Listen up, pardners, it’s our 25th Game Club, and to celebrate, we’re tackling the most recent (although still seven years old) entry in Lorne Lanning’s Oddworld series, Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath. It’s an (*ahem*) odd hybrid of first- and third-person shooters set in a whimsically bizarre version of the old west. You play as the Stranger, a bounty hunter looking to score loads of moolah by bringing in the orneriest outlaws in the land. Of course, there’s much more to the story, but to spoil it (and its twist) would be a disservice.

The game’s biggest gimmick is the literal “live ammo”–living critters that you must first hunt before loading them into your crossbow to use against the enemy. You also have the choice of bringing your quarry in dead or alive. You’ll earn a higher bounty if they’re still kickin’, but it’s usually more difficult to do this than finishing ‘em off first.

Originally released on the Xbox (and sadly not backwards compatible on the Xbox 360), we were lucky enough to get an updated version of the game recently. Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath HD is currently available on the PlayStation Network for $14.99. The regular ol’ version of the game is also available on Steam for $9.99 (with a free HD update coming in a few months).

We’ll be discussing Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath in episode 275 of the Player One Podcast. So get playing and share your comments and/or memories. You can post them in this thread, in the official thread on our forums, on Twitter (@p1podcast), drop us an email, or leave a voicemail (713-893-8069).

As we discussed in episode 257, we’re going to have a special import gaming retrospective next episode in episode 259. We certainly have plenty of stories about the subject, but we want to hear from you as well!

Head on over to the Import Memories thread in our forum and share your import gaming experiences. What was the first game that you imported? What was the most recent? Have any of your imports ended up being worth a small fortune? Which game was totally worth those hefty import shop prices? What $100 title ended up sucking? Do you have a crazy system modding story? This is what we want to know!

So start sharing, and we’ll talk more about it next episode in two weeks.

Update: Although originally planned for episode 258, scheduling conflicts have forced us to push the import discussion back a week. That’s OK, though–it just gives everybody an extra week to get your stories in. We will now be having our import discussion in episode 259.

It’s Game Club time again, folks! This session, we’re checking out a 21-year-old portable game–Capcom’s Gargoyle’s Quest. It’s an action/adventure title with a few light RPG elements starring Firebrand (aka Red Arremer; aka the irritating red demon from Ghouls ‘n Ghosts that would always kill you). It is also the first game in what would become a spin-off series to GnG. It continued with Gargoyle’s Quest II on NES and Demon’s Crest on SNES.

There are two ways to play Gargoyle’s Quest. The old fashioned way is to track down an original Game Boy cartridge. Of course, at this point, it’s probably easier (and cheaper) to pick it up through the 3DS Virtual Console. It’s currently available there for a paltry $3.99.

We’ll be discussing Gargoyle’s Quest on episode 256 of the Player One Podcast. So get playing and share your comments and/or memories. You can post them in the comments section of this blog post, in the official thread on our forums, on Twitter (@p1podcast), drop us an email, or leave a voicemail (713-893-8069).

For those wondering, yes, I am now on Twitter. I finally cracked in order to more effectively bug people to be on their 3DS friends list. You can follow me at @WhimsicalPhil. Is that how you type it? “At at your user name?”  I don’t know. These kids and their internets nowadays. I don’t understand ‘em.

Apparently, the person who was maintaining the fake Whimsical Phil Twitter account shut it down after we talked about it on episode 231. I guess he or she (oh, who am I kidding? He) realized that the jig was up, so there was no point in maintaining the ruse. That left me free to sweep in and reclaim my nickname. Huzzah!

It’s that time again! Time for another entry in our increasingly infrequent Game Club! As we discussed on a recent episode, we’ve decided to tackle Michel Ancel’s beloved Beyond Good & Evil. The game is currently available on PS2, Xbox, GameCube, and PC. Ubisoft just released an HD port on Xbox Live Arcade for a measly 800 Allards (that’s only $10 in regular monies). It’s also coming to PSN, well, sometime later.

Beyond Good & Evil may not have set the sales charts on fire when it was originally released in 2003, but it received tons of praise from professional reviewers and fans alike. Why do you love this game so much? Let us know! Maybe–just maybe–this Game Club will convince Ubisoft to finish up Beyond Good & Evil 2.

