I'm Doc Issues from Capes on the Couch, a show that examines the mental health issues of comic book characters. Part of the Gunna Geek Network. Just like the show you're checking out now, shows on the network are individually owned, and opinions expressed may not reflect others. Find other amazing geeky shows@gunnagnetwork.com welcome to Play Comics, where once again, we are looking at a video game based on a comic property and how well it represents that source material. And today, we are coming to the end of an era because at least as of the time of recording this, this is the last Spawn game that's ever come out. And I don't know if they're ever going to put out another one ever again. So I was racking my brain, who can I actually get to be a guest for this episode? And I thought, you know, maybe I should try talking to Rob Doynes, who drew a recent Spawn series. And it was really good. And a special guest. Did I pull that off?
You were like, which artist is currently not working right now? He just finished something, so, you know, he's free. He's free. We got him. Right?
That was it. Exactly. How did you know?
Not my first rodeo.
That's right, everybody. I got Rob Dwayneus here, who just finished up. You know, just. Let's use just loosely, but just finish up. Drawing Spawn Kills every other spawn, and in the future, you can get that collected. Now you're just gonna have to get single issues, but we are here to talk about Spawn Armageddon. So, Rob, how are you today?
I'm good. I'm doing well. I'm actually drawing a Spawn Kills every spawn sketch Grabber Commission.
So nice.
I mean, not while we talk, but it's right in front of me. That's what I've been doing this.
If you could do it while we talked, then I. I would be very impressed.
Oh, I can. I just, you know, I'm like, you know, it's an hour. You can focus. I'm used to streaming like, six, seven hours while I'm working anyway, so it's not a big deal for me, but. But no, I'm doing really well. I'm gonna be honest with you. When you were like, spawn Armageddon. I'm like, of course, of course, of course. How about the best spawn game? Spawn Eternal, right? No, we get Spawn Armageddon.
I still have nightmares.
You want a quick story about Spawn Eternal? I got for you.
Yes.
This involves Todd. Yes.
Let's do it.
So I grew up going to Sandy. I grew up in San Diego and my first San Diego Comic con was in 92 when Image founded it. I didn't know. I had no idea. Ty. And then we're forming a company. But I knew him from Spider man. Fast forward three years later or so or four years. 96, 96, they had a demo for spawning turtles. 96 or 97, they had a demo there and the game was horrible. Nobody wanted to play. They had three little TV stations set up at the Spawn booth. Nobody played it. I brought my little brother. This is 97. I brought my little stepbrother with me and I put him in front of it and he started playing it. Like little kids do sometimes. They just have a way of mashing the buttons in a way that makes a game work. You ever experienced that where they could just make a game work? And you're like, this makes no sense. He's doing nothing, but somehow it's happening. And while he's doing it, I look over to my left and Todd's just standing there, like intently focused on. He's like an eight year old kid is making the game happen. He's like, all right, yeah. He's like trying to study and figure out, you know, is this going to work with kids? Maybe this will actually work. And then my little brother looks at me, goes, this game's crap. I was like, well, I just won't introduce myself, you know, I think we're done here. Spot eternal.
Well, maybe he didn't recognize you later when you got hired on to write this art.
He most certainly did not.
So what was it that really got you into Spawn in the first place, besides being a kid at the perfect time?
Well, I was. Let's see, I was just about to go my freshman year when the book came out. I was a Todd fan. I'm into cartooning. Like, I'm a cartooning guy. And Todd's work, although was detail, had lots of lines, was cartoony to me. Very Disney eyes, had this mixture of. Of some. Of Michael golden. Because I knew, like Michael Golden's work on the Nam because my uncle used to read that book. And I was like, this is like a cartoony book, very serious subject material. So I was really into Todd's just cartoony style. And when he started Spawn, I was like, well, I'll pick up this. And it made me laugh is essentially it. Like the violator shows up and there's like some crude humor. But I'm like, you know, you're not getting a lot of chuckles out of mainstream Superhero Books in 1992.
So.
So, like, I just stuck with it. Every month I picked up Spawn and Savage Dragon. Yeah, those are the two I picked up. And boom, like, that was my three books a month, you know, or every other month. Because Bone wasn't on the monthly schedule. And I suck with Spawn all the way through till issue 100 when they killed Angela. And I'm like, you know, I think I'm good. Like, I liked Angel Medina's art. So Spawn with sort of realistic in the art style, I want to say, with the Brian Heberlin art, sort of when I jumped off. But every now and then a cartoonist comes along, like Carrie Randolph or Capulla would come back or Eric Larson has a run on it. And I jump back on, you know, for that sort of cartooning. But again, anything else, it's just, it's a creator owned book. And I was of that era. Like, turtles were my first creator owned experience with the comic book. And the idea that you could create something, own it and take it whatever direction you want, and if it's successful, reap the rewards has always been what I've, you know, like the dream. Right. Like, it just appealed to me from day one. So Spawn was like watching Todd take it from, you know, his high school sketches, which he's always been really open about. Like, like, and he shows you the sketches, you're like, it's true. He really did. And to a comic book, to toys, you know, when he first launched toys, and then to the video games, the Super Nintendo game, which I was a huge fan of actually. I really loved the Super Nintendo game. So to me, it was just awesome to see. It was like, you know, you really could do it. It wasn't just a fluke with the turtles, like a one off, you know, this was something that was replicatable. I need enough talent and tenacity and know how and everything. But it was possible.
