Tonic Trouble

Tonic Trouble is an action-adventure game played from a third-person view.^[2][3] The playable character, Ed, navigates three-dimensional environments through platforming and entering portals, while wielding a peashooter (used in a first-person perspective); new gadgets are rewarded as more levels are completed.^[2][3][4][5] Gadgets are created by a mad doctor character,^[6] who builds the peashooter, a bow tie that enables Ed to fly, a diving helmet for underwater exploration, a belt that functions as a cloaking device by letting him take the appearance of enemies, and a pogo stick that allows him to traverse lava and stomp open trapdoors.^[7] There are six levels in the Game Boy Color version,^[8] in contrast to the twelve featured in the Nintendo 64 and Windows versions.^[9][10]

Ed can jump, climb, fly, swim, and crawl. To unlock the ability to kick and slap enemies, he must enlarge himself into Super Ed with popcorn consumables.^[4][7][9] The health bar increases from obtaining thermometers.^[8] Ed can use a stick to beat enemies, activate switches, and pry open doorways to areas containing bonus items.^[7] Fetch quests include collecting red orbs and other items;^[4][5] solving puzzles can grant power-ups and help defeat enemies.^[3] Collecting bonus spheres will unlock a secret level.^[7]

In the Nintendo 64 version, Ed, a purple alien working as a janitor on his mothership, finds himself cleaning a storage room. He starts hunting a bug, trying to squash it. Exhausted from the hunt, Ed proceeds to drink an unidentified liquid from a container, but as he spits it out onto the floor, screws come alive and open a trapdoor. The container falls through the door and down to Earth, polluting a river and causing the entire planet to mutate. Grögh, a drunkard sleeping nearby, swallows the liquid and gains supernatural powers that help him conquer Earth.

The initial story of the PC version differs. There, Ed contemplates giving a gift to a girl he likes but gets chased by her boyfriend into the storage room. When he learns of the liquid's mutagenic properties, he throws the container into a garbage chute, from which it falls and lands on Earth. Before finding the container, Grögh gets kicked out of a bar for not paying his tab.

Shortly following the incident, Ed is recruited by resistance leader Agent Xyz to obtain the container so that an antidote can be created against the mutations. Ed takes a small spaceship to Earth to meet the inventor Doc and his daughter Suzy, who Xyz said would aid him in his mission. On his way there, he crashes into a snowy mountain, forcing him to continue by sled. At the foot of the mountain, Ed takes the direct route to South Plain, where he encounters Suzy. She implores Ed to save her father, who was imprisoned by his own robot following the contamination.

Once liberated, the Doc informs Ed that before his capture, he was building a catapult that could get someone into Grögh's Castle and recover the container. However, Grögh's henchmen took the items required to finish the contraption, which the Doc instructs Ed to retrieve. The last item is stolen by an enemy called Magic Mushroom, but Ed defeats him. With the Doc's catapult completed, Ed is flung into Grögh's Castle, where he engages in battle against Grögh and wins. Ed reclaims the container, enabling him to finally remedy the infestation of Earth.

Tonic Trouble was conceived and initially designed by Michel Ancel, who had created Rayman in 1995.^[11] Ancel was largely inspired by the storyline of Day of the Tentacle and the world-travelling mechanic from The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.^[12][13] Starting pre-production in June 1996,^[12] Tonic Trouble was the first project to be developed by the previously established Ubi Soft Montreal,^[14] which devoted a team of sixty programmers, thirty animators, twelve level designers, twelve 3D artists, and four audio department employees.^[15] The game engine, known as "Architecture Commune Programmation",^[12] was built by fifty in-house staff over a course of eighteen months, with a total cost of US$4 million.^[16] Using the engine, the developers wanted to take full advantage of Intel's newest Pentium II generation of central processing units.^[12] Tonic Trouble was one of the first games to be distributed on DVD-ROM,^[17] a rarity at the time.^[18] The additional storage of DVDs allowed Ubi Soft to include a longer introduction and more music tracks.^[19] Designer Pierre Olivier Clement stated that the design team aimed at making the player rationalize every step they took, contrary to what was done in games like Duke Nukem and Quake.^[12] Furthermore, they opted to differentiate the game from its sister project, Rayman 2: The Great Escape, by focusing more strongly on adventure, whereas Rayman 2 relied more on action.^[20] The soundtrack was created in six months by composer Eric Chevalier and five in-house sound editors.^[1][12]

