Toontown Rewritten
| Developer | Toontown Rewritten Team |
|---|---|
| Type | Massively multiplayer online role-playing game |
| Launch date | October 28, 2013 (Alpha) May 17, 2014 (Beta) June 2, 2014 (Semi-open beta) September 19, 2014 (Open beta) September 1, 2017 (Production) |
| Platform | Microsoft Windows, macOS, and Linux[1] |
| Website | toontownrewritten.com |
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Toontown Rewritten, commonly known as TTR, is a 3D massively multiplayer online role-playing game based on The Walt Disney Company's defunct Toontown Online. The game is a free-to-play and non-monetized fan project that is developed by a team of volunteers dubbed the Toontown Rewritten Team, formally described as "a fan-made revival of Disney's Toontown Online, created using publicly available downloads and information made freely available to the general public."[2]
The game was first announced publicly by the Toontown Rewritten Team moments after Disney closed Toontown Online; the project was internally named "Toonpulse" sometime before the announcement.[3] A month later, the game entered alpha on October 28, 2013[4] and allowed a small number of players to access the game. A year later, on May 17, 2014, the game had its beta release[5] and underwent a "semi-open beta" release for the next several months during the same year[6] before it opened to all players on September 19, 2014 under open beta.[7] Since September 1, 2017, the game has been in production[8] and continues to release periodic updates over the years.
Although the number of players tends to vary, a minimum of over 1,000 players are known to play the game on a consistent basis. Toontown Rewritten is a Toontown fan project with the most players that is considered a "fitting continuation of the wacky tales of a town of Toons the world came to love."[9]
Staff team
The Toontown Rewritten Team is made up of many Toontown community members who are passionate about keeping the game alive and actively hire more volunteers to contribute towards making Toontown Rewritten tick.[10] The fan project is currently co-founded by creative director Joey Ziolkowski (who also works as a game designer at Schell Games)[11], among a few others.
Lore
Since the very beginning of the game's development, the Toontown Rewritten Team wanted to incorporate a story into every aspect of the game in ways that it is considered "rewritten" because they felt that Toontown Online always lacked in elements of lore.[12] The story follows a Toon scientist named Doctor Surlee, who was previously Gyro Gearloose in Toontown Online's timeline, using his personal pocket watch device to activate a time reversal in order to rewrite the Toontown world by rewinding back in time to 1998 on October 26th. The time reversal prompted a new timeline to be created that is now known as Toontown Rewritten but with unforeseen anomalies caused by the instability of Doctor Surlee's pocket watch, anomalies of which would then become eliminated on the day his invention known as the Silly Meter maxes for the first time 10 years later.
Gameplay
Not much from Toontown Online changed drastically in Toontown Rewritten aside from a wide variety of quality-of-life features and improvements made to certain areas of the game, including additional content exclusively developed by the Toontown Rewritten Team. One example of additional content includes one of Toontown Rewritten's most significant updates released on November 29, 2018 that introduced a long-awaited options menu allowing players to alter keybinds and gave a complete overhaul of character movement mechanics.[13][14]
As with Toontown Online, players can create their own cartoon characters known as "Toons" and work their way through six playgrounds named after classic Disney characters by completing in-game quests called "ToonTasks" while protecting the Toontown world from corporate robot enemies known as "Cogs" and embarking on missions to infiltrate their "Cog facilities" and "Cog HQs". In playgrounds, Disney character NPCs are absent from Toontown Rewritten because the Toontown Rewritten Team wanted to refrain from calling attention to the characters at all and avoid adding them to the game without Disney's permission as confirmed by Joey Ziolkowski.[15] Majority of Toontown Online’s original content have been added to Toontown Rewritten since its alpha period.
Impact from real world events
In response to police brutality and racial violence targeted towards black people, multiple players took to Toontown Rewritten to express their support for Black Lives Matter.[16] Toontown Rewritten issued a formal statement via social media on June 4, 2020 stating that the team stands with the black community and allows in-game protests and chat messages pertaining to Black Lives Matter as long as they are expressed in a family-friendly manner, and donated $1,500 to an organization called "Reclaim the Black".
