Hello! I can’t describe what this feels like: Joe Danger is released exclusively to PlayStation 3 today. This is both the most exciting and nerve wracking day of my life.
Two years ago, three friends and I decided to make a game together. Hello Games formed and sat around playing with a box of toys. One stunt cycle in particular. Firing it out windows and imagining a game featuring that hapless rider.
The truth is, back then we didn’t really know what we were doing. We didn’t know if we could make the game we wanted with just four people. We had worked on some big titles before, games like Burnout and Black, and those were huge teams of hundreds. All of us had been dreaming of making our own games, probably since we could play them. In the end it was just something we had to do.
Last Friday night we all sat up waiting for our first review. It turned out to be a 9.5 on IGN, their highest ever rated PSN game. Then we got a 9 in GameInformer, their Game of the Month (the first ever for PSN). Amazing! Check out some more awesome reviews here and here.
We’ve literally poured everything we have into Joe Danger. It’s been an incredibly difficult two years, but to see people enjoying what we’ve done is the most rewarding feeling in the world. It’s why we’re so excited for the release. This is the game we’ve always wanted to make, for each of us it’s every game we’ve loved crammed into one innovative and tight package. I thought I’d let the others members of Hello Games describe what they love about the game.
Grant: “I’m the sole Artist and I designed most of the levels for Joe Danger. Christmas ‘92 I got Sonic, and played it straight ‘til Christmas ‘93. I wanted to create levels with that crazy feeling of speed, those sudden leaps of faith and the fluid feeling when you are in the zone. You might be on a Bike, but for me Joe is a platformer at heart. Just one at 200mph.”
David: “I’m the Gameplay guy on Joe Danger. Before I had my C64 and California Games, I was Pinball obsessed. I’ll basically do anything for a multiplier. Tony Hawks Pro Skater and Jet Set Radio were huge for me at Uni when I was learning to skate. It’s all about that extreme tension when you’ve built up some huge score Combo, and just one mistake will wipe it all out in an instant. Joe Danger is fast and frantic, but really it’s all about highscores for me.”
Ryan: “I’m the main technical dude at Hello Games. I’m that guy who loves nothing but racing games, speed-runs, time attacks. Excitebike, Trackmania, Crazy Taxi and Burnout have been big games to me and I guess that’s rubbed off. Joe Danger is never anything but fast, whether you’re trying to grab every coin in Coin Dash, or neck and neck racing for the finish line. It’s all about Boost. Stunts feeds your boost, allowing for even bigger air and crazier Stunts. Boost is that glue between racing, comboing and platforming.”
Once again, Joe Danger is on the PlayStation Store in America later today and we really hope you enjoy it! Spread the word.
You can keep up to date with Hello Games and Joe Danger on our blog, follow us on Twitter or even just send us a mail!
Hello World! It’s exciting to be back on the PlayStation.Blog. It’s even more exciting to be able to announce that Joe Danger, the PS3-exclusive title that allows you to fulfill your daredevil fantasies, will launch on PSN June 8th!
I can’t describe what it feels like to see our own game actually hit the PlayStation Store. My three friends and I at Hello Games couldn’t be more nervous and giddy. We barely slept for the last few months, trying to get the game finished and polished. I doubt we’ll sleep for a month more, trying to stay on top of the leaderboards.
What I really can’t wait for is the surprises we have in store for PS3 gamers. This has been a total labor of love for us, and I’m really looking forward to seeing what people think of the game. If you want to know more about the Joe Danger, you can read some previews here, here and here, but first let me tell you a bunch of stuff you might not know.
Stunt, Create and Share
Creating levels in Joe Danger is as fast and fun as playing the game itself. In fact, you never leave the game! As you ride through your level, press Edit at any time to freeze the world and play about with it however you want. You can drop a ramp then launch Joe over it, or place a Shark Tank just before he lands.
You can even create your own challenges to send to your friends. Lay down the gauntlet with your own Multiplayer race level, or set out a Coin Dash against the clock, or a tricky Target Smash. You can complete a friend’s level, then add more danger and send it right back for the ultimate challenge. That’s how we’ve created all our own levels in the game.
It’s a BIG game
You take Joe from zero to hero across eleven tours, which are each made up of up to ten levels. Levels are set in a crazy diverse set of hazard filled game modes like Target Smash, Assault Course, Race, Coin Dash, Bowling Bounce, and Puzzle Mode.
