Black ICE\White Noise

Black ICE\White Noise is an unreleased action-adventure video game that was in development and planned to be published by Atari Corporation on a scheduled December 1995 release date exclusively for the Atari Jaguar CD.[1][2] It is influenced by the works of American-Canadian writer William Gibson such as Neuromancer and its plot is very reminiscent of The Matrix, which came three years later after the project was discontinued.[3]

The player would have followed the story of a group of three characters in a fictional United States city in the year 2042, as they performed multiple missions and tasks such as assassination, computer hacking, exploration, street fighting and other assignments.[4] Originally conceived internally in 1994 as a mascot platform game by Sam Tramiel to represent Atari Corp., it later evolved into a more mature title involving a

History

Background and conception

B.J. West began working for Atari Corporation in June 1993, five months prior to the release of the Jaguar in North America and worked on various games for the system from 1993 to 1994 as a graphic artist and animator such as Club Drive, Cybermorph and Trevor McFur in the Crescent Galaxy.[5][6] After finishing his work on these games, Sam Tramiel and the executives at Atari Corp. had a SKU open for their next internal project but they did not have a set idea what it was going to be, with the team pitching multiple proposal ideas of varying genres,[5][6] with the intention to create a mascot character to represent the company, similar to what Nintendo and Sega had with Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog,[3] with one of the proposed characters being an alligator lawyer named Al E. Gator[15] and among the furthest developed game pitches was a platform game starring an armadillo character titled Arlo Armadillo vs. The Bugs Below for the then-upcoming Jaguar CD.[5][3][16] Faran Thomason, who was also one of the producers of the game,[4] and B.J. West remarked that no one liked any of them and he proposed other game ideas after the platformer proposal was withdrawn.[5] The team later came with the concept idea of a cyberpunk role-playing video game with influence from works of William Gibson that would later be titled Chaos Agenda,[17] with B.J. West further backing the idea by creating with the internal team a design document and artwork,[3] with Atari Corp. greenlighting it after realizing various focus tests with positive output.[6]

Development

Black ICE\White Noise was previewed in 1994 under the name Chaos Agenda and was one of the first games announced for the Jaguar CD, where it was originally advertised that players could travel between multiple cities.[14][18][19][20] It kept being advertised and previewed under the same name until August 1995, where it was still listed as an upcoming game for the add-on but under its final name.[1][21][22] Ken Rose, lead programmer of the game, also worked unofficially as one of the managers for the project.[23]

Cast

In a forum thread post at Giant Bomb, an Atari employee recounted about the casting and filming process of the Black ICE\White Noise's in-game characters.[24] He stated that the team travelled to Los Angeles in order to film the game's playable characters and NPCs in a blue screen, similar to Mortal Kombat.[24] Around thirty-four actors were cast for the game and among them are:[4]

Michiko Nishiwaki as Misha,[14] a japanese street samurai for hire.[11]
Chris Hudak as Crash,

Audio

Originally, the team were in negotiations with American industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails to compose the soundtrack for Black ICE\White Noise, with his founder Trent Reznor showing interest in doing so but Atari Corp. offered a low amount of payment for the work and as a result, the deal did not happen.[3][6] Instead the original soundtrack was created, composed and performed by Grammy award-nominee and former video game composer Andy Armer. Although it was never fully implemented into any of the released playable prototypes,[11] it was officially released on CD by B.J. West under the label Kelp Entertainment.[8] The game's sound effects were also never implemented into any of the released prototypes but have since been released by the defunct Jaguar Sector II website under a CD-ROM compilation for PC titled Jaguar Source Code Collection.[25]

Cancellation

After various delays and expenses, Atari Corp. cancelled the title in 1996, a decision that was seen by the gaming press as an indication that the company was preparing to stop support for the system.[7] Plans for a film adaptation were also in development but negotiations were quickly stopped due to Atari demanding a high sum of money for the film rights.[3][6] The game's source code has become lost due to Atari leaving the video game market after the system's commercial failure.[5]

title	Black ICE\White Noise
developer	Atari Corporation
publisher	Atari Corporation
director	David Frost (Interactive Alliance Corp.)
producer	Faran Thomason B.J. West
designer	B.J. West Chris Hudak Keoni Chavez Sean Patten
programmer	Eric Smith Pradip Fatepuria Scott Chandler
artist	Bryce Nakagawa Chris Thompson Mira Soriano-Gillet
writer	B.J. West Chris Hudak Keoni Chavez
composer	Andy Armer
engine	Ken Rose
platforms	Atari Jaguar CD
released	Unreleased
genre	Action-adventure
modes	Single-player

Black ICE\White Noise

Gameplay

History

Background and conception

Development

Cast

Audio

Cancellation

Release

Revisions 18 and 19

Revision 23

External links

References