Art of Rat Attack

Happy 1 year to my career of Rat Attack speedrunning.

I promise that I still give a damn. I'm just unfortunately dealing with "burnout" on the two things I love, perhaps you could blame it on the ponies, but I would choose not to.

#ratattack #scratchcats

It has come to recent attention that Rat Attack has been rereleased for the first time in 17 years onto GOG.com.

Status on what is in this release of this game is to be announced.

www.gog.com/en/game/rat_...

#ratattack #scratchcats

Also - look at how much a copy costs a quarter of a century on. I was always destined for cult appeal.
#retrogaming #nintendo #videogames #ratattack

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the European release of Rat Attack on the Nintendo 64, here is some brand new artwork of the Scratch Cats drawn by game artist Phil Corbett!

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It should be noted again that Atomicat has this reverb in their line, albeit cut off. This suggests a double theory that this is from an earlier build of the PS1 game where Atomicat would have been a playable character before becoming a reskin of Banubis.

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An interesting oddity in the N64 version of Rat Attack is if you lower the music and listen to the voices on the select screen, you can hear the PS1 reverb in Bob Cat, Atomicat and Pearl's lines. A theory suggests these were recorded off of the PS1 version and Pure forgot to disable the reverb.

Sourced from the Digital Press Kit and Rat-Attack.com - discmaster.textfiles.com/view/18637/R...
web.archive.org/web/20150415...

Screenshots from early builds of Rat Attack featuring an unused Casino level. No level resembles it in the final.

🧶3/3 Unlike the website for Rat Attack, Cheese Design didn't last long as the website closed around 2000-03ish, presumably around the same time Pure Entertainment also did.

Cheese Design was never registered as an actual company, which means it may have also just been an internal team.

🧶2/3 Using the Wayback Machine, there is supposed to be a Flash file that plays. This file has unfortunately been lost to time. Unless an archive of it is found, it is unknown what it could have contained.

🧶1/3 One of the handful of "companies that outside of a forgotten PS1/N64 game have been lost to time with zero to no documentation online" is Cheese Design, a company owned by "Andrew Talbot" that (as far as we know) had at the bare minimum of something to do with Rat Attack.

This is a snippet of the track. The full song can be heard here:
tcrf.net/Rat_Attack_(...

The CD for Rat Attack on PS1 has 2 tracks. As usual, Track 1 is the game data. Inserting the game's disc into a CD and setting it to Track 2 will playback this song. Its purpose is unknown, and it does not exist anywhere within Track 1 where the rest of the music is stored.
#ratattack #scratchcats

Rat Attack! PS1 Source Code : Pure Entertainment : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive Obtained from a developer by steveirwinfan96.

The game's source is available here:

archive.org/details/rats...

The source code to the PS1 version of Rat Attack-currently available, handed over from a developer and uploaded to Internet Archive-contains a text document pertaining to Tekken 3. Its purpose is unknown, but perhaps Rat Attack would have-or did-had inspiration from the game.
#ratattack #scratchcats

Apologies for the lack of uploads to @rat-attack.bsky.social - been working on other stuff in life. Will be posting to it more often this January.

I love that this tribute account to the best ever game in video game history exists. Give it some love, this was my first ever job!

correction: 0.1MB, or 100KB

The only other noticeable difference with the PAL version is the PAK folder being around a kilobyte bigger.

PAK - Game assets in a compressed format
XA - The music format used for PlayStation games
RATATTAK.EXE - The PS1 executable for Rat Attack
SLUS_006.56 (NTSC) / SLES_011.03 (PAL) - Identifier for the game's serial code
SYSTEM.CNF - System configuration file

Rat Attack is tiny enough to fit on a DS.

Sourced from philcorbett.blogspot.com/2012/07/ and philcorbett.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/muff...

Pearl

Atomicat

Sparky

Yippy Yappy

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Muffy DuPont

Prof. Julius

Newton / PU55Y

Hai Jinx

2012 reimaginings of the Scratch Cats drawn by Rat Attack Artist Phil Corbett. #ratattack #scratchcats
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Cloud background

Cloud background removed

Transparent background (unfortunately doesn't appear transparent from here, but you can find it from here) https://discmaster.textfiles.com/file/18637/Rat%20Attack%20(UK)%20(Digital%20Press%20Kit%20-%20Summer%20'99).bin/HIRES/NEWFOR99/COMICS/SPARKY.PSD/out-3.png

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Alternate variations of Sparky's panel.

3 panels with Bob Cat and Thumps (from left to right): Bob Cat is going fishing with his younger brother Thumps, the Rats kidnap Thumps with Bob Cat fighting them off and having his left ear bitten off, Bob Cat becomes a boxer.

3 panels of Smokey (from left to right): A nuclear test lab in the middle of the mountains, Smokey screwing in a new invention, Smokey looking forwards with her body turned backward with her right hand in the air.

2 panels of Pearl (from left to right): Two dogs looking suspiciously at Pearl, the other is running away from a now completely grown up Pearl.

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Compared to the Flash cartoon, Thumps has a different design in these panels.

Hai Jinx in a stance with leaves being blown in the wind.

Sparky flying out from the Haunted House. Similar to the Flash cartoon.

3 panels of Manx in a city in the night (from left to right): Manx in a menacing stance with his claws out, Manx standing facing forward with his arms behind his back, Manx grinning while front-side facing to the left.

3 panels of Muffy DuPont (from left to right): Muffy is sitting in the lap of Doctor Opolitz, Muffy is pulling her zipper containing her secret identity downward, Muffy DuPont in her normal form with a smile on her face.

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Comic panel-themed drawings of the Scratch Cats.
Dated August-October 1998
Some of these are semi-retellings of the Flash cartoons.

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The N64 screenshots in the DPK are dated January 6, 1999. The final build dates for the port were in October/November of the same year. It is safe to assume this change was made very late in development.

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In Rat Attack, there are special Rats that hold letters that spell out "EXTRA". These special Rats can give you an extra life if you eraticate all five.
In early N64 screens of the game available from the Digital Press Kit and most files in the final game, they are instead labeled as "BONUS".

Most of the content you'll be finding here come from the Rat Attack Digital Press Kit which contains a lot of goodies such as art, music, concepts, renders, etc. You can find it at archive.org/details/redu..., or for more compatible sources of media, at discmaster.textfiles.com/browse/18637.

Rat Attack Discord
discord.gg/Pp8QwfpP9x
A very (at the current moment) early, WIP Discord server dedicated to Rat Attack.