Toy Story 3 (video game)

Development[edit]

By February 2008, Disney and Pixar had rejected THQ's pitch to develop the video game adaptation of Toy Story 3, choosing instead to have it developed by Disney's Avalanche Software. THQ had been a long-time developer of Disney games.^[14][15] Avalanche Software presented two ideas to Pixar: a traditional story mode that retells the film's story, and the free-roaming Toy Box mode. Pixar liked the ideas and suggested they both be developed.^[16]


Jonathan Warner, a senior producer on the game for Avalanche, said: "We knew we couldn't just do a 'see the movie, play the game' kind of treatment. This movie is so powerful. It's about the characters and the situations they find themselves in. We had to honour that".^[17] Among Avalanche's primary challenges was creating a game that would appeal to various age groups.^[17] The game was later tested by more than 60 groups of children aged 6 to 14, and the developers found that it appealed across the demographic.^[16]


Pixar was heavily involved in the game's development, with a 10-person team from the company aiding Avalanche. The Pixar team reviewed game sequences every other week. Avalanche art director Jeff Bunker said: "Something could be off by a pixel and Pixar would call us out. I didn't find that annoying, I found it exhilarating. The message was, 'We're going for perfection here'".^[17] Toy Story co-creator John Lasseter and Toy Story 3 director Lee Unkrich were involved in the game's development as well, and provided input on how to make the Toy Box mode feel more like a Toy Story video game.^[16] Avalanche developed the Toy Box mode as the game's centerpiece, with the story mode added primarily as a companion.^[16][18]


Describing the Toy Box mode, Warner said the development team "wanted to take that experience where kids combine different sets of toys from their toy box but it totally makes sense to them, it all flows out of their imagination". Warner further explained that the Toy Box mode begins in a typical western town setting "but soon you're able to start bringing in toys that make no sense to the Western setting and context, like a haunted house toy - and these change the way the town looks, the sort of enemies and toys it brings to the environment, pushing things in a completely different direction".^[19] The Toy Box mode went through approximately 10 different versions before Avalanche finalized it. The original version of Toy Box mode would involve bandits invading the player's town, and Warner said the player would then have to "keep performing tasks to make sure everything was still going. We thought it would be a fun and interesting idea, but it turned out to be more like hard work!"^[16]


Avalanche wanted the game to have a cinematic quality like the films. The development team chose to make the characters look identical to their film counterparts,^[17] and worked closely with Pixar to achieve this goal.^[20] Renders and models of the characters were passed to the development team from the film's animators, and the game's characters were hand-drawn rather than using the traditional method of motion capture that is typically utilized in games.^[17] Most of the film's voice cast reprised their roles for the game, including Joan Cusack (Jessie), John Ratzenberger (Hamm), Wallace Shawn (Rex), and R. Lee Ermey (Sarge).^[16][21] In the home console versions, Jeff Garlin and Kristen Schaal also reprised their roles from the film as Buttercup and Trixie.^[3] Tom Hanks, who voiced Woody in the films, was unavailable to voice him for the game because of a busy schedule, so his brother Jim Hanks provided Woody's voice in the game.^[17]


Toy Story 3: The Video Game was announced on February 16, 2010, at the American International Toy Fair, along with the Toy Story 3 mobile application.^[14][10] In April, Disney Interactive Studios announced the exclusive content for the PlayStation 3 version, including the ability to play as Emperor Zurg or unlock additional mini-games designed specifically for PlayStation Move motion controller.^[22] The PlayStation 2 and PlayStation Portable versions were developed by Asobo Studio,^[23] while the iOS game was developed by Disney Mobile Studios.^[24] A version for Mac OS X was developed by TransGaming via Cider.^[25]