TV Games – Spider-Man
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!
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