// News // 10th Apr 2015 — 9 years ago // By Andrew Duncan

Hollywood Battle-On Teaser Trailer

The Yorkshire-based games studio Gaslight Games have created the above trailer based on their love of a podcast, and we have had a chance to sit down with managing director Mark Jawdoszak and talk about it.

Based on the Ralph Garman and Kevin Smith podcast Hollywood Babble-On, Hollywood Battle-On takes the form of a side-scrolling beat 'em up, in the same vein as Streets of Rage. The player fights their way across Hollywood, battling the greedy and lazy.

GameGrin:

Tell us about Gaslight Games.

Mark Jawdoszak:

We are a British-based team currently closing out development on our Kickstarted game "Master of the Seven Teas", with another update going to QA this week (which will hopefully be released over the weekend or early next week). It's currently exclusive on the OUYA, but coming to Android, iOS and PC soon.

GameGrin:

Hollywood Battle-On is currently a fangame, have you tried to contact Ralph or Kevin about using their likenesses to get them on board?

Mark:

Yes! We've been using the HBO Podcast email address which we know is monitored, and let them know about the video. Ralph liked it and featured it on episode 205! From the sounds of things Kevin was pretty into it too, so we've reached out again via email. We've also had quite a flow of retweets and favourites, and a good bunch of replies from eager fans. It's even become a little meta, in that someone's made some fan art of our game, which in turn is a video game interpretation of the show, with cues from another fans work (turning the hosts into 80s comic book action heroes)! Ralph's even retweeted the mentions of us wanting to make it.

GameGrin:

Where do you plan on taking Battle-On?

Mark:

We make use of Project Anarchy, from Havok, and through its licensing program we would be able to hit a huge variety of platforms. That's one of the first things we see with Battle-On, the ability to not only target mobile devices, but also consoles and anything with a controller!

GameGrin:

How far do you want to take it?

Mark:

Whilst it's named Battle-On, we thought it would be great to use as many of the SmodCo [Kevin Smith's company] cast as possible. For instance, you could play as Kev and Ralph in their HBO garb, but also Jay and Silent Bob, Bluntman and Chronic, the gents who work at Secret Stash (from AMCs Comic Book Men and the Tell 'em Steve Dave podcast) and beyond. Our animator thought each character could have their own, unique fighting style, combos and specials. And from this, our lead artist would love to create different locations, have many different minions and bosses...

GameGrin:

Speaking of bosses - Hollywood Babble-On is over an hour long each week, devoted to bashing celebrities. Would you try for Fair Use, or play it safe with slightly-altered names?

Mark:

It's a difficult one. On the one hand, it's a large part of HBO and Ralph's impressions could allow for a slew of parody type enemies... but on the other hand, I'm no lawyer and running afoul of high-priced legal folks that these celebrities could afford isn't something I'd want to risk.

GameGrin:

Okay, how about vocals - would you ask the two to record lines or rip it from the podcasts?

Mark:

We would prefer to use recorded lines as, in theory, they could be higher-quality we could dictate the cutting (which is easier for playback), choose the lines, any taunts or cut-scenes, and it affords us the flexibility in writing! Of course, that would entirely be down to the availability of such a VO cast - in this case, mostly Ralph (Garman) and Kevin (Smith)!

GameGrin:

Finally, is there anything else you can tell us about the game so far, with no 'go ahead' from the stars?

Mark:

There are so many other things we've been thinking about, from story, to specific locations and enemies, collectibles, pick-ups and power-ups and everything else you'd expect in a game - it's just difficult to dedicate resources without an official go ahead!

GameGrin:

Thanks for your time!