Scavenger was one of the most exciting game development houses to come out of the mid-90’s. Formed from the roots of the amiga hacking and demo scene, their Zyrinx team would push the SEGA Genesis to the limit and they would also demonstrate the polygon-pushing power of its 32X add-on lbefore setting their sights on Saturn.
With an E3 booth that stole the show and took the games industry by storm, they became media darlings and secured a 4-game contract with game publishing newcomer GT Interactive. Investing early in motion-capture new graphics rendering techniques like voxels, nurbs, tessellation and light maps, they aimed to push Saturn farther than anyone had previously thought possible…
However, their deal with GT would prove to be their undoing, as the fast-growing publisher refused to pay for games it had taken delivery of. Through endless litigation, Scavenger ran out of funds and had no choice but to leave several works-in-progress behind as they were forced to permanently close their doors…
Follow SHIRO! on this amazing journey, as Dave & Patrick sit down with Scavenger co-founder, Christian Laursen, for an interview that digs deep into the company’s history, from its time in the spotlight to its fading into obscurity.
Christian’s Concept Sketches
“Nitrowrecks” – (aka Heavy Machinery) – by AGONY a Scavenger Team
SCAVENGER E3 1996 – Booth Demo Reel
SCAVENGER E3 1996 – Booth Footage
“ANGEL” – Rare Demo Footage
A massive Saturn fan since Christmas ’96, Dave is enthusiastic about growing the community and spreading Saturn love and knowledge to fans old and new. Co-founding the SEGA SATURN, SHIRO! podcast back in 2017 and creating the SHIRO! SHOW in 2020, he seeks to create interesting and engaging Saturn-related content for the community. Dave’s interests circle around game preservation, and he is a huge fan of game magazines and developer interviews.
Great interview with Christian, and nice to see so much visual material from those days!
I was one of the two graphic artist/animators working on Tarantula (I’m also the guy in the mo-cap suit :). We had three programmers on the game: one for the PC engine, one for the Saturn version and one tools programmer. This was in the Danish studio that also worked on Aqua and Gemini.
The programmers were cutting edge and were using techniques yet to be established in the game industry, such as skinned figures (as opposed to segmented like Tomb Raider 1996) and various pre-rendered texture effects. True, the Danish studio didn’t have previous game dev experience, but by the time the company (US studio) ran into financial trouble in late 1996, Tarantula was starting to come along well also from a game design perspective. Far from finished though. At our office we also had a live Tarantula in a terrarium (and sometimes outside) to study its movements.
The team members from Tarantula continued to Psygnosis (London) and eventually Shiny Entertainment (Calfornia).