An Interview with Obsidian Entertainment

Obsidian Entertainment was the developer behind the recently released Fallout: New Vegas.  We recently sent a reporter to interview Chris Delp, director of Quality Assurance for the game.  We caught up with him in his office, where he was hovering in midair next to his chair.)

Brad:  Ever since New Vegas was released, there have been numerous complaints about glitches within the game.  Is addressing complaints a high priority for the company at this point?

Chris:  Oh absolutely.  (At this point, Chris’ head begins slowly rotating 360 degrees, independently of his body) One of the ironic things about making a game like Fallout is that because you’re introducing so many fictional elements into something that’s supposed to imitate the real world, the parts that are supposed to be “realistic” need to be as believable as possible.  Otherwise, people aren’t able to suspend their disbelief in order to accept things like world-ending nuclear war or Giant Radscorpions.

Brad:  So for instance, when a character starts floating in midair all of a sudden, that can actually make people less interested in the story?

Chris:  Absolutely.  People don’t just start floating in the air for no reason.   I mean, I might float over across the room and pick up that coffee cup that’s stuck halfway through the ceiling, but I’m not going to just start floating for the hell of it.  It wouldn’t make any sense.

Brad:  It seems like even the smallest details can cause big issues, then?

Chris:  Sometimes, but it really depends on what those details are.  One big one is the way people and animals move.  We spent a lot of time getting the animations right, because it’s something people really pay attention to.  When a dog moonwalks across a room in the game, we want it to look as much as possible like the way your dog at home would moonwalk.  Here, let me show you something (Chris glides across the floor while remaining in a sitting position, and points to some employees who are levitating about 5 feet off of the floor).  You see those artists over there?  Their entire job on this project was just to handle all the different animations in the game.

Brad:  What about complaints people have had with some of the weapons glitching?

Chris: We’re working on it, but it is a pretty tough job to handle right now.  We wanted to make the game so that anything a person could use as a weapon in real life, they could use in the game, and it would behave the same way.  Obviously, that’s a huge challenge.  After all, a rifle doesn’t act the same way as a shotgun or a flamethrower.  Even melee weapons have to behave differently – stabbing somebody with a knife is a lot different than hitting them with a baseball bat or an anteater.  Or if I was to shoot a rocket launcher, it’s going to make a different kind of explosion than if were to equip the receptionist over there as a weapon and shoot missiles with her.

Brad:  Some gamers have questioned whether this game was play-tested at all.  What do you say to an allegation like that?

Chris:  Well, I think a lot of comments like that come out of frustration, and we did play-test the game, obviously.  But I do admit that we did have some difficulties with the testing process this time around.  Three of our testers spontaneously dismembered in the same week.  Completely unrelated incidents, too.  Just sitting at their desks, and all of a sudden their arms, legs and head just all fell off at once.  Another guy had a door close on him, and got stuck halfway through it, so he was out for about a week.. Another guy – our lead tester, actually – the chair he was sitting on exploded.  You know, that’s life though, these things happen sometimes.  You have to work through it as best you can, which is why we’re so dedicated to getting a patch out to fix all of the problems people have encountered.

Brad:  Thanks for giving us this interview.

Chris:  Any time.  Here, let me get the door for you (his arms suddenly extend to be 30 feet long, as he reaches across his office, the hallway, and reception area to open the door) There you go…  Oh bother, the sky’s bright green again today.  Hope you brought an umbrella.

Members of Imaginary Rock Bands Angry Over Having to Switch Discs

Fans of the popular Rock Band game franchise took to the streets this week to protest the exclusion of some songs from the new Rock Band 3.  Several insulting words were hurled in the direction of the developer’s headquarters as game nerds expressed their impotent rage at not being able to play a handful of their most somewhat liked-songs in the latest version of the game.  No injuries were reported, but police are advising citizens that anyone who goes onto a Rock Band message board does so at their own risk.

At the heart of the issue is the fact that Rock Band 3 allows players to use songs featured in previous titles as part of the new game.  However, a few songs, most notably those by the bands Soundgarden and Red Hot Chili Peppers, do not transfer to the new game, and can only be accessed through the games that they were originally featured in.  The thought having to occasionally play Rock Band 2 instead of 3 is so abhorrent to many gamers that they’ve taken to complaining loudly while lining up to buy the newest game in record numbers.

“This is completely unacceptable,” said DaveMustaineRulez69 “you’re telling me that if I wanna play ‘Give It Away’, I’m going to have to get up, put my Rock Band 2 disc in, and then play that?  And then I’ll only be able to play almost all the songs from Rock Band 1, Rock Band 2, and all the other stuff I’ve downloaded, but not the songs from Rock Band 3?  Unacceptable.”

