Meet Rocketmen Producer Tim Innes, captured here mid-karaoke.

CAPCOM: Hi Tim! What is your role in the Rocketmen game? TIM INNES: As Producer I organize things, offer business & game development leadership, write many emails, juggle flaming chainsaws, herd cats, and help make things go like a Pakled space captain. Actually my job is much more complex, and often involves various game development tasks and stand up comedy. C: What part do all the groups (developer, publisher, licensor) involved play in creating a game like this? TI: All three essentially become a team for any game made like this one. The licensor is the spark of life the game. They let the developer and publisher use their ideas and vision, and repurpose it into a video game format. The developer is then able to take the ideas from the licensor and recreate the game into a new vision and medium. They do most of the hands on work creating the game; components like programming, art work, writing, sound, are all things the developer works on daily. The publisher works closely with the developer to make sure the game has ongoing criticism, stays on track, wrangle resources the team may need, removes road blocks, gets the word out to potential customers, and ultimately ensures the game has the fun factor. It‒s an alliance essentially, with each group complimenting the skills and abilities of the other group. C: What initially sparked Capcom‒s interest in Wizkids Rocketmen series? TI: The characters and story stood out as something unique if you compare the game to similar titles in the same market space. Very few games out there have this extensive character customization, content depth, sense of humor, and a truly unique art style that taps people‒s old-school love of classic science-fiction. C: Who are the Rocketmen and what‒s their story? (Who are the characters and where/when does the story take place? ) TI: The Rocketmen are the leaders of the Alliance of Free Planets. They include Nick Sion and Zach Rathman who are both Rebels from Terra, and Alecto Mink from Venus. Essentially they are the defenders of the galaxy, and fight against the Axis of Evil using their ray guns, and wit. C: What is the Axis of Evil? TI: The Axis of Evil is the combined forces of the war hungry Martian Race and the newly created Legion of Terra. Together they have enough power to dominate the rest of the galaxy. The leader of the Legion of Terra, Lord Invictus, is constantly trying to rally the other planets and dominate the galaxy with his catchy evil ways. C: What is the object of the game? TI: The goal of Rocketmen is to defeat the Axis of Evil and restore peace to the galaxy. You know; hero stuff. Nick, Zach, Alecto, and the Player, must travel to Mercury to convince them to join the Alliance of Free Planets. Obviously this doesn‒t go well, and perhaps next time they will listen to me and bring a fruit basket. C: How would you describe the gameplay? What were your goals here? TI: Upgradable Run and Gun is the best way to describe it. The actual controls are similar to that of what is referred to as a 4-way shooter (one stick moves, the other points where to shoot.) But there are also secondary weapons like rockets and land mines that provide additional tactics. Although the game is very arcade like, the player is always earning experience points towards their character and can upgrade skills, weapons, and other cool stuff after each level.

It should be familiar. Just reading this you can get a pretty quick grasp: Imagine using the left stick to move right, left, up, and down to evade incoming rounds and enemies. Use the right stick to fire back. Pull a trigger to use a secondary item/weapon to fire rockets, launch seeking missiles, drop mines, etc.. And hit a controller button to activate stuff like doors, computers, control panels, … you get it. Controls are very easy to learn. Our goals were simple – old school gameplay with all the modern bells and whistles. I could compare the game to old classics like Robotron (a personal favorite), Contra, or even Smash TV, but those games are not as deep as this one (or 3d). I think ultimately the goal we accomplished was re-envisioning a classic game-play concept with better art, story, weapons, and a heavy dose of sci-fi smackdown. But gameplay is fast, challenging, you have to be competitive to get drops and use them. It‒s a busy game, and rewarding as you develop your character. C: What are the character classes and what are the pros and cons of the classes? TI: There are 3 character classes and 3 races to choose from. The Warrior class gives you bonuses to damage. The Engineer class gives bonuses to manipulating technology and gathering loot. The Outcast gives bonuses to secondary weapon damage like rockets, mines, etc. The most obvious thing about race is that they are from separate planets and look radically different. The game play effect (under the hood) is that Rebels gets bonuses to hit points, Venusians bonuses to speed, and Mercurians bonuses to toughness.