Each of those levels feature a high-score table and up to eight challenge stars earned by thrilling the crowd. Some involve collecting hidden pick-ups high in the sky using skilful boosting, beating Team Nasty to the finish line, collecting the letters of D-A-N-G-E-R , racing against the clock, launching your bike at top speed towards a rack of bowling pins and scoring a strike, or keeping the crowd cheering as you combo a whole level. Sometimes you’ll be trying to do all of those things at once!
Community
Joe Danger is all about playing with friends, because playing Joe Danger together is how we’ve built this game. That might mean passing the pad on a heart-breakingly difficult Coin Dash, or punching your rivals off their bike in Splitscreen. Sometimes it’s crossing the finish line to immediately see all your online friends highscores, and instantly restarting. More often, it’s about downloading a new level and trying to complete it, before making your own tweaks.
We want this to be a competitive game, something to play with friends and one we hope you’ll want to tell everyone about.
The PSN Store publish date is June 8th — and we hope you enjoy it!
You can keep up to date with Hello Games and Joe Danger on our blog, follow us on Twitter or even just send us mail!
My name is Sean Murray. My three friends and I are making a game for PlayStation 3 called Joe Danger!
We’re a tiny indie outfit based in Guildford, UK (across the street from our friends at Media Molecule), and we’ve been having the most insanely awesome 2010 so far. To start, we revealed Joe Danger, then had lots of important people say really nice things about us. We’ve been nominated for two Independent Games Festival awards, a Direct2Drive Vision award and now we get to announce that we’re coming to PlayStation 3. It feels good to finally tell someone. Whoop, whoop!
Joe Danger is the star of our game. He’s a down and out daredevil, this hapless little dude who’s known as, “The World’s Most Determined Stuntman.” You need to take Joe on the ride of his life and go from zero to hero, across over 50 eye-poppingly gorgeous and eye-wateringly dangerous levels. It’s what we like to call a “Stunt-‘Em-Up,” and your job is to combo, boost and pull ludicrous tricks to fill stadiums and put Joe back on the podium.
You’ll help Joe to wheelie his way into the record books, as you smash through hardcore stunts and take on some of our ridiculously addictive mini-games like Coin-Dash, Bowling-Bounce, Crazy-Puzzle and Target-Grab. To regain the title “Master of Disaster” though, you’ll need prove you’re the best, race against your rivals, out-thrill your friends and defy death to defeat the dastardly Team Nasty.
Before starting Hello Games together, we all worked at much bigger companies on huge teams, making some amazing games like Burnout and Black. Creating our own games is what we always wanted to do though, and PSN gives us the opportunity to get ‘em out there to you lovely people.
About two years ago when we first left to do our own thing, we sat around talking about what our very first game might be. We knew for sure that we wanted to recapture some of the arcade magic of games we grew up with from the SNES and Genesis generation. Then Grant, our only artist, brought a box of toys in from his parent’s attic, and something kind of beautiful happened. There was an instant, awesome power to demonstrating your latest game idea with Optimus Prime in your hands. We kept coming back to one toy though — an Evel Knievel stunt cycle. We sat and played with it, building bigger and bigger ramps, launching it out of windows and down corridors. It didn’t matter that he crashed all the time; in fact, that was almost the point. Just like that, Joe Danger was born!
The really important thing about playing with that stunt cycle was that building ramps was as much fun as launching yourself over them. So with Joe Danger you can freeze the game at any point to enter edit-mode and change your world any way you want. You can put a ramp down just before you land or place a ring of fire just before you go through it. It’s really easy and allows you to create the most ridiculous stunts you can think of, then use them to smash some world records! You can even share your creations with all your friends and torment them with your devious creations.
We’re a pretty competitive bunch here at Hello Games, and never more so than when we take each other on in some outrageous split-screen face-offs. The key to success is to pull tricks and create combos which will earn boost, allowing you to reach ridiculous speeds and pull even bigger tricks. Once you master your motorbike, you can take on the world with your high-scoring combos. We’re really looking forward to having some competition when the game is released.
When people ask me what my favorite film is, I like to tell them it’s Cinema Paridiso, because I like to look clever. It’s a lie though. My favorite film is actually The Naked Gun. I’m a big fan of slapstick, especially people getting clotheslined at high-speed, and that’s something we’ve tried to fill our game with. We use advanced cartoon physics to create a world ripe with humour. As a stuntman you laugh in the face of Danger, but it laughs back when you crash, as you bounce from boulder to boulder on fire, towards a pile of giant mousetraps. Even when you’re flung from your bike at high speed though, you can still make a last ditch attempt to please the crowd by pulling poses mid-air and nudging yourself directly into the path of Danger to score some extra points.