Others were less diplomatic:

“They should all be killed, along with their families!”  Screamed one distraught fan.  “I will never buy a game from this company again and anybody else who does is retarded.  And most likely gay.”

One industry expert tried to explain exactly why fans found this move so offensive “Nothing like this has ever happened before.  Every game sequel ever made has always allowed players to access all the content from prior games.  This would be like playing Street Fighter 3 without being able to play as Dhalsim, or playing Ms. Pac-Man without having an option to play as regular Pac-Man.  No game has ever not done this for you, which means Rock Band 3 is the first game in history to screw players over like this… well, besides Rock Band 2.”

One fan summed up the frustrations of many by saying “All my life, all I’ve ever wanted to do was take a tiny plastic guitar and play a setlist of ‘Cold As Ice’ followed by ‘Enter Sandman’ then ‘Any Way You Want It’.  Now I can’t.  Oh sure, I can play all those songs, and thousands more, but not without changing games in between.  Thanks for nothing, assholes.”

Fake Game Profile: Chrono Champions

Review Screenshots User Reviews Cheats & Secrets

Release: Summer 1995

Platforms: SNES

Genre: Fighting

Preview: (Originally published in May 1995)

Fighting fans are about to get a history lesson when Chrono Champions hits the SNES this summer. Featuring the greatest warriors throughout history fighting to the death, the title is sure to generate interest beyond the normal audience of fighting fans. After all, who hasn’t wondered whether or not Blackbeard could beat Caesar in a brawl?

Although the roster of fighters is sure to make this a “thinking man’s fighting brawler”, hardcore fighting fans need not worry – Chrono Fighter’s is set to be the goriest fighting game in history! The game will feature more different Fatalities than the entire Mortal Kombat series put together, with a whopping total of 430 different ways to kill your opponent. Each fighter will have over 20 different fatalities of his own, as well as several stage specific and victim specific ones. In addition to this, there will also be Friendships, Babalities, Animalities, Car-alities, and an all-new kind of finisher called an Okoye-ality, in which you can turn your opponent into former NFL star Christian Okoye! Cramming this much carnage into a game is sure to raise some eyebrows among anti-violence groups.

In fact, the game is already generating controversy. “The guys who made ‘Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure’ tried to sue us, because so many of the characters from our game were also in their movie,” explains lead character designer Don Schultz. “At first, I thought screw them – they don’t own history, but we later changed two characters just to be safe. Joan of Arc was replaced by Caesar and Sigmund Freud became Erik the Red. We also had to take out Attilla the Hun as a playable character, because nobody on the development team knew anything about him historically. We still kept him in as a non-selectable sub-boss instead and just kind of guessed what he’s was supposed to be like. The real Attilla probably wasn’t a T-Rex, but what the hell – it’s only a sub-boss.”

Even with those changes, the game game is still sporting a rather impressive roster. Players can choose from some of the most famous warriors the world has ever known, including Aristotle, Napoleon, Blackbeard, Andrew Jackson, Billy the Kid and Genghis Kahn. Each character has a unique fighting style consistent with historical records, and an arsenal of moves that they even might have done in real life. An actor was even brought in to the studio and wore several authentic-looking costumes for digitization that should make the game look so real, you’ll think it’s actually happening.

Tips, Cheats & Secrets (Submit a secret)

• Napoleon Bonaparte’s “Fake beg for mercy” special move (f,b,f P) doesn’t do any damge, but instead makes your next attack unblockable. Use it to set up the “punch back of head” special move (qcb, P) for major damage, or to launch into the devastating groin kick, groin kick, eye poke, throat bite combo.

• Andrew Jackson’s special moves are as follows:

Ol’ Hickory: qcf, P

Whoopin’ stick: PPP

Teleportation kick: hcb, K

Trail of Tears (fatality): f,d,b,b P

• To do Genghis Kahn’s “Cannibal” Fatality, you must be on Julius Caesar’s stage, fighting against either Blackbeard or Billy the Kid, and have your back to them when the match ends.  Move exactly one jump length away from your opponent and press (hcb, K, qcf, P) at the exact moment that the bird in the background flies over your head.  Also, you must still have 3/4th or more of your health, and there has be be between 70 and 74 seconds left on the match timer.

Trivia and Fun Facts

• Every character in the game has at least one special move with the word “Whoopin’” in its name.

• All of the characters in the game speak English except for Julius Caesar who speaks in Latin. When he throws a fireball, Caesar shouts “Roma Ardet!” (Rome is burning!), and during his Whoopin’ Uppercut, he says “Cave canem” (Beware of the dog).

