One of my favorite kinds of video games is beat ‘em ups, a genre that feels tailor-made for co-op action as you roam the streets with your friends to face whatever opponents come your way. The first one I remember playing as a kid is Streets of Rage , which led me down a path of leather-clad bad guys and healing foods in barrels. These days, studios like Tribute Games continue to hold onto that nostalgia, creating beat ‘em ups that both embrace the old school days of yesteryear and pay homage to iconic IPs. My introduction to them was with the totally radical Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge , and I’m happy to report that their latest release, MARVEL Cosmic Invasion , is even more ambitious. Yannick Belzil (the narrative designer), Adam Marin (the art director) and Matthieu Godet (the lead animator) took the time to talk about the game’s development, revealing how anime has made an impact on their work and which anime series would make for a great beat ‘em up. You’ve done beat ‘em up games in the past; for example, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge is one of my favorites from you. What is it about this style of game that draws you in? Adam Marin: As an artist, I find beat ‘em ups are actually a great medium to tell stories. Unlike more open-world game genres, the linear levels in beat ‘em ups have a closer resemblance to storytelling modes used in comics, manga and anime. It’s not a genre traditionally associated with “story,” but I find we can do a lot in this space that wouldn’t be practical in other kinds of games. Also, I think working in such a classic genre allows for a lot of originality in what kinds of conventions and expectations you follow or subvert. Matthieu Godet: I love how tight beat 'em up games are. They are very short experiences that are difficult to master, but the learning process is really satisfying. Ideally, there is no filler in a good arcade game, and everything has a purpose: combat beats, story, visuals… each part needs to be delicately crafted. That’s something I enjoy and admire about them. MARVEL characters have been in all kinds of video games. What was it like putting them in a beat 'em up? What makes MARVEL characters such a good fit for this style of game? Yannick Belzil: If you look at classic MARVEL comics, a lot of them are centered around action and combat. Many of their powers are physical and fun; they become a tool you’d love to use during fighting. With so many characters to choose from in the MARVEL universe, how did you go about figuring out which characters should be in the game? Belzil: Choosing heroes came from a variety of factors, the first being gameplay. We wanted our characters to feel different, for example: are they flying or grounded, do they have projectiles or not, can they block or dodge the adversary? From there, we chose characters that fit our aspirations, as well as characters we like. Marin: Something I love about the roster is how we could showcase heroes across different strata of the MARVEL universe: so we have more street-level heroes like She-Hulk together with a character like Beta Ray Bill, who himself has one foot in the mythos of Asgard and the other in the cosmic realm. We wanted a roster that demonstrated the vastness of MARVEL stories. RELATED: SHINOBI: Art of Vengeance Creative Director Ben Fiquet on Breathing New Life Into a Franchise He’s Loved Since Childhood This game really has an old-school feel, from the graphics to the voice work (for example, Alison Sealy Smith and Cal Dodd from the original X-Men 90s cartoon are back as Storm and Wolverine). What inspired you to go in this direction for the game, versus giving it a more modern feel? Belzil: It’s part of our mission at Tribute Games: making games that feel the way you remember them. We wanted to push that beyond the gameplay, but also the presentation of our characters. Here, our idea was to present the 2005 Annihilation saga as if it were adapted from the 1990s Marvel cartoons. It allowed us to play with iconic versions of the characters we enjoyed and that still have a lot of appeal to players. As I played the game, it really felt like the moveset fit for each character. Black Panther, for example, is really fast and uses a lot of quick combos compared to someone like Storm, who can fly in the air for her attacks. How did you figure out how to make each character play in the game? Belzil: All of these characters have such strong personalities and powers; it was pretty simple to figure out the type of gameplay that would be appropriate for them. It was part of how we chose our hero roster as well. I was told that the game has some anime-specific references. Can you discuss those references and what you feel they add to the game? Marin: I’m fascinated by the ways characters from Western media are interpreted by artists from Japan, including stuff like the T eenage Mutant Ninja Turtles OVAs or the Japanese-animated intro to the X-Men: The Animated Series . Our game is inspired by 90s and 00s comics and animation, and there’s this huge cross-cultural influence between anime and manga and American animation/comics