Did you ever think growing up that you would get to be working on this thing that you loved so much?
Oh, no, no, no, no. People would say, one day you're going to work for Todd. I'm like, first people don't work for Todd. Like, one guy drew the book for almost 100 issues, got it in him or it was great, right? And two, I never saw my art in that category. I couldn't, I couldn't definitely mimic a Jim Lee or Rob Liefeld or somebody. But when I drew on my own, my art was more in line with Bill Watterson and Jonah Vasquez and like action figures. You know, toys like Mario always felt toyetic, like not. Not Spawn. So I was like, yeah, I don't really think so. And also to the point, I think the artist probably most aligned with in comics was probably a guy named Carlos Miglia. And Carlos Ormeglia, he might be known. And Meglia passed away in 2008, but he did a Star wars miniseries that was really great. And then he did a comic called Cybersix. There was a cartoon about that as well. And so I would always love to see Maglia draw Spawn. And so when I did get. When Todd hit me up, I'm like, are you sure you want to do this? But I know Todd, when he first did the Spawn Kill stuff, you know, he wanted to do a parody book. I always saw it as like, you know, when Spawn shows up, you can have a cartoon style to it, but the Spawn should still be Spawn. It shouldn't be like a goof of Spawn. Like, I have like a theory on that where it's have fun, but don't make fun. Right? Have fun if you're good. And that's why I thought like the best of Mad magazine and those things is they were having fun when they did a parody, but they weren't taking a dig at it, like just to knock it down or anything, you know. And so that's. So the draftsmanship on those old Mad magazines and stuff were something that I always appreciated, although I never emulated. So, no, I did not ever think that I'd be drawing Spawn. I did think that maybe if I could get my head around sculpting, maybe I could work on toys one day. But I eventually got into T shirts and licensed apparel as my full time gig in the early 2000s. So I just kind of forgot about learning how to sculpt. My bed just disappeared. But I think looking back at it, if I woke up tomorrow in 1996, probably would have spent more time sculpting and drawing. But yeah, no, I didn't ever thought for one second. Todd did have a guy named. Was it Cleary, the guy who did that. He had like a Todd like style a little more wilder. He. He did like the interior, those little comics he used to ship with the toys. And that guy had like a more cartoony style, but not like what I do.
I think your art on Spawn kills every other Spawn was a nice little change from what I had seen. Granted, a lot of what I have seen lately has been just trying to read along with Spawnography. So a lot of that older Greg Capullo stuff. But seeing this real cartoony art in there, I think was just a nice touch because, you know, I see Spawn in the video games here. I see Spawn in that one issue of Sonic the Hedgehog. Because no matter what, when I'm looking up Spawn, that pops up for me, it's nice to see another take on this character, and especially one like yours, knowing that Todd likes it.
Oh, thank you. I mean, yeah. I mean, for the most part. I mean, every now and then he'd be like, what are you doing, bud? What is this? What is this cover? You know, like, you'd get that note.
Well, he didn't fire you, so that's a good sign.
No, well, see, he's in a bind with, that is. Not a lot of people want to sit down and draw interiors. Once you got a guy who's willing to sit down and put the work in, you kind of hold on to him. He's a great coach in that way. No, I. I appreciate that. Also, you know, for me, like, I just. I think as a kid, like, or even a teenager, young adult, I always loved, like, Ren and Stimpy and then Beavis and Butthead, you know, Liquid Television and then eventually Invader Zim and Powerpuff Girls and Samurai Jack. So there's another kind of cartooning that, to me wasn't Care Bears, you know, wasn't playing cutesy. It was playing with more attitude. And so I remember looking at the Spawn Kills Everyone books initially, the other two, and thinking, like, man, this was with more Nicktoons and Cartoon Network, I think I'd enjoy this more. They weren't madly drawn. They just worked exactly what I was hoping to see. And I'll be honest, when Todd hit me up, I'm like, seriously? I'm like, ok. And he's like, draw how you want to draw. But so I did that. You know, I think it threw some people off at first, but by the fifth issue, most of the fan reviews have come in very strong. Like, I think they got it by the end. You know, like, consistency helps. And anything you do, if you're consistent with it, and by the end, I think you can bring new people along. But for the. I think definitely Spawn fans. I'm a Spawn fan. And anytime you tell someone you love Spawn, usually the first thing is really like, why? And I'm like, I don't want to explain why I like things to you. You don't have to explain to me why you like sports. It's not my opinion. I don't need to know. So I think sometimes when fans of something see a cartoony version come up, they're expecting it to be a dumbed down version or a lesser version or it's goofy on them. But for me, I love Star wars, but one of my favorite Star wars is the 2D candy Tartakatsky clone wars shorts. You know, and they weren't talking down to Star Wars. You know, they were having a more fun animated take on it, but it was being quite serious. So I just was really appreciative that Todd was on board with all that, you know.
