Gee Whiz! Entertainment

Gee Whiz! Entertainment was a development studio based in Brisbane, Australia. It was formed in 1996 by the partners John Passfield and Steve Stamatiadis, as a continuation of the studio Interactive Binary Illusions they had established in 1993. Both founders have an extensive background in comic books. Following up on the games Alien Carnage (also known as Halloween Harry) in 1993, and Flight of the Amazon Queen in 1995, they released Zombie Wars as a Windows sequel to Alien Carnage in 1998. After that, they attempted to redesign their cancelled project Stereo Jack completely in 3D in 1998, but did not complete it. In 1999 they developed a type of software they coined Screen Opera. The first one developed was Magic Spirit Board (2000), followed by The Chronicles of Jaruu Tenk (2000). It was an attempt at creating a living, persistent world similar to the one from David Crane's Little Computer People (1985) on the Commodore 64. In Chronicles, you got to explore the world of a little alien called Jaruu Tenk. He was an Observer on the small island of Bloofen Jut. The software was time based and each time you visited Jaruu more things would appear in his world. He even updated his journal everyday and got the newspaper delivered daily. You could also talk to him by typing on the keyboard. Chronicles could be set up as a screen saver and when it kicked in you would return to Jaruu’s world reflecting the time of your visit – morning, day or night. His friends would also pop by for a visit and he’d engage them in conversation. Leading up to Christmas he'd even set up a Christmas tree. It took over a year to put together, work being done at night and on weekends in between developing the Mike Stewart's Pro Bodyboarding game (1999). The Screen Opera project was never meany purely commercially, unlike the first The Sims game by Maxis that was released around the same time. By 1999, the studio formed a joint-venture with a company owned by Robert Walsh, who had produced Mike Stewart’s Pro Bodyboarding, and it became Krome Studios Pty Ltd.