Scooby-Doo! Night of 100 Frights (partially found prototype build of unreleased PlayStation game; 2000)

The cover art for the officially released version of Scooby-Doo! Night of 100 Frights.

Status: Partially Found

Scooby-Doo! Night of 100 Frights is a third-person platform game based on the popular Scooby-Doo! television series (specifically Scooby-Doo! Where Are You!). The game was released in 2002 for the PlayStation 2 and GameCube and in 2003 for the Xbox. However, original plans for the game intended for it to be released on the PlayStation.

Development

Development for the game began as early as 2000 by Heavy Iron Studios with publication by THQ after the latter company had signed a deal with Warner Bros. Interactive to develop three video games based on the Scooby-Doo! franchise, one for each of the leading consoles at the time developed by Sega, Nintendo and Sony. For the Sony-related product, Heavy Iron Studios began development on Scooby-Doo! Night of 100 Frights. By October 2000, five levels for the game had been created but not finalized, going by the names Old Mining Town, Mystic Manor, Wolf's End Lodge, Frightland Amusement Park and Main Street/The Secret Lab. However, at some point after this date and perhaps before or after the new year of 2001, Heavy Iron Studios suddenly decided to drop the project altogether, the mention of the game on THQ's website also quietly being removed. By late January 2001, development of Scooby-Doo! Night of 100 Frights was restarted from scratch in preparation for the newly-released-at-the-time PlayStation 2. A single prototype of the original PlayStation version, dated October 26, 2000 was produced, assumed to be a version very early on in development. It is not known if Heavy Iron Studios worked on this version of the game further after the first prototype and prior to its cancellation and subsequent retweaking, developing more levels and other content. Thus, the first prototype is the only available and surviving content of the original PlayStation version.

Gameplay

The original build of Scooby-Doo! Night of 100 Frights shares little to no similarities to the officially released PlayStation 2 title. In comparison to the 3D animated cutscenes of the PlayStation 2 version, the in-game cutscenes are instead animated in a full 2D animation style mimicking the television show, developed by Media Vision Animation with the storyboards being done in-house at Hanna-Barbera. The gameplay itself also bares no resemblance to the final version, as the player controls both Scooby-Doo and Shaggy Rogers simultaneously from a third-person perspective behind the characters, unlike in the final version where Scooby-Doo is the sole player-controlled character with the camera mostly being fixed in a sideways position throughout the game. There is no sound at all throughout the prototype, with the only exception being the in-game cutscenes which have voice acting for the characters and nothing else, with most of if not all of them being unfinished. All five levels are also highly unfinished and there is no way to complete the game.

Cancellation

It is not known when exactly Heavy Iron Studios opted to cancel the original PlayStation version of Scooby-Doo! Night of 100 Frights, or the reason behind it. However, it is possible that the developers instead wanted the game to be on the following PlayStation 2 as it would likely have done better in sales as the console was new at the time and was steadily growing in popularity. The reason for the change in gameplay style is also not known.

Availability

The sole prototype of the original version of Scooby-Doo! Night of 100 Frights was discovered in May 2021 by an anonymous third-party donor, and gameplay footage was uploaded to the GameRaveTV YouTube channel that same month. The prototype is available to download on the Internet Archive with the requirement of an emulator to play it. However, the fourth level is susceptible to crashing with only a Gameshark code able to prevent this.

Gallery

Videos

Full gameplay video of the Scooby-Doo! Night of 100 Frights PlayStation prototype by GameRaveTV

Images

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  Shaggy Rogers and Scooby-Doo in one of the in-game cutscenes, utilizing a 2D animation style similar to the television series.

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  Level 5 of the prototype build, showing off a drastically different gameplay style compared to the final release.