Yeah, it's really nice knowing when people are going to let you do your thing, just let you have fun with it. And Spawn is just such a weird, fun comic anyway. You know, like, here's all these crazy things, like where else are you gonna have somebody with a shoelace being part of their like physical features and stuff? Like that's just insane.
Not just a shoelace. But then people don't even know if it's in continuity, shoelace or not. Like you never like, he's like, it's not really Batman. It was, but it is. There's this weirdness. And that's what I love about about creator owned comics is you can or any creator owned property really is the creator. So the character can be as reliable, the story can be as reliable as the creator. So it can change on a dime sometimes. And I love that some people don't. They want like, okay, so in issue one, it was specifically this. And I'm like, well, not really like Sherlock Holmes. Sometimes Watson's arm, his injury would change from book to book. Sometimes he's on the left arm, sometimes he's on the right arm. And you're like, yeah, yeah, just go with it. So I've always appreciated it and Todd just has a. The more I sort of spent like a good year and a half kind of talking to him off and on. You get a real good sense that the books were just a product of this kind of quirky sense of humor. And he is a naturally funny person. One time we did a meeting and he ended it with a Dr. Evil pinky million dollars.
Nice.
Came out of nowhere. And it's just like, you just don't, you know, you're like, God, this is awesome. Yeah, so I'm with you. You can have detectives Sam and Twitch. You can also have giant cybernetic gorillas. You know, then you can have the angels and demons. And then it can literally just be like, listen, the like Twilight Zone episodes, you know, we're just random, weird, evil things are happening to people, and Spawn is just somehow tangentially attached to it. And yet, you know, it works. Once you stick around it long enough, you get the vibe, you know. But if you try to, like, tell anyone, here's this specific story arc and it goes here, it's very difficult to to do that with Spawn, I think.
But I think that's a lot of the fun of it, because at least from what I've seen so far, even if it contradicts something that's happened before, it's something that's like, all right, here's the turn in the road. We're going to go this way now. And it just starts to be consistent with future things until it needs to change again. And not having the giant corporate red tape that you have in Marvel and DC with 80 years of continuity to worry about. I don't want to think about how many years it is a Spawn. So don't tell me that math, because that's not how math and time work.
I know you're like, no, I don't want to know. Also not feeling being taught it, because it is like you can have different Spawns. Not feeling the need to reboot this every 10 years or something with the new issue one that is not something that has happened.
Well, we're going to sit around holding our breath for a Spawn reboot while I drop some promos for a few other shows.
Hey there, Hell Spawn. Is your regular podcast rotation missing a show that dives deep into the gritty darkness, one of the greatest superhero creations of the 90s. Well, we've got a show for you.
I'm Pierce Lydon with George Marston, and this is Spawnography.
We're for two longtime comic book journalists who are ready to take you from the alleys of New York City to the depths of Hell itself as we dissect each arc of Spawn, unraveling its mysteries and celebrating its legacy along the way. New episodes drop every Monday wherever you get your podcasts. Because for Todd so loved the world, he gave his only begotten Spawn Spawn. Fans of Play Comics, would you please go to Kickstarter and search for Suspicious Behavior Productions, because if you do, you can get the first issue of our comedy horror miniseries by Centennial Kill. And you can get your first edition autographed print copy of Invasion from Planet Wrestletopia the Complete Series, all for just $19. But you only have until May 15, so go to Kickstarter, search for Suspicious Behavior Productions. Thank you for your support.
Those are some great things to listen to. But first let's finish up here. So, Rob, what we're here really to talk about today is spawn Armageddon, this GameCube PS2 Xbox game that came out in 2003. It was made by Point of View and Namco. And for some reason, I don't know, I. I don't think I've looked at any Namco games on the show, which is weird. Point of View makes more sense because I haven't really heard from them. But no Namco games. I just don't get it.
