Irrational reveals discarded game pitch for 'Monster Island'

Irrational Gameshas revealeda nearly-10-year-old document written by Ken Levine. The 2001 pitchdescribes"Monster Island," a console action gameinspired by '50s Japanese film monsters.

The post is a couple days old now, but it's too cool not to share anyway, especially because Irrational Games artist Jorge Lacera created some awesome monster illustrations to be included retroactively.

The document's introduction describes the premise:

"Monster Island is a fast paced action/strategy console game that lets the player assume the role of either a giant monster out to eat a city for dinner or the authorities pledged to protect the innocent citizenry.

Monster Island features three different time periods for the player to battle through: Greece 400 BC, Europe 700 AD, and Tokyo 1957 AD. The game features one of the most advanced physics engine ever featured in a console game. As a monster, players will be able to topple skyscrapers, punch holes in buildings, collapse bridges, and tear street cars off their tracks and scatter them like so many toys.

The game will boast not only 20 Irrational-created monsters but will also allow players to build their own monsters and set them loose upon the world. Players will be able to change appearance, skin, size, even special powers such as radioactive breath and multiple heads!"

Yes! Stop work on BioShock Infinite immediately and make this!

Levine suggested a budget of $2.5 million for the game, andregardingits platform, wrote, "XBox is probably the easiest, PS2 is a pain in the butt, and who knows about GameCube?" What a fantastic piece of gaming lore!

A PDF of the document is available atIrrational's blog.

Oct 29, 2010