inFamous started as an Animal Crossing-like game

No photos exist, sadly

Sucker Punch Productions has been making the rounds leading up to inFamous: Second Son‘s release a week from today, and speaking to GameSpot, co-founder Chris Zimmerman talked about the bizarre origins of the game that kicked off the open-word action series.

“The original idea for Infamous, believe it or not, was that it was kind of Animal Crossing, but you were a super hero,” said Zimmerman. This work went on for around a year and the pitch called for players to fight a gang of purple gorillas whose only crime was stealing balloons.

Zimmerman described this early inFamous as being “So much more stylized, much more cartoony than what you end up seeing. We worked hard to see if we could make that work.” Ultimately, the team decided to pivot once it was determined the project “really wasn’t coming together.”

PlayStation-exclusive Infamous series originally began as an Animal Crossing-style game [GameSpot]