Joe Danger and Joe Danger 2: The Movie are bracing for impact with Steam on June 24, developer Hello Games told us. As for prices, Hello Games is keeping them under its helmet for now.
Both tricksters will feature mouse and keyboard support, be compatible with Big Picture Mode, include ghost records to race against, and offer Steamworks support for their level editors.
Joe Danger 2: The Movie flies onto North America's PSN on October 9, Hello Games confirmed to us. It's priced at $14.99, while Europe gets the puzzle-racer on October 10 for £9.99. Hello Games also filled us in on the PS3 version's '10 hours of extra content' as revealed last month, and it's something the British studio is calling 'Joe Danger Gaiden'.
"It's actually a throwback to when we made the original Joe Danger," Hello Games founder Sean Murray said, "As our guys sat in a room playing our own game, we fell into that classic trap of playing our own game too much. Our first prototype was this very tight, very challenging game that took about 10 hours to complete. No tutorials, no hand-holding, just fun arcade gameplay."
The PS3 version of Joe Danger 2 features this ditched prototype, but revitalized into 25 tough new levels integrating the sequel's Pro medals and extra challenges. The extra content also sees the return of Team Nasty, this time letting you play as the stuntman's bitter rivals. Sadly, it doesn't feature the return of The Nasty Boys, the ill-mannered 90s WWF tag team who liked to shove opponents into their armpits.
Oh, you're still here? Well, maybe you should check out our review of Joe Danger 2 on XBLA.
Joe Danger 2: The Movie is riding back to PlayStation Network, with Hello Games hopeful of a release within a couple of weeks. Despite the short turnaround from the Xbox Live Arcade version, which landed earlier this month, Hello Games tells us the PSN version has "10 hours of extra content."
Hello Games says it's also working on tweaking the vehicles for the PS3 version, after some reviewers said they preferred the simplicity of the bike. While our review deemed Joe Danger 2 a four-star smash, the range of vehicles wasn't something that impressed. So it should be interesting to see just how Hello Games changes things up.
Like a lot of film sequels, Joe Danger 2 sounds good on paper, in a bigger-better-more-explosions kind of way. Promoted from stuntman to star, Danger's garage and scenery are now fuller and more diverse. One minute he's skiing away from an avalanche, the next he's jetpacking through a jungle and breaking dinosaur eggs. With an action-packed variety of backdrops and vehicles, the 2D puzzle-racer never looks the same from one level to the next. This is a quality not to be sniffed at; many games would do well to break out of their beloved grey corridors and empty brown plains.
Nonetheless, like a lot of film sequels, Joe Danger 