of that time, so there’s definitely an anime-esque inspiration in how we adapt MARVEL heroes to our pixel art style. Godet: I watch a lot of anime, and it definitely impacts my own work when animating, to say the least. I guess if there’s one obvious reference to a specific manga/anime, it would be Nova’s Special attack pose; he is pretty much doing the Dragon Ball charging ki pose there! What is it about anime that inspired you to add touches of it in the game? What do you feel anime adds to video games? Marin: Great anime is associated with great storytelling – sometimes that’s about plot, dialogue and narrative, but just as often it's the way images are used to tell stories: with striking scenery, moving animated performances or incredible action scenes. In the beat ‘em up genre, we’re uniquely positioned to leverage that latter kind of storytelling, so when we see an opportunity to learn from the care, craft and technique that goes into great anime storytelling, we jump at it. RELATED: Arc System Works CEO Minoru Kidooka on Over 30 Years of Creating Games for Everyone Godet: Anime impacts my work as a game animator in the importance I give to strong keyposes, relative to stuff like fluidity. This is similar to the approach studios like Studio TRIGGER use with limited animation, where cool-looking drawings really pop out during action sequences. In action games, when an attack connects, it triggers a “hitstop,” a short freeze that adds visual impact and lets the player know their attack hit the enemy, and it also gives them a little bit of time to continue their combo, etc. This freeze emphasizes the keyframe, so those drawings really need to look their best, while inbetweens take a backseat, especially since most attack animations are fairly short. The pipeline we use when working on animations for Cosmic Invasion is also similar to the anime pipeline: we first draw rough keyframes in a higher resolution, then tie them down in pixel, then draw the inbetweens, and finally do clean-up and rendering for all those drawings. Between each step, I’ll do corrections if necessary so that every animation looks coherent in the game. If you could do an anime beat ‘em up, what series would you want to do? What anime do you think would make for a great beat ‘em up like MARVEL Cosmic Invasion ? Belzil: I’d love to make a Guyver beat ‘em up. I have fond memories of the 1989 anime series. It probably would NOT be as family-friendly as our previous games, with way more gore. Marin: I grew up watching stuff from the shonen boom in the early-to-mid 2000s. Maybe this is cheating since it was a game first, but I think a Megaman: Battle Network / Rockman.exe beat ‘em up would be really fun. The characters are so expressive, the viruses would make amazing enemies and I love the 2000s early-web aesthetic. Godet: It’s really hard to answer this, as I’m typing, I’m constantly thinking of different shows. I’ll just cheat and list my top five. Yu Yu Hakusho , JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure (Part 2 is probably the best fit for a beat 'em up), Golden Kamuy (there could be at least three or four different bear boss fights. So much reuse!), GTO – The Animation (maybe Shonan Junai Gumi instead?), and Saint Seiya (truly showing my age). A similar question as the one above, but this time with a focus on anime characters. What anime characters do you think would fit in a beat ‘em up game? How would you go about figuring out their movesets? Marin: Kage from Ranking of Kings could be a really fun oddball character: slinking around as a pool of shadow on the ground and pouncing out, and there’s lots of room for expression in his character design. A lot of shonen anime have awesome “gag characters” and slapstick stuff, which is an area I’d like to explore more. Godet: Maybe this is a bit of a strange answer, given we just made Cosmic Invasion , but to be a great fit for a beat ‘em up, I think a character’s power level needs to be somewhat reasonable. If you take the cast of Final Fight , Cody, Haggar and Guy are powerful enough to destroy a whole gang, but they’re still human brawlers, so it doesn’t feel odd when they get overwhelmed. Adult Goku, for example, is NOT a good beat ‘em up fit, in my opinion! Yamcha, on the other hand? Now that I could see. An alternative timeline without Goku, where Yamcha and the other Earthlings need to protect the planet against Vegeta, Nappa, Raditz and some OC Saiyans, constant waves of Saibamen… I’d definitely play that. RELATED: Pick Your Street Fighter 6 Main Based on Your Taste in Anime Since up to four people can play MARVEL COSMIC Invasion , what would be your dream four-person anime team-up? Belzil: The kids from Neon Genesis Evangelion . I just want them to have a nice time playing video games as a respite from their harsh EVA pilot lives. Asuka would not be a gracious team player, though. Godet: If we’re talking pure nonsense crossovers: Future Trunks (NOT the Super version), Josuke Highashikata ( JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable ), Raoh from Fist of the North Star (Hokuto no Ken) and that one gorilla from Cromartie High School .
