Talking Tyrannosaurus Tex

The developer of the anticipated 3D shooter talks with us about its ambitious project.

At the forefront of Game Boy's seemingly eternal youth is Eidos. As well as Tomb Raider, the company has just announced Tyrannosaurus Tex, the first 3D first-person shooter exclusively for the Game Boy Color.

Being developed at U.K.-based Slitherine Software, the game seeks to condense the big guns of Quake and its ilk down to the teeny weeny screen. Eighteen maps are on offer for gamers to explore and blast their way through in full 3D. If you thought you'd have to wait until Game Boy Advance for this sort of thing, think again -- Slitherine has managed to develop an engine that can deliver not only a full 3D environment but also crams in high color cut scenes and a stunningly high framerate.

Technology aside, Tyrannosaurus Tex is bound to catch people's eye for its pure gaming ebullience. Slitherine is like the proverbial child in the sweet shop. It has frantically stuffed its technology with all the things that gamers love. Dinosaurs, robots and cowboys are all crowbarred into the plot. Not only that but there's a death-match option that will be settling schoolyard scores via the link cable once the game ships this spring.

We caught up with lead programmer and Managing Director of Slitherine Ben John, to discuss handheld gun slinging and the future of the Game Boy.

IGNpocket: Can you just tell us about Tyrannosaurus Tex -- what's it all about?

Ben: Well it's a 3D first-person shooter for the Game Boy running at a high frame rate with loads of weapons and baddies and that kind of thing. We basically tried to recreate the Quake experience for the Game Boy. We wanted to give Game Boy Color owners something completely new. Something they couldn't play before.

IGNpocket: Why has it taken so long for FPS to appear on the Game Boy?

Ben: I think basically everyone's just been waiting for someone else to make the first move on it. Faceball 2000 demonstrated it was possible but proved pretty slow. I think that kind of stopped anybody really trying although I don't quite know why people didn't pursue it. If you think the first first-person shooter was Wolfenstein really wasn't it? Then we got Quake. There's no reason why you couldn't do Quake using the Wolfenstein engine, and that's kind of the approach we took. We were thinking, the engine obviously can handle a FPS type environment, there's no reason why we can't put in some other gameplay features in. Take the stuff that people developed in all these great FPS's. That's what we're trying to do, get all the fun and excitement of these big games, and cram it into a Game Boy.

IGNpocket: So it's working out well yeah?

Ben: Marvellously yes. About two days ago, I saw about nine huge bad guys running round on the screen with absolutely no drop in frame rate whatsoever. It's even more amazing to me because I wrote it, and I wrote it with about three or four characters in mind ...

IGNpocket: So how is gameplay actually going to work? For example the targeting system -- are we talking a fixed cursor?

Ben: Yeah that's the idea. The best way to explain is to tell you how the control system is going to work. You've got obviously your left and right that turn you left and right. Forward and back, is obviously go forward, and retreat, and fire button, is fire button. If you press the select, you get a little menu similar to the one you get in Quake III, and you can quickly change from one weapon to the next.

IGNpocket: Does the game carry on as you change your weapon?

Ben: Yes it does. You've got your weapons menu when you hit select, and whilst you're holding select, you press left and right. As you let go of select, the next weapon pops up.

IGNpocket: So you're keeping the FPS action pace up all the time?

Ben: That's right. There's a bit of strategy as well, because of the games storyline, we've managed to get robots and dinosaurs into the game, and it's actually different depending on the weapons. They have different effects on the different monsters, yeah? So your colt 45's they're fine, you can shoot any enemies with them. But some of the better weapons such as the electric gun, they'd be great on a robot, short circuit them. On a dinosaur, it's just going to make them a bit more annoyed.

IGNpocket: You are going to have to think a bit then?

Ben: Just a little bit. It's still predominantly a no-brainer action type game.

IGNpocket: We've got to ask you about the subject matter, cowboys, dinosaurs, robots...

Ben: That's it, yeah. It's pretty good isn't it? We've even managed to get a storyline which they all fit into. Briefly it goes like this. It's 2000 years ago, a spacecraft crashes into the Texan desert, piling into the ground. It's full of robots. They repair the spacecraft, and build a huge subterranean city, as robots do when they come out of spacecrafts. Then what do they find under the desert? Dinosaur bones. They repair the dinosaur bones, Jurassic Park style, and they live in peace, the robots, and the dinosaurs, in their subterranean city. That's until the human miners come down. The story's there really just to allow the dinosaurs, robots and outlaw theme.

IGNpocket: I'm just amazed you didn't get Zombies in it as well!

Ben: That's a good idea isn't it? Zombie dinosaurs.

IGNpocket: It could catch on ...

Ben: We like what we've done. For example the dinosaurs are re-built dinosaurs. We've taken a bit of artistic license there. A few sport metal patches. They're definitely not anatomically correct, they can spit fireballs that kind of thing. It all makes it pretty fun.

IGNpocket: The multiplayer option, how's that going to fit in? Is that just going to be a totally separate death match scenario?

Ben: Kind of, yeah. I don't want to give too much away just now, but to start off with you're only going to have five death match levels. But if you're pretty good at the one player game, they'll be a few more surprises in there, if you know what I mean? I was very impressed with Mario DX, I like the way that the more you play it, you just get loads of cool stuff. It's a proper reward as you're playing it that'll actually mean something to you.

IGNpocket: Are you going to be able to create your own character for death match?

Ben: You've got a choice, you can either be the robot, the dinosaur, or the outlaw. Creating your own character is a pretty good idea but unfortunately not. But you can actually be a dinosaur whilst your mate's a cowboy, and he can run round and pick up all the guns and everything, and you know you've only got two pretty big claws and a bite attack. You just link up to your mate and try and bite him in the back.