Joe Danger is coming out really soon, some time in the next few months. We’re giddy with excitement about it and we think it’ll put a big stupid grin on your face.
You can keep up to date with Hello Games and Joe Danger on our blog, follow us on Twitter or even just send us mail!
My name is Sean Murray. My three friends and I are making a game for PlayStation 3 called Joe Danger!
We’re a tiny indie outfit based in Guildford, UK (across the street from our friends at Media Molecule), and we’ve been having the most insanely awesome 2010 so far. To start, we revealed Joe Danger, then had lots of important people say really nice things about us. We’ve been nominated for two Independent Games Festival awards, a Direct2Drive Vision award and now we get to announce that we’re coming to PlayStation 3. It feels good to finally tell someone. Whoop, whoop!
Joe Danger is the star of our game. He’s a down and out daredevil, this hapless little dude who’s known as, “The World’s Most Determined Stuntman.” You need to take Joe on the ride of his life and go from zero to hero, across over 50 eye-poppingly gorgeous and eye-wateringly dangerous levels. It’s what we like to call a “Stunt-‘Em-Up,” and your job is to combo, boost and pull ludicrous tricks to fill stadiums and put Joe back on the podium.
You’ll help Joe to wheelie his way into the record books, as you smash through hardcore stunts and take on some of our ridiculously addictive mini-games like Coin-Dash, Bowling-Bounce, Crazy-Puzzle and Target-Grab. To regain the title “Master of Disaster” though, you’ll need prove you’re the best, race against your rivals, out-thrill your friends and defy death to defeat the dastardly Team Nasty.
Before starting Hello Games together, we all worked at much bigger companies on huge teams, making some amazing games like Burnout and Black. Creating our own games is what we always wanted to do though, and PSN gives us the opportunity to get ‘em out there to you lovely people.
About two years ago when we first left to do our own thing, we sat around talking about what our very first game might be. We knew for sure that we wanted to recapture some of the arcade magic of games we grew up with from the SNES and Genesis generation. Then Grant, our only artist, brought a box of toys in from his parent’s attic, and something kind of beautiful happened. There was an instant, awesome power to demonstrating your latest game idea with Optimus Prime in your hands. We kept coming back to one toy though — an Evel Knievel stunt cycle. We sat and played with it, building bigger and bigger ramps, launching it out of windows and down corridors. It didn’t matter that he crashed all the time; in fact, that was almost the point. Just like that, Joe Danger was born!
The really important thing about playing with that stunt cycle was that building ramps was as much fun as launching yourself over them. So with Joe Danger you can freeze the game at any point to enter edit-mode and change your world any way you want. You can put a ramp down just before you land or place a ring of fire just before you go through it. It’s really easy and allows you to create the most ridiculous stunts you can think of, then use them to smash some world records! You can even share your creations with all your friends and torment them with your devious creations.
We’re a pretty competitive bunch here at Hello Games, and never more so than when we take each other on in some outrageous split-screen face-offs. The key to success is to pull tricks and create combos which will earn boost, allowing you to reach ridiculous speeds and pull even bigger tricks. Once you master your motorbike, you can take on the world with your high-scoring combos. We’re really looking forward to having some competition when the game is released.
When people ask me what my favorite film is, I like to tell them it’s Cinema Paridiso, because I like to look clever. It’s a lie though. My favorite film is actually The Naked Gun. I’m a big fan of slapstick, especially people getting clotheslined at high-speed, and that’s something we’ve tried to fill our game with. We use advanced cartoon physics to create a world ripe with humour. As a stuntman you laugh in the face of Danger, but it laughs back when you crash, as you bounce from boulder to boulder on fire, towards a pile of giant mousetraps. Even when you’re flung from your bike at high speed though, you can still make a last ditch attempt to please the crowd by pulling poses mid-air and nudging yourself directly into the path of Danger to score some extra points.
Joe Danger is coming out really soon, some time in the next few months. We’re giddy with excitement about it and we think it’ll put a big stupid grin on your face.
You can keep up to date with Hello Games and Joe Danger on our blog, follow us on Twitter or even just send us mail!