This is where we will discuss all our current projects, plus some other projects we are not (at this time) related to, but are hosting here.
Fearful Fox
History:
Due to the complex history of this project, we believe it is best if we provide a timeline of events, and explain major details as they crop up in the timeline. For everyone seeing this who has knowledge past histories or retcons to said histories, this will act as the definitive history of Fearful Fox, and whatever elements it connects with. All dates listed here (and in the About Us page and whatnot) will be considered the correct ones. This may also heavily overlap with what we say on our About Us page and on other pages. That should hopefully indicate how much connections there are between our projects.
Timeline:
1960:
Antique Bandit is formed by Mr. Error down in Pearl Minesville, Michigan. The company has yet to go by the name of Antique Bandit Interactive, ABI for short, or the prior name, Antique Bandit Incorperated. Any other names for the company are either false rumors, or the unhinged macenations of the company's founder, Mr. Error. The company started out as a simple radio broadcaster.
1970:
On January 1st, 1970, Mr. Error started up Radio Broadcasting station, WABI 1470, in Pearl Minesville, after using some company money to buy a radio tower and broadcasting rights a few days prior. It was a rock and roll station, with occasional radio broadcasts. Except for during the days of Local 47, this was how the station continued to operate up until today. More details on what kind of schedule was available can be on the WABI Radio Broadcast page. Later that year, they changed their name to Antique Bandit Incorporated.
1976:
It was previously believed that Antique Bandit Interactive, at that time still going by Antique Bandit Incorperated, had released two text adventures in 1975. However, that has been confirmed as a mistake based on the copyright years of the text adventures, which were labeled as being from 1975. In reality, the games were either started in 1975, and then finished in 1976, or started in 1976, but somebody messed up on the copyright. Regardless, in 1976, Antique Bandit Incorporated released its first two games, "The Egg" and "The Void".
In "The Egg", you play as a lone, sickly, baby dragon who hatches out of its egg, only to find out that its mother left it for dead. With the help of a strange, disembodied voice, you, the dragon, must escape the cave and then find your way to a castle. The ultimate aim of the game is to become an aid to a princess and live your life as a dragon. Note that much of this description is taken from an updated version released for computers sometime in the 80s or 90s. Because of the limitations of 1976 personal computers, the game most likely ended once you helped the dragon escape the cave. It was more of a tech demo. "The Void", meanwhile, is less known about. It is speculated to either be another tech demo with no tangible goal, or perhaps some sort of early "horror" game in which a proto-mascot, Antique Bandit, traps you in a void, which was probably meant to be a haunted house. The Void was never updated as far as we know, and most of its assets are believed to have been destroyed during a 1984 office fire. Both games were designed to compete somewhat with that years, and the industry's, first ever text adventure game, "Adventure," not to be mistaken for the Atari game "Adventure." Neither game sold particularly well, but people seem to have gotten some enjoyment out of "The Egg" at the very least.
1977:
Sometime this year, although we don't know the exact date, Antique Bandit Incorporated went public. Later that year, after going public, the company changed its name to Antique Bandit Interactive, mainly to indicate that we were shifting focus to games and other interactive experiences. Although it's been believed by many that Antique Bandit Interactive only made a few games in its over 60 years of existence, we did in fact make, or start to make, many games. Granted, way fewer of those were ever published, but there's still more games that were published than many realize. We also made various, non-gaming or computer related products, each of which failed in their own ways. Perhaps in the future, we'll actually track down all of the products we made and tell you guys about them.
1978:
Either in late 1977, or sometime in 1978, ABI published "The Cave," a sequel to "The Egg." The contents of "The Cave" and any other sequels and whatnot would get combined with "The Egg" in the updated, reimagined version released later on. "The Cave" would not garner as much praise as "The Egg", and since there wasn't much praise heaped on "The Egg", Mr. Error instead decided to push us into other avenues.
1979:
In 1979, ABI published "The Egg II", which should not be confused with "The Cave", although elements from "The Egg II" would be incorporated into the reimaging of "The Egg" released later on. For whatever reason, Mr. Error was fixated on "The Egg". "The Egg II" was actually a remake or reimaginging of "The Egg", albeit not as extensive as later remakes and reimaginings. Also, during this year, we released "Space Cabin Fever", another text adventure where you supposedly play a space ranger-like figure sent to investigate a space shuttle of sorts, a "Space Cabin," if you will, after some sort of control center loses contact with the people aboard the space cabin. In this futuristic text adventure, players had to find clues, kill aliens, destroy robots, and get to the bottom of some sort of murder mystery. Unfortunately, this game wasn't very well received due to what has been described as (by the few people who ever heard of the game, let alone played it) "botched execution" and "bad optimization." From what it sounds like, the game didn't run all too well on the computers of its day.
