Futurama (video game)

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Futurama
Developer Unique Development Studios
Publisher VU Games / Fox Interactive
Released August 12, 2003
Genre Third-person Action
Mode(s) Single player
Ratings ESRB: Teen (T)
PEGI: 12+
Platform(s) PlayStation 2
Xbox

Futurama is a 3D platform game based on the science fiction cartoon series Futurama. Versions are available for the PS2 and Xbox, both of which use cel-shading technology. A version for the Nintendo GameCube was planned but later cancelled.

Contents

Mom buys Planet Express for sinister reasons and the team of Fry, Bender, Leela, and Zoidberg must thwart her evil plot to take over the universe.

After realizing the Planet Express delivery company has been losing money for blatantly obvious reasons (such as using a giant spaceship to hand-deliver single packages and the crew never actually collecting money for deliveries), Professor Hubert Farnsworth sells the company to Mom. With her purchase of Planet Express, Mom now owns over 50% of the planet Earth, and becomes its supreme ruler, taking all humans for slaves and instituting a curfew with 'hoverbot death troopers' patrolling the streets. Fry, Leela, Bender and Farnsworth attempt to escape Earth but the ship is inexplicably (for now) broken and scorched so whilst the others repair the ship, Fry is sent to find a hammer. However, when the two ton pile of steel and junk (the proffessor set this up to test a invention) the hammer was supporting falls on him , he is killed. He is brought back to life by the Professor's re-animator and finds all the Professor's tools to fix the ship. Alas, the professor couldn't fix the dark matter engine so Fry must go to the pawn shop and reclaim the back-up engine. Once he does so they escape Earth with the re-animator and the gun the professor pawned the back-up engine for.

Mom's plan is bigger than the mere conquest of Earth; she plans to turn the planet Earth into a gigantic Warship to conquer the universe. However, in order to move the entire planet off its orbit, she requires a large Dark Matter engine, that only Professor Hubert Farnsworth knows how to build. She captures the Planet Express Ship in a tractor beam from a scrapyard on a desert asteroid. Bender escapes with the re-animator and shuts down the tractor beam. Mom's ship (in the shape of Mom's head) captures the Planet Express Ship in its mouth and Mom and her sons board the Planet Express ship. They cut off the Professor's head and put it in a jar before hurling the Planet Express Ship into the sun.

In a twist, the sun actually has a habitable surface, where the Sun People live in fear of the Mighty Sun God that has killed much of the star's population and created an undead army out of their bones. Leela defeats him, in exchange for Dark Matter to fuel up the ship, and the crew heads to the planet Bogad (Dagobah spelled backwards minus two letters), home of Professor Farnsworth's mentor Adoy (Yoda spelled backwards), presumed to be the only person capable of hatching a plan to solve the situation. As the crew journeys to Bogad, Mom succeeds in powering up the Earth's Dark Matter engine and proceeds to destroy nearby planets.

On Bogad, the crew meets Adoy, who reveals he's invented a time machine capable of sending them back in time and stop Mom before she became unstoppable. The ship and crew travel into the past but arrive completely out of control, crashing the broken, scorched ship inside the Planet Express hangar with not much time left to prevent the original sale of Planet Express. They then leave in their original ship, thus explaining how the broken ship got broken in the first place.

The crew arrives at Mom's Company just in time to prevent the sale, however Mom forces them to fight the robot Destructor from "Raging Bender". The crew manages to defeat him, but then they are crushed and killed by Mom's sons. Professor Hubert Farnsworth has a face-off with Mom and then returns to Planet Express to give his employees some good news. The cutscene shown at the end is actually the first cutscene from the beginning. The game ends the way it began, returning to Level 1 and completing the circle in the timeline (creating an infinite loop).

In Futurama, the player controls each of four playable characters on different levels designed for using just one of the characters at once. Most levels include a combination of fighting, jumping, and some puzzle-solving. Making use of each of these characters and their abilities, the player furthers the story along by unlocking interstitial cut scenes that provide more information about the story for the player.

  • Fry: Being the only character to use weapons, Fry wields such protection as a hammer and a railgun.
  • Bender: Being a robot, Bender uses attacks that make use of his brute force abilities; a shoulder charge, spinning punch, and a jumping "butt slam". Along with these, since he doesn't have a weapon, Bender can do a "special move" called the Super-spin Attack.
  • Leela: Being agile and educated in martial arts, Leela can do various kung fu style moves. As she also does not have a weapon, she can also do a "special move" which is a mid-air tornado kick sustained for 2 seconds.
  • Zoidberg: Used in a "race against the clock" riding level.

In addition to these playable characters, many other characters from the series make cameo appearances, as well as new characters being introduced for the first time.

As well as the levels being character specific, each character is also provided with items, health pick-ups, and valuables to collect that will help them in some way.

  • Fry: Cans of Slurm
  • Bender: Olde Fortran and Mom's Old-Fashioned Robot Oil
  • Leela: Vitamins (Said to taste like candy according to Leela)

  • Fry: Ammo cartridges
  • Bender and Leela: A charge-up to use their special move.

After collecting 25 valuables, a character earns an extra life.

  • Fry: Earth's Tricky-Dick Fun bills
  • Bender: Robobium shards (Bender's birth stone)
  • Leela: Gold bars
  • Zoidberg: Fish bones

Development on the game started before the series' cancellation,[1] but the game wasn't released until after the last episode had already been shown. Thus, the game has been known as a "lost episode" of sorts since it includes around half an hour of completely new material.[2]

Many of the crew from the Futurama series worked on the game. Matt Groening served as Executive game developer and David X. Cohen directed the voice actors. These voice actors were the original actors from the series: Billy West, Katey Sagal, John DiMaggio, Tress MacNeille, Maurice LaMarche, and David Herman. Also adding to the authenticity of the game was the original music composition provided by Christopher Tyng who also composed the music in the series and Futurama scriptwriter and producer J. Stewart Burns who scripted an original storyline for the plot.

A major part of the appeal of Futurama lies in the humor of the game. The cut scenes are full of jokes, and the characters and enemies make various quips during gameplay (e.g. Fry has an accident at the start of the game and wakes believing he almost died, and is then told that he did and that he is just a clone). The loading screens are all advertisements for various things in the year 3000 (Such as an Army enlistment poster featuring Zapp Branigan with the caption "Join the army. What are you, chicken? Buk,Buk,Buk")

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