. The final build for Genesis (released in Brazil in 1997) contained a lot of minor differences that also ended up in the PC version in 1996.

However, you can give me an answer without even knowing it. How? To do this, I have to ask you one delicate question. The fact is that the final credits of the European version for Megadrive (released in November-December 1995) and the canceled Genesis / Brazilian version contain one difference: your surname.

Can you say when approximately you changed it? If this happened at the very end of 1995 or later in 1996, then we can definitely say that the Genesis version, in the credits of which you are listed as Craig Allen, was completed only after the game was released in Europe on the Sega console.

You are definitely digging into the history books! I would need to check the paperwork for the specific date.

My name legal changed on March 29, 1996 so it would have been on or around that time that I official evolved from Craig Annis to Craig Allen.

Awesome! This means that the final Genesis build was not completed until April 1996. The original game was REALLY finalized only after the release in Europe. Finally, I know the truth!

In any case, back then you had to ‘flash’ the cartridges and the lead time for that was quite long - but a name change to Allen would certainly indicate a later build! And it’s not a sensitive subject so if you want to mention my name change in the article - it is a funny clue to sequencing!

Another bit of family trivia: Michael wrote my wedding celebration song - it was a luau themed wedding - which would eventually became the basis for Maui’s credit celebration music!

Do I understand correctly that after the Gold Master cartridge was sent to the publisher, it took at least 2-3 months before the game went on sale? Did you need to send the Gold Master cartridge already in September 1995 in order for the game to hit European stores by the beginning of December? Based on the data I received earlier from Cary, the final Sega build for Europe was created on September 22, 1995.

Yup. Because you had to send the code to be ‘flashed’ onto cartridges.. and during the holidays the process can become bottlenecked.. and to leave time for shipping… earlier the better to make sure the inventory was available when marketing started. The other issue with the cartridge business was that if you ran out of inventory.. you were months away from restocking the channel.. so in addition to the cost of goods.. the ability to turn around CD product in a couple weeks meant you could do more ‘just in time’ inventory control and have less exposure from unsold product.

Mat Sneap told me that Eurocom made a demo version of Maui Mallard sequel in 2.5D for Playstation, where one of the levels was... an aeroplane graveyard :) The plane graveyard also was drawn by John Fiorito in his concepts for the sequel.

I am attaching a fragment of an internal Disney Interactive document I received from Patrick Collins, with data on the development of Maui Mallard 2.

You like no one else can know the details of the sequel's creation and the amount of what they managed to do on this project before it was canceled. Was the sequel supposed to be developed only in Eurocom? Did MM2's developments form the basis of the Hercules game? Have any levels been made yet?

You are going to earn the Maui Mallard Detective of the Ages award, I think! Mat Sneap has lots of good information about the Maui 2 project and I’m glad you’ve connected with him!

The only reason why we were able to make the Hercules game day and date with the movie was by converting Maui 2’s pre-production and tech work into the basic framework for creating the Hercules game.

At the time, I was worried we would not be able to get Maui 2 back on the schedule if we switched to Hercules… but it was important to support the company‘s overall commitment to the future animated property, so we shifted gears with the intent of going back to continue production on Maui 2 after the Hercules game was finished.

We had a design spec for the game with concept art, the tech demo (which showed how we could use the power of the PlayStation to bring 2D Maui into a 3-D world) as well as character designs by Oliver Wade being animated at Creative Capers when we stopped and moved to Hercules.

Much to my personal disappointment, after Hercules released, we were not able to gain support for going back to Maui Mallard 2 despite the money that we had spent on prepping the production and being ready to go.

Are you familiar with these MM concepts by Ron Dias from Creative Capers? I initially took them for the frames of the animated series. Indeed, in terms of the detailed elaboration of the backgrounds, they are much more similar to the frames of the Disney cartoon than to the concepts for a 16-bit game.

But the setting depicted here (snow caves, Asian temples) has more intersections with John's concepts for the sequel than with the original game, but he could not confirm to me that Ron received his drawings.

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Could it be that Ron was working on the pilot for the upcoming Maui Mallard animated series? I just can't figure out how the snow caves and Eastern Asian temples from his drawings of Maui combine with the setting of the original game in Hawaii. This is clearly something else. According to my guesses, this is either a sequel to the game, or a pilot episode of the animated series. What do you know about this?

