Development
Electronic Arts licensed Ritual Entertainment's Heavy Metal: F.A.K.K.² engine, which is in turn a modified Quake III Arena engine. The most notable changes in the engine include the use of the Tiki model system, which enables the engine to use skeletal animation among other things, the Babble dialog system which enables lip synching of audio with character animations, dynamic music system, scriptable camera, particle system and extended shader support. The changes implemented to the engine for Alice remained minimal however. The game's .bsp files even retain F.A.K.K.²'s headers, albeit sporting a different version number.
An early version of the game featured the ability to summon the Cheshire Cat to aid the player in battle. Though this feature was removed from the final product, beta screenshots of this version do exist online. In the final product, the player can press a button to summon the Cheshire Cat at any time, though he merely provides cryptic advice on the current situation, and does nothing to aid Alice if she is being attacked. An Alice port for the then-unreleased PlayStation 2 was also in development but was later cancelled, which caused Rogue Entertainment to shut down, another decision which angered American McGee. The game's retail release was also noticeably less gory than the demo that had been released earlier.
The game's box art was altered after release to show Alice holding the Ice Wand instead of a bloodied Vorpal Blade, and to reduce the skeletal character of the Cheshire Cat's anatomy. EA cited complaints from various consumer groups as its reason for altering the original art, though McGee stated the alteration was made due to internal concerns at EA. A third version of the box art has Alice holding the Cards in her hands instead of a knife or wand. Alice was EA's first M-rated game.
Alice has grown in value and become a collector's item since its release, with new copies selling for $100–200 on auction sites and used copies selling for close to $100. The game is prized in the order of its release artwork with the Vorpal Blade, a.k.a. "bloody knife," version being highly valued, followed closely by the Ice Wand release and, finally, the comparatively innocuous Hand of Cards version.
In 2010, a real-world replica of the fabled Vorpal Blade was released to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the game.
Read more about this topic: American McGee's Alice
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