"The Brothers Grunt was very grotesque, very, very strange, and full of edgy humor - it was going to be an amazing success. We got to about alpha [in the game development] when the Brothers Grunt show was aired in the Beavis and Butt-head slot. You turn on the TV, you want Beavis and Butt-head, but instead you get this stuff? You're already pissed because you didn't get what you wanted. Then, Coca Cola and Proctor & Gamble pulled their advertising. Finally, MTV took our game to a focus group. The kids loved it. Then MTV said, 'This is the Brothers Grunt.' And the kids went: 'Oh.' They wouldn't pick up the controller. This game that they loved, they wouldn't touch. So MTV said, 'your game is great, guys, but people won't play it.' That's what a license can do to a good game."

Indeed.

Exhibit B: The Hitch.

There are several reasons why Beavis and Butt-head Do U isn't half the game it might have been. Here's the flip side to the Identifiable Features feature: Sometimes your characters are too dumb to do what you want them to do - or what Illusions' Lead Programmer, Bill Fowler, wanted them to do.

"The only real stumbling block was that Beavis and Butt-head themselves were really stupid. Some of the solutions to the puzzles were things they really couldn't figure out. In the early design there was a thing about them gathering images from the Net for a report about human sexuality. They would set off looking for pornography and accidentally find something they could use for the report.

"We'd thought about this pretty thoroughly. They'd be using the computers in the university library to access this stuff and find a site by typing in words to search. The player would have to type that in, and if it was sufficiently suggestive it would take them somewhere with pornographic content. The picture would start to fill in. It would show the girl's face and her shoulders, and down to just about the breast level before the censorship program cut in, or whatever, and they'd be eternally frustrated.

"However, a big part of the puzzle hinged on them being able to fix a broken photocopier by adding toner, and that was way beyond the scope of what they should have been able to figure out. They would have just said, "It's broken" and wander away. There's no way they'd argue with someone to get the toner, then open the machine and figure out how to fill it - so that had to be dropped."

Exhibit C: The Empty Dressing Room.

Those household names can be touchy. Duckman was doing fine except for one small glitch: The star of the series, Jason Alexander, really didn't want to do any more Duckman than he had to. Fowler tells the story:

"Just before the actors were scheduled to go in for recording, Jason Alexander, who was the voice of Duckman, started making these outrageous demands. He had some legitimate concerns - doing that voice was hard on his throat, and the number of hours of studio time we wanted from him was two or three seasons worth of TV recording. In exchange for damaging his voice to this degree, he wanted $100,000, plus a dollar-a-unit in royalties. That was substantially more than we as a company were making from the game. So the publisher didn't want to do that."

"The lawyers could have said, 'You couldn't come up with anything, so now you have no game,'" says Coliz. "That's definitely a risk you run. The voice element has its own agenda and you have to run with it."

Fortunately, an agreement was made. The regular Duckman voice-double stepped in for regular money. The game was finished, and everyone was happy. So how come it never made it to the shelves?

Next: Problems with Duckman