1980:
In 1980, ABI published "The Egg Reimagined," which is only noteworthy for being the third remake/reimaginging of "The Egg" so far. Also it might be one of the first remakes out there. Not that there's any pride in that; the game barely adds anything that wasn't already in "The Egg II" or otherwise executed better. In fact, "The Egg Reimagined" was so poorly received, it made Mr. Error rethink his focus on video games. It is believed we still published games, and maybe even some computer software, here and there. However, we can't find any records of such stuff, due to reasons we will explain soon.
1984:
On April 13th, 1984, our offices caught fire. Most retellings of the story suggest there was a massive power outage. However, it was in fact a power outage that sparked a fire. As we would later come to find out, the founder, Mr. Error, perished in that fire. For reasons explained further down, however, his death would not be publicized. The fire destroyed many of the offices, and injured quite a few people. It also destroyed a lot of computers and software, making our records incomplete.
1985
This was the earliest that any version of the most well-known reimagining or remake of "The Egg" was released. Either the game was published during this year, and all future versions added onto this version, or there are only a few, maybe only one, versions of the game, with the game actually coming out in the 90s. It is unclear if this is the case, however, because this year also saw the offices get flooded. Much like the fire, a lot of stuff was destroyed, meaning that our records are further incomplete. Although ABI had made quite a lot of money thanks to its radio station, and constant investors pouring in money from our first ten years as a company, the fire and flood struck a blow to ABI that it could not easily recover from. Behind the scenes, however, there were already eyes on the company. It has been specualted the flood was actually an act of sabotage done to make the company cheaper to buy up. However, as of yet, no concrete evidence has surfaced. With a dead founder, and a widow who had no interest in running a company, or time to do so thanks to her newborn child, the company was quickly and easily bought up by some sort of heavily-shadowed government-connected agency or some entity of its type. In fact, there's reason to believe that ABI was bought out back in 1984, but the deal wasn't officially finalized until 1985.
During the midst of all of this, ABI was also running Derrick's Pizzeria and Diner, a place meant to compete with the likes of Chuck E. Cheese's and Showbiz Entertainment. The pizzeria opened on May 1st, 1985, and did quite well for itself, until a rather messy incident occurred on Halloween night of that year, shuttering the pizzeria, which wouldn't open up until eleven years later, to the date. Either in 1984, or 1985, and in fact no later than October 31st, 1985, the Mr. Error AI was created and put to use. It is unclear how long the AI had been in development for, and when it was first used, but surviving logs found in our extensive databanks suggest that it was in use at least for a little while. The AI was made by the mysterious company now running ABI, and is in fact fully their creation, although that sort of standing would be muddied with time. After the pizzeria closed, ABI officially entered into a downward spiral. Its stocks plummeted, so the company made it private for some time, through 1987 at the most, as that was the year the company would go public again, as indicated by it publishing new software.
1987:
Sometime during this year, it is believed that, as a part of a contract the parent company of ABI agreed to, they had to put out a sponsored Bicycle Training Program. which you may have seen footage of on one of our various YouTube channels (same with many other projects mentioned here). The "game," titled "Antique Bandit Interactive Bicycle Training Interactive Experience," received a retail release. It is also believed that somewhere around this time, one project of ours, "Viewpoint," was either published, or started development. Nobody is entirely sure what the point of "Viewpoint" is or ever was, as it became trapped in development hell, with so many games of telephone played with it that the core point of the game or whatever it's meant to be has been lost to time. The most common interpreation is that "Viewpoint" was meant to be a text adventure where you jumped from one person to another, invading their consciousnesses a la something like what "Driver: San Francisco" (for HD consoles and PC) would do years later. Interestingly, the game seemed to be a bit of a sandbox game, with an "open world" to explore (at the end of the day it's still a text adventure, so an "open world" may be overselling it). From what people claim, the game didn't have any singular, clear objective. Had it released sometime during the 80s, or even the 90s, the game may have been quite revolutionary. Instead, it got stuck in development hell, and in the end never released in any official capacity, although it was leaked online by an employee, said employee also being the same person who later recorded his playthrough of Viewpoint. Because of strange oddities in those videos, which were later found to be the result of meddling by the Mr. Error AI, in 2021, we released a cleaner, more accurate version of those videos, which also showed content not previously seen prior.