Unrealistic Moments in the Game, Factual Errors & Glitches

• Contrary to Napoleon Bonaparte’s profile, a person cannot earn a black belt in “Fighting Dirty”. Also, it is chronologically impossible for Napoleon to have received his training from the “Nature Boy” Ric Flair.

• Due to a developer misunderstanding the term “19th century”, the background of Billy the Kid’s stage is set in the 1980′s instead of the 1880′s. This also explains Billy’s “breakdance” fighting style as well as his constant references to ghetto blasters.

• Although some Vikings were bloodthirsty raiders, Erik the Red became famous for his exploration and navigation, and not for “eating the hearts of the women and children”, as stated in his introduction.

• There is very little evidence that Aristotle knew kung-fu, and absolutely nothing to suggest that he taught it to Plato.

• No matter which character you beat the game with, the ending text is always accompanied by a portrait of Blackbeard.

• Caesar can still do the “expose breasts” Friendship move that was originally intended for Joan of Arc.

• Finishing a match with a “Friendship Move” still causes the opponent to explode into a pile of bloody guts.

• Blackbeard’s and Genghis Kahn’s game dialogue was accidentally switched, as a result Genghis Kahn talks like a pirate while Blackbeard talks like the stereotype of a flamboyantly gay man.

• Andrew Jackson’s stage is supposed to set in 1800s Washington D.C, yet the Statue of Liberty and Space Needle are both visible on the horizon.

Our Review: 4.0/10 (July 1995) “…considering that making the game playable clearly took a lower priority than making the game ultra-violent, what’s truly remarkable is that on top of all it’s other problems, the game really isn’t that gory…” (Read the full review)

User Reviews         Average user score 9.0/10 (1 review)           Submit a review!

Title	User	Score
Yeah, kick his head off Aristotle!	SnakeRulez	9/10

Fake Game Profile: Zombie Plague! (Starring the NFL QB Club)

Review Screenshots User Reviews Cheats & Secrets

Release: Fall 1994

Platforms: SNES, Genesis, 32X

Genre: Action

Preview:  (Originally published in June 1994)

This fall, gamers will be taking control of Steve Young, John Elway and other elite NFL quarterbacks, only this time it isn’t going to be on the football field! In the upcoming game Zombie Plague, it will be up to these passers to repel a horde of undead monsters, and rescue fellow QB Bubby Brister from their clutches. Players can choose their favorite QB Club player, then trek across dangerous stages while throwing pigskins at enemies to kill them. We played an early version of the game, and it played a lot like the arcade classic Total Carnage, except with football and zombies and about 100 times more awesome!

The concept behind the game is certainly an original one, and lead designer Chris Delp was excited to explain how he came up with the idea. “People don’t want ‘just another football game’,” he said. “This is the age of Shaq-Fu. Gamers want to see their favorite sports stars doing something other than playing sports. We love to see them doing cool things like killing zombies or fighting crime.”

A concept as amazing as the one behind Zombie Plague is hard to improve on, but the development team has come up with some exciting ideas throughout the game’s production, including adding a few football-themed minigames between levels. And although the basic idea of the game has stayed the same since development began, there have been a few changes in that department as well. “Originally, the object of the game was going to be to rescue Dan Marino,” says Delp. “But then we figured it would be more fun for players if they had the option to play as Marino instead. So we changed it to Bubby Brister. I mean, nobody would want to play a game where you’re the princess and you rescue Mario.”

Players can play as any of the QB Club members (except Brister), and each one has his own unique abilities. For example, Randall Cunningham can run faster than the other players, and Bernie Kosar can cast magic spells. According to Delp, “The game may be fictional, but we still want to keep it as realistic as possible. We want people to be playing at home and say ‘Yeah! That’s exactly how Boomer Esiason would kill zombies with a football in real life’.”

Of course, all that realism would be wasted if the game didn’t have great graphics to show it off, and already Zombie Plague looks great. The game makes extensive use of digitized graphics, much like Revolution X and Mortal Kombat. Real quarterbacks from the Canadian Football League were even brought in for extensive motion capture sessions to ensure that all the animations were done properly. Little details, such as putting numbers on the player’s jerseys and the fact that Randall Cunningham and Warren Moon are black are even shown in the game, making it that much more realistic. In fact, the graphics are so good that when we set two TVs next to each other, one playing a tape of a football game, and the other one running Zombie Plague, and watched them, we had a hard time telling which was which!

In order to keep things interesting, the game will feature a number of different levels, including a graveyard, a factory with plenty of conveyer belts, and a final stage at the Super Bowl. A variety of weapons can be picked up throughout the level, such as exploding footballs and a special spread shot that allows your quarterback to throw multiple balls at once to cover multiple angles. Additionally, there will also be a number of different enemies to fight, including several different types of zombies as well as bats, robots and horses.

