The concept for
Gex was created by Lyle Hall, who began work on the project shortly after joining the newly-formed
Crystal Dynamics in 1993. Hall wanted the game to "take advantage of both the graphics prowess and the
CD audio capabilities" of
Panasonic's
3DO console, intending to create a 2D platform game starring "the coolest character I could come up with". It was created with the intention of a new mascot in mind, with Crystal Dynamics pushing for a character who could rival the likes of other gaming icons such as
Mario and
Sonic the Hedgehog. Initially, the development team consisted of four people; Hall, who served as the game's producer, Mira Ross and Susanne Dougherty as artists, and Gregg Travers as the lead programmer (later on, Justin Knorr was hired as the game's lead designer). The game initially centered around a Hollywood film stunt performer named "Gecko X" who needed to help save his contracted film studio from going bankrupt at the volition of the antagonist, Karl Chameleon. Each stage was themed around a film genre (e.g. a level inspired by
Western films) and would begin by showing
stock footage from a vintage film of that genre. The player would then traverse the level and perform "stunts" along the way, with the player's performance dictating the amount of money the film would earn at the box office and how well the studio would do. The concept was eventually nixed at the suggestion of Travers, who argued that placing the levels in such realistic settings would lead to a lack of sensible design structure, and a new, more fantastical concept was brainstormed, in which a new villain, named Rezull, would capture Gex and bring him into a "TV Land" where he would have to escape by collecting magical TV remotes and fighting Rezull's armada of "video warriors" made of TV static. During its production,
Gex went through various development challenges due to schedule issues. Work on the game began in late 1993, with a development deadline of June 1994. The development team initially came up with six different worlds themed around varying TV channels, including a
horror world and a
science fiction world. Each world was given three distinct sets of art design that could be used to create unique levels; for instance, the horror world had a haunted house set, a graveyard set, and a "Mode 2" set for a vertically scrolling level. While working on the game, they found that developing game art for
Gex was far harder than it had been with
16-bit video games, as the expanded
32-bit memory in combination with the storage capabilities of a
compact disc meant that far more art could be made. With two artists working on the game's assets, a single in-game level took around two months to complete. Because Crystal Dynamics' two other 3DO games being developed at the time,
Crash N Burn and
Total Eclipse, only required a small number of artists, Panasonic was hesitant in hiring additional artists to the game's development team, presuming it to be unnecessary. Because of this limited development team, the game took longer to produce than anticipated. Eventually, the company began bringing other artists in to work on designing characters, including Steve Kongsle (who had been working on
Crash N Burn and designed Gex). In the middle of the game's strenuous development, a number of
Gexs developers - among whom were programmer Danny Chan and Evan Wells, as well as various people from outside of development - joined together to secretly program several features into the game. The unused sci-fi art from the game was used to make a series of secret levels. A small 2D
shooting game programmed by Wells as his Senior project at
Stanford University was added into the game, as was a small minigame made by scriptor Susan Michelle. These additions were kept in unbeknownst to the company until they were discovered through
playtesting. The additions were kept in the game. The "secret team" also programmed a hidden extended end credits sequence which featured photos of the staff, as well as a wide array of concept art, sketches and storyboards, which came to last a total of 18 minutes after being completed. This sequence could be accessed by completing all of the sci-fi levels as well as the rest of the game. At one point in development, one of the stages designed by Knorr was edited without his permission. The level had several parts with bugs that Knorr requested to be fixed. Since the game was eight to nine months late of its initial completion deadline, rather than working around the bugs, the company removed these parts in order to ship the game sooner. Knorr was infuriated by this, and in response, left a hidden message in one of the levels teaching the player a cheat code to get to the game's stage select (which contained over 80 level slots despite only 28 levels being in the game) and telling them to pick a specific stage, which contained the original version of this level. There, he hid three more messages, including one which disclosed the personal phone number of head of product development Madeline Canepa and telling the players to call her and "give her a piece of your mind and my mind too". This addition was ultimately found by playtesters, leading to the immediate firing of Knorr. By June 1994, very little progress had been made on
Gex, with less than half of the game complete. The multiple art sets were reduced to only one per level, and the Mode 2 section and the sci-fi world in its entirety were scrapped. The team hoped to have the game finished by September so that it could be released for the holiday season in December. However, by September, the game was still vastly incomplete, with unfinished level designs and no in-game audio, and by the end of 1994 it was clear that the game would still need extra time to be finished. ==Release==