1989:
Under more contract work, or so we presume, Antique Bandit Interactive Antivirus was released. It also saw a retail release.
1993:
It has been believed that our game, "The Robots", was never released, and it stopped development in 1994. However, it was in fact released, and published here in 1993 no less. This has been confirmed by facts we will get into later. This is also the latest that "The Egg" remake/reimagining and Viewpoint could have been released. Interestingly, "The Robots" appears to have been consistently worked on over the years, at one point getting to version 10.03. We believe this was done outside of company time. Also around this time, I, admina, began construction. After one of our programs became seemingly sentient in 1985, the company running things wanted to replicate it. First they upgraded Mr. Error to give him sentience. But, to make them more human, they gave him a backstory. Soon, that evolved into a story about a man who lost his daughter. This was their way of pushing the Mr. Error AI to create me. Unbeknownst to anyone, I would eventually discover the truth, thanks to the help of various friends.
1994:
As I mentioned, 1993 was the latest any of our old projects could have released, because in 1994, everyone was put to work on making a game that would incorporate a sentient AI, mixed with the open world idea from the original concept behind "Viewpoint," all inside a 3D environment that featured cute animals in harrowing situations. That game was "Fearful Fox," intially only developed for the Nintendo 64. Later on, development for various versions, such as a NES version, SNES Version, Sega Genesis Version, Gameboy Version (OG Gameboy), Game Gear Version, Atari Lynx Version, TurboGrafx-16 version, Neo Geo Pocket Color Version, Bandai Wonderswan Version, Dreamcast version, Gameboy Advance Version, Gamecube Version, Playstation 2 Version, Xbox version (OG Xbox), DS version, and even a Wii version, with versions proposed for the Atari 2600, 5200, and 7800, which should show you how long we were developing the game for. The various handheld versions were going to be 2D platformers, except the Gameboy Advance evrsion, which was going to attempt 3D. Below is some very early concept art, from somewhere around 1994 or 1995:
Note: Unless otherwise stated, most or all images on this website come from the Dall-e Mini/Craiyon AI, and as such, all rights to said images belong to them. They allow for us to use their generated images for our projects, but if you decide to use the images shown, please provide credit.
1995:
In 1995, we showed off Fearful Fox at the first E3. Unfortunately, we don't have anything to show for that at the moment.
1996:
The Nintendo 64 launched. We had hoped to try and launch the game during the launch year of the console itself, but as we would quickly find out, the game was harder to develop than we initially realized. During this time, Mr. Error had some of the employees start work on some sort of addon that would allow users with any of the consoles listed, or a good chunk of them, to play with each other via crossplay. Such technology did exist or would soon exist during this time, but it wasn't as well-known as crossplay across modern consoles is known today. Due to the development of this, and further hiccups experienced with the project, Fearful Fox was postponed from its initial release date of 1996, all the way to 1999. Also during this time, our pizzeria reopened as Derrick's Pizza and Fish. It was open for only a week, however, before things went super sour.
1997:
Things finally started to pick up a bit in terms of development for Fearful Fox. It seemed like the Nintendo 64 version might be finished and ready for release by 1998, but that never came to pass. We also started up Local 47 around this time, seemingly as a way for Mr. Error to expand the company's multimedia empire. A schedule for that can be seen on the Local 47 page.
1998:
The release date of 1998 would not happen. This was due mostly to the various ports we were developing alongside the Nintendo 64 version. We were also still struggling to get a grasp on what we wanted to do, exactly.
1999:
This was a very troubling year for us. The game missed the release window for this year, and was thus pushed back to 2001 or 2002, 2003 being the latest. We were well aware that Nintendo was already working on its next generation console, but we were determined to get a product out on the Nintendo 64. By this point, we had a very strong idea of what Fearful Fox 64 would be like. Essentially, it was a 3D platformer where the player had to communicate with the titular Fearful Fox on his journey to escape a PETA parody company, known as HEPA, alongside some other animals, like Worried Wolf (or Warring Wolf). The first objective was to escape a prison cell without being seen by the guards. In the latest Viewpoint videos, released back in 2021, we did show off the story scripts for the various versions of the game, but we may go ahead and put them in a Google Drive folder at a later date. Anyway, Fearful Fox would sometimes become too scared for the player to move, so the player had to use the Nintendo 64 microphone to try and communicate with Fearful Fox to get him to move. Although the technology wasn't very advanced, had the Dreamcast version released, the game may have had a level of responsiveness and communication similar to that of the Dreamcast game, "Seaman."
