Tales of The Nutcracker (1993 video game)

Tales of The Nutcracker is a 1993 fantasy platform game developed and published by Astound. It was conceived and designed by the brother-sister duo of Kevin and Julianne Langley. Based on 's short story ' and 's ballet adaptation ', the game focuses on Marie Stahlbaum, who is transported to another dimension and meets the Nutcracker Prince; the duo then venture through various environments in a quest to defeat the forces of the Mouse King and to rescue the Sugar Plum Fairy and her cavalier.

A hallmark of Tales of The Nutcracker was its use of digitized hand-drawn animation for its sprites. For this process, Astound was assisted in part by former employee Matthew C. Baker's Baker Animation company, who also assisted in casting voice actors and designing characters. The game's cutscenes made use of full-motion video sequences; though some ports' FMV sequences were more rudimentary due to system limitations. The game also made use of digitized voice acting, with a cast that featured noted character actors, , and. Several ports of the games boasted a digitized score by the. This combination of digitized animation, voice acting and orchestral music was considered groundbreaking for the time.

Heavily hyped upon its initial release for TS-UGOS computers, and the then-recently-launched  console, the game was critically acclaimed and was a huge commercial success, with much of its success coming from the TS-UGOS port being bundled with the TheoryDesk UG 5 desktop computer (in a pack that also featured Orville: Hero of the High Seas and ); the 3DO port was also bundled with the Theorysonic 3DO, the most successful 3DO model. Its success launched the Tales of The Nutcracker franchise, consisting of two sequels, Tales of The Nutcracker 2: Journey to Swan Lake (1996) and Tales of The Nutcracker 3: Coppélius' Grand Invention (1999), and two reboots: Tales of The Nutcracker: A Winter's Journey (2005), which was itself followed by four sequels, and Tales of The Nutcracker (2018), which itself spawned a sequel.

Background and conception
The conception of the game began in 1988, when Kevin and Julianne Langley had finished work on the (NES) game KnightMyth 2 for Astound. While the game performed weakly due to competition with the similar , it still performed well enough with critics and gamers for Astound to approach the Langley twins with an offer of total creative freedom to design a whole-new IP for the company. The Langley twins accepted the offer and went to work designing a game. Julianne, a long-time ballet aficionado, suggested a game based on ', thinking that the original story behind the ballet, ', would "make a great major video game", and Kevin agreed.

To offset any problems during development, the Langley twins created a second new IP, Orville, who's game Orville: Hero of the High Seas, a more "simple" mascot platformer, would be worked on by a smaller team.

Design
Aside from The Nutcracker, the Langley twins drew from several sources of inspiration beyond video games, including musicals such as ' and ', the Japanese theater troupe, films such as ' and ', and literature such as .

Characters
For the characters, Astound wanted "-style" character designs and animation. After "auditioning" several companies, -based Baker Animation, founded by former Disney animator Matthew C. Baker, and -based, a company with an extensive career in both anime and outsourcing for Western animation, were chosen to help develop characters and an animation process.

Marisela Junior was in charge of designing Marie. She wanted a character that fit the "Disney-style" quota and "could easily pass for a character from a Disney or film."

Astound staff bought tickets to the and  productions of 's version of The Nutcracker to watch them for research purposes, a process which  version programmer James Papachristos described as "a waste of time." They felt the ballet was "too complex and intense" to adapt major elements from into a video game, so they took storybook adaptations of the ballet and choreography sheets for the actual ballet and picked which elements they wished to adapt.

The Langley twins, Matthew C. Baker and Clive Garrett wrote an extensive 19-page initial story, but Astound had it condensed to fit an instruction manual.

Casting
As the game was to feature digitized voice acting, Astound set out to assemble voice talent.

Astound held auditions in, and  for voice talent. Over 30 actresses auditioned for the role of Marie Stahlbaum, but it was Heather Blank who won the role.

Graphics
Tales of The Nutcracker is often cited as one of, if not the first, video games to use pre-rendered hand-drawn animation for its characters. Astound, Baker Animation and TMS developed a compression technique known as Sprite Animation Modeling (SAM), which allowed the team to incorporate more detail and animation for each sprite for a given memory footprint, which better preserved the pre-rendered graphics.

Artists and animators from Baker Animation and Tokyo Movie Shinsha convened at TMS' studio in Tokyo to develop and produce the character animation, which made use of traditional animation via digital ink and paint. The animations would be compiled frame by frame, then videotapes of the animation would be sent to Astound's studio in the to be compressed for the game. The SAM process was handled by custom-built workstations with a custom-written utility program similar to.

The SAM process pushed the hardware of TS-UGOS, the Sega CD and the 3DO to each system's limits. The sprites would take hours to render, so employees would leave the computers running overnight. These custom machines required a massive air conditioning unit to prevent overheating, as a result Astound had to purchase a second air conditioning unit for their studio to provide relief for employees who would otherwise have been forced to work in the summer heat without relief.

Music
Film score composer composed most of the soundtrack for the game. Before composing, Jones was shown the graphics and watched playtesters going through the levels.

John Rumker contributed four tracks, including the Cavalier's theme and the stage music for the Swamps of Darkness. Guitarist Olaf "Norse" Forfang wrote the Mouse King's theme, and also worked as a session guitarist on the score.

The score was performed by the, conducted by Michael Bernini. The score was recorded at in, and mixed at  in  by Michael's wife Helena Freeland. Additional instrumentation, including guitars, drums and synthesizers, were also recorded at The Plant. In addition to Olaf Forfang, other session musicians on the soundtrack included bassist and drummer.

Marketing
Astound unveiled Tales of The Nutcracker at the 1993 Summer in. The unveiling was the finale of Astound's presentation. Astound didn't reveal it was to be released on the Sega CD until the end of the presentation, as the device was mainly known for poorly-received full motion video (FMV) games by then. Kevin Langley stated "When the presentation was over, first, there was silence. Then, there was a huge standing ovation."

Tales of The Nutcracker was backed by Astound's largest marketing campaign to date. According to The Boston Free Press, Astound spent $13 million on marketing Tales of The Nutcracker, compared to just $6 million for their 1992 title Gods & Heroes.

A score CD was issued by through retailers and mail order in November 1993, with a standalone release in May 1994. A promotional, competition-oriented version of the Sega CD version of Tales of The Nutcracker was sold through. It included a time limit for the playable levels and a scoring system.

Ports
After it's release for TS-UGOS, the Sega CD and 3DO, Tales of The Nutcracker was extensively ported to other platforms.