Croc 3: Stone of the Gobbos (Cancelled 2005 Multi-Platform Game)



As the Croc series was always meant to be a complete trilogy, after Croc: Legend of the Gobbos and Croc 2 Argonaut Software was set to release the final instalment of the series Croc 3: Stone of the Gobbos (also titled as Croc 3: Baron’s Revenge and Croc 3: Croc Returns!), which was going to be released onto PS1, PS2, GameCube and Xbox and directly continue where Croc 2 left off; Croc would be facing Baron Dante and saving the Gobbos again, but this time Dante has a spell that Croc can only stop with the sacred “Stone of the Gobbos” he has to find.The game was going to have “Full Explorable Hubs Worlds” to make it easier for younger players similar to Spyro Year of the Dragon; a lot of the inspiration for Croc 3 came from that game, and this was one of the biggest inspirations. Also notable was the fact that on PS2, GameCube and Xbox it was going to be optionally two-player with the second player being a new character Ginger, a love interest for Croc possibly in the same spirit as Sonic and Amy Rose. In addition, Justin Scharvona, the composer for the soundtrack of the original Croc, was to return to compose the soundtrack for this game.The game originally started development in 2001. Argonaut had split into three teams and one of them was for making this game, which was composed of a total of only ten people, so the game went through many changes. Like how Croc’s original voice actor didn’t want to return for the role so they had to recast, and the engine they were working on was an unstable version of their in-house engine BRender, which also powered Malice and a couple of other Argonaut games, but this version in particular was a new and exclusive updated version that allowed for certain things that tried to push the four consoles to their limits. It was also first in development for Dreamcast, PS1, PS2, GameCube, Xbox and PC, but then stripped down to just the PS1, PS2, GameCube and Xbox; the failing sales of the Dreamcast and the fact that Croc 2 wasn’t on a SEGA console killed the Dreamcast version, but the PC version was just simply scrapped. The PS1 version in particular took more time to make as they were using a previous version of BRender meant for Croc and Croc 2, as the newer version of BRender couldn’t work on the PS1 due to its next-gen graphics. As mentioned before, the newer console versions would have top of the line graphics developed in house to push the consoles to their limits and the PS1 version’s graphics would be the same as Croc 2, and they insisted on having Croc 3 released on PS1 to keep the trilogy in line with each other on the PS1 as, again, the series was always planned as a trilogy and this was the final instalment. For distribution of the game, Argonaut contacted Fox Interactive again but they declined due to the lower sales of Croc 2. They then tried EA but their fees were too high, and then they had finally struck a deal with Activision as they would not only publish it but also help them work around their budget. And at one point it was planned to be released in 2005 but possibly only onto the PS2, GameCube and Xbox.Unfortunately though, Argonaut closed in 2004 which led to the Croc IP being sold to Zenimax Media Inc, who would have had Mad Duck Productions continue development on the game, but the game was cancelled after trouble with the developer, and so was the franchise’s foreseeable future for any other instalments aside from three mobile phone games: Croc Mobile: Jungle Rumble, Croc Mobile: Volcanic Panic and Croc Mobile: Pinball (which they in themselves may be hard to find nowadays).The preceding information of Croc 3 was then released to Unseen64 by former Argonaut employees who were from the team that worked on Croc 3.A very early playable prototype of the PS2 version was going to be leaked by a former Argonaut employee (who released info about the game to Unseen64) at some point but the founder of Argonaut rejected it, as the employee was actually only allowed to release the info about the game and nothing more because Zenimax is apparently a “Cease And Desist crazy type company”.