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Blade Kitten

by Syrg Sapphire

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Original Thread: The Bad Idea That Killed a Studio: Blade Kitten

 

This LP is also available on the Internet Archive! Some video LPs are kindly hosted by the folks on archive.org. This means the original source videos will always be available for download or watching, even if the original video hosts are no longer available!

Introduction

Krome Studios was basically the company you worked for if you were an Australian who wanted to be part of the video game industry in the 2000s. Founded by three men in 1999, they were a gun-for-hire studio that broke out with their platformer Ty the Tazmanian Tiger (and its sequels), then moved on to pay the bills with various licensed products that included multiple attempts at Star Wars. Two of said three men had been in the industry for ages, being creators of the old Apogee title Halloween Harry (aka Alien Carnage).

One of those two men was Steve Stamatiadis. He was the creative director of Krome Studios, and he drew a webcomic.



Blade Kitten was a game released to digital-distribution exclusively at the end of 2010, published by Atari. It was based on "Space Captain Steve's" webcomic of the same name, focusing on a catgirl Felion named Kit Ballard, who is, of course, a bounty hunter in space with a tragic past- blah blah you don't care about this and the comic isn't really that good. Atari stepped in to publish it for them, and despite being a little pressed for time, reports state that "Episode 2" of Blade Kitten, a planned DLC pack of a final set of levels to finish the story, was somewhere around 90% complete.

Blade Kitten bombed so fucking hard that not only would Atari not pony up the fees to put Ep. 2 out anywhere, no publisher in the industry would touch that shit. Unfortunately for Krome, it seems like Steve, now basically in charge of development when one of the other three heads left years prior, had effectively sunk too much of the company's dwindling cash into making said title. Despite being such a juggernaut in its corner of the world, and being involved with such heavy-hitters as Lucasarts and Microsoft, Krome shuttered its doors a single month* after the game was released.

Blade Kitten is not a good game, but it was competent and had some positives. (The story was decidedly not one of them.) Come with me and we'll revisit a game I can't quite bring myself to love, but hate to see bashed unfairly. (And if you want to read more on this, this is basically the best article for you.)

* To be fair, the company had been going through waves of layoffs from late 2009 until a month prior, and in August one of the company's branch offices was shuttered entirely. Still, the actual death-knell was sounded October 2010.

Videos

01. Exceptionally Sun-ResistantYouTube Blip Polsy-Blip
02. It's Not Even IN a BoxYouTube Blip Polsy-Blip
03. Nothing Here is CoherentYouTube Blip Polsy-Blip
04. Their Clothes Fall Off When You Attack ThemYouTube Blip Polsy-Blip
05. I Owe You LunchYouTube Blip Polsy-Blip
06. We're Going to Get MoralisticYouTube Blip Polsy-Blip
07. Everything is On FireYouTube Blip Polsy-Blip
08. Gonna Get Some Floathog ActionYouTube Blip Polsy-Blip
09. This Consists of Going Down a LotYouTube Blip Polsy-Blip
10. That Guy's Got a Bone-BeardYouTube Blip Polsy-Blip
11. What Kind of Noink Help is That?YouTube Blip Polsy-Blip
12. The Final ShoutdownYouTube Blip Polsy-Blip
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