Dad Strength is a comedic beat ‘em up video game modeled after old-school titles such as Double Dragon and Final Fight. In this postmortem, the game’s development process will be examined in depth. Dad Strength was developed over the course of two years, and luckily a developer’s diary was maintained throughout this time.
For those following the most current video game releases, MadWorld should need no introduction. In a nutshell, Madworld offer players a highly stylized, film noir environment in which to creatively torture and execute an assortment of grotesque and supernatural foes. The central controversies surrounding the game relate to its sole target platform - the Nintendo Wii. Before the game’s release, critics and fanboys have mainly argued the following points:
Simply and objectively put, the first argument is fallacious because the MadWorld developers specifically chose Wii as their target platform due to its unique motion controls (see: Why MadWorld is Wii-only). The second argument is dismissible due to the existence of Mature Wii games (Manhunt 2, No More Heroes) as well the illogical implication that Nintendo has a social responsibility to prevent adult content from gracing its consoles. The “Mature” rating on MadWorld’s cover should be the first clue to parents of young children that Super Mario Galaxy might be a better choice.
MadWorld was the first release developed by Platinum Games, a relatively new company formed by many of the ex-members of the dissolved Clover Studio (Viewtiful Joe, Okami). Since I’m a huge fan of their Playstation2 beat ‘em up throwback God Hand, I’ve been eagerly awaiting MadWorld’s release since it was unveiled last year. However, when the game was released, my Wii was inaccessible; My father had kidnapped it to play Guitar Hero World Tour. At the same time, I was facing the decision to have surgery to correct a level III+ acromioclavicular separation. The total time needed to completely heal from surgery and rehabilitation is 4-6 months, so it wasn’t a light decision. With the surgery date looming only three days away and no way to play my copy of MadWorld, I went insane and I did the only thing I could.
While developing a humble beat ‘em up game (an homage to such classics as Final Fight and Turtles in Time), I found myself in need of a way to organize various scenes. The game would start with a loading screen, transition into a short narrative, and finally cut to the title screen. Once the actual gameplay began, another scene would be needed to keep track of the entities, images, sounds, and other game-related objects for stage one. In keeping with the ethics of object-oriented programming, I decided to make the scenes themselves objects by creating a scene entity with methods for loading, activation, deactivation, and unloading.
Lately, I’ve been wondering if I haven’t developed a bit of ADHD. I have a handful of game ideas that I want to explore and the list keeps growing. The problem I’m facing is how to choose the best ideas and spend time turning them into projects. When I completed the scene entity (which took very little time), I made the decision to design a small game to test its usefulness (which took much more time). It turns out that the scene entity has very little to do with the final game, yet I am left with something much more satisfying. (more…)