All stats can be upgraded independently of the race or class you’ve chosen. The choices you pick as a player give you a head start in your area of expertise, while letting you choose how your character looks in unique ways. C: How does gaining experience and using upgrade points work? TI: You gain experience by shooting enemies. Experience can be used to upgrade your character stats (hit points, speed, etc.). You buy the stuff with Loot that gets coughed up anytime you blow up environments or enemies. You‒re constantly gathering the stuff, and that‒s a good thing since it‒s used to upgrade your power-up weapons, purchase secondary weapons, and upgrade your armor (which changes how your character looks as well). C: For a downloadable title, we were really surprised to see character customization menus on par with some RPGs. What kind of features do you feel most proud of/which features will surprise new players? TI: Character customization will be a surprise for sure! It‒s fun making characters and watching them evolve throughout the life of the game. The fun isn‒t just from picking how they look, and seeing how they level up, but how they bring on the pain! Depending on how you play you get rewards (I shouldn‒t give away too much) that display on your character. It‒s a visual way to show your experience to other players. But after a while, when you have upgraded your characters skills, equipment, weapons, and have some unique bling, it‒s very fun to show up with your newb friends and be like “Need some help? .†On the lighter side of surprise, I think people will be pleasantly surprised with the humor and amount of story in the game. The title isn‒t intended to be stand-up comedy, or a comic book, but you should get some laughs. And although you can skip through cut scenes, the cut scenes do keep the game from becoming repetitive and help keep the players on task. I think it‒s a great balance. C: What are some of the more interesting weapons and power-ups you can collect? TI: Weapons have a progression similar to character development where after missions you can upgrade your rate of fire, damage, spread (just as a few examples). The weapons become more deadly and satisfying to use. Once you have maxed out the weapons the enemies pay a big price, and it is easier to be the hero in coop games. Upgrading your weapons with loot increases the stats of each weapon differently. For example, you can increase the one stat “bounce†on the Razor (a weapon that fires thin saw blade-like projectiles) so later when you pick up a Razor mid battle it bounces more blades off enemies and solid objects causing even more damage on the ricochet. There are four main weapon power-ups: Shotgun, Laser, Vulcan, and Razor. Each has its own special stats to increase. The Shotgun’s main stat is bullet spread; the Laser‒s is beam intensity; the Vulcan changes the rate of fire; the Razor, the number of times the blade bounces. Some of the more interesting secondary weapons include: an Airstrike from the Icarus Jane (the Rocketmen space ship) that clears the screen with a giant laser blast, a mini Turret that shoots enemies automatically for you, a “Seeker” Robot that chases enemies down and explodes on impact, and then the usual Rockets, heat seeking Missiles, Land Mines, Frag Grenades, Acid Grenades, etc.. There are also force fields, healing, other stuff, but it‒s really too much to list. C: What are the boss fights like? TI: Boss fights are the big classic fights with explosions, surprises, and they require a lot of dodging, shooting, and hit points to survive. For the most part, they are generally straight forward for arcade players, but some of them have a few tricks up their sleeves. I wouldn‒t say they are a puzzle, but there is a trick. If you don‒t know how to adapt, you may get rocked in the boss fights. If you die you lose some experience, so don‒t die. But hey, if it wasn‒t risky, why play?

