Spy Fox: Operation Ozone

Poodles Galore has constructed a giant orbital aerosol hairspray can to destroy the ozone layer so she can have a world monopoly on her SPF 2001 sunscreen, and it's up to Spy Fox to stop her. Can he do it? Probably, but it may be too late for Humongous Entertainment anyways.

And then Spy Fox was never heard from again. Oh well, he had a pretty good run of it.

Unused Text#

Debug Output#

The game outputs hefty quantities of debug console messages. They're most easily viewed by running the game in ScummVM and setting the debug level to 0 or higher.

Debug Rooms#

There are several debug rooms for quickly modifying the game state. To enable them, add the line WhosABigCheater=I to the configuration file (last letter case-insensitive, so i will also work).

Room Select#

Activated by pressing the G key. Click on a room to go to it.

Item Select#

Activated with I. Click items to place them in the inventory. Note that having more than 12 at once will crash the game.

Path Select#

Activated with C. Allows most game options and some important flags to be set.

Unused Scenes#

Freaky Muscle Shack#

Watch on YouTubeOne more bizarre Humongous Easter egg for the pile. Go to the Universal Imports shack, hold the Up and Right arrow keys simultaneously, and click on the proprietress to get this... this... explanation-defying thing.

God knows what it's doing in the game.

Aliens Ate My Cookies Ad#

Left over in the resources for the intro sequence is this unused teaser for A Gaspocket Adventure: Aliens Ate My Cookies, a (trendily prerendered) adventure game developed by Humongous subsidiary Gaspocket that was slated for release around the same time as this game, but ultimately canceled.

Oddly, the ad's background is the only graphic in Operation Ozone to use 16-bit color - everything else uses 256 colors, despite the fact that the game actually does run in high color mode. Preview versions of the game used 256 colors; it's not clear if the color mode was upgraded so the ad could be included, if the ad was put in due to the color mode being changed, or something else entirely.

Unused Graphics#

More placeholders, more temporary animations, more stuff.

Spy Car#

Chicle Cache#

The chicle room has a near-complete set of test animations for the chicle-boulder escape sequence.

Graphic	Notes
	Fox places the Spy Toaster.
	He pops into the air and pulls the handle to release the chicle.
	He gets his chicle, but... uh-oh!
	Just shoot it, Fox! Or run for your life, whatever works.
	Running across the pillars...
	...and toward the exit.
	Temporary graphics for the collapsing pillars, probably originally used in the test sequence above.

Cosmetics Factory Entrance#

Used	Unused

There's an extra object graphic for the window the guards sit behind that shows it opaque instead of clear. Possibly it was supposed to change to this after the Spy Ear puzzle was solved, or there was meant to be an alternate version of the puzzle that didn't involve eavesdropping on the guards.

Cosmetics Factory Rocket#

An early graphic for the Sticky Stun Bun's splatter.

What it looks like on the intended backdrop.

Bea's Bees#

Graphic	Notes
	Some bees, much larger and more cartoonish than the used versions. This is the only graphic and there's no animation defined, so it may have been a placeholder.

Moon Base Hangar#

These background sketches are for a focus-switch transition from Poodles to Fox during the initial arrival cutscene that never came to fruition. In the final game, Poodles simply walks out of frame, revealing Fox.

A mockup of how it would have looked, using the existing graphics.

Powder Puff Control Room#

Graphic	Notes
	The last frame from Fox's entrance sequence has an embedded message. Naturally, it's skipped over in-game.

Outer Space#

Graphic	Notes
	Early version of the close-up of Fox shown the first time he sees the can.
	Test animation of the rocket flying into the can...
	...and landing in it.

Save/Load#

Graphic	Notes
	A simple save/load preview placeholder dating all the way back to Putt-Putt Saves the Zoo. This game's version is resized to fit the larger image slots.
	Another preview, this time of the sewers in Spy Fox 2: Some Assembly Required with a horribly-broken palette.

Credits#

Miscellaneous#

Graphic	Notes
	A few graphics from the game restart prompt of Putt-Putt Enters the Race somehow wound up stored with this game's opening logos.
	The Junior Adventure logo, widely used across Humongous' other games from 1996-1999 is not being used.
	A placeholder background for room 1, which exists only to store the inventory interface components. Identical in appearance and usage to a graphic from Spy Fox 2.

Unused Music#

A few of the vocal songs have unused instrumental versions, though not all of them.

The load/save music from Putt-Putt Travels Through Time is also still here. Seriously.

Unused Sounds#

The aforementioned Junior Adventure logo sound.

Unused Dialogue#

Watch on YouTubeJust like its predecessors, this game has a smattering of unused and almost entirely unremarkable dialogue. This xdelta patch re-enables everything listed below except the bowling shoes messages, which can easily be triggered using the inventory debug room.

Grappling Granny#

A series of messages for when Fox walks into the quicksand after already solving the Grappling Granny puzzle. Fox uses the Granny automatically whenever he needs to cross in the finished game; perhaps at one point he didn't, and it proved too aggravating to have to do it manually every time.

Pro Shop#

These lines play on the beauty clay path when the bowling shoes are used on the shoe rack after trading for the flippers. Of course, it's impossible to have the bowling shoes after trading them, so these can't be heard.

Some lines meant to be played when a shirt on the rack is clicked with one already in the inventory. Instead, the game automatically trades whichever shirt is in the inventory (possibly another intentionally-removed headache-inducer).

Wig Maker#

When the wig style indicator is clicked, Fox says the name of the selected style. One of these lines should play at random afterwards, but it doesn't happen because of a script bug.

Clam Pile#

Because of a scripting error, only the second half of the pearl detector failure messages play. The first one should precede "I need to keep looking", while the second comes before "I should keep looking".

Prickly Pear Ranch#

An alternate set of conversations for clicking Bobby Llama's bowl of nutshells. The script that would trigger them is simply never called.

Jukebox#

Abbreviated messages for clicking the jukebox's song labels. Instead, Fox always reads both the number and song title. These may have been meant to play from the second click on, as with similar labels, but if so the trigger was removed entirely - no code calls the script that plays these.

Undocumented INI Settings#

Palette Display#

Adding ShowPalette=1 to the configuration file adds a window showing the currently-loaded palette. Pressing P with the window highlighted cycles through the palettes (though only palette 1 is ever used) and also reloads the palette. It won't update automatically on changing rooms, so it has to be refreshed manually in order to work.

Path Select#

The INI settings ForceLand and ForceWater force every new game onto a particular route. ForceLand=1 makes the required food item a Prickly Pear Pizza, while ForceLand=2 makes it a Secret Donut XY. Similarly, ForceWater=3 puts the game on the beauty clay path, while ForceWater=4 enables the pearl path.

No Water Effects#

Adding DontUndulate=1 to the configuration file disables the ripple effects in the underwater areas, presumably as a fix for computers that couldn't handle it.

References#