Ask 411 Games 01.09.12: Snowboarding, Second Parties, Rockman, More!

Posted by Mathew Sforcina on 01.09.2012

Why didn't Claude speak in Grand Theft Auto III? Why aren't there more cruiserweight legends in WWE games? Where's Roll and Protoman in Mega Man X? And what happened with 1080° Snowboarding 2? All this and more covered this week in Ask 411 Games!

This would be, unless I'm very much mistaken, Ask 411 Games. I would be, unless I'm even MORE mistaken, Mathew Sforcina. And you would be… Well that I can't comment on.

I hope your year so far has been full of good gaming and what have you. Right now I have a thunderstorm about me, so let's get down to brass tacks, shall we?

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(Seriously, nothing, EVER, will top the Ask 411 Wrestling one. But dammit, this one comes close.)



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Remember, questions can go in the comment section, or, better yet, to [e-mail].

Mr. Ace Crusher ensures that the word wrestling will appear in this week's blurb.

While we're on the subject of why wrestler x isn't in a WWE game, I'd like to ask why there's been no love for 'crusierweight legends' like Dynamite Kid, Owen Hart, 123 Kid/X-Pac, or Dean Malenko in the current generation of WWE games (since these guys retired/since WWE has saw fit to include 'legends' in their games). Malenko and Billy Kidman are on the WWE payroll still and X-pac is apparently on HHH's talent scout payroll, so it's not as if they're completely non-WWE employees. Don't know why they wouldn't include them, especially with WWE 12 since *spoilers* there's a wcw invasion in the story mode */spoilers*

Well, Owen is easy: They can't without an agreement from Owen's widow, Martha. And she's batshit insane a really annoying person not on WWE's good books right now, and vice versa.

But for the rest, they would fit in the most recent game, or indeed could easily be put in. But the problem is, that there's only so many names they can get into the game. And added to that is that most legends that they might well put in aren't cruiserweights, to the odds are low that they'll be chosen.

And to top it off, you have Eddie in there every year. Which is fine, sure, but he's a cruiserweight (technically) and so they quite possibly view him as enough, maybe one more. Which this year was Ricky Steamboat.

Overall it's just a similar issue to the lack of smaller guys in WWE overall, not just in the games. WWE has some control over who appears in the game, as does THQ, so THQ would have to fight to get one in beyond Eddie, who I'm sure WWE are insisting gets put in. Just another sign that Vince loves the big guys.

Of course, who did Triple H push to hire this year? Sin Cara and Kharma, which, while not working out for either of them, does show that maybe he isn't quite as obsessed…

The Mime has an ironic question. Well actually it isn't, to qualify as verbal irony he'd have to be called Motormouth or something… Just get to the damn question.

Why wasn't Claude given a voice in GTA 3? I seriously doubt that they intended to make their main character for such a landmark game a mute



Actually, they kinda were. Or at least, it was a case of them making up the rules as they went along. You have to remember how big a step GTA3 was, and how it was without anything else to compare itself to. Sure, today, you have GTA3 and a zillion copycats to crib off, but at the time, Rockstar were making it up as they went along. Now today, yes, EVERY character speaks. But Claude doesn't. Why? Rockstar actually answered this a few weeks ago…

It may now seem obvious that people should all talk in games, but this was not necessarily the case in 2001, certainly not in an open world game. We were making up a lot of procedures as we went along, and we decided that the NPCs (Non Playable Characters) should talk and we would have to figure out how to make them talk (using motion captured cutscenes, something that had never really been done before, at least not on the scale we were doing it). So we decided that the game's protagonist would not talk, partly to aid people identifying with him, but mostly because we had so many other problems to solve and this did not seem like a major issue. We started to discuss introducing a talking lead character when working on Vice City, but it was a lot of work. While the structure of GTA3 may seem obvious or natural now, and the use of cutscenes made in the game's engine that look and feel like the game may seem simple and easy, it really was not the case back in 2001 when we had to figure out all of these things for the first time. Oh and in San Andreas, CJ calls Claude a mute because he does not talk and CJ finds this unnerving.

So basically they were finding it difficult to create the cutscenes, so instead of having to deal with two major characters in any one scene, make one a mute, and volia, your work is halved. And it allows the player to overlay a little bit of their personality onto Claude if they like. Maybe he REALLY loves Tacos. Maybe he hums along to Beethoven. Maybe he's Bi. Whatever you like.