Zombie Plague is scheduled to hit store shelves in just a few months (right in time for football season!), and is already looking fantastic. Tune in next month for the review!

Winning Tips, Cheats & Secrets (Submit a secret)

• On the ice level, throwing while standing still will cause you to slide backwards slightly.

• Use Jim Kelly’s “Throw interception” special ability to automatically target enemies and lock in on hard to hit bosses.

• Shooting all the trees in Level 3 will cause the word “sucks” to always appear after Troy Aikman’s name for the rest of the game.

• To kill the fast moving ninja zombies, aim slightly ahead of them. Remember – a good quarterback throws the ball not where his target is, but where he’s going to be!

Unrealistic Moments in the Game, Factual Errors & Glitches

• It is impossible to shoot down an Apache helicopter by throwing footballs at it, even for the members of the NFL QB Club.

• In the Super Bowl level, the scoreboard in the background reads “Dallas 6,031 – Buffalo 13″. This was not the actual final score of Super Bowl XXVIII. Also, Jim Kelly did not throw 274 interceptions in the game.

• Although fictional, it is widely accepted that zombies eat people’s flesh or brains, not kidnap professional football players.

• The Genesis version of this game contains a known glitch whereby touching any of the blue stalactites in the Cave Level will cause the Genesis to overheat and burst into flames if not turned off within a few minutes.

• In the graveyard level, Bruce Springsteen, President Reagan, and Larry Bird are shown raising from their graves as zombies and attacking the player. All three were alive at the time the game was released.

• The theme music to ABC’s Monday Night Football is not actually set to circus music. Also, the real lyrics contain no references to dragons.

• Being armed with a taco generally does not make it easier to kill sharks.

• Although the cutscenes before level 5 contain several references to “saving the president”, Bubby Brister was in fact not the President of the United States, nor of the NFL QB Club.

Our Review: 5.5/10 (October 1994) “…What a mess – it’s basically just a bunch of leftover ideas and unused levels from other games that they simply slapped the NFL QB Club license onto and tried to…” (Read the full review)

User Reviews               Average user score 4.6/10 (5 reviews)  Submit a review!

Title	User	Score
Why would anyone bother to rescue Bubby Brister anyway?	Bradshaw1972	3/10
Not too bad, Not too great	PhantomMeanace	7/10
This is why we had to put up with “QB Eagles” and “QB Browns” in our Tecmo games? So their real names could be used in this instead? WTF?	JadedNinja	1/10
Don’t listen to these weaksauce non-gamers, this game is HARDCORE!!!	Eric M	9/10
Did zombies eat the programmers brains?	KefkaSnake	3/10

Fake Game Profile: Three Amigos! (The Game)

Review Screenshots User Reviews Cheats & Secrets

Release: November 1989

Platforms: NES, PC (IBM compatible/Compaq/Tandy)

Genre: Action

Preview: (Originally published in September 1989) (hide)

Riding out of the Old West and on to your NES this Christmas season it’s… the Three Amigos! After failing to obtain the rights to make a Star Wars game this summer, a lot of companies would have given up and gone out of business, but C&R games decided to do the next best thing – make a game about the Three Amigos! (Editor’s Note: the exclamation point is part of the movie’s title – we’re not THAT excited. Well, maybe a little…). Players will get to take control of Lucky Day, Dusty Bottoms, or that annoying one Martin Short played as they battle through six stages to defeat the infamous El Guapo.

Fans of the movie ought to be pleased, as the game looks to pay the film proper homage. For example, the first stage has the amigos breaking into their old studio to get their costumes while being chased by security guards and giant bats. Later stages include a shootout at the cantina, the Mexican desert, and El Guapo’s ice fortress. Along the way, the amigos will have to deal with rats, spiders, bats, bandits, Indians and even a band of marauding zombies. Fortunately, they’ll have plenty of firepower at their disposal, with slick powerups such as rockets, lasers, and split-fire.

As for the gameplay itself, we’ve gotten a chance to play an early version, and all we can say is – totally awesome. The game is a side-scrolling platformer with a heavy dose of action. Think Ninja Gaiden with guns. Or Contra, I guess. Except with cowboys. The version we played had some control issues, and it was almost impossible to make most of the jumps, but we’re sure that will be cleared up before this one gets released. We spent a good 10 minutes playing this game and already we can say is that it’s pretty darn radical.

