Cartoon Orbit
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Cartoon Orbit front page, 2000-2002
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Type of site
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Trading card game |
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| Owner | Turner Broadcasting System (Time Warner) |
| Created by | Sam Register |
| Slogan(s) | Collect. Trade. Master. |
| Website | cartoonorbit |
| Commercial | Yes |
| Registration | Yes |
| Launched | October 2000 |
| Current status | Defunct as of October 16, 2006 |
Cartoon Orbit was a children's online gaming network created by Turner Online to promote its shows and partners. Created as an addition to the Cartoon Network website, Cartoon Orbit opened to the public in October 2000. Its main attraction was a system of virtual trading cards called "cToons", which generally featured animation cells from programs broadcast on the network, though advertisement-based cToons were also common. Added in October 2002 was the head-to-head strategy game gToons
The site began to suffer from lack of maintenance beginning in 2005. On October 16, 2006, Cartoon Network shut down Cartoon Orbit, leaving users with a "Thank You" certificate as a token of their appreciation.
Cartoon Orbit was the brainchild of Sam Register, who was also behind the development of CartoonNetwork.com in 1998. He went on to become the creative director of the site as well as Cartoon Orbit from 2000-2001 before leaving to pursue television development with Cartoon Network in its Los Angeles studios. He came up with the idea for Orbit after seeing PBS's Sticker World. After Register left Cartoon Orbit, Art Roche became the creative director of CartoonNetwork.com, a post he continues to hold. Justin Williams was the project lead at Turner and Director of Community for Orbit until 2003, when he began working on other Cartoon Network interactive projects. Lisa Furlong Jones, Sharon Karleskint Sharp, and Robert Cass created content and wrote copy for Cartoon Orbit, while Noel Saabye and Brian Hilling provided art and animation.
The site was registered in May 2000, with the beta phase ending in September of that year. The original name was to be "Cartooniverse", but this was changed because the copyright was held by someone else. This name can be seen in early Flash animation and screenshots. Cartoon Orbit was first built using parts of Communities.com's "Passport" software (not to be confused with the current Communities.com, which is unrelated). This software was a 2D, avatar-based chat server, where members could decorate their own spaces, and it was used extensively in Orbit for displaying and editing cZones. Most of the chat functionality, however, did not become part of the finished product. To comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, Cartoon Orbit instead had a list of pre-written words and phrases that players could send in a chat box. Until the complete conversion to Flash in 2002, references could still be found in the HTML source code to passport "room servers", and links to technical documentation on Communities.com's web site. Also before the Flash transition were "Worlds" on Cartoon Orbit based on fictional cartoon locations, which came complete with a quote or quip from that world's characters, a poll, and links to "Spotlight" cZones.
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