Shaq Fu/Development
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Development
Delphine first began development of what would eventually become Shaq Fu as a basketball game, but after talks with American athlete and endorser Shaquille O'Neal (a self-proclaimed fan of Mortal Kombat), the title soon evolved into a competitive fighting game starring the titular celebrity.[1] Acknowledging that they could not directly compete with the worldwide sensation that was Street Fighter II, the company instead produced a game that highlighted the developer's greatest strength: rotoscoped animation.[2]
Shaq Fu utilizes the same rotoscoping techniques from the company's previous cinematic platform game Flashback, in which an actor is filmed against a bluescreen and then digitized with an advanced SGI workstation. Delphine's artists would then touch up the final results using some of the roughly 7,000 original character sketches[2] as a base for defining the game's character animation.[3] Filming was directed by an expert in kung-fu martial arts[3], with a number of Shaq Fu's characters being rotoscoped by stuntpeople from the movie industry.[3]
In addition to starring in and endorsing Shaq Fu, O'Neal also personally assisted with finishing some of the game's dialog.[3] In the end, roughly 40 people worked on the project in total.[3]
Timelines
| Timeline (Mega Drive) |
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02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 1994-01-06: Winter CES 1994 1994-10-28: US release, DE release, UK release |
| Timeline (Game Gear) |
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| History not known (yet). |
References
| Shaq Fu | |
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