We’ll be discussing Beyond Good & Evil on episode 230 of the Player One Podcast, so get playing and share your comments and/or memories. You can post them in the comments section of this blog post, in the official thread on our forums, drop us an email, or leave a voicemail (713-893-8069).

SpongeBob SquarePants Dilly Dabbler

As I was preparing to write up this piece, I realized that there simply aren’t any screen shots or video online of most of the games on which I worked. Considering that most of them were intended for very young children, this wasn’t much of a surprise. So I invested in a (very) cheap video capture device. It certainly isn’t the highest quality, but it’ll do for this purpose. I’m so dedicated to this podcast!
In my previous entry about my Spider-Man game, I mentioned that working with licensed properties can be a hassle. This was a point that was heavily reinforced while working with Nickelodeon on SpongeBob SquarePants Dilly Dabbler.

By the time we started working on this product, there were one or two SpongeBob TV Games out already. Nickelodeon and Jakks wanted something different for this one. Instead of a collection of mini-games, Dilly Dabbler (their name) was going to be a collection of “activities” that would be aimed at younger kids. Both companies were quick to stress that they didn’t wants “games” here. Of course, the original request was for something along the lines of 10-12 different activities, which would have been very difficult to fit on the 1MB ROM with which we had to work, especially if we wanted to use different artwork in each activity (for backgrounds and whatnot) to keep them visually interesting. Eventually, we talked them down to a more realistic seven activities. Nick and Jakks suggested a couple possible activities; my first job was to fill out the rest and implement their ideas into the design document.

This one gets a bit long, so there’s more after the jump.

Mr. SpongeHead

This, as the title suggests, is a Mr. Potato Head knock-off. There’s not a whole lot too it, really. You just mix and match SpongeBob’s parts to make him look as goofy as you want. In addition to swapping the parts, you can also drag them around SpongeBob’s face a bit to mix things up even more. Luckily, Kevin James (no, not that Kevin James…this Kevin James is far more talented), the artist who worked on this project, was a big SpongeBob fan, so he was eager to suggest all sorts of costumes and props to use for this and the other games.

Seaside Sliders

Man, I hate these sliding tile puzzles. I always have, and I always will. Not much to say about this one, either, but hey…we do have three levels of difficulty, so that’s something. See? It’s a game that the whole family can enjoy! Also, one of the available pictures shows Patrick doing some sort of workout (or something) that involves him stretching one of his legs. It looks really inappropriate. It is, however, official Nickelodeon art, so don’t blame us.

Gary’s Gooze Art

Gary’s Gooze Art (named after SpongeBob’s pet snail) is a simple drawing program that turned out to be slightly more difficult to program than originally anticipated. Still, it worked out pretty well. I really like the Gary sprite that is used as your cursor. Originally, I had titled this activity “Gary’s Slime Art” since snails, you know, leave a trail of slime behind them. “Slime” was changed to “Gooze” as per Nickelodeon’s suggestion. I believe that Gooze was some sort of slime toy that Nick had on the market at the time.

Mix & Match Patrick

Did you ever see one of those books that have pictures of people (or monsters or whatever) in different outfits and they’re cut up into three parts? You can flip through the different heads, bodies, and legs to create all sorts of silly combinations? That’s what this is. To add a little bit of depth to the activity, we also added a “Done!” button that plays a little victory tone if you press it after correctly matching the parts.

Color Me Spongy

It’s a coloring book. Pretty basic, really. You choose which picture you want to color (all the pictures from the Seaside Sliders activity are reused here), cycle through the different palettes, and color away. Instead of a standard brush, you’re using what is essentially the “fill bucket” from most paint programs. You could also click on the eraser icon to clear out an area that you’ve already colored. Talk about options! We would reuse the coloring book template for the Blue’s Room TV Game.