Unless he pops up in GTA5. Which would be cool. Even if I've already bet on one of the women from GTA1.

Do want.



Do Sorta Want.



Want For Others.



Do Not Want.



And this is just cool.



Guest#9675 has a question that doesn't really belong here…

Is that Ferris Bueller's dad in the Journey the Escape commercial?



He's at 0:15.

And here's the dad, Canadian actor Lyman Ward.



Well, it does look like him. And the time line makes sense, Ferris Bueller's Day Off didn't come out till 1986, and the game was released in 1983, so it's probably him. But I can't say for sure.

JES takes us from the GTA world to the Mega Man one.

I have a couple questions.

Are Mega Man (classic) and Mega Man X the same person? Some people have said they are two different models, some have said X is Classic, just an upgraded one.

No, the original Mega Man…



Is not the same person/robot/whatever as Mega Man X.



Mega Man Classic is a robot, originally called Rock (with his ‘sister', Roll), designed to be Dr. Light/Right's lab assistant. His purpose was a general-purpose tool user. Simply by studying how a tool was used, he could mimic its use using a Variable Tool System, thus making him the ideal lab assistant. But then Dr. Wily rose up with a bunch of other robots, and Rock volunteered to be transformed into a fighting robot, and he became Rockman! I mean, Mega Man. Depending on where you are.

Mega Man is the same through the numbered Mega Men games, 1 through 10. Whereas Mega Man X was Dr Light/Right's final creation, and is a Reploid. A robot who could think and make their own decisions without programming limitations. This is many years after the original Mega Man games, and the two are not the same guy. They are different.

Also, have they ever explained in the X series what happened to Dr. Light, Rush, Protoman, or Roll?

Dr. Light is easy. When he built Mega Man X (at some point after Mega Man 8), he realised that the Reploid had no programming to make it do the right thing, no moral programming. So he locked X in a capsule to test him, running simulation after simulation to see if he was good or evil. This process took around 30 years, and Dr. Right wasn't around at the end, as he was very old to begin with. So he left a message on the capsule warning of the contents, saying not to release the robot till testing was complete. One Dr. Cain found him, used him as a blueprint, but forgot the whole "training to see if they are good or not" and the Reploids he built went evil/Maverick, and the Mega Man X series begins.

Protoman, Rush and Roll, being all related to the original Mega Man, do not appear in any form in the later games. It is several decades later after all.

BR asks about sequels for snowboarding.

1080 Snowboarding was a great game. There was a sequel for the Gamecube, which was ok, but before that, I remember there was gonna be a sequel on the N64, could of swore I even saw a picture or two of it. What happened with that sequel?



It became that.

OK, so 1080° Snowboarding was programmed by a couple of Englishmen, Giles Goddard and Colin Reed, who had previously worked on Wave Race 64, which was a massive success. 1080° Snowboarding was well received and somewhat popular, albeit not quite on the level of Wave Race. And yes, in 1999, Nintendo did announce a sequel for the N64, and it was given to second party developers Left Field Productions.

(Quick detour to explain that: First Party Developer = Owned/Part of the company that publishes the console in question. Third Party Developer = Produces whatever it likes on whatever it wants. Second Party Developer = Company that only produces for one platform but isn't technically owned by platform's owner. Although they may have a share.)

Left Field began work on the project, but then it was shifted from the N64 to the Gamecube since the N64 was near the end of it's lifecycle and the GC was the new hot thing. Now, Left Field had begun as a third party company, and then in 1998 Nintendo bought a minority interest in the company and made them second party, as they began to work exclusively on Nintendo properties. But after many months of rumor and speculation, Left Field bought Nintendo out in 2002, and went third party again. As part of this deal, Left Field were removed from 1080°: White Storm and first party Nintendo USA division Nintendo Software Technology Corporation were put in charge, and they released 1080° Avalanche in 2003. It's not sure what, if any, of Left Field's work was left in, but it's said Left Field's version was probably much more arcadey.

So, in conclusion, it became the Gamecube version.

Now, that's all for this week, as next week, we hopefully will look at a topic that you could call Kudos or Eulogizing or Stroking. Maybe. If it all works out. Remember, questions can go in the comment section, or, better yet, to [e-mail]. Until then, check that you're who you think you are, and then wish yourself a good day.