Mr. Nutz: Hoppin' Mad is a side scrolling

Side-scrolling video game

A side-scrolling game or side-scroller is a video game in which the gameplay action is viewed from a side-view camera angle, and the onscreen characters generally move from the left side of the screen to the right. These games make use of scrolling computer display technology...

, 2D platformer video game published by Ocean Software

Ocean Software

The British company Ocean Software was one of the biggest European video game developers/publishers of the 1980s and 90s...

 for the Amiga

Amiga

The Amiga is a family of personal computers that was sold by Commodore in the 1980s and 1990s. The first model was launched in 1985 as a high-end home computer and became popular for its graphical, audio and multi-tasking abilities...

 and first released in 1994.

The player controls the one player character

Player character

A player character or playable character is a character in a video game or role playing game who is controlled or controllable by a player, and is typically a protagonist of the story told in the course of the game. A player character is a persona of the player who controls it. Player characters...

, Mr. Nutz who is an Anthropomorphic

Anthropomorphism

Anthropomorphism is any attribution of human characteristics to animals, non-living things, phenomena, material states, objects or abstract concepts, such as organizations, governments, spirits or deities. The term was coined in the mid 1700s...

 red squirrel

Red Squirrel

The red squirrel or Eurasian red squirrel is a species of tree squirrel in the genus Sciurus common throughout Eurasia...

 wearing shoes, gloves and a cap, who must stop chickens from outer space that are trying to take over the world. The game shares similarities with other platformers of the same time, jumping is the main technique used in the game to navigate platforms and defeat or avoid most enemies. There is an overworld

Overworld

An overworld is, in a broad sense, an area within a video game that interconnects all its levels or locations. They are mostly common in role-playing games, though this does not exclude other video game genres....

 map in overhead view in which a small amount of gameplay takes place, and from which the player selects which levels to play. Most gameplay takes place within the levels which are the common 2D platform view.

Development

The game started out as Timet: the Flying Squirrel by a group of people who later formed company NEON. When selling the game to Ocean the main character was replaced with the already existing character Mr. Nutz and the game was renamed. Before that the player character sprite was a slimmer flying squirrel

Flying squirrel

Flying squirrels, scientifically known as Pteromyini or Petauristini, are a tribe of 44 species of squirrels .- Description :...

, which was changed to a fluffier red squirrel but all of the level and enemy design remained as it was before. Mr. Nutz: Hoppin' Mad was developed by Neon Studios and published in Europe by Ocean for the Amiga 500

Amiga 500

The Amiga 500 - also known as the A500 - was the first “low-end” Commodore Amiga 16/32-bit multimedia home/personal computer. It was announced at the winter Consumer Electronics Show in January 1987 - at the same time as the high-end Amiga 2000 - and competed directly against the Atari 520ST...

 and Amiga 600

Amiga 600

The Amiga 600, also known as the A600 , is a home computer that was introduced at the CeBIT show in March 1992. The A600 was Commodore International's final model based on the Motorola 68000 CPU and the ECS chipset. It is essentially a redesign of the Amiga 500 Plus, with the option of an internal...

 in 1994.

Ocean had previously released a game on multiple consoles

Video game console

A video game console is an interactive entertainment computer or customized computer system that produces a video display signal which can be used with a display device to display a video game...

 under the shorter name of Mr. Nutz

Mr. Nutz

Mr. Nutz is a side scrolling, 2D platformer video game published by Ocean Software. It was first released for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in 1993, then later released for the Mega Drive in 1994, followed by Game Boy, Game Boy Color, then Game Boy Advance ports.The player controls the...

, featuring the same titular character but with different, slower and more linear gameplay, unrelated levels and enemies, another story, and the absence of a overworld map to select the levels, with only a linear mini-map to follow the course of action instead.

Sometime after its original Amiga releases, the Neon Studios game was eventually stated to be ported to the Sega Mega Drive

Sega Mega Drive

The Sega Genesis is a fourth-generation video game console developed and produced by Sega. It was originally released in Japan in 1988 as , then in North America in 1989 as Sega Genesis, and in Europe, Australia and other PAL regions in 1990 as Mega Drive. The reason for the two names is that...

and released in Europe in 1995 as Mr. Nutz 2 , acting as a sequel of the console Mr Nutz game which had already been released in this particular system. However, despite being fully completed by the developer and even tested by European press reviewers, the Mega Drive port of Mr. Nutz: Hoppin' Mad was never published.