Metal Shaving Makeover

I was actually pretty proud of this activity. It’s inspired by the old Wooly Willy toy, which allows you to use a magnetic wand and metal filings to sculpt wacky hairdos on a hairless cartoon fellow. The programmer did an excellent job of recreating the behavior of the old toy. By tapping the joystick button, you can pick up clumps of the “metal shavings” and position them on the face of SpongeBob and four of his friends (Patrick, Sandy, Gary, and Squidward). You can also hold down the button to drag the shavings around. Just like the real toy, this is somewhat imprecise, and the shavings will occasionally fall off the wand and scatter about. Like I said, it does a good job of feeling like the toy.

One problem with this activity was that due to sprite limitations, we couldn’t have as many shavings as we would have liked. To get around this problem, we originally allowed the player to “draw” on full body shots of the characters. This allowed the player to, say, give SpongeBob a huge afro or a long, flowing beard. However, Nickelodeon insisted that we zoom in on the characters’ faces. Because of this, it’s a lot harder to make extremely goofy hair styles as the available shavings don’t go as far when you’re looking at a close-up.

Krabby Patty Fry Fest

Oh, Krabby Patty Fry Fest. It’s actually my favorite activity in this little compilation (it’s certainly the most interesting to look at), but man, was it a chore getting there. During the initial planning stage, I came up with a concept that was essentially a Simon-style memory game that had SpongeBob building burgers. The Jakks producers really liked the idea, but our mutual concern was that Nickelodeon would consider it too “gamey” for an “activity” collection. Thus began a few days of back-and-forth as we chopped out any potential game elements. There would be no scoring and no real “win conditions.” You were just shown what to put on the burger and you built it. It would be something like the Mix & Match Patrick game–if you built the correct burger, you got a little victory noise; if you build the wrong burger…well, just keep trying ’till you get it right. Not terribly exciting, but certainly not a game.

Eventually, the concept was submitted to Nick and it was approved. After a week or two, we submitted an early build of the game to Jakks to show them our progress. I received a surprisingly stern phone call from the Jakks producer complaining about how boring the burger game was. I explained that the “activity” played exactly as we had planned during those few days of discussion. He told me that he was aware of that, but it was still boring. He suggested that we implement some sort of scoring system and a harsher penalty for building an incorrect burger. Essentially, he wanted to rework the concept to my original pitch. I was fine with this, but reminded him that Nick would probably consider it to be a “game” if we were to do so. This sparked roughly another week of discussion between me, Jakks, and Nickelodeon as we figured out just how many “game” elements we can toss into it. Then, of course, the programmer had to alter how the game was played afterward. Eventually, after weeks of debate and reprogramming, we ended up exactly where we began–with the final activity being almost identical to my original pitch.

That said, it ended up as a pretty fun (if simple) little memory game. It’s a dumb touch, but I love the way SpongeBob’s eyes blankly follow the cursor around the screen. That was a little gag suggested by the programmer as he was working on the cursor’s movement. Another (mildly) interesting tidbit is that when it was first programmed, the burger ingredients were truly random. The programmer and I then decided to make it so that each randomized burger included at least one patty. You know, so it could officially count as a burger. These are the things you need to think about when you’re making a video game, folks!

As an amusing footnote, I also got an angry call from the Jakks producer at the eleventh hour right before our final build of the game was due. He was convinced that we were going to get the game rejected by Nickelodeon because we had screwed up the official SpongeBob art. It was pointed out that in all of the activities, SpongeBob’s cheeks went up over his eyes when he smiled. The Jakks guy was convinced that this was not how SpongeBob looked and that we had altered the artwork. I explained that no, we made no modifications to the official art and that is simply how SpongeBob’s character design looks. He would hear nothing of it. After all, he explained, he had watched SpongeBob with his kids–he knew how SpongeBob looked.

I offered to e-mail him examples of the official art and suggested that he do a Google Image Search for SpongeBob to see that yes, SpongeBob’s cheeks really do work that way. He refused to listen, though, and seemed to suggest that we were trying to sabotage the project. I eventually had to tell him that I could get Kevin to alter the art to his liking, but it would cause us to miss our deadline by a day, Nickelodeon would reject the game because we altered its official art, and that would add even more time to our missed deadline. He, of course, didn’t like that idea, so I told him that I would take care of it and hung up. I then sent him a few pieces of official art to show him that he was wrong, and went back to work to make sure the game was finished on time. Not surprisingly, I never got an, “Oh, my mistake…sorry about that” from him.

