The Vancouver-based team at Next Level Games (NLG) has been churning out awesome games for years - from their award-winning Super Mario Strikers to the wicked Mario Strikers Charged and their last title, Spider-Man: Friend or Foe! To celebrate their comic-book adventure, Gary went knocking on their front door and had a chance to pop in and chat with them about what it was like making a superhero video game. Here's the 411 on making video games at Next Level Games!
Welcome to Next Level Games
 The Front Door |
 Hard at Work |
Next Level Games - Creating a Spider-Man Adventure
Spider-Man's newest game of multiplayer comic-book mayhem started in March '06 when Activision gave Next Level Games a call and told them to make a Spider-Man game. About 15 game developers at NLG put their heads together to make a 10-page outline for the game.Next Level Games - Comic Book Characters
NLG had a lot of freedom to include all kinds of comic-book characters so they started with the Spider-Man 3 movie, then added classic characters and some up-and-coming stars like Iron Fist. The final roster made sure there was a good mix of cool moves and styles - like Rhino being kind of slow but able to take a heap of damage, while Black Cat moves like a ninja but can't take a hit! Then it was onto the rest of the game.Next Level Games - Spider-Man World Tour and Humor
The Next Level Games team also took Spider-Man out of New York and sent him around the world in his battles against Mysterio and his mind-controlled minions. They had an NLG writer team up with a Marvel writer to come up with all the fun chatter in the game (booyah for the SHIELD computer!), and made sure to include lots of jokes and stuff about old comic book things - like the Hypno-Hustler and old Twinkie ads you'd find in comics! Once the characters and story were done, it was time to build the game.Related Stories:
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