California Doubling: Despite being set in Boston, at one point, two characters are clearly driving down a downtown Manhattan street.
Follow the Leader: This was one of a multitude of early-90's films that focused on husband and wife characters.
Playing Against Type: Among the film's executive producers are Michael Hirsh and Patrick Loubert, of Canadian animation house Nelvana. That's right, from the people who gave us The Care Bears Movie.
Production Posse: This marks Josh Malina's second time acting in an Aaron Sorkin-penned script. He plays one of the doctors who assists Jed when he's operating on Tracy.
The Game
Channel Hop: The original Xbox iterations of the game were to be published by Sierra, while the final release was published by ZeniMax Media subsidiary Mud Duck.
Development Gag: The Witch in the third level ends up using a spell that transforms Malice into her child self from the original PlayStation version of the game.
The game's soundtrack is notoriously hard to find online, with only one full upload existing.
The game itself has never been re-released due to its lackluster critical and commercial performance and due to the developer going defunct after its release.
Invisible Advertising: All marketing vanished once Sierra dropped out of publishing the game, leading the final game to unceremoniously release with zero fanfare in 2004.
Saved from Development Hell: After a lengthy development, hopping console generations, multiple retoolings and delays, changing publishers, and experiencing a full-on cancellation, the game finally saw the light of day in 2004.
Uncredited Role: Lani Minella (who voiced Dog God, the witch, the merhag, and the crows) goes completely uncredited in the game, however she did confirm her involvement on Twitter.
Unspecified Role Credit: None of the game's voice actors are attributed to the game's characters in either the game's credits or the manual.
The game started out as a bright and colorful platforming game for the original PlayStation, not unlike Argonaut's previous series Croc. In this incarnation Malice was going to be a young girl and Dog God had a much cartoonier design.
Eventually Argonaut overhauled the game to be Darker and Edgier, with the game planned to be released as an Xbox exclusive launch title in 2001 published by Sierra.
The game was eventually pushed back into 2002, and it was revealed in an MTV interview that Argonaut had brought on ska band No Doubt to perform in the game — lead singer Gwen Stefani was going to voice Malice herself (which you can hear a sample of in this video) with the other members voicing incidental characters throughout the game. Additionally it was stated that three songs from the band's then-latest album Rock Steady - the songs being "In My Head," "Detective," and "Platinum Blonde Life" - were to be included in the game, either in their original form or remixed to fit the game's tone.
The same interview reveals a very different plot for the game, as well as the original name for Dog God:
Stefani, who recorded her vocals last week, gives life to Malice, a hammer-wielding, magic-abusing teenager who travels back in time to right historical wrongs created by the evil Nefarious Rex, whom she must defeat in the final showdown.
Print ads for the No Doubt iteration of the game advertised that early purchases of the game would include a miniature guide book, which was never released.
Early trailers suggest that Malice was meant to be able to turn into a cat at some point, which was dropped entirely by the time it released.
existing.