Yeesh.

Despite all the trouble, I’m really proud of how Dilly Dabbler turned out. As an activity center for little kids, it’s actually pretty fun. We were even able to sneak a little bit of game in there, too.

Up next: Tele-Doodle!

During our most recent episode (#221), CJ, the Gregs, and I gave a brief recap of our past experiences in the game industry. So focused was I on the various writing that I’ve done over the years that I initially forgot to mention the brief time that I spent at Backbone entertainment as an Associate Producer (at least, until the guys reminded me).

Can you blame me, though? I was only at that job for five months before I was laid off. Some of the company’s other projects had been canceled, so it suddenly had a surplus of producers. Because I was the newest on staff, I was also the first one to get the boot. Sigh. Still, during my five month stay at Backbone, I managed to ship four products on time and under budget as well as get three other projects practically out the door. So, yeah.

You’ve probably seen games similar to those that I worked on during my time there. They’re usually called Plug & Play TV Games, and they were published by Jakks Pacific. They’re the self-contained controllers that plug directly into your TV; they’re usually loaded with a handful of different games. When I worked at Backbone (early 2004…cripes, that was seven years ago?), these TV Games were huge business. Store shelves were clogged with all sorts of different TV Game titles. Not surprisingly, Jakks wanted to get as many of these games into stores in as short a time possible in order to capitalize on the fad.

Over my next few blog entries, I plan on talking a bit about the TV Games in which I was involved. Of course, when it comes right down to it, the real credit goes to the fantastic programmers and artists that really shaped these projects. The guys that I worked with the most were Anthony Vaughn (the lead engineer) and Kevin James (the lead artist). These games had extremely small teams, usually with just one or two engineers and one or two artists working on each title. In fact, a lot (most?) of the artwork on a few of these titles was handled by Kevin–and he wasn’t even officially assigned to work on them. He volunteered to help me out after working on his “real” assignment. Talk about helpful. But yes, here are the TV Games on which I worked:

Spider-Man

One of many Spider-Man related toys that was intended to capitalize that that year’s soon-to-be blockbuster movie, Spider-Man 2. The slight catch was that only movie-licenses products could feature Doctor Octopus, and this game had the comic book license. Any other character was fine to use, though.

Jakks wanted to have a “main” platform game with a few mini-games as extra goodies. In addition to coming up with the level progression and boss fights of the main game, my primary job on this project was to come up with relatively simplistic mini-games that would fit within the hardware limitations (and this was not powerful hardware). What I came up with was a whack-a-mole variant, a Game & Watch inspired game with Venom, a 3D maze game, and what is essentially upside-down Missile Command.

For what they were, I think the mini-games turned out pretty darn well. They look nice, and they’re kinda fun to play. The stiff controller doesn’t do the game any favors, but it’s workable. I was especially pleased with the tile-based 3D maze game. I always enjoyed those pseudo-3D mazes in 8-bit games, so it was fun to get to work on one. The fact that the mazes are randomly generated is cool, too.

Although the mini-games remained true to my original designs, the main game was altered a fair amount as it was finished after I had been laid off. As far as I remember, about the only thing of mine that stayed in the game was the very basic boss fight against Rhino during the first level (jump over his head as he charges, and he gets stuck in a wall…typical stuff). I had a few other boss fights that I felt would have turned out well, but I don’t believe they made it into the final product. These included a rooftop battle with the Green Goblin where you had to dodge his pumpkin bombs while repeatedly latching onto his glider with Spidey’s web. After enough hits, you pull him down far enough that he crashes.

I had also planned a subway battle against Electro that had you moving between the platform and the subway pit. In addition to dodging Electro’s lightning bolts, there was also the occasional train to avoid and the constant danger of Electro supercharging the subway’s third rail, making the pit a death trap. The best way to defeat Electro was to hit him enough to push him back into puddles of standing water to “short him out.”

Oh, and when we were in the middle of developing the title, Jakks sent us over a picture of what the final joystick would look like. We all got a chuckle about how disturbingly phallic Jakks decided to make it. I found some footage of the game on YouTube, so you can see it in motion.

