Super Mario 64, a forgotten Dreamcast JRPG, classic Jet Li films, and more all inspired Tim Schafer while working on Psychonauts
Everything from Finalš§ Fantasy ā±7 to the Nightmare Before Christmas played a part

Psychonauts, the iconic platformer about entering peoples' psyches to sort out whateveāØr emotional baggage they've got strewn about, is 20 years old. And to celebš rate the milestone, Double Fine founder and Psychonauts director Tim Schafer shared some of his inspirations for the classic.
Befoāre opening Double Fine Productions, Schafer was widely known for a bunch of LucasArts point-and-click adventure games, such as Full Throttle and Grim Fandango, but he decided to instead make a third-person, fully-3D platformer after playing Super Mario 64, naturally.
"I remember that [Mario 64] was the first one where I just, like, špushed the joystick in the direction I wanted to go and the character ran that way, and I was like: 'Wait a second,'" the director recalled in a new vlog.

"And then, ašt the time, I played a lot of games like Final Fantasy 7," he added. "Maybe later [The Legend of Zelda] Ocarina of Time. These games where you just drove the character directly and ran around. And you could still do things and have a story and solves puzzles and stuff, but I think that was the moment where I was like, 'I don't think I want toš° make a point-and-click adventure anymore. I think I want to make a console game. I want to make a character-driven console game that is just really immediate and has more action, but, you know, still has a lot of narrative.'"
Those early 3D console š¤Ŗgames were "a big turning point" foš„r Tim Schafer to "leave behind what I'd been doing for the last 10 years and try something new."
You'd be hard-pressed to find games that aren't in some way influenced by Mario or Zelda or Final Fantasy, but the Psychonauts team looked in more niche corners too. Schafer said Psychonauts also had "somź§e actual mechanics" from criminally overlooked Dreamcast JRPG Skies of Arcadia, specificallyš with the resource that you dig up from under the ground.
Everything else from horror romp The Suffering and Disney's Nightmare Before Christmas to art work from Joe Sorren and a Haruki Murakami novel also influenced Schafer to some degree. Raz's daddy issues specifically may have sprouted from a small scene in 1984's Dreamscape, while his dedication to being the best mind-fixer possible came from Jet Li's "really serious" on-screen son in The New Legend of Shaolin, played by Mo Tse. You can check out the full list above for tšhe specifics, though, it's all interesting stuff.
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Kaan freelances for various websites including Rock Paper Shotgun, Eurogamer, and this one, Gamesradar. He particularly enjoys writing about spooky indies, throwback RPGs, and anything that's vaguely silly. Also has an English Literaturź§e and Film Studies degree that he'll soon forget.
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