Set in the future on a terrestrial planet, the player takes on the role of a newcomer to the Phase Zero squad, piloting a hovercraft to fight rival corporate states.

It was initially conceived as a top-down shooter for the Super NES, but the team decided to move with Jaguar due to its powerful hardware, opting to use heightmaps for the graphics and support local area network (LAN) play for multiplayer.

In 1996, Atari laid off several staff members amid rumors that they were leaving the console market, which included the departure of Tahquechi.

[3][6][7] The player controls the hovercraft in a landscape featuring six degrees of freedom and destructible environments, while navigating through checkpoints and fighting enemies.

[13][15][16] They moved from an apartment to a house with four other members, including Bill Lanides, Andy Carlson, Sterling Krauss, and an intern known only as Damian.

[15][16] To mitigate the problem, Gordon and Otávio devised a technique using the Jaguar's blitter dubbed "displacement texture mapping", which allowed for large and detailed interpolated heightmaps.

[13][14][15] Duarte was the lead game designer under direction of Paul and responsible for the artwork, creating a tile-based terrain system to build levels and supervising artists with visual assets.

[35] It was later scheduled for launch in late 1995 and appeared in a promotional recording sent by Atari to video game retail stores on October 9, 1995.

[26] Atari Explorer Online's Adam Urbano said that it showed the Jaguar's hardware potential and expressed excitement over its realistic landscapes, smooth frame rate, and controls.

[6] CD Consoles proclaimed that Phase Zero would be one of the best Jaguar games, highlighting its audiovisual presentation, interactive environments, enemy AI, and freedom of movement.

[39] In 1996, Atari laid off several members of its staff amid an internal restructuring to focus on software publishing and rumors that they were leaving the console market, which included the departure of Tahquechi, who was replaced by John Skruch as the game's producer.

[44][45] The Hyper Image staff moved the company to San Francisco and renamed it MagicArts Corporation to pursue projects on Sega Saturn, PlayStation, and Windows 95 platforms.

[43][47] Sony hired MagicArts to develop two games for PlayStation but neither were released: Alien Earth/Legion (a 3D action shooter), and Yoyo's Adventure (a 3D platformer).