Within the multiple games, you may notice a trend of enemies usings bombs against Spidey. It may seem odd that so many of Spider-Man’s foes have decided to take up explosives, but this was something that Marvel told us to do. I suppose that cartoony bombs were a weapon that kids couldn’t easily get their hands on or something. Working with licensed properties can be pretty difficult as there’s usually days worth of back and forth just to figure out the simplest of concepts. When you’re on a three month production cycle, this can be quite trying.

Since Spider-Man’s release, there have been multiple other Spider-Man TV Games, but they’re all different from this one. It’s been years since I’ve seen this particular title in stores.

Up next: SpongeBob SquarePants Dilly Dabbler!

This week! We talk about the games of last year as if we’re still playing them. Because we are. That includes Donkey Kong Country Returns, EA Sports Active 2, Raskulls, Castlevania Lords of Shadow, Picross 3D, Limbo, Halo Reach and Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood. Plus who we are, 3DS, preorders, digital downloads and much more.

Own an iPhone/iPod touch? We’ve got an app for that–the Player One Podcast player app is available now. Play shows new and old, read show notes, access the show Twitter, website, email, voicemail line and more! Plus, you’ll be able to access bonus audio and video content (soon, once we figure out what that is). Click here to download.

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Follow us on twitter at twitter.com/p1podcast.

Thanks for listening! Don’t forget to visit our new web site at www.playeronepodcast.com. You can leave us a voicemail by calling 713-893-8069 or you can send a comment via MP3 to our email address, playeronepodcast@gmail.com. Don’t forget to join our forums if you haven’t already!

Running time: 1:26:11

Direct download: 01_17_11-Episode221.mp3

The last Metroid is in captivity.
The galaxy is at peace…

Holy cow! We’re finally doing another Game Club!

In celebration of our 200th episode of the Player One Podcast and the upcoming release of Metroid: Other M for Wii, we are taking a look back at one of the most acclaimed titles for the Super NES, Super Metroid.

Despite all of the praise that Super Metroid has gotten over the years, the game is over 15 years old now. Does it still hold up after all this time?^* Let’s find out by playing it together! Bust out your old cartridge or pick up the game for 800 Nintendo Points from the Wii’s Virtual Console.

We’ll be discussing Super Metroid on episode 201 of the Player One Podcast, so get playing and share your comments and/or memories. You can post them in the comments section of this blog post, in the official thread on our forums, drop us an email, or leave a voicemail (713-893-8069).

* Don’t be a fool. Of course it holds up! Still, maybe you have…odd…taste in games and you’re not a fan of Super Metroid. In that case, we really wanna hear from you.

Here’s the second pair of Atari pencils that 11-year-old Phil bought in 1986, and 35-year-old Phil is still hanging onto in 2010.

Series 1: Centipede

The cabinet art for Atari’s 1980 game, Centipede (as seen to the left), was some of the coolest artwork in the arcades at the time. Sadly, that trippy arthropod didn’t earn a pencil appearance. Instead, the art depicted here was lifted from the box art for the Atari 5200 and 7800 version of the game.

Still, a Hobbit-ish kid armed with a magic wand going up against a cartoony-looking centipede is pretty rad. Green, of course, is the obvious color choice here. I’ve held on to three of these pencils over the years.

Series 1: Haunted House

This is the first pencil that we’re looking at to be based on a console exclusive title and not an arcade game. Haunted House was released in 1981 for the Atari 2600, and the pencil artwork, not surprisingly, is taken from the game’s box art. In the game, the player is exploring a darkened haunted house, and only the walls and the main character’s eyes can be seen in the blackness. To find items, you must light a match that only burns for a short time. I know the game has its fans, but honestly, I could never get into it back in the day. And I played through the 2600 version of E.T., for crying out loud.

With its cool black color and cooler spooky design, this was a popular pencil among my classmates. I only have one in my collection. Does that mean it’s rare? Eh, probably not. I’ll just chalk it up to luck of the draw.

(Game screens taken from The International Arcade Museum and AtariAge)

Previous Entries:
Atari Pencils – Series 1, Part 1