{"id":5639,"date":"2022-05-16T16:25:08","date_gmt":"2022-05-16T14:25:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pr.gagadget.com\/behind-the-scenes-with-mythforce-the-video-game-thats-an-awesome-80s-cartoon\/"},"modified":"2022-05-16T16:25:08","modified_gmt":"2022-05-16T14:25:08","slug":"behind-the-scenes-with-mythforce-the-video-game-thats-an-awesome-80s-cartoon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pr.gagadget.com\/en\/behind-the-scenes-with-mythforce-the-video-game-thats-an-awesome-80s-cartoon\/","title":{"rendered":"Behind the scenes with MythForce, the video game that\u2019s an awesome \u201980s cartoon"},"content":{"rendered":"
Behind the scenes with MythForce, the video game that\u2019s an awesome \u201980s cartoon<\/div>\n
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The lesson of MythForce<\/em>, if Beamdog\u2019s zany roguelite has one, is that parody is easy; homage is hard. It\u2019s simple enough to snicker at the 12-frames-per-second animation of the 1980s, and the cynical narratives that the decade\u2019s syndicated cartoons spun to sell Jem and the Holograms<\/em><\/a> <\/em>dolls or Centurions<\/em><\/a> <\/em>playsets to kids coming home from school. But making that look and feel come home to someone playing a video game, as if it were a cartoon come to life, would take a lot <\/em>of work. They\u2019d have to work against <\/em>the engine they\u2019d be using to build the game, even.<\/p>\n

It was worth it, Eric Booker and Luke Rideout said. Their boss, Trent Oster, wasn\u2019t sure. <\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re telling me,\u201d Oster said, summarizing a conversation with Booker and Rideout, \u201cthat you want to take Unreal \u2014 which is really good at doing photo-real stuff, and lighting, and all this awesome stuff \u2014 and you want to turn all that lighting off, and put a bunch of effort into making it look how it\u2019s not supposed to look?\u201d<\/p>\n

The look, of course, is what makes MythForce<\/em>, which launched April 20 in early access on the Epic Games Store for Windows PC. In gameplay, yes, it\u2019s a lively, first-person hack-and-slash adventure where players level up a team of characters with loot and XP from procedurally generated dungeons. In look and sound, MythForce <\/em>players are plundering a world of pure 1980s syndicated UHF cartoon nostalgia. All it\u2019s missing is a blue-screen 1-800 ad for Freedom Rock<\/em><\/a> <\/em>or Time Life Books<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\u201cMy favorite thing to watch has been when [players] first boot it up, that theme song comes on, and, like, the four or five seconds of confusion,\u201d said Beamdog artist Micah Pettibone. \u201cAnd then people just, literally, jamming to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

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