Nope. These were also concepts developed for Maui 2! I’ll see if I can find the concept pitch for you… but it started with Maui on a journey through the ice caves.. and culminated in a world of shadow and light with a lighthouse that was literally oscillating the world between two states with Maui having to face his ‘dark side’ at the end of the game.

Maui was going to be our first ’next generation’ video game (something that would become HERCULES) and we were looking for ways to push the power of the PlayStation so leaning into dynamic environments (being able to melt ice to create new pathways and swapping gameplay elements in real time).

I think we ended up with around 8,000 frames of animation created for the game as well… it was all ready to be assembled after HERCULES wrapped production. But you never know! Maybe someday…

The 8,000 frames of animation for the sequel looks like something incredible next to the 3,000 frames of the original Earthworm Jim game. Do I understand correctly that ALL animations were ready for Maui Mallard 2?

I’m afraid I can’t give you an exact answer to that question either other than I know that when we stopped production on Maui 2 we had pretty much completed all the animation we needed to bring the characters to life and start building the game… So I think we had done about 6-8000 frames of animation at that point ...I believe Hercules for example ended up with around 8k as well… Because with the next GEN systems we had the ability to have greater variety and larger memory storage for such assets…

This is why Maui 2 was such a disappointment not to continue with production because we had done all the work to prep everything to be turnkey production at the time but alas… Now just finding those assets as you are finding out is a challenge in itself…

You told me that Ron Dias' concepts were made for the MM sequel, not the pilot of the animated series. But did you have any attempts or intentions to make an animated series based on Maui Mallard? Or were you going to expand the franchise in any way (toys, comics, etc.)? As far as I understand, due to synergy with other Disney departments and the appearance of Maui in other mass products, the game itself could become more popular, as it happened with games based on famous Disney feature films or animated series.

Yes - I actually was doing a bit of work across Disney to evangelize the value of the character and try to gain broader support from different Disney departments. Creating synergy is easier the more you can articulate and guarantee or deliver broader market impact to tie into.. so early on when Disney Interactive was going big with Maui we were able to create a lot of interest in the project. Blizzard Beach as it is known today at Walt Disney World was in discussions to become a Maui Mallard theme waterpark, for example.

And we had meetings with Disney Television Animation which resulted in both Maui’s appearance on Quack Pack as a cameo but also the short lived Nightmare Ned tv show (which is another story). Unfortunately as plans internally at DI shifted to focus more on the ‘big drivers’ - Disney Feature Animation films like Hercules - the ability to convert such discussions into products and showcases for the Maui brand evaporated as the focus turned to more ‘proven’ or more widely supported company initiatives.

I think I found the very cameo you mentioned. Episode # 23 of Quack Pack TV series (mid-90s successor to Duck Tales). True, the character presented there can hardly be called an MM cameo. Rather, there was the use of ideas and components of his image (more similar in appearance to Herbert Muddlefoot from Darkwing Duck series).

A certain private detective in Hawaii named Mel Mallard, who is the cousin of Donald himself. From the words of David Bergantino, Maui was also originally conceived as Donald's cousin. Plus Donald's Hawaiian shirt.

Note Donald's character is not the same as Maui but sports the same basic clothing… SYNERGY AT WORK :)

Do you remember what exactly the MM cameo was in the Nightmare Ned series? If I understood you correctly, Maui was also shown there in one of the episodes. Right?

Sorry - to clarify - MM was going to be featured in Nightmare Ned.. just that NN was an interactive property (like MM) and we were working with TV Animation at the time… but the development of NN is its own dive into the challenges or bringing groups together around a common mission in a big place like Disney :)

Was the same Game Design Document made for the sequel as for the original game?

I may have found the original pitch slides in a long forgotten box of Disney lore. Something probably no one has seen since it was shown in a 35mm slide projector circa 1995….

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AWESOME! My gratitude cannot be expressed in words alone! Craig, with your help I have now opened the Ark of the Covenant! Maui Mallard and the Lost City of Dread - is this the official title of the sequel? Or is it just a working title for the pitch?

It was the working title... never made it to final marketing review so.. it’s the only title it had!

On your Facebook page, I discovered that a couple of years ago at ComicCon you were with Patrick Gilmore and two heads of Creative Capers (Sue and Terry Shakespeare) talking about the creation of Maui Mallard. Nice to see you together again. Is there a video recording of this performance somewhere?)

