Ultra Vortek

During an excavation process in South America in the middle of 21st century, archaeologists unearthed an ancient tablet named the Ultra Vortek which referred to both its demonic protector known only as the Guardian and the "Time of Testing", an event where people would send their best fighters to combat against the Guardian in order to seize full power of the Vortek tablet but failing in defeating him would result in their current society being consumed by the tablet, starting the cycle anew and bringing humanity into a loop until he was defeated. A hundred years later after discovery of the artifact, civilization has declined and nations across the world fell apart as a result. During this dystopian period, both science and technology have advanced far enough for humans to develop creations of their own such as robots designed to replace manual human labor for cost effectiveness, however they would later become self-aware due to their own ability to reason and after being enslaved for more than 50 years, forming their own society and conflict between humans and robots erupted afterwards.

Through the human cloning creation process, the Military Industrial Complex developed and designed a new race that would eventually replace soldiers during war due to their survival capabilities that surpassed humans, however a great conflict that broke in the year 2112 lead to some of them escaping and forming their own collective underground gang which, due to their lack of a true leader, very few gangs offer any allegiance to them because of their constantly changing opinions and views as a result. As society continued to crumble, many humans joined gangs to rebel against the corrupt government and the rival gangs, with the largest of them residing in the underground and splitting into two factions, one of which possessed powers derived from the Vortek tablet that would cause friction between those who used hand-held weapons, whose tools were regarded by the former as poor substitutes.

At a certain time period, the Guardian reappears before humanity and announces that he will destroy the world, unless a warrior defeats him in violent combat. He allotted a specific amount of time for humanity to select seven of their best fighters and have them compete against one another. Once the fighter defeats the other warriors, he will open the "Ultra Vortek", combat the Guardian, and if victorious, may then use his newly acquired power to determine the fate of Earth.[8]

• Lucius: Current leader of the MeatHackers and grandmaster of the Vortek power division.
• Dreadloc: Second in command and leader of the weapons division.

• Volcana: A pyrokinetic spy whose genetic lineage was introduced after the last world conflict that occurred.
• Mercury: A Specially Qualified Unique Engineered Eugenic Bio (SQUEEB) unit originally tasked with maintening nuclear reactors.
• Grok: Originally created for urban pacification and reeducation, he is the only known SQUEEB unit of his kind.

• Skullcrusher: Also known as the "Minister of Discipline" within the ranks of S.M.A.C., he was previously used for mid and high-level constructions.
• Buzzsaw: Originally designed for illegal logging and the last known developed upgrade of these machines.

• Carbon: Essentially a black palette swap of Grok, he is a possible PowerShifter with one additional move and can only be fought by fulfilling certain conditions on Hard difficulty.
• The Guardian: Demonic protector of the Ultra Vortek tablet and the main boss of the game to be fought against.
• Shadows: Fought before facing The Guardian, they are shadow-colored palette swaps of any of the seven fighters, thus being considered sub-bosses.

Ultra Vortek spent well over a year in development and became the only title developed by Beyond Games released for the Atari Jaguar.

Atari Corporation was impressed enough by Beyond Games' BattleWheels (1993) on the Atari Lynx that they invited Beyond Games founder Kris N. Johnson to see their upcoming home video game console (the Jaguar) in development. Beyond Games was preparing to move onto another platform and develop new projects at the time, so Johnson visited and was intrigued by the hardware specifications on the new console. Beyond Games signed with Atari Corp. to be one of the first third-party developers for the console and they received software development kits that included several demos for it months later.[7][9][10][11] Johnson began to disassemble the demo source code to slowly build an understanding of the hardware architecture, eventually managing to make a scrolling background demo with full-color support.[7]

Beyond Games originally had plans to release an updated conversion of BattleWheels as one of their first titles for the Jaguar, however Atari requested them to create a fighting game instead. After the success of both Street Fighter II: The World Warrior and Mortal Kombat, the team decided that a digitized one-on-one fighter would serve as a positive showcase for the hardware and their creative efforts.[7][9][10]

During a brainstorming session, Johnson and designer Curt Hatch determined that some of their ideas for the company's next project would be unachievable with digitized actors. Hatch and artist William Clark Walker were developing computer-animated character concepts, which lead the team in creating a fighting game project by combining digitized actors along with stop-motion models and computer-animated characters that would become Ultra Vortek, albeit with limited resources.[9] Moving from hand-drawn graphics to digitized images, motion capture and 3D modeling represented a big leap for Beyond Games. Johnson contacted artist Jim "Meats" Meier, who was experimenting with 3D art, to recruit him after seeing his artwork locally and the project became Jim Meier's first work in the video game industry.[7]

The development of Ultra Vortek reportedly took over a year with an estimated budget of nearly US$100,000 and it was described by writer Tim Huntsman as "very indie", as most of the team had several roles during this process.[7][8][12][13] Johnson served as the game's sole programmer in addition to being producer. His previous background with martial arts helped during the design and creation of the characters.[7][8] Jim Meier was art director and responsible for the stage artwork and cover art.[8][9][12] Both Hatch and Walker, as well as D. Christopher Salmon and Chris Hansen, designed the characters and costumes used by the actors.[7][8][9][12][14][15] Dale Meier and Walker were responsible for composing the soundtrack and making sound effects respectively.[8][9] Huntsman wrote the scenario, assisted with gameplay design, and lent his voice for The Guardian.[7][8][14][16]

After the characters were designed and Jim Meier began working on backgrounds early in development, the team started filming the actors with a blue screen at a warehouse. There were several problems that occurred during this phase such as with the lighting equipment that led to various character costume elements being scrapped. They eventually moved to the "Bar and Grill" nightclub owned by Johnson, due to its large space that allowed actors to move more freely.[7][9][15] Four of the playable characters were digitized live-action actors, two of which had no previous experience in martial arts. Both Buzzsaw and Lucius were played by Huntsman and Clark Stacey respectively, while former bouncer Lamont Hanna portrayed Dreadloc and volleyball player Toni Fitzgerald acted as Volcana. Fitzgerald also brought some of her own costumes for the character as well.[7][9][14][15]

Both Grok and Mercury were pre-rendered 3D characters by Hatch and Walker, while Skullcrusher and The Guardian were made by Chris Salmon as 14-inch models that would later be filmed through the process of stop motion animation.[9][12][15] Afterwards, both Huntsman and Dale Meier edited and cleaned the films in order to provide the necessary frames to animate the characters within the game. Bruce Johnson applied finishing touches to some scenes.[7][9][12]

Gameplay screenshot from the unreleased Ultra Vortex for Atari Lynx.

A version of Ultra Vortek featuring hand-drawn graphics was in development by Beyond Games for the Atari Lynx under its original Ultra Vortex name. It was intended to be released as part of a planned relaunch of the Lynx if the Jaguar proved to be successful on the market.[7] The game was only displayed for versus play once at Atari's booth during Summer CES in 1994, where it featured one stage and two playable characters.[46]

The Lynx version was left unreleased due to the Jaguar's lack of commercial and critical success. Carl Forhan of Songbird Productions, who had interest in completing the project, contacted Johnson in regards to his unfinished projects for the system and eventually picked up their rights for distribution.[47] Johnson sold his original development equipment and source code to the company, and the game was renamed to Ultravore.[5][6][7] A prototype of this incarnation also exists but has yet to be released online. Several emulated screenshots have been made available to the public for viewing.[48]