Yeah, I know Point of View, like personally, like. So I was in College in 2003 at the Art Institute of San Diego and they would bring. There was a bunch of just random indie. I say indie developers, but there was these little satellite studios like Haimu, these guys that made a game called Mark of the Cree. I forget the name of their studio. And these guys, Point of View were based out of Irvine, but there were a bunch of guys that came from Midway. They did Midway ports, if you know, Midway games. We made Mortal Kombat and stuff like that. So these guys were mostly doing ports of like, I think Ready to Rumble was a game they had mentioned at the time and Mortal Kombat trilogy and some stuff on the Saturn. I'm a Saturn fan. So they came in to speak once and I was like, I mean that sounds like a fun place to work. And then they told me their credits. I'm like, these games were never good. You know, they said they were working on the Spawn thing, which I was like, really? Oh man, I hope it's more arcadey. It was like my thought at the time, I was hoping because Midway was a company that knew how to make an arcade game. But usually when the arcade games came home, they didn't go further. Arcade game in the way that at this time in place, Soul Calibur was a game in this arcade. But when Soul Calibur went to Dreamcast, it felt like a full featured home port. Had extra modes and adventures and time things and a little bit of story stuff. So when, when they were making the game, I knew that there was a good chance this could be a 5050 title. They tend to be more visual based and less game feel based. I don't know how to describe that if you know what the game feel means, how like a game feels when you play it. Like if it plays right. And a lot of these guys were real just sort of like tech heads. So I felt like when I, you know, when I eventually played the game. My. My worry for me, my worries about what may or may not go wrong.
Were accurate, I think even more than I thought. I got the perfect guest for this episode.
Now I have a weird Kevin Bacon like, experience with life. You bring up some random place like point of view or. Or hurdy gerdy, and I'll be. I know those guys. You know, like, I shouldn't, but I do.
One of the things I was really looking at in here is like this game saying that it's looking at issues one through 99. 99 is kind of a weird number to say that you're stopping at for your inspiration. So I'm looking at it and like, all right, when did that issue come out? And all the dates I could find were September of 2000. So, you know, I might be a month or two off one way or another with how comic dating works and stuff. But that's close enough.
I can tell you why they say 99. Because Malboja gets killed in issue 100. And so in this game, they're not dealing with the death of Malboja, they're just dealing with all the random. Because there's a bunch of random storylines that occur. And as I remember it, Angela and Cogliostro and stuff, they're not in this game, which were under a lawsuit for the longest time too. So. And Angela's death is a hype is the. The big thing that happens in issue 100. So I imagine not wanting to deal with that was also one of the reasons for that.
That seems like a really good reason. Okay, that makes a lot of sense because I came into this wondering too, like, when did they start working on the game? Because I don't know how long it takes to make a game.
I'll be 2001.
Okay. Okay. So definitely after the game came out.
This is probably an 18 month title, you know, around there. 18 to 24 months. Yeah. So to early 2002. 2000, late 2001, I have to imagine.
Yeah. Because I was thinking maybe. Okay, like, is that just the last thing that was out or close enough, but it seems like it's like you were saying a lot more of a, we don't want to touch the lawsuit.
Yeah. Or if the lawsuit wasn't going on the back and forth with Todd and Neil was. Was happening at that time, you know, to be certain.
And when we say this game is based on issues one through 99, that is a very, very loosely used version of the word based. Partly because you have a game and it's not going to be able to cover 99 issues of comic anyway. And partly because it's not like they went back and got direct storylines. They just kind of said, hey, here's stuff that happened in these issues. We're gonna take inspiration from it and do that kind of thing, you know, which is fine.
Yeah. I'm of the mind that no video game should, unless it's a literal adaptation of something like the death of Superman. You know, video game or any other media opposite its original media should find a way to adapt and condense down to its best strengths. So I'm fine with that. It is funny though, when they were like, it's from issues 1 through 99 and you start off the game, you're like, no origin. Right. Like, it feels more like issues 60 through 99. Like the comics, you know, you're like, it feels like we're well into this by now.
Which I think is also fine. Because Spawn. I know for me, I didn't know a lot of people who read the Spawn comics or anything. Like, I knew people who saw the movie because it was just a cool looking movie. But we didn't really know what was going on with Spawn. And quite frankly, we didn't really care because he just looked really cool and we knew he had the big old cape and he could do cool stuff and that's all we needed. So skipping an origin in this game too, that's not anything that bothered us at all.
Right, right.
But what this game does is have you take like that third person action style of game, and you're going through the city, you're going through just different waves of enemies and stuff, and going around killing everybody, collecting souls, trying to get through to that end of the game, and kind of attempting to make you feel like Spawn.
Well, I mean, yeah, I sort of. I mean, here's my thing. Like, and I felt this way at the time, and I don't think much has changed for me on this matter is if you really don't have active use of Spawn, Spawn's cape, and you're not really, you know, playing as Spawn. It's still kind of like a brawler. The only game that has really incorporated his cape into the gameplay was the Super Nintendo game. And obviously a lot of it has to do with just the technical limitations at the time. I mean, physics, cloth physics, even. Even to do something like Batman's cape in the Arkham Asylum games, which would ship, you know, maybe six years later, the physics was still not at that level. You know, on PS2 level titles. So maybe. I mean, you didn't even have capes in Final Fantasy Games at that time, right? You don't have like a swan scarf blowing in the wind. So, you know, it was still very, very rigid from that standpoint. But I think if you had grown up with the toys, which I think a lot of people, because they were at Walmart, probably had a Spawn toy whether they knew the comic or not, then, you know, I could think you could pick up this game, like just run around, got muscles, you know, like beat Stu up.