I don't know if it was recorded - but it happened! I still believe Maui is a great Disney character waiting to reemerge and its place along side Kingdom Hearts, Aladdin, Toy Story, Hercules and other great Disney characters that have translated well into action gaming experiences.

Thank you so much, Craig! You helped me a lot.

You are welcome, Max. Maui Mallard is a project I would love to return to one day... so thanks for keeping the spirit alive!

Afterword

How this project came about

My name is Max Nasikan. I am the author of this interview with MM creators and the September interview with John Fiorito. I am the creator of the only MM fan community with 10 years of history and a huge fan of this game with 24 years of experience.

I received my Sega MegaDrive cartridge with the original MM game as a gift in December 1996. By that time, Sega had already officially stopped supporting its 16-bit console, but in Russia it was still at the peak of popularity (Genesis counterfeit clones are being sold and in demand here even today).

I remember how I was amazed at the quality and quantity of animations. The game gave a bunch of pleasant moments. Transformation into a ninja and mini Maui. Combo attacks and homing lightning. Bungee jumping and underwater level. Bonus unicycle riding and tricky staff acrobatics.

And the game was not easy. I remember how difficult it was then to ascend in the Realm Of The Dead tower. The underwater level was also difficult at first. Now The Flying Duckman is one of my favorites levels. I took similar pleasure only in playing Earthworm Jim.

In 2011, I came across an interview with a couple of game developers and this urged me to look for other materials on Maui. It turned out that finding anything on the franchise is extremely difficult.

Only then did I learn about the cancellation of the original game release on Genesis in the USA, almost zero marketing campaign even in Europe and the cancellation of the well-deserved sequel. This gave rise to resentment in me for the unfair oblivion of a potential hit and the underestimated work of its creators. I wanted to fix this.

At the end of April 2011, I created Maui Mallard fan community, knowing quite well that it won’t become large. The goal was simple – to create at least one resource on the Internet with comprehensive content on this game.

Since then, by persistent web surfing, I've been collecting content bit by bit, one day even managed to find and posted the two Sega ROMs with 60 fps for the proper performance of PC emulation: European modified Donald in Maui Mallard (E) [f1] and Donald in Maui Mallard (Brazil) for Brazilian MegaDrive. Over the years, I have collected a lot of graphic materials on Maui and made about a dozen arts based on them (I'm a graphic designer myself).

All this time, I made no attempts to contact the creators, just couldn’t believe in the success of such an idea. On the eve of the 25th original game anniversary in September 2020, I thought, «Damn it! What do I have to lose in the end?»

From Noe Valladolid, who interviewed Patrick and Oliver in 2011, I got some contacts of MM creators. Among them was John Fiorito, who seized on the project with great enthusiasm. This resulted in my interview with him that was posted in our community.

After the interview was released, John shared it on his Facebook page with other ex-colleagues. This is how I got to know the rest of Maui team. The project began to grow in scale like a snowball. To be honest, if John had not given me the interview then and had not drawn the attention of the other creators to it, I would have lost hope of success, and none of this would have happened. Special thanks to him for that.

As a result, the project, which I at first treated with considerable skepticism, grew into a monstrous 2-part interview with a total of over 130,000 characters and over 200 graphic materials that were never seen previously. Until September 2020, little more than nothing was known about the creation of Maui Mallard. Only some information from long-time interview with Patrick and Oliver, mixed with fictional facts from Wikipedia. At the end of 2020, the brainchild of the MM team became explored perhaps more than any other retro game.

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Thanks to everyone who took part in this project! They’ve managed to find time to provide me with the detailed answers and scan their artifacts. Thanks to everyone who took part in creating this wonderful game (although I myself have been and remain a fan of only the original Genesis version and the PC version based on it).

I cannot say how many hundreds of times I have played it on the Sega emulator and in the PC version over the past 10 years. But I know one thing for sure: no nostalgia or childhood memories alone will make me return to the game so often. It's all about the great love that the creators put into the gameplay. Even now, after a quarter of a century, Maui Mallard finds new admirers among children and teens (although it cannot be called a game for children). This gem is timeless. It has a special MAGIC. Maybe its creators really used voodoo techniques? :)

The End

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Copying any exclusive material from this article, be it text or concepts, is possible only with the link to the article and the community.

© Max Nasikan. December 2020.

My other interviews with the Maui Mallard team:

Interview with lead artist John Fiorito (September 2020)

Interview with Eurocom programmer Jon Williams (March 2022)