IGNpocket: Will you be bundling with a link cable?

Ben: Probably not. We're quite lucky to have Pokémon selling a lot of link cables. If this was about six months ago, the number of link up cables sold was very low, Pokémon's actually doing wonders for the sale of link up cables. Obviously for a game like this people are going to want to explore the multi-player feature, but we're concentrating on games stuff that'll attract people in its own right. For example we've got lots of guns in the game like the big first-person shooters.

IGNpocket: How many guns are we talking?

Ben: We've got six at the moment.

IGNpocket: And they range from the lightning gun....

Ben: Yeah, if you imagine the guns that have worked well in FPS, we've got the nice ones. Obviously we've changed them a little bit for the game. But if you think of cool features for example you start off with one Colt 45, and you pick up another one pretty quick.

IGNpocket: So we're talking the full John Woo experience?

Ben: Exactly, yes. On screen your guns will be there firing alternately down the bottom, and this is your stock weapon, you can never run out of bullets in your colt 45. It's a pretty good gun really. And you can progress right up to this huge big gun that does loads of damage to everything. We've also got dynamite, this is quite interesting because as you press the button and you hold it as you light it, you're actually still holding on to it. And of course if you hold onto it too late, you'll be engulfed in the same explosion. You got good scenes when you're being chased backwards down the corridor by huge, hungry T-Rex's, with the dynamite actually in your hand, and there's sweat coming down your face right to the moment you let go of it, and then of course you back into a wall or something and then the trouble starts ...

IGNpocket: So all this comes through cut scenes as well?

Ben: Yeah, we got over a hundred at the moment.

IGNpocket: And they progress the story?

Ben: That's right, they tell you the story, what's going on. It's pretty much linear but there's different things you can do at different points in the game. In actual fact in the cut scenes will offer different things depending on what you do. We've got a nice big twist at the end as well.

IGNpocket: We don't suppose you're going to tell us what that is?

Ben: No, it would spoil it. We've got this villain guy, he's a computer hologram creature, and after a final confrontation with him, I think you'll be quite surprised when you find out what he turns out to be after all.

IGNpocket: OK, we'll look out for that.

Ben: These cut scenes are very exciting because they're in ultra-high Color. We licensed the company that made the "cat's face" demo a few months ago if you remember that, so all the cut scenes look absolutely tremendous on the little screen. They just look like photographic quality really, but in cartoon style, because that's the style of the game. It's a real good reward for playing the game.

IGNpocket: Can I just ask you about the Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance is pretty imminent, so why revolutionize the Game Boy now?

Ben: It's a funny state of affairs isn't it? Especially for us when we've got this 3D engine which could really deliver any 3D game on the Game Boy, and at the end of the year there'll be this super-machine which will be delivering all that and more.

IGNpocket: It seems a shame when there are all these amazing things coming out for Game Boy at the moment. Do you think it can endure alongside Advance?

Ben: Without a doubt. The Game Boy just works so well as a unit. The sales figures are amazing. Do you remember the last dying days of the SNES as well, and we had things like Donkey Kong Country coming out right at the last second? It's like that sort of thing. I was working at Psygnosis previously on real next generation stuff, but I left at the beginning of the year to set this company up, and really push the Game Boy to its limits. I think in a way you only get to fully explore something right at the end of its life, maybe a kind of desperation thing ...

IGNpocket: Are you going to be working on the Advance?

Ben: I really couldn't say anything like that. We're dedicated to bringing out another two or three 3D games for the Game Boy. Whatever platform we go on to, we're going to push it right to the limit, that's pretty easy to say for the Game Boy, because it's more limited.

IGNpocket: But invariably people's expectations get higher. How does Tex match up to what's already on the market?

Ben: What we're hoping to do with Tex is give people that 'wow' factor back. It's 3D, it runs at 30 fps, so you've got all these baddies on the screen. We've also got these high color cut scenes and we've got limited 3D sound. When you're wearing headphones, you can hear whether something's to the left or to the right. It's either in front of you, to the left or to the right. Of course back is the same as the front to you when you're wearing headphones. So I suppose it's not quite a full 360 degrees, but it's clear enough to give you an indication of where everything's coming from. Then we've got Sprite multiplexing, we've actually got 160 sprites on the screen at any one time. Even the numbers of colors on the screen are being pushed. We swap all the pallets round constantly, and then we swap pallets again half way down the screen so we can have different scening, and colors. Everything we can do technically, we've tried to do. Certain things have proved impossible, but you know, maybe for the next game.

IGNpocket: So you have got more up your sleeve then?

Ben: Of course, yeah! We've also had a lot of interest in the last couple of days from companies interested in licensing the engine.

IGNpocket: Can I ask who?

Ben: I better not say. We're committed to making good fun games as well, so we're not going to just farm the engine out, so everyone can just put loads of new graphics in.

IGNpocket: You don't want people to have things too easy then?

Ben: No, we didn't want loads of 3D First-Person shooters, all exactly the same except for different names for the weapons and that sort of stuff. If we do licence that, we'll only licence it for maybe two, or maybe three games.

IGNpocket: And you'd be quite discerning on who you'd let use for that....

Ben: Right, we want great gameplay in that as well. It's hard when you've got new technology as well, not just to get swept away with that.

IGNpocket: Tyrannosaurus Tex sounds like you could be getting into the swing of things pretty quickly yourself ...

Ben: Yeah, it's a good name isn't it. The artist came up with that name...I think it was going to be called Dino Death Match at one point.

IGNpocket: That's pretty good as well but we think Tyrannosaurus Tex has the edge ...

Ben: Thank you very much, I'll tell the artist.

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