page_title: Phase Zero
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Phase Zero / History
caption_attribution_description: The Atari Jaguar console shown with the standard controller. The Jaguar was a fifth generation gaming console released by Atari Corp. in 1993. Using a 3 chip, 5 processor design, it had a powerful (for its time) architecture, but games generally didn't fully utilize it due to the difficult nature of programming for it. It had a small game library with titles mostly published by Atari, a company that was had constant difficulties getting back in the dedicated gaming market after the Atari 2600. It was Atari's Corps last gaming console, as it took itself out of the gaming market after the huge failure of the console.
context_page_description: Phase Zero is an unreleased action-shooter video game that was in development by Hyper Image Productions and originally planned to be published by Atari Corporation on a scheduled September 1995 release date exclusively for the Atari Jaguar. It was the only game in development by Hyper Image.
  Assuming the role of a newcomer pilot from the titular squadron assigned to fight against an rival organization only known as The Collective in a foreign planet, players take control of a windowless VTV hovertank craft called Hunter in order to complete a series of missions and tasks, while battling against enemy VTV hovertanks. Hyper Image was originally working on a top-down shooter for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, before the team later moved to the Jaguar with Phase Zero and opted to use their own interpretation of the heightmap technique to render the landscapes and visuals, in addition of also placing emphasis on LAN play for multiplayer.
context_section_description: Phase Zero was first displayed to the public at Atari Corporation's booth during the Winter Consumer Electronics Show in 1995 under the name Hover Hunter, where both attendees and the video game press covering the event immediately compared the game with NovaLogic's Comanche and its Voxel Space engine due to the voxel-like graphics, and it only featured both an "Adventure" and "Combat" game modes to play for the audience, with the latter featuring support for up to eight consoles networked for multiplayer. In a January 1995 article featured on the student publication The Diamondback, it revealed that Hyper Image Productions was a game development company formed by seven former college students who took the path of entering into the video game industry. Paul Good, then-executive of Hyper Image stated that although they were not happy with the state of Hover Hunter when showcased at Winter CES 1995, it received positive reception from the public, while also looking for a publisher to buy the rights to the project. The article also revealed that the technique used to render the in-game visuals, dubbed "Displacement Texture Mapping", was written by both Jeremy Gordon (head of the company) and Otavio Good (brother of Paul Good), allowing them to create landscapes from pixels.
  In two March 1995 online interviews by both Atari Explorer Online and Game Zero Magazine respectively with Hyper Image, the team spoke further about their beginnings, revealing that Andy Carlson was the composer for Hover Hunter and Jeremy divulged information in regards to the technique that he and Otavio were using to display the visuals of the game, which turned out to be their own interpretation of heightmap technique that was found in titles such as Cyberdreams' 1993 racing game CyberRace. Though the team remarked that Hover Hunter was Hyper Image's first full-fledged title for the Jaguar, they stated that a small networkable Pong game was their first project developed for the system. Jeremy also stated that the reason as to why they chose the Jaguar to develop their title was due to its powerful technical capabilities compared with other systems released at the time and the open support from Atari Corp. themselves. The game made its second and last trade show appearance at E3 1995, featuring a different set of playfields and HUD display compared to the last build seen at WCES 1995.
  In a post-E3 1995 interview by Atari Explorer Online with the team at Hyper Image, they spoke more in regards to their beginnings as a game development company and the title in question, with both Jeremy and Paul stating that the team was originally working on an overhead shooter on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System but they later moved to the Jaguar and opted to use heightfield instead for their next project, with Jeremy comparing it to F-Zero but "with heights", while Paul explained further that each pixel on the landscape had its own elevation value to represent a specific height from a flat terrain. However, they later found out that the terrain would get heavily pixelated when being too close to it, but Otavio managed to implement interpolated heightfields to the technique that he and Jeremy created for the Jaguar to mitigate the issue. The team also placed importance to the LAN play for multiplayer, as members of the company were fans of networking titles. The game began to be advertised in magazines between mid-1995 and late 1995, while being slated for a Q2 1995 release, but it was later slated for a September/Q3 1995 release. Internal documents from Atari revealed that the game was renamed from Hover Hunter to Phase Zero on August 1995.
  Although other internal documents from Atari still listed the project as in development on December of the same year, in addition of kept being advertised in magazines and showcased during the Fun 'n' Games Day event hosted by Atari, Hyper Image stopped receiving payment from Atari for the development of Phase Zero in the middle of 1995. On March 1996, a month before merging with JT Storage in a reverse takeover on April of
caption: Internal issues within Atari Corporation due to the commercial and critical failure of the Jaguar, is one of the reasons for the cancellation of Phase Zero.
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