You know, on one hand, yeah, you've got the ax, you've got the chains you can use. You kind of halfway have the cape that pops out when you're jumping certain places, and that's about it. On the other, there's that just gameplay limitation of. There's so much more that I feel like this game needed to have in it to make me really feel like Spawn. Because honestly, me playing this, I just felt like I was a dude who happened to have an axe.
Right. Well, remember this game came out a couple years before the first God of War. And I feel like had this game come out post God of War, you'd have a much more God of War like game, you know, like God of war, that first PS2 game, really nailed that feeling you got from the 16 bit era. Beat em ups like Fatal like Final Fight and Streets of Rage and all the Konami, you know, beat em ups like the Turtle games. It felt like it managed to figure out how to do that in third person. Feel arcadey, but also have the brutality of like a mortal Kombat or GTA 3. And then it had really excellent art, design and voice work too. And it had mature humor and mature, you know, like there's like half a million monsters ripping off heads and stuff. So I know this game gets likened to Devil May Cry and I can sort of understand that, but to me, I feel like they were. They were clearly onto something, but they didn't have, you know, the studio to execute that thing before it existed. So had this game started development in 2005 after God of War, I feel you would have got a much stronger game that that reflected maybe the actions you see in the cutscenes versus the gameplay.
Oh yeah. This coming out in 2000, I think is probably the source of a lot of problems with it.
2003, right? 2000, yeah.
This coming out in 2003. That's what I said because that's how time works. This coming out in 2003, even even still is a source of a lot of the problems. Maybe even a bigger source of the problem then because you have everybody try to make everything look realistic. They can almost pull it off with things like back in 2000 that I originally said there you still had people doing PlayStation era graphics where you know it's not going to look all that realistic. So you either just kind of do what you can and everybody's cool with it, or you just stick with 2D stuff or 2 and a half D stuff and you. I know, right? You can pull all that stuff off.
Yeah. You could do a cloth like in think soulcalibrate, someone with like a cape or a shield. You could do that when it's just two people on screen. But when you have to render multiple enemies and also have pathways and so anytime you have pathway in a game that especially the characteristics jump you just. It makes things way more complicated for them to optimize. Especially in the day of 2003, developing on PS2, GameCube and Xbox very difficult. None of those three systems had similar architecture or similar dev kits at all.
Yeah, I feel like that's something that a lot of people just tend to not think about at all because it's not like you're going to making a game and then saying all right, button do all the things for PS2 and then button do all the things for Xbox. Like you almost have to make the game over and over again.
Yeah, yeah. And. And there's just memory limitations. It uses memory in different ways. Every architecture has its own hardware specialties. Like the PS2 had motion blur built in that you could get really great motion blur. Like if you remember metal gear solid 2 had all that rain in the open sequence that's built into the system. That's hardware based tricks like shader tricks we would call those today. They weren't really shaders, but when those games are emulated, those magical little blurs go away. And you always look at the emulation like how come it doesn't look right? Because it needs the thing built into the system to do it. So when you take away all that stuff then you can't even get the atmosphere effects that the PS2 could give you. Or on the the GameCube you maybe you don't probably, I don't know. The GameCube had a 7 to 1 texture ratio. So maybe you could have more interesting textures. Right. But then maybe the textures wouldn't load the right on the PS2 because of the way the PS2 draws the texture into a certain Bus that has to cache at a certain time. These are very difficult things to do. That's another thing over ambition, I think probably caused this game to fail. And I could see why, because they were guys used to doing ports and this was going to be their first big. It's a combo character. People know. They know it. Todd is like a drive away or a quick two hour flight away. Probably came into the office. I don't know. I've never asked him about it, but I can see all that. And I could see, you know, everyone trying to find a way to get that big brawler like action game on the hardware, but then doing it for all three systems at the same time. Ship on GameCube and Xbox, you know, like, man, that, that I. I mean, just pick one, right. Like at the time for certain.
And I want to make sure that we don't miss out on the fact that the voice acting in this. Holy crap. The people that they got in here. Right?
Yeah, yeah. Keith David comes back. Joe DiMaggio's in it. Right from every now and then vaguely you hear Bender, you know, like, if you're listening, it's a little unfair, but the voice acting is great. I mean, just getting T. David back alone was. I mean, you know, they care, right? They weren't trying to make like a. THQ was known at the time for making those like kind of garbage ports. They get like a Looney Tunes game and you know, just crank it out right before the Looney Tunes movie comes out or whatever. So they were definitely trying to fill it with all the things that the best of what they spawn that they knew at the time. The Animated Series being one of those things would have been really interesting if they had gotten Leguizamo back for the clown though, right? That would have been interesting to hear Keith David speaking against LEGO Zamo.
