Preview Tony Tough in a Rake's Progress Developer: Stefano Gualeni/Valerio Massari Publisher: dtp (Europe), TBA (North America) Release Date: Q2 2005 Platform: Preview by Randy Sluganski June 2, 2005

A pleasant surprise a few years back, Tony Tough & The Night of Roasted Moths was a laugh-out-loud cartoon adventure that paid homage to the early Lucas Arts classics. But, truth-be-told, even though the game received rave reviews from websites and magazines alike, it just did not sell. But thankfully Tony’s back and this time he has gone retro in more ways than one.

Tony Tough in a Rake’s Progress is a prequel to the first game as we help a 13 year-old Tony solve his very first case. The game follows one day in the life of Tony as he investigates alien-landings and ancient Indian-cultures in his hometown of Washington, New Mexico during the early 1950’s.

But the graphics are also retro, for though they have progressed from 2D to striking 3D characters, the high-resolution graphics are presented in an Art Deco-style that pays tribute to the American small-town paintings of Edward Hopper and it works for the graphics alone are reason to purchase this game.

Thanks to Christopher Kellner, the International PR Manager for German publisher dtp (Digital Tainment Pool), I had the pleasure of playing a lengthy portion of the game and, largely due to the talents of Stefano Gualeni, Tony has lost none of his charm. If anything, he is funnier than ever, though the sometimes “smart-ass” humor coming from young kids may be off-putting to some.

The prequel is again a point-and-click interface with inventory objects, but now we have real-time shadows and lightening effects, real-time weather changes and lots of interactive objects. The developers are promising over 30 rendered locations and over 20 characters, most of whom, you can be sure, will be slightly eccentric.

The developers, who are Italian, have done a wonderful job of recreating a 1950’s look and feel. Now they just need to find a North American publisher (dtp holds the worldwide rights to the game), but that shouldn’t be a problem, as Tony seemed to make quite an impression on the publishers I spoke to at the E3.

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