Interviews// Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - Developer Interview

SPOnG: With the game being released on every format imaginable, do you think there’s a risk of watering the game down to suit all formats?

Nick Harper: Yes, I think that’s always a risk. However, Ubisoft decided to split the development into four teams, so the games would vary. I worked on the main team developing for PS2, GameCube, Wii and PC. A separate team developed the 360 version and a third team made a unique GBA version. Finally a fourth team in Quebec developed a different version again, this time for the DS and PSP.

Because our target audience is 8 to 10 year old kids, we felt it was right to focus on PS2 and Wii as the main platforms. Overall, each development team followed the themes of brotherhood, acrobatics and ninja combat, except we each tried to optimize the game to suit the capabilities of the platforms we developed the game for.


SPOnG: Ah, the Wii version. How is the motion-sensing remote utilised?

Nick Harper: We did two things for the Wii. First we put the combat onto motion control. Because we want the game to be playable by six year-olds, it was important for us to keep the input mechanic fairly simple and when we playtested the game the results were really positive.

One funny story was when a kid was slashing with the Wii remote and got over-excited and started kicking with his own feet to try and kick the bad guys. It was kind of funny but indicated he was into the game so that was good for us!

As well as the combat controls, we created nine motion-driven mini-games (hey, it’s the Wii, of course there are mini-games!) that fit the turtles’ style. So for example the Leo mini-game has you aim the Wii remote at the screen and flick the nunchuk to throw shuriken at oncoming bad guys.


SPOnG: What famous faces can we expect to see in the game, after knowing that the Foot Clan are already going to make an appearance?

Nick Harper: Of course the Foot Clan are in as they’re in the movie. We also have Purple Dragons roaming the streets, who we took from the comic books. Then we have a third bunch of bad guys that we made up for the game, called the Black Gators. They’re these sewer-dwelling tech-heads that Don bumps into as he’s looking for electro-gadgets. Because they were new to the turtles universe we had to get Peter Laird’s approval which was cool for us – he took a look at the sketches and tweaked them for us and then approved the final 3D model. So hopefully in the future we may see some Black Gators in the comics or as toys!


SPOnG: Okay - a very important question. Will Shredder be in it? We would love to kick Shred!

Nick Harper: Yeah Shredder is in! We use him in a flashback actually. It’s kind of what I was saying earlier – in the game we want the player to understand how good it was when the turtles were a team, so we make them fight Shredder as a full team during a flashback.


SPOnG: There are a lot of fans of the TMNT out there. How much pressure has been put on you guys to create the best game possible?

Nick Harper: I tried not to let it get to me too much. It’s kind of weird because inevitably you read the forums and they go from “this is awesome” to “this sucks” on the next line. So I guess that shows how passionate people are about the turtles!

The other issue is that really the movie and the game are aimed at a more family-orientated audience but there’s still this hardcore fan base of 20-somethings out there looking for something like Ninja Gaiden but with turtles. So we’re trying to make a game that a six year-old can enjoy but also that a 20-something can get a lot of pleasure out of. Which is hard! From what I’ve seen when we had the game at Comicon in New York, a lot of the older crowd were really enjoying themselves, but we still had youngsters getting over-excited so I’m pretty pleased with the result.


SPOnG: We’re assuming you’re all fans of the series yourselves. Did you ever appreciate the original cartoon TV series?

Nick Harper: Yeah I used to watch Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles as a kid. I’m English so of course we had the renamed version because the BBC thought ninjas were too anti-establishment or something. Wasn’t that the point? Anyway, I watched all those with Krang and his crazy cohorts.


SPOnG: Who’s your favourite character in the franchise?

Nick Harper: I think it’s pretty difficult not to light a torch for Bebop and Rocksteady. They’re clearly misunderstood giants drawn to the wrong side of the tracks by the maniacal psychopath from Dimension X, Krang, and his equally subversive sidekick, The Shredder. April was always kind-of-cute too, in a Belle from Beauty of the Beast cartoon way.


TMNT is out now on several format, with the PS3 version following later this year - check out SPOnG's TMNT page for details and images. Thanks to Nick for his time with this interview.