That would have been. I don't know if we could have handled that. That's too much. Awesome.
It's all the voice work though. I'm certain he would have been up for it. People generally just don't have contact to agents. But that would have been something.
All of my little research was saying Kevin Michael Richardson came in and did spawn, which. Yeah, not Keith David, but also another really big name in voice acting stuff. The fact that you're thinking it was Keith David, like, I mean, that just tells me that they did a good job.
Yeah, so you got me on that one. You know, like, I always thought it was Keith David, but again, to be fair, I could never beat the games because they, about two to three hours into each title they would freeze up on just. And I'd be like, well, check out the credits later, you know.
Yeah, if you were like me, you never read the manual anyway. So when would you ever see the credits? Right?
We didn't get manuals. All rentals, remember?
Oh, that's right, I forgot about that.
So Nintendo people don't know like, like in the late 80s, early 90s, Nintendo sued. Once you could rent video games, they sued all these mom and pop places and they were going to lose it. But the way they won was they couldn't sue them on the games. They got them on the manuals, they called it because the people would, they would make photocopies of them or try to reset or hand them out during the, you know, the rental. And so they got them for copyright violations on the manuals. So when you rent the video game, you never got the manual.
And for anybody who isn't old like us, you don't know the pains of not being able to jump on the Internet and just find the manual.
This is like game facts weren't even doing anything at this time, you know, so that was all new, you know.
The weapons you got to have in this, your chains, so many different guns, your big old axe. Like you can tell it's people that really like spawn working on this, which I really appreciate.
Yeah, they did. They seem genuine. The guy that came to my school to speak, I can't remember who, who he was, his name, but I just remember him being genuinely excited about it. Me being the only one in class who cared. That's why I tell you. And they're looking at me, man. Maybe you should come and get like an internship. I don't do 3D, you know, so that's never happening. But great, great, great career to always talk yourself out of jobs, you know. So I always recommend that.
And the love fest, it just continues with the levels that you get to go through in here. There's tons of the city. You get to go through heaven and hell. You get to go through so many little things like that. It's just. Oh, you can tell that they read their stuff. They probably had stacks of the books sitting around while they were making it.
The environmental design and the pre baked lighting is very good for 2003. You know, again, like had this just been at a PS2 exclusive, they could have done more atmospherics, the kind that you got because GTA 3 came out, I want to say like two years before. So they already had like all Those like point lights and fog effects and you could have got more atmospheric stuff. But yeah, they had a ton of things. The only thing they didn't have was like a variety of boss fights. Like you could tell like that like boss fights were like probably like on the third tier of importance. You know, a little bit of a repeat on that level. But the. I was afraid it was going to be like Spawn a turtle just walking down like pixelated hallways. Or in this case smooth, smooth graphic hallways, but hallways nonetheless. And there is some of that Spawn walking behind chain link fence, you know, stuff to the game. But it doesn't. It doesn't. It keeps. It keeps it moving, which I like. And I do appreciate the older. One thing I appreciate about older games on that era was how they were gamey. So having the icons that you collect and run through is actually. I like that, you know, versus it trying to be some like realistic world simulation where Spawn exists into it. It's like. No, this is closer to. It's actually closer to the PS1 Spider man game if you remember that. You know, where you know, you just have these like rooftops and then like it was a gradient fog, right. And you have these like icons floating above the city and you can click comic book covers. It's a game. It's okay. It's. It's fine. Doesn't take away from the experience. Experience.
I mean they don't completely the bed on enemies. You've got a bunch of the big names in here. You've got Cygor, you've got Redeemer, you've got a violator in here. So like there's big names that you expect to see. Not all of them, but still.
I. I just remember the time going like my worst Tremor. You know, I'm that fan.
You know, Tremor was too for this game.
I know. I always wonder if Tremor was co owned. I don't think so. Like, I wonder if Silvestri had points on Tremor, but. Yeah, I know, I know Tremor. But Cygor looked pretty cool. I mean there weren't a lot of games with cybernetic gorillas, you know, chasing you down the streets at the time.
So as we start to wrap things up, what do you think are really the big things that this game gets right about Spawn?
Well, the CGI cutscenes, the way the Kate moves in there, I think looks good to this day. Like whoever animated that cape, if they could have just found a way, you know, to get that in game, would have been pretty amazing. When you do use the cape, you have that, that Batman Arkham Asylum style glide which, you know, this predates Arkham Asylum like quite a number of years. That looks cool. You know, when the cape actually fans out and everything. So it gets that. And the combos are there. It's just that they're limited. So the combat isn't bad. You're not like, oh no, it doesn't. You know, killing the enemy didn't feel fin. It's just that it's repetitive. You know, you're like, okay, now you need this variation on that and this variation on that variation. So I think, you know, like what they have would have made an awesome tech demo to get funding for a real game. But the variety of villains, the environmental design is fantastic though. The voice acting is good. You know, like I don't cringe to this day when I hear them speak again. I thought it was Keith David. So the voice acting is very good. Could have used more R rated script, you know, similar to the cartoon maybe, you know, in that sense. Because sometimes you're like, I really think Spawn should have dropped an F bomb right there and he didn't. You know, like a little bit more, A little bit more s talking, you know, a little bit more Playing the dozens on that script would have been a little better.