C: The game has kind of a clean, classic look. How would you describe the style of the art? TI: It‒s a nod to Flash Gordon and all that old sci-fi serial fun stuff. The art style really looks interesting since the game uses a cell shader style of rendering, making the game at times look like a comic book. The rest of the game says Arcade game coolness, with explosions, lasers, robots, rocket ships, and lava. Ok, I guess I lava isn‒t totally clean and classic, but we still like it. C: Can I play this in single player story mode or with friends? TI: Rocketmen: Axis of Evil is a single player or 2-4 player co-op game. Not many Live games can say that, especially action ones. You can play by yourself offline to take your time and soak in the story, or go online (playing in the same story mode) and power up your character with friends. If you play online (even if you are alone/solo doing a few levels for a few minutes) your friends might show up and join in on the fly. No restarting and no losing progress. C: In multiplayer mode, can we play together in the same room and online? TI: Rocketmen gives you the option to play online or offline with up to 3 other friends. The game is built to make multiplayer easy to use and fun to play. Two to four player online cooperative play is the feature that matters. We believe people will naturally gravitate to the multiplayer game. Players will also be able jump right into games quickly, and not have to wait around for lobbies. C: What is your favorite aspect of the game? TI: That is tough. I love the combat, and yet I like the story too. Aside from multiplayer boss fights, my favorite part of the game is the character upgrades system. Every time you finish a level you get a small piece of equipment added to your character that makes them look different and gives them a slight stat boost. That means my character can look completely different from any other characters after only a few levels. You‒ll know for sure who‒s a veteran and who isn‒t, just from their look. Another part I really enjoy is the looting. Whenever you defeat an enemy, or activate an important tech device, all this shiny money springs out onto the ground. If you’re playing multiplayer it usually turns into a race to see who gets the loot first. The “Loot Vacuum†lets you suck the loot towards you, but, only when you’re not shooting. So the tricky thing is that you can try and suck the loot towards you (away from your buddy), but you’ve got to keep an eye out for enemies. It gets pretty competitive. It‒s usually the guy with the better Loot Vacuum (improvable through your engineering upgrade), that really cleans up. C: What were the biggest challenges for you on this title? TI: This game was very ambitious in its content, scope of gameplay, features, characters, weapons, and story. Basically this game is huge. A lot of games on Xbox Live Arcade are like … tiny… like Pluto. This game is like Jupiter. The hardest part of making this game, and the biggest challenge, has been getting everything to fit into a small downloadable file that people can grab and play easily. It is a huge value for the casual players, and the crazed arcade fans. C: With development for new downloadable titles working on a smaller scale, We‒d imagine there are certain creative freedoms but also some unique limitations. Can you talk about what those were and how you managed the balancing act? TI: We wanted this game to deliver so much, and frankly we delivered everything possible while keeping the download size relatively manageable. We are constrained through file size. But that helped us focus on gameplay, rather than making some tired non-interactive story fed through a game console. We wanted gameplay and story, without neglecting the fun of the arcade gameplay. So instead of going bonkers and making a story heavy game with long scenes and no gameplay, we use the cutscenes to focus the player and story in short bursts. Ya, you can skip it, but it helps the player know the missions and keep track of the plot. I personally don‒t like half baked story, so we didn‒t do a “Robot Monster falls in love with Robotron†epic story and gameplay hybrid. We spent our effort making big levels that change, evolve, and challenge. We gave the player the focus and tools to bring the smack down, and story be damned, you can just blow stuff up to have fun. And the story is way better than Robot Monster anyway, so I don‒t know why I brought that up except that came to mind. I have an odd mind. Isn‒t both those guy robot‒s anyways. Yikes. I should stop now.

C: This game is actually pretty funny. Tim, where does the funny come from? TI: Mercury. The planet, not the element. Seriously, I realize I may be a little too literal here, but clearly big green men are from Mars, women with blue skin are from Venus, and that leaves Mercury. Process of elimination; I call it science! Ok, I think many people like the old 50‒s sci-fi movies that were good and at times slightly cheesy. I‒m thinking this game whacks at the funny bone from that perspective. It is not a redux of Radar Men from the Moon, or Zombies of the Stratosphere (for those of you in the know). But the game does have that serial/episodic cliff hanger feel. And that, combined with some good writing and light hearted jabs, makes the game fun to watch. Game play is where the enjoyment truly is at, but for story and dialogue, it will make you giggle. I think this game taps a fun balance of cheesy goodness with poking fun at itself in a fresh way, while still being serious enough to entertain. And if you don‒t like cut scenes, story, or comedy, then skip it man. We have a button for that! C: We’d also like to ask the testers to give future Rocketmen players a “PROTIP†TI: The game has difficulty that encourages players to replay levels for better times, and you gain points even if you play the same level several times. If you have trouble facing down a boss, replay the previous level until you raise your character up, then face him again. Better weapon upgrades always makes life easy for Rocketmen. C: How can players get this game? TI: It will be available on the Xbox 360 Live Arcade and the PlayStation Network for PS3. C: When will it be available? TI: Depending on the alignment of the planets Rocketmen should touch down around Feb/March. C: How much will it cost? TI: Roughly $10 Terra dollars, but I would consider a fair trade for a thousand kilos of Newtonium. C: Do you always answer serious questions with a joke? TI: Every chance I get. Unless, of course, you have the Newtonium on you.