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Mike's Ten Things Nobody Knows About Fightball
Designing a game with James can be pretty entertaining.
Fightball wasn't, sure, but it could be, hypothetically speaking.
Oh, I only kid because I love. Actually, we had a great time.
This section will pull back the curtain on ten unheralded
moments in our game design process. Because jokes are always
funnier if you have to explain them, right?
1. Fightball, Starring Air Jordan
I initially wanted to make a serious game with real NBA players.
That's 'cause I'm a basketball freak. I've got season tickets
to our local WNBA team, the Seattle Storm, and I'm at a bunch
of Sonics games each year. So the original decks for Fightball
featured Michael Jordan's 1998 Chicago Bulls versus John Stockton's
Utah Jazz, because those of some of my idols. Mr. Ernest,
on the other hand, finds pro sports to be dreadfully dull
and pro athletes to be a bunch of preening, overmuscled lunkheads
who have all the money he should rightfully have. That rare
combination of blind hero-worship and apathetic disdain made
us the perfect team to write a game about wildly exciting
basketball played by preening, overmuscled lunkheads.
2. It's All About The Baseball Furies
One of my top ten favorite movies is an over-the-top Walter
Hill gang flick called The Warriors. Like every great film
known for its pacing, it's the story of getting from one end
of New York to another. (Seriously. Check out Escape from
New York, On the Town, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three,
Marathon Man, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.... Okay, maybe
not that last one.) The Warriors concerns the titular boppers
trying to get from the Bronx to Coney Island. In their run
home, they throw down with a variety pack of gangs, including
the Baseball Furies, who, I kid you not, dress as the New
York Yankees. So they became the model for Fightball's teams.
The bat-toting Baseball Furies thought they were the kings
of cool in their pinstriped pajamas and Frank-Gorshin-on-Star-Trek
facepaint. But really, they were dolts, and got the horsehide
kicked out of them. Our teams needed that same vibe. They'd
think they were cool, and maybe others in their world would
think they were cool, but we'd know better.
3. James Is A Fightin' Fool
Fightball's working title was "Basketbrawl," so
named because it reminded people of Brawl, James's earlier
real-time game. But some videogame had already gobbled up
that title, so we needed something new. I'd been teasing James
that he was in love with the word "Fight," as he'd
already used it in five game titles - Fight City, Brawl: Catfight,
Dogfight, Fight the Power, and, well, Fight! So he came back
at me by proposing the name Fightball for our nameless little
game. Now how could I argue with that? Of course, that makes
it much harder for me to tease him about always spoiling for
a Fight.
4. I'm In The Cruisers
Our original names for the Cruisers were Domino, Norman, Stern,
Grace, and Action. Grace's name got changed late in the process,
because we really liked the spunk in the name Pepper. Action
got changed because playtesters kept seeing the card name
and wanting to "take an action." So James surprised
me by renaming him the highly appropriate Slick, which just
happens to be my nickname in some circles. I'm flattered,
natch, because I'm gonzo for films like American Graffiti
and West Side Story, which as it turns out was where the name
Action came from in the first place.
5. I'm Also On The Cruisers' Court
Earlier in 2002, I broke my arm while attempting the Canadian
national sport of curling. You might have seen this bizarre
activity during the Winter Olympics. It's beer-swilling duffers
chucking 42-pound rocks down an ice sheet, kinda like shuffleboard
on Saturn. Anyhow, I tried it once and enjoyed it, and I tried
it a second time and did a slick-soled pirouette through the
air onto the surprisingly hard ice. A bunch of mocking and
rehab later, my wife insisted that James put curling into
Fightball. James likes Evon better than he likes me, so if
you look at the Cruisers' Long Shot, you'll see Stern chucking
a ball from a curling circle. Kinda makes me want to get back
out onto the ice....
6. The Aztecs Invented Fightball
Well, sorta. The reason we made an Aztec team is because of
the ancient Aztec ritual game of tlachtli. In this game, two
teams battled to get a ball through a hole. It could get a
bit violent. That's because the winning team was showered
in the garlands of Aztlan, while the losing team was sacrificed
to the gods. That fact seemed the perfect little motivational
tool for high priest Huitzilopochtli (whose name we stole
from a Mexican city). We figure that such plays as Sudden
Death and Sacrifice Fly make a lot more sense when you take
them literally.
7. Team Sport Could've Been Even More Sporty
Sometimes James has to restrain me. Such an occasion happened
when we were naming Team Sport, my favorite of the teams.
I figured they'd all want to name themselves after ancient
sports heroes. And since they were gang members, they'd figure
that the biggest champions would tag their names on the various
paraphernalia of the sports. So I wanted to name them Wilson,
Fila, Ping, Brunswick, and Spalding (named for, respectively,
manufacturers of volleyballs, running shoes, golf clubs, bowling
balls, and basketballs). James said that if their names were
nothing but jokes, they'd never be anything but jokes. This
from a guy who once called a game "Stumpy the Cave Boy."
8. James Makes His Own French Letters
Speaking of jokey names, the Cavaliers not only got the cheesy
name Brie, but the French letter Çedilla as well. (See,
it's a joke within a joke, because in French, you don't use
the little tail on the C in front of an E, so the fact that
she has a cedilla in her name is an error on the part of the
français-impaired Cavaliers, and.... Huh? Okay, okay,
whaddaya want from me? My dad's a linguist, for Pete's sake.
But I digress.) Anyhow, the font in the card names didn't
have a good cedilla, so I forced James to make a new one in
one of his graphics programs. I think it looks quite stately
myself.
9. I Don't Believe Eduardo's A Real Brazilian
Fightball's talented artist, Eduardo Müller, is from
Brazil. At least, that's what James tells me. But I don't
believe it, because in an environment where we told Eduardo
to fill the art up with paraphernalia from all kinds of sports,
he didn't put in even one soccer ball. This from a guy from
the land of Roberto and Pelé. Uh-huh, sure. I'll bet
Eduardo's from Jersey, just like the Texas Wildcats.
10. I Already Know What's Gonna Be In Fightball II
James doesn't, of course. What, after all this, you think
I'm going to tell him?
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