ToonFest
Named after the real life gatherings for Toontown fans held by original developers at Disney, Toontown Rewritten organized their own ToonFest gatherings, two of which were held in Owensboro, Kentucky at OMGcon[17][18] and three of which were held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania at the ReplayFX Arcade Gaming Festival within the David L. Lawrence Convention Center.[19][20][21] Former Toontown Online developer, Jesse Schell, was given the opportunity to answer 10 questions from Toontown fans during both OMGcon events.[22][23] Jesse Schell and another former Toontown Online developer, Shawn Patton, were invited to attend all three ReplayFX events in person.[24][25][26]
Toontown Rewritten was originally going to host their sixth ToonFest event at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center for the fourth time, scheduled to take place from July 9-12, 2020[27], but was canceled in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.[28] Despite the event's cancelation, Toontown Rewritten held an online event called "ToonFest at Home" where they conducted several live panels and workshops, including a live pre-recorded video of Toontown Online developers Jesse Schell, Shawn Patton, Bruce Woodside, Felipe Lara, and Joe Shochet reuniting in a Q&A session with Joey Ziolkowski.[29]
References
- ↑ "Play". Toontown Rewritten.
- ↑ Palmeri, Christopher. "Disney's Defunct Toontown Remade by Unsanctioned Teen". Bloomberg. Archived from the original on June 17, 2014. Retrieved July 30, 2014. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ Devon, Razey. "Rewriting Toontown - Independent developers work to keep Toontown alive". Technology Tell. Archived from the original on January 18, 2014. Retrieved January 14, 2014. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ "A Big Surprise All 'Fa You!". Toontown Rewritten. October 28, 2013.
- ↑ "You Betta' Be Ready for This!". Toontown Rewritten. May 17, 2014.
- ↑ "Toontown Rewritten is open to all!". Toontown Rewritten. June 2, 2014.
- ↑ "ToonFest 2014". Toontown Rewritten. August 20, 2014.
- ↑ "The Toontown v2.0.0 Update". Toontown Rewritten. September 1, 2017.
- ↑ Prince, Chloe (August 31, 2020). "'Forget It - It's Toontown': Remembering The Cult Hit MMO". TheGamer.
- ↑ Reitemeier, Mike (August 24, 2020). "Relive Your Childhood in Toontown: Rewritten". Phenixx Gaming.
- ↑ Joey Ziolkowski's website
- ↑ Lombardo, Paul (September 28, 2020). "Were YOU Toon Enough for Toontown Online?". Medium.
- ↑ Fahley, Mike (November 30, 2018). "Five Years After Disney Shut It Down, Toontown Online Gets Keybinding And Walking". Kotaku.
- ↑ Boyce, Bree (December 2, 2018). "Toontown Rewritten's latest player update buffs options and character movement". Massively Overpowered.
- ↑ "Toontown Rewritten and the Problem with Disney Characters • r/toontownrewritten". reddit. February 11, 2021.
- ↑ Beck, Kellen (June 5, 2020). "Gamers take to 'Toontown' to stand with Black Lives Matter protesters". Mashable.
- ↑ "The OMGCon Aftermath!". Toontown Rewritten. June 15, 2015.
- ↑ "ToonFest at OMG!Con - Final Event Summary". Toontown Rewritten. June 30, 2016.
- ↑ "The Main Event | ToonFest 2017". Toontown Rewritten. July 28, 2017.
- ↑ Olivetti, Justin (March 19, 2018). "Toontown Rewritten sponsors convention for emulator fans". Massively Overpowered.
- ↑ "That's a Wrap! | ToonFest 2019". Toontown Rewritten. August 10, 2019.
- ↑ OMG!Con 2015 - Jesse Schellivision
- ↑ OMG!Con 2016 - Jesse Schellivision
- ↑ "ReplayFX Update: Meet Developers of Toontown Online". Toontown Rewritten. May 22, 2017.
- ↑ "Meet the Minds Behind Toontown Online". Toontown Rewritten. July 8, 2018.
- ↑ "Celebrate ToonFest with Toontown Online Designers". Toontown Rewritten. June 7, 2019.
- ↑ "Presenting ToonFest: Toon HQ Takeover!". Toontown Rewritten. March 11, 2020.
- ↑ "An Update on ToonFest 2020". Toontown Rewritten. May 12, 2020.
- ↑ "Celebrate 7 years of Toontown Rewritten with ToonFest!". Toontown Rewritten. September 19, 2020.
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