Yogi's Adventure
INTELLIVISION CARTRIDGE [Mattel Electronics #4602/UNRELEASED]
Working titles: Modern Times, Yogi's Modern Times, Yogi and BooBoo, Yogi's BooBoo, Yogi's Frustration
Characters used under license from Hanna Barbera
Design/Program: Mark Buczek
Graphics: Mark Buczek, Monique Lujan-Bakerink
Music/Sound effects: Joshua Jeffe
DEVELOPMENT HISTORY
In 1982, Marketing went on a shopping spree, picking up licenses to dozen of cartoon characters, including the entire Hanna Barbera stable. The royalty agreements included guarantees -- if Mattel Electronics didn't release a game within a year using the characters, Mattel would have to pay a lump sum, averaging around $300,000 per license.
By 1983, realizing they couldn't get original games using the characters into production fast enough, Marketing started looking for games nearing completion that the characters could be dropped into.
Unfortunately for Mark Buczek, Marketing thought his game Modern Times was suitable for the Yogi Bear license. Loosely inspired by the Charlie Chaplin film of the same name, Modern Times was a good game that was almost finished. Suddenly, Mark was having to figure out how to shoehorn Yogi and BooBoo into it.
Months went by as the game was tinkered with, tested and re-tested. Monique Lujan-Bakerink was brought in to add special animated cartoon screens. Still, the game didn't test well and release was held up further.
Ironically, late in 1983, it was noted that the game itself tested fine, it was Yogi and BooBoo that were testing poorly. Marketing decided the game needed new characters. Unfortunately, Mark Buczek had been laid off by this time; no further work was done.