Winning Tips, Cheats & Secrets (Submit a secret)

• Each of the Three Amigos has his own special ability. Ned shoots the fastest, Dusty jumps higher than the others, and Lucky sings the best. If you are having trouble with a stage, try doing it again with a different character.

• To defeat the invisible swordsman, try throwing grenades. Even if they miss, they will still make him turn visible for a few seconds.

• Piñatas drop health-restoring candy when shot, but the candy will explode if not picked up after a few seconds. Be careful!

• The flamethrower power-up is slow, but can do a lot of damage. Save it for the hardest to kill enemies.

• Fighting the German pilot head-to-head is only going to get you killed. Instead, climb onto the rooftops and wait until he dive bombs you. Then jump over his plane and shoot him in the back as he flies away.

Trivia and Fun Facts

• In order to make the game more marketable in Mexico and other Spanish-speaking countries, the title was changed to Los Mariachis Festivos, which roughly translates to “The Festive Band”.

• Three Amigos! NES cartridges were manufactured with a special protective coating that was supposed to help keep the cartridge’s contact points clean. The clear, sticky coating instead attracted dirt and dust molecules, frequently making the game nonfunctional and often spreading to (and damaging) any NES that it came in contact with. This substance, when combined with cleaning alcohol (the main ingredient in most game cleaning kits), would form a corrosive chemical compound that instantly destroyed the console’s internal circuitry.

• In 1995, C&R Games made some minor graphical and storyline changes, and re-released Three Amigos! As Saint’s Quest, a game in which players control one of three apostles as they try to prevent Mexican Bandits from stealing all of the bibles from a small town in modern-day Kansas. Gameplay and level layouts were nearly identical.

• In order to make the amigos easier to tell apart on the NES, the colors were changed on each amigo’s costume. Lucky Day wears a green outfit, Dusty is red, and Ned has a pink shirt with a yellow hat and boots.

• The final scene of the original film, in which villagers dress up as the Three Amigos to trick El Guapo’s bandits, was not fully understood by the Japanese programming team which had only an English-language version of the movie to work with. As a result, the final stage of the game instead has the amigos slaughtering the villagers, who are some kind of doppelgangers under El Guapo’s mind control.

Unrealistic Moments in the Game, Factual Errors & Glitches

• The existence of an ice level in the Mexican Desert is extremely unlikely.

• There is a glitch in the PC version of the game which causes the item “Lucky’s Lasso” to not appear on the third level. This item is required to finish the stage.

• In the first level, the Three Amigos are already wearing the costumes that they are supposed to be stealing.

• Lucky Day’s seething hatred of Batman and the Green Lantern was never mentioned in the original movie, and also makes no sense within the context of the game.

• The Panzer Tank that Ned drives in the desert level wasn’t invented until several years after when the game is supposed to take place.

• Pressing the jump button while playing as Dusty Bottoms causes the game to reset back to the Title Screen.

• No part of the original film even remotely resembles the second level of the game, in which the Amigos jump from rooftop to rooftop while being attacked by scorpions, bats, and Aztec Indians.

• Mexican bandits typically do not throw shurikens at their enemies.

• On the Character Select screen, a fourth amigo, “Chewbacca”, is shown but is not selectable. This is simply leftover programming from the company’s original attempt to make a Star Wars game.

• No species of scorpion is known to be able to repeatedly hop over a fully-grown man.

Our Review: 5.0/10 (October 1989) “…I don’t think anyone was expecting a perfect recreation of the film, but this generic, run-of-the-mill fare hardly resembles the movie it’s supposed to be based on at all. You could change the main characters and just as easily have called it any movie you wanted…” (Read the full review)

User Reviews               Average user score 4.5/10 (4 reviews)  Submit a review!

Title	User	Score
Nothing like the movie…	Snake Eyez	3/10
We are the Three AAAAAAAHMIGOS!!!	Grrrl Gamer	6/10
A potentially fun game ruined by poor control	JadedNinja	5/10
Aren’t there 10,000 NES games exactly like this?	Psyko Clownz	4/10

An Explanation of Fake Game Profiles

Anyone who has read enough game magazines knows that the previews they write about upcoming games tend to be overly optimistic, almost to the point of absurdity.  Go back and look at some of the worst games to come out within the last 15 years or so, and you’re sure to find at least a few magazines that wrote previews for the game before it came out that made it out to sound like the greatest thing ever.

Taking a bit of inspiration from Wikipedia, Gamefaqs and the Awful Movie Database on Something Awful, we’ve come up with our own preview section, in which we make up terrible-sounding games, and then write about their impeding release as if its going to change humankind for the better.  As an added bonus, each preview also has a follow up section, which details interesting facts about each game, as well as a list of each game’s many, many errors and glitches.