The Making of It’s Mr. Pants – Celebrating 15 Years with Xbox Feature

Rare had been making two Donkey Kong GBA games that needed repurposing. Diddy Kong Pilot and (the sequel to N64’s Diddy Kong Racing) was redeveloped as Banjo-Pilot in 2005. But the more unusual decision, and one that is most in keeping with Rare’s irreverent and playful spirit, is when it changed the puzzle game Donkey Kong Coconut Crackers into a bizarre concept called It’s Mr. Pants (released in late 2004). “Tim Stamper and Gregg Mayles were having a chat,” reveals Paul Machacek. “We haven’t done a puzzle game at that point. So we came up with rules for something that started with Tetris-style blocks, but that went left a bit.
“I remember Tim coming to me with a sheet of A4, a set of rules and a drawing, and asked if I could knock up a demo. The intent was it would be a portable title. I had worked on [Game Boy game] Donkey Kong Land and I still had the software. Tim came to me about 11am, and by 8pm I rang him and asked if he wanted to look at what I’d done.
‘Look at what?’ came Tim’s startled reply.
Machacek responded that the work was done.
“I had it running with some ‘wonderful’ programmer art. Tim was astounded that it had happened so fast. We realised that there was something fun about it. That’s the thing: you can write something down, but it’s not until you implement it and twiddle with it that you know whether it’s going to be any good.”
The next chapter in Mr. Pants’ life was a good degree less expedient. The game needed a theme. Rare tried Donkey Kong, but the Microsoft acquisition put an end to that. There was also an attempt to use the Sabreman IP.
“The guy who is now art director on Sea of Thieves [Ryan Stevenson] had just joined at the time. He had a desk next to me and one day turned around with a doodle,” says Machacek.
Stevenson recalls: “There were lots of ways we could see to wrap this game up with different Rare characters. But, and it it started as a joke, there was this idea of Mr. Pants. I went away and did this crayon-like sketch, and took it in the next day, and it took traction.”
Machacek again: “I took one look and was like: ‘Yeah, you’re taking the piss, but, you’re right’. That actual drawing is in the game. It set the art style for the whole thing. So I commandeered Ryan for a bit and we took the piss out of each other for the duration. I love that it started a fight on Wikipedia.”
Fight on Wikipedia?
“You know you have discussion pages on Wikipedia?” Machacek responds. “A user said It’s Mr. Pants deserves deletion. Somebody asked why? The reply was that it was pointless. And then somebody else came in saying Mr. Pants is the mascot of a famous studio and he is every bit as important as Mario. Someone else came in saying ‘don’t be so bloody stupid’. In the end, Wikipedia had to lock the page because it got quite vitriolic.”