The game was first previewed as Ubi Soft's first Nintendo 64 title in Electronic Gaming Monthly's January 1997 issue, under the working title "HED" (then also the protagonist's name),^[21] and later listed on Ubi Soft's website as Ed.^[22] By that time, it had already been renamed eight times.^[23] The game was announced by Ubi Soft in April 1997, with a release slated for December 1997.^[23] The company held an online contest to determine the final name;^[23] the name "Tonic Trouble" was chosen by late April.^[24] It premiered as a Nintendo 64 and Windows title at June 1997's Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), revealing it would have four-player cooperative multiplayer and a 64DD add-on once the cartridge version had been released,^[25][26] however, representatives later stated an unwillingness to focus on the 64DD, explaining that the device was still in development and puzzle-solving gameplay was incompatible with multiplayer.^[12] Critics noticed early that Tonic Trouble strongly resembled the appeal of Rayman, judging from Ed's limbless design, the colourful worlds, and similar platforming gameplay, though renewed in 3D, in contrast to Rayman's 2D visuals.^[27] Ubi Soft also entered into a partnership with Newman's Own in May 1998, which would see Tonic Trouble's Windows release include a package of Newman's Own Popcorn in the retail box, as well as Newman's Own branding on the popcorn dispensers within the game.^[28][a] In November 1998, Newman's Own started packing $10 rebate coupons for Tonic Trouble with 4 million boxes of its popcorn products, where the coupons would expire on 1 June 1999.^[30] For every coupon redeemed with Ubi Soft, the company was to donate $1 to the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp in France.^[30]

Originally scheduled for November 1997,^[21] Tonic Trouble saw multiple delays, with its release being pushed back to early 1998,^[16] then to April 1998,^[17] June 1998,^[12] Q4 1998,^[20] and 15 February 1999.^[31] According to an author at IGN, the version shown at E3 was in a rough state, lacking animation and suffering heavily from low framerates and stiff controls, though all of these issues had been resolved by the time they received a new preview copy in December 1998.^[32] From 9–11 October 1998, it was exhibited at the Tokyo Game Show (TGS) alongside Rayman 2.^[33] A critic from IGN noted that, although both showed great attention to detail, Rayman 2 looked "significantly sharper".^[34] An early version (designated the "Special Edition")^[35] was distributed as part of the software bundles shipped with graphics cards, including those of the Marvel G200-TV, Mystique 200, and Marvel G400-TV models by Matrox,^{[36][37][38][39]} and Guillemot's Maxi Gamer Phoenix.^[40][41] Around February 1999, it was rumoured that Tonic Trouble and Rayman 2 would be releasing for PlayStation,^[42] with that year's TGS line-up also shortlisting such versions for both games.^[43] In March 1999, Ubi Soft acquired a Dolby Pro Logic surround sound licence for usage within Tonic Trouble and Rayman 2.^[44] Tonic Trouble was released for Nintendo 64 on 31 August 1999 and Windows on 7 December 1999.^[29][45] An eponymous Game Boy Color counterpart was developed by RFX Interactive and first shown at France's Milia expo in February 2000.^[8][46] The conversion featured the same cast and story as the main game, while the gameplay was adapted from 3D to 2D.^[47] It was released for Game Boy Color the same year, exclusively in Europe; Ubi Soft did not plan to bring it to the United States.^[8][48] The Game Boy Color version was one of a number of Ubi Soft games for the platform that utilized the "Ubi Key" feature, allowing players to share data between different games via the system's infrared port and unlock extra content.^[8]

On December 17, 2025, the Nintendo 64 version of Tonic Trouble was released for the Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack subscription service as part of the Nintendo Classics line of emulated games.^[49]