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April 19th, 2015 
Carl Williams 
To say that Psychonauts had a storied development would be kind of an understatement. What started out in the wild world of the classic LucasArts title Full Throttle expanded. The game nearly died and was revived again by the hands of one man, Tim Schafer. Psychonauts was originally to be a drug filled romp through fantasy land for the main protagonist in Full Throttle. LucasArts couldn’t stand for that and the segment was dropped. Schafer wouldn’t let it go – later this sequence was fleshed out and became Psychonauts. Too bad gamers didn’t have as much dedication to quality releases of the time.
Psychonauts and Xbox love at first sight
Psychonauts had Microsoft eyeing it for exclusive status on their Xbox console. At some point the people in charge decided the head rolling antics of Sega of old were pretty cool. This led to Ed Fries, the man really making these decisions, go abruptly out the exit. It is not clear what happened afterwards though. Console exclusivity was as much a dream as the original concept for Psychonauts was. Not to be held down, Tim Schafer was able to negotiate deals for Psychonauts. Majesco the king of “no clue how to handle a quality game right” stepped up. This deal with Majesco opened up porting Pschonauts to the Xbox competitor the Sony PlayStation 2.
Psychonauts saw release on Windows (alongside the Xbox original version) and PlayStation 2 (in June of 2005) consoles. More recently on Steam, Gametap and finally the Macintosh OSX platform. Not bad for a game that just wouldn’t die due to the dedication of its creator.
Sales figures were not good
In the first seven years Psychonauts would go on to sell around 400,000 copies at retail which is horrible. Majesco averaged about 57,000 copies a year or less than 5,000 copies per month in sales. The fans failed Psychonauts. With the release on Steam an Xbox Live though, things have turned around. Maybe it was a case of just not being where the gamers were? No one knows for sure. We do know here at Retro Gaming Magazine, we are thankful that Tim Schafer didn’t give up and kept fighting. Thank you.
Psychonauts is available on these platforms for your enjoyment (some are site supporting affiliate links):
Amazon
eBay
Steam
Xbox Live
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It shows the game was meant to be an Xbox exclusive. Sadly, the PS2 version was pretty poor in comparison.
The game just wasn’t originally designed with the limitations of the PS2 in mind.
Alice: Madness Returns reminds me of Psychonauts. It also was a 3D platformer/action game where you explore a mind of a crazy person with some small bits of the real world in between the levels. Both had very stylized graphics (that could be considered an acquired taste), both were mishandled by their publishers (Majesco & EA) and both sold very poorly.