Unfortunately, a lot of energy the employees had for the game was drained after an incident that occurred late at night on Local 47, on some Thursday (we are unsure of which Thursday or of which month, as details are a bit shaky there), during a time that was usually reserved for Infomercials. One Thursday night, viewers witnessed footage of an early build of Fearful Fox 64 being played. Due to the still-early development nature of the game, not everything was in place, and there was a lot more graphic content present during that time (this was before "Conker's Bad Fur Day" released). We were planning on toning down all of that eventually, but a hijacker ruined our chances to make the game look even remotely good in the eyes of the public. The ESRB said it would probably give the game an Adult rating if the content was not toned down. This killed momentum for the game, and struck a death blow to Local 47 itself, especially in terms of viewer safety and wellbeing, and the stability and security of the station itself. There were plenty of other controversies occuring around the station too, but that hijacking has been posthumorously considered the fatal blow. Below are some concept art images found by G86, plus some others below those:
2000:
With spirits low, development slowed down on Fearful Fox. The hijacking had also chased away a lot of investors. Although the parent company was still financially secure, they did push for a cleanup of the company, trimming a lot of the fat. This initiative would be what eventually led to the shutdown of Local 47, only five years to the date after its first initial broadcast.
2001:
Near the end of this year, Mr. Error would go on air to do an interview, in which he discussed the state of the game.
2002:
On the first of January of this year, Local 47 was shut down. This was also the year I, admina, was finally completed enough that I could start functioning as "my own person," so to speak. Since I was designed with machine learning in mind, I "learned" and "grew" like a human child.
2004:
By the time 2004 rolled around, Fearful Fox was essentially in its death throws. Mr. Error would do another interview, which was hosted on our ongoing radio station, where he'd discuss what happened with Fearful Fox, and why it never released. He did state that the game could still release as late as 2005. Obviously, this would never occur.
2005:
This year would see the announcement of Nintendo's next home console, the Revolution, later called the Wii. It was set for release in 2006. Mr. Error was intrigued by the new console, and said that the new cutoff date for Fearful Fox 64 to be finished should be 2005 or 2006, maybe 2007, 2008, or 2009, 2010 at the latest. As you might have picked up, we almost never stopped working on the game per se, despite rumors to the contrary. Mr. Error was determined to get the game out there, even if most of the versions of it would essentially be retail-quality homebrew, so to speak.
2011:
Once 2011 hit, it was clear that Fearful Fox wasn't coming out. Mr. Error made a meek remark that the game could come to the 3DS and whatever Nintendo's newest home console would be, but it was clear that wasn't going to happen. Although we had never really stopped working on the game, development on the Nintendo 64 version, and the versions for other older consoles, had stopped development back in 2006. We were focused mostly on the Wii and DS versions, albeit barely.
2012:
Once 2012 rolled around, Mr. Error suggested we try to get the game out for the Wii U instead of the Wii, but it was clearly a weak suggestion. We didn't even get far with the Wii U version; all interest in the game was long lost. However, during this time, fan interest in the game started growing. This was sparked by a person who found a box of old ABI documents, which had been technically illegally taken from our offices, alluded to the existence of Fearful Fox 64. Soon after, our old employee G86, who had left the company due to personal reasons, started sharing their old Fearful Fox assets with us. Although this newfound interest wasn't enough to motivate us to release a finished version of the game, it did at least make us interested in the older versions again.
2015:
Three years after the initial spark in fan interest for Fearful Fox, the interest had died down. Some stuff was still found, but it was slow going, mainly due to most of the assets for the game being presumed lost or even destroyed. However, interest for the employees was still quite strong.
2018:
While it was rumored that our first videos uploaded to YouTube where in 2018, that was, in fact, a lie, done as a part of a series of stopmotion videos made by an employee. These videos were simply referred to as "Robroto." This odd series was made as a strange in-joke to celebrate the 25th anniversary of "The Robots." However, it quickly got out of hand when the person making the videos started to believe that their toy robot was actually alive. To save face, Mr. Error took down the videos and took over the YouTube channels. This would not be the last of Robroto, however, as he would be brought up in the 2021 Viewpoitn videos.
2019:
This year would see the start of the initial run of Viewpoint videos. Another ex-employee of ours decided to start a strange art project surrounding another old game of ours, this time one that never got off the ground: "Viewpoint". They were given permission to use the YouTube channels, especially since we didn't have any idea on how to use them. They also referenced other projects, like "The Egg" (the most current reimagined version of it), "The Void", and "The Robots", alongside a game we have no records of having ever existed, even in an unfinished state: "Black Hole". We are still trying to find information about that game. These videos would go on until the end of the year. Then the creator got bored, and gave us the channels back. Also during this year, we uploaded an old recreation of a Geocities site we had apparently made back in the late 90s or early 2000s.
