It was my honor to be able to interview Super Fighter Team founder Brandon Cobb.  He was gracious enough to discuss me some of their previous, current, and upcoming video game projects for the Sega Genesis and Lynx.   Super Fighter Team is a videogame development, production and publishing company based in San Diego, California.  I hope others enjoy this one as much as I did!

Brandon Cobb

December 26, 2008

John Hancock: Thank you for your time for this interview.

Brandon Cobb: It's my pleasure. Thanks for your interest, and Merry Christmas to you.

J: So what were some of the video games and systems you played when you were growing up?

B: My first real experience with video games came in 1987 when my grandmother purchased a complete Apple IIc computer setup for my older brother and I. What an insanely great machine. I used the hell out of that little gem, playing everything I could get my hands on. My favorite games for it are Star Blazer, Neuromancer, Bard's Tale II, Where in America's Past Is Carmen Sandiego?, L.A. Crackdown, Moon Patrol and many more. That computer still works flawlessly, yet I've been through a pile of PCs over the years. Interesting. My mother was against the idea of buying me a video game console because of the high cost of games, so I never had one as a child. Instead I played whatever consoles my friends had at their houses.

Brandon grew up on Apple IIc 

J: At what point in your life did you realize that you wanted to be in the video game industry?

B: When I was eleven, I played Super Fighter for the first time. It was an amazing experience. I loved that game. I said, "I'm going to find the company that made it and thank them." Everyone I said it to thought I was nuts. Maybe I was. Eight years later, though, I found the company, thanked them, and received their blessing to keep the game alive. That opened the doors for me, right there. If something that amazing can happen, then anything's possible.

Super Fighter - old PC game and inspiration

J: Beggar Prince was the first commercially released game for the Sega Genesis in nearly a decade. What are some of the most important things you learned from that project?

B: With this kind of work, you really, really, REALLY have to love what you're doing. The Beggar Prince project started with me thinking, "This will be an easy, fun little thing for us to do while we're working on some of the Super Fighter stuff", and ended up turning into this huge, stressful project that spanned two years. During development we hit lots of snags; little imperfections in the original code that needed to be fixed. I'm a rabid perfectionist, so even though it drove me crazy I would document every issue, large or small, walk our programmers through them, then closely inspect the results of their work. Naturally it stings a bit whenever someone idly passes off our work on the game as "just a translation", because, in all honestly, the localization portion of the work was a walk in the park compared to everything else we did. By far, though, I think people seem to understand and appreciate what we did, which makes it all worthwhile. The appreciation of our customers and fans is what drives us to keep going.

Beggar Prince - first commercially released Genesis game in nearly a decade

J: Your current project, Legend of Wukong is receiving very positive reviews for being a wonderful and major overhaul from an obscure Taiwan game by Gamtec. What made you want to pursue this title, and how did first hear about it?

B: Legend of Wukong was recommended to me by Derrick Sobodash, our script programmer for Beggar Prince. When I had some free time I bought a copy of the original game from Taiwan and gave it a look. It was a nice game with its own charm, but very rough around the edges and was going to need a lot of work before we could release it; much more work than Beggar Prince had required. I actually saw that as a positive thing: With Legend of Wukong we really dug in deep and added our own sense of originality and identity to the game. We improved and enhanced it without tarnishing or downplaying any of the hard work the original programmers had put in. It was a lot less of "let's fix this bug" and a lot more of "let's strengthen this routine" or "let's add a new feature here."

Legend of Wukong - only retail release for Sega Genesis in 2008

J: Is Legend of Wukong going to be a limited run? 

B: We don't believe in "limited runs". We believe in making our games available to the people that want them. After all, that is the whole point of doing something like this, isn't it? We'll do our best, within reason, to keep up with demand, just as we did with Beggar Prince.

J: Homebrew gaming has changed a lot over the past fifteen years. At first, there were just simple Atari games being made by single person programmers. Now, there seems to be a movement to newer and more graphic systems such as the Sega Genesis. What is the biggest challenge with creating multiple person projects such as Legend of Wukong?

B: You can't just have anyone working on these types of projects. Your teammates must have the same emotional attachment to the project that you have. Otherwise, it's very unlikely to work out, because it's a tough task and there isn't a lot of money involved. The people we employ, as well as our volunteers, all genuinely believe in our cause. We all know we're crazy, but it doesn't matter. We're going to make new games for classic systems, and the people that like that sort of thing are going to love our stuff, because we put our hearts into it. It's inspiring. It's sentimental. It's an awesome thing to be doing.

J: There have been other companies that have taken on localizations/conversions of overseas games that have done very well, such as Working Designs and Atlus just to name some off the top of my head. Is there any one particular company that makes video games that you inspire to be like?

B: Aside from the Taiwanese software I love, there are some video games from France that blew me away when I first tried them, and that remain in the list of my favorite games of all-time. For example: Alone in the Dark, Gobliins 2: The Prince Buffoon, Another World. I aspire to get the same reactions from the people who buy our products as I get from masterpieces like these.

J: This year you had a very special event happen the journey to find an English version of Fatal Encounter for the PC I heard the discovery of a working copy of Fatal Encounter was one of over ten years. What was that experience like when you first had a lead on a working copy of that game?

B: I'm glad you brought that up, because it was a very special moment for me. By all accounts, Fatal Encounter just simply did not exist. Classic PC game collectors across the world hadn't even heard of it. When I asked the president of C&E about it, his response was grim: His only remaining retail copy of the game had long since succumbed to floppy disk failure. It was just one of those moments where most people would've given up. Luckily, I don't think that way - and it's a damned good thing, too. According to Mr. Davis Chan, who finally ended my exhaustive search for Fatal Encounter: "The reason for my interest in the game is that I have recently retired and have so much time in going through the 'abandoned' 486 computer of my son who is now over 25. I tried to play the game and found it tedious to look up my spreadsheet for the password each time the game was loaded up. As I know that over the time a lot of old DOS games are released as freeware, I just Google searched with the words Fatal Encounter and luckily found your website. The disks were sent to you in response to the invitation in one of the pages of your website." One man kept a backup of the game. One man. By chance, that one man went searching for more information and found my website. To me, this story is another great example of why you should never give up on your dreams, regardless of how impossible it may seem that they will ever become reality.

J: Another project in the pipeline I hear you have is a 100 percent original shooter for the Atari Lynx  called Zaku. What are the big differences between working on a portable system versus a home console?

B: While I could get into the obvious, it really just comes down to one thing: Your level of dedication. Osman Celimli, the designer and programmer of Zaku, is heart set on creating a beautiful Lynx  game that's fun to play. He's making digital art, and that's possible to do on any game system, be it a portable or a home console. You have to learn the limitations, stare them right in the eye, then blow past them. Magnificence will be your reward.

Zaku - portable shooter built from scratch

J: Any other ideas or projects in the works?

B: On December 21, we happily released Super Fighter Block Battle, a freeware action puzzle game we developed for the mobile phone. It's the first official follow-up to Super Fighter that we've released, and I'm very proud of it.

Super Fighter Block Battle - Vs. puzzle game and official follow-up to Super Fighter for mobile phone

J: I just wanted to personally say how excited I am on your projects coming out, and look forward to buying Legend of Wukong in January as well as any future projects. I was one of the first shipments of Beggar Prince and love it.

B: I'm very glad to hear that you're pleased with our products. Best wishes for 2009.

Links:

Super Fighter Official Website

Legend of Wukong Official Website

Beggar Prince Official Website

Zaku Official Website

SF Block Battle Official Website

Preview of Legend of Wukong