Disney's Toontown Online / Toontown Rewritten

Submission 8,458

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About

Toontown Online was a massively multiplayer online role-playing game loosely basedonthe film Who Framed Roger Rabbit in which a group of anthropomorphic animals known as toons fight off an army of business robots known as the Cogs.

Gameplay

Players are first introduced to making their Toon when starting the game through customization options such as species, color, and so on. Each Toon is given a laff meter which serves as a health bar; if the bar is depleted, the player is forced have to retreat to the playground. The playgrounds are areas that house multiple facilities, including shops, mission providers, and a minigame area. Certain playgrounds have access to special areas such as Goofy's Speedway and Chip and Dale's Acres, which host vehicle races and games of mini-golf, respectively. The core of Toontown's game play focuses on battling the cogs. Toons are given gags to fight the cogs in a turn-based, teamwork-focused battle system. As the game progresses, players are given access to a greater variety of gag types as well as more effective gags.

History

Toontown was developed by Disney Interactive, Schell Games, and Frogchildren Studios and published by The Walt Disney Company. The game was released for Windows on June 2nd, 2003.

Closure

On August 20th, 2013, Disney announced that after running for ten years Toontown would be shutting down. For the remainder of the game's life, players weere all given free memberships.Many fans were extremely disappointed-- some expressed this with whole videos about the subject (shown below). Many users and fans attempted to petition the closure, but Disney never responded. On September 19th, 2013 Toontown Online was officially closed.

[This video has been removed]

Revival

Due to the disappointment of many fans, multiple attempts revive the game were put into action-- most noticeably, Toontown Rewritten, Toontown Infinite, and Toontown House. Toontown Rewritten is currently the most popular incarnation, featuring 3000 beta testers as of September 19th, 2014. A whole year after Toontown online's closing, it is finally opened up to the public. Though Toontown's revival games are great, they have many problems in their beta's. ToonTown Rewritten, had a Semi-Open Beta system in which users have to wait in lines, plan play times, or use beta keys to get in. Many users complain about this system frequently. Toontown Infinite may seem like the winner with no wait lines and more features, but no release date was scheduled and it was notoriously laggy. It ran for a while, but then it went into an interminable hiatus. Toontown House has never gotten a official website and those who have played it have made videos testing it. As of 2015, its official reddit has gained over 3,800 subscribers.

Reception

The game was positively received, including a 81% rating from metacritic and a 82% rating from gamerankings.com. In total, it received 14 awards, including Computer Gaming World MMORPG Game of the Year (2003), Game industry News Family Game of the Year (2003), Webby Award For People's Voice (2003) and Parents' Choice Foundation Silver Honor (2003), among others.