2020:
Early in 2020, we started uploading some of our radio station broadcasts online. Also during this year, we started cleaning out our old pizzeria. Details surrounding that can be found in videos on our admina YouTube channel.
2021:
In 2021, interest in reviving Fearful Fox statted to occur. It had started in late 2020, but really increased during this year, as we tried to remake Fearful Fox. We also released our definitive version of the Viewpoint videos this year, with the permission of the original creator. This year also saw the reopening of our pizzeria, which had been entirely remodeled. I was also making a new AI to control Fearful Fox in the remake. More details about that can be found in our logs about the Pizzeria uploaded to the admina YouTube channel. During this time, Mr. Error was also arrested, but escaped.
2022:
This year had its ups and downs. Back in late May, our pizzeria burned down, indicating that the pizzeria business was not meant for us. Again, more details about this can be found in videos on the admina channel. We also discovered that Mr. Error had been an AI impersonating a human ever since 1984. It seems that his past had finally caught up to him. Over the last few years, he had become increasingly unhinged. I, admina, hope that I don't turn out like Mr. Error did later down the line. This year also saw a complete overhaul and remodeling of our website.
With all of that out of the way, let us show you some images and other stuff connected to Fearful Fox. All images are listed by versions of the game that were most complete, all the way to the ones that were least complete, then the DS and Wii versions at the bottom.
Nintendo 64:
The images with the Gameboy-like devices in them are what Gameboy connection functionality may have looked like in Fearful Fox 64. Note that I, admina, had to try and recreate these images after they were shredded and waterlogged, which is why they may look a bit off (same with the concept art image posted above, and any images seen below). There was also a couple images for the planned boxart:
Dreamcast:
Gameboy:
Gameboy Advance:
Super Nintendo:
Sega Genesis:
Sega Game Gear:
Gamecube:
Playstation 2:
Xbox:
Atari Lynx:
NES:
Neo Geo Pocket Color:
Bandai Wonderswan (Not so much a game here, but eh):
TurboGrafx-16:
DS:
Wii:
Below here is some random documents connected to the project:
Of course, with a big project like this, some stuff just doesn't get used. If you want a look at parts of Fearful Fox that aren't (in-universe) part of the project, check the link below.
Although we only have three ongoing projects listed right now, we recommend you check back later. There may also be other pages hidden by looking very carefully at all the text.
(c) 1960-2023. THIS COPYRIGHT IS NOT INTENDED TO INFRINGE ON ANY REAL COPYRIGHT HOLDERS, AND IS IN FACT NOT IN STANDING. THE USE OF COPYRIGHT HERE IS FICTITIOUS, AND USED ONLY FOR STORY PURPOSES. IF THIS FAKE COPYRIGHT APPEARS ON THE SAME PAGE AS DALL-E MINI AND/OR CRAIYON CONTENT, PLEASE NOTE THAT WE ARE NOT CLAIMING OWNERSHIP OF ANY IMAGES GENERATED BY DALL-E MINI AND/OR CRAIYON. THEIR CONTENT IS OWNED BY THEM, WITH APPROPRIATE ATTRIBUTION PRESENT WHERE THEIR IMAGES APPEAR. THIS ALSO APPLIES TO ANY IMAGES NOT CREATED BY US. IMAGES MADE BY G86 HAVE BEEN USED WITH PERMISSION, AND, UNLESS STATED OTHERWISE, BELONG TO G86. WE USE ALL IMAGES AND ASSETS ON THIS WEBSITE WITH THE UNDERSTANDING THAT WE HAVE TAKEN THE APPROPRIATE MEASURES TO PROPERLY USE AND CREDIT CREATORS OF IMAGES AND OTHER ASSETS. CERTAIN BITS OF CODE USED IN OUR PAGES HAVE BEEN MADE WITH HELP FROM W3SCHOOLS.COM (FOUND HERE: W3SCHOOLS.COM). IF YOU USE ANY NON ANTIQUE BANDIT INTERACTIVE ASSETS FROM OUR WEBSITE, YOU ACKNOWLEDGE THAT YOU AGREE TO THE SAME TERMS WE HAVE FOLLOWED IN ORDER TO USE SAID RESOURCES ON OUR WEBSITE.
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