The Cursed Sparky Lost Game

Do you remember the Sparky canceled game by Mitch-Collins back in 1996? "Sparky Rush: Purrils in Pawsville" was announced during the Happening-95 official event, but with no trailers, gameplay, available demos, not even screenshots. Just the name of the project. That was going to be the first project of the recently founded Mitch-Collins Interactive, but it was mysteriously canceled by the publisher. 1 year later, “Sparky Rush: Operation Nightpaws” was finally developed by DominoWorks and released by MCI. The game generated $400,000 in revenue. But what about Purrils in Pawsville? Why did MCI even change the original name of the project? What really happened to the project was a complete mystery to the public… until now.

Recently due to a data breach in Polybius database by the Inner Circle, we got a hold of a working build of the original Sparky's game! It was hidden in one of the older Polybius archived ROMs of the original Polybius Series X. The file “SPARKY.rom” was in the list of the 100GB exposed data by Inner Circle on the internet and it was found in the really obscure folders of the hacked files. It was lost for a really long time, but the internet now got a working build of one of the most obscure pieces of media ever. Until now, it was rumored to never even have existed.

The developers of the original project was Team Stardom, the small developers team behind the cult classic “Phantom Stardom”. In summary, MCI was really pressuring them, long work hours and extreme crunch. Unfortunately, Team Stardom had to cancel the ongoing project of “Phantom Stardom 2” that they were working on, the long awaited sequel to Phantom Stardom to focus only on the game they’re currently making.

After a lot of pressure from the higher ups, 3 of 4 developers left the project, only Mike, the project director stays, and if you know the story about the tragedy in Team Stardom, you know things get really disturbing from now on so viewer discretion is advised.

After all of this, Mike ends up killing himself, but not before shipping a playable but really unfinished build of the game to Mitch-Collins. What contained in that unfinished project was so disturbing that made them never talk about this game forever, even to this day. All sorts of crazy stories spawned from this, the most popular creepypasta-like one says that "the game is haunted and anyone that plays it ends up killing themselves".

You can download right now the original .rom file and play it in any Polybius Series X emulator, or play in the Romsarchive’s online PSX Emulator, Vapor Snake.

Are you brave enough to play it?

WARNING

Game only for ADULTS, it should not be played by minors.
Themes: anxiety, peer pressure, depression, disturbing imagery, suicide.

Sparky Rush: Purrils in Pawsville! original lost ROM

Interview With A Original "Team Stardom" Developer

Additionally, today we have one of Sparky's game developers with us for an interview! They would like to remain anonymous, only using M to refer to them. They worked in the game for a couple of months before leaving it because of the abusive and exploitative working conditions.

"So M, how did you get the project?"

-We had just launched our previous game Phantom Stardom, and it was a success, so much in fact that we already started working on a sequel. During this time Mitch-Collins Interactive contacted us to make a game for the first Polybius console, and like, it was a big deal, making a game for a big company, a famous recognizable IP. At that moment, none of us had experience with 3D games. It was trending at that time, but our Team only knew how to work with 2D environments and art. For this reason, we had lots of problems and endured a genuine development hell. Really dark times, still today I don’t like to remember the feeling and all my inner crazy thoughts.

"What was your position in the company?"

-Well, a lot of things actually, but mostly I worked as a sound designer, I did the main menu theme and some other song for the city level.

"How was your and the others' relations with Mike?"

-Mike was a pretty workaholic guy, who strived for perfection always, he was a great leader. But this project broke him somehow... Like, something changed in him. At first we were so happy we got the deal and stuff, but as the days passed and the money got shorter he started to scream at us. One time he almost hit one of us.

Before his death, he didn't look like himself anymore. The slightly overweight guy we knew was really skinny and looked like he hadn't slept in ages.

"Have you seen the leaked build that surfaced online?"

-Yeah... Really disturbing stuff, like he took all of his anger and madness in the game. I really couldn't play it all the way.

"Why did you leave the project?"

-Being an indie team is hard, like, it's like a marriage. Things were really good for us, our game was performing well and got the deal for the Sparky's game, we thought we were gods. But looking at the situation now, it looks like Mitch-Collins just wanted a low budget project with high profit metrics.

But then the hardship came, Mike got... weird. And we knew the game wasn't going anywhere. We all went from really close friends to hating each other in a couple of months. It was a depressing work environment, every time I worked there I just wanted to die.

"How do you feel about Mike now?"

-I fell really sorry for him. Every day I think about what would've happened if I hadn't left the project, maybe he would still be alive.

I have this picture in my head, him sitting alone in his dim office, looking at that dumb Sparky smiling at him, laughing at his misery.

"How are you today?"

Thanks to God and my friends, I overcame my PTSD and started to work again in other game companies. I started my career again from scratch, but today I have a good family and a good job in the horror games industry.

That's it people

Thanks M for taking their very short time to answer these questions for us. The game is a very sensitive topic for M, so I'm double grateful for this interview.

See you next time.

-Night Killer, 15/06/2013 at 00:14.