Æon Flux (video game)

A game based on the original animated series was announced on April 9, 1996 for the PlayStation. The game, which was loosely based on "The Demiurge" episode, was being developed by Cryo Interactive and published by Viacom New Media. The game first made an appearance at E3 that same year, with Æon Flux creator Peter Chung on hand to promote it,[1] and commercial advertising was even included in the 1996 VHS release of the animated series.

Viacom New Media would merge with Virgin Interactive midway through the game's development. The merger would ultimately lead to the cancellation of Viacom's in-development games and subsequently leave Cryo without the rights to use the Æon Flux property. In mid-1997, the Æon Flux video game rights were acquired by GT Interactive.[2] The game's assets were not lost however, but were reworked into the 1997 title Pax Corpus, having been stripped of all copyrighted association with Æon Flux. Pax Corpus does retain many obvious similarities to the original animated series. Specifically, parts of the plot are similar to "The Demiurge", and many design details bear a striking resemblance to examples found in the show, e.g. the female protagonist wears a purple and black outfit not unlike Æon's.

Another failed attempt would be made by The Collective, sometime around the year 2000, and was to be published by GT Interactive. It was using a then-current version of the Unreal Engine, and appeared to be a 3D third-person action title similar to The Collective's previous title, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: The Fallen. Again however, at some point during development, the game was cancelled and the project vanished.

In order to coincide with the release of the upcoming film, developer Terminal Reality was tasked with creating a game to tie-in with the film. The team was only given ten months to finish the game, a relatively short time for a non-sequel console game (especially in 2005), as it had to be out in time for the movie's theatrical premier. Still, Terminal Reality rose to the task and managed to create a complete Æon Flux game in less than a year, due in part to the fact that the developer created much of the game using an engine they had already built for their previous title, BloodRayne 2, which cut down on development time dramatically. Nine years after the first ill-fated attempt and five years after the second, an Æon Flux game was finally completed and released to the market in November 2005.