Yeah, there's so many things in here that are just like visually feeling wise, vibe wise, everything. It's like this is Spawn. But I'm with you. It's like this. I wish this was a beta version.
Yeah, there's plenty of blood. You know, it's not like you're just like you're getting the green blood effect, right? Like so the kitties like it or the kitties can watch. I mean there's tons of like you, you hit an enemy, blood shoots out everywhere. And if you look at and say it's a PS2 era game, you don't look at it and go, oh, one of the bad ones. The only thing I think that really didn't work too well for it was its UX design was very of the time that, that Chrome, remember the, the Photoshop Thousand and One Secrets book, right? Like every little Photoshop trick, like that's, that's the UX that we're dealing with here. It has that, that, that, that Evanescence font, you know, everywhere. But the, the villains, so many villains like the, the, like the, the hell demons, bubbling eyeballs coming out of like meat sockets, pretty dark souls, you know, like this. Like there's, there is a game there that's somewhere between God of War And Dark Souls and it predates both of them. It's pretty. It's pretty wild. You know, I would. I do wish they would try another stab at this, you know, this. This format. An arcadey beat. Brawl and Spawn Beat em Up. Maybe that plays a little bit more into the fun of it versus the. It's dark and everything's, you know, grimdark. Maybe just a little bit more Konami arcadey in that way. You know, in the way that Street Fighter is an arcade game. Right. But you know, you're not overly dramatic here, but with the fun blood. The blood kills. If they had managed to find a way to get that fun of Mortal Kombat 2 and the fatalities in here, you could have really. Like, if Spawn had this really interesting ways of goring people up, you know, I think it would have made a bigger splash. It just doesn't go far enough in any one category, you know. But other than crash on you about two hours in on any platform, you will crash on you, I guarantee.
Outside of that crashing, what do you think are some of the things this one gets wrong about Spawn?
Well, first off, there's no Cogliostro. He's like talking to a dude in a suit, which I think is supposed to be the writer guy from issue 60 or 70. Can't. I don't. I don't. Sam and Twitch should have been there. Like, if the city just got like a giant attack, Sam and Twitch could have reached him in the alleys and he's just sleeping. He didn't see any of it. He could be in his throne, just living in trash. Like, hey, man, the whole city's being attacked by demons. We figured you'd have something to do with it. It's a trip from hell. He could be like, what? He starts with protecting his alley, and then he could work out to the city and then work out into hell to find out who's causing and going to heaven. So not understanding. I think the side characters in Spawn versus this feels like a bunch of guys that maybe were more familiar with the toys and the artwork.
For me, the biggest thing that jumped out is just the cape and how much it's not there. Your spawn, your cape should be there. Like, you should be the big exception to Edna's no capes rule. And it's just there when you're jumping so you can glide.
I know, but I give that one a pass because nobody was going to be able to do a spawn cape in 2003.
Oh yeah. I don't blame them for it at all.
But like in 3D, in 2D, they could have. I felt at the time like somehow Tottenham missed out on the Konami Brawler, you know, like there should have just been a Spawn Brawler game. Like where you just pick like a pixelized version of Capullo's in his artwork. Seems like a no brainer where you just a bunch of spawn, then you Medieval Spawn, Angela, Sam and Twitch come at whatever, you all get out and you're shooting and hacking at people the way the Simpsons game did, but with spawn characters. Seems like that should have happened. The guy that wears a minimal cape and carries an axe should be Medieval Spawn. That proper spawn. Proper spawn should have a big gun, you know, or two big guns.
Maybe two per hand. It is spawn.
Will I ever draw another spawn bug? I'll do that. I'll do two big guns for hand.
Okay, this is me, and I'm gonna leave this in here so you have proof. But this is me saying that you can use that idea for free.
To be like, where'd you get this idea, bud? Like, well, it came from this podcast.
And you should go on it. Except there's no more Spawn games. We have to talk about something else for now. Would you give somebody this game as part of a primer course if they weren't into Spawn yet but wanted to get there?
Primer course for what? For game design?
No, just for Spawn. As a character.
Postpone as a character, yeah, because game design.
No. And if you try to do that, I will go over to your house and destroy it.
You gotta really get back to how bad Midway messed up a lot of the industry right there. I know people are a fan of those games, but, you know, my college was located right next to them, so half of the guys there would do beta testing all night, like play testing for extra cash. I'm like, you know, I'll go work at Kinko's because I can't imagine a bigger hell being forced to play a Game Boy color port of Ready to Rumble for like eight hours a night.
