You may think, after watching the initial trailer, that Twisted Pixel pulled LocoCycle (in which you control a renegade robotic motorcycle that shoots and karate-chops its way across the country) out of some loony creative cauldron of its own making. But that's not quite true, says studio director Michael Wilford, showing the game for the first time at PAX Prime 2012. There is a very clear inspiration, he says, and it's Ice Cube's 2004 motorcycle racing movie, Torque.

"It's a really shitty movie," Wilford tells us. "It tries to be Fast and the Furious on motorcycles." Twisted Pixel's art director gave a copy of Torque to the company's chief creative officer, Josh Bear, one day as a joke, and Bear was directly influenced by a viewing, especially a scene where two women battle with motorcycles. "Josh had a nightmare that night," says Wilford with complete sincerity, "and woke up the next day and said, 'We have to make a game about a fighting motorcycle.'"