No, no, no. I don't. Don't bring that evil into my life.
Or mace the Dark Ages. You know, I'm not War Gods. Yeah, I know. We're not doing that. So as a spawn, no. I'd always recommend the Super Nintendo game, but I think if they were young enough where PS2 was their first system, then, yeah, I guess I would. I'm kind of torn. I think in the Demon's Ham on the Dreamcast has a lot of fun gameplay. Elements reminiscent of, like, Power Stone to extent, you know, mixed with Quake. So that's probably the more fun game to play if you got multiple people. But if it's a guy just playing by himself, I mean, this game's hit or miss. It's either you're either gonna go, you're gonna appreciate what's there, or you're gonna be annoyed that it didn't go further. I think. I think you're one of the two.
I'm kind of torn on if I would give them the game to actually play. I would give them a compilation of the cutscenes all day long and just show them.
Yeah, pretty good for 2003. I mean, it's like the same. I mean, those cutscenes and he should have just. Todd should have hired those guys. Here's the next animated series, you know.
And finally, like, let's fix this final boss thing once and for all. One Muppet gets to be the final boss of this and has to fight Spawn. Which Muppet is it?
It's the two old guys, and all they do is ridicule the game. Waldorf and Stellar, right? They're used to wearing chains. If you saw the Muppet Christmas Carol. Right?
I don't know how I didn't see that answer coming.
Yeah, I love my Muppets. You're talking to the right guy.
Well, Rob, it has been great talking to you about this one. If people want to hear more from you, where else can they find you? Around the Internet?
Sketchcraft on YouTube. Sketchcraft.com is my main site. All my links are right there. But I do a regular show, not dealing with Merge. It's called the Sketchcraft Shout out, where we look at different cartoonists meeting a guy named Uncle Jerk from Jerk Comics. We look at different cartoonists and cover different art books. And then I also post my art tutorials or usually my streams. These days, I'll edit them down to 15, 30 minutes and do commentary, you know, in between all my projects and to kind of promote and just sort of hang out. So that's. If you want to hear and hear me talk, that's the place to go.
Sketchcraft on YouTube or sketchcraft.com it's definitely fun stuff. And I mean, Rob, you're never going to be able to make me do visual art because I try and I suck at it. But that's why I just have so much more appreciation for people like you who can do that kind of thing.
Hey, well, I appreciate you at least bringing up old video games. No one wants to talk about your favorite thing to do. I love my gaming and my gaming history and especially Those Southern California third party developers who came and went from the year 1996-20, right when the recession in 2009, they all went away overnight. So I'm gonna pour one out for Point of View Studios.
You know, as always, if you want to hear more from me, then the best place to do that is to go on over to playcomics.com where there's links to all the social media things, which is pretty much blue sky. But you know, I want to leave the option open in case something else pops up because that's what's been happening the past few months anyway. Year, I don't know, it's been too long and I don't know what time means anymore. If you want to be like Rob and come be on the show, then there's a link down in the show notes where you can find a list of the games that I'm looking to get booked the soonest. And yeah, like come sign up for one of those. It's fun. Like I get a lot of my guests to come back because they have a lot of fun doing it. So, you know, obviously that means I'm doing something fun with this and you can be in on the fun yourself. If you want to help support the show then you could be like Dan McMahon or own a lit class and give the show money because it does cost money to make a podcast. Or you can just share it with friends and you know, make sure I get more downloads and you know, maybe tell me how much you enjoy it. Because I'm a selfish, narcissistic person who really wants to know that the things that I'm putting out into the world are enjoyed by others. I mean, that that's not a horrible thing to want, is it? You can do it anyway though. Don't forget the Play Comics is a part of the guineageek.com network, home to such wonderful shows as Legends of Shield where as Daredevil finishes up, we're finishing up looking at all that and I can't see what we're going to be looking at next. But I can see that these dumb jokes about me seeing things or not are going to be coming to a close, which is probably for the best. Also, on a completely unrelated note, Carrington and I are making Sugar Spite and everything is fine. Where we are going to be looking at all these media things that we watched as kids and stuff and singing and thinking, hey, you know, why don't the lessons we learned here, why are we told to ignore them now? Because that's just weird. We kind of missed that mid April point that we were looking at. But you know, it's going to be coming out soon. That's what I can say. Because honestly, that's what I know right now. We got a few episodes recorded. We want to have one or two more like recorded before we start putting them out. If you like the music that I'm rudely talking over right now, head over to BackingTrack GG and find some great music for one of your own projects. Maybe not this one, though, because I'm already using it. But I mean, there. There's nothing really stopping you outside of the fact that I'm asking nicely because I'm mean and selfish. But most of all, just grab a game, grab a stack of comics, and go find yourself a new favorite character. And welcome to Play Comics, where once again, we are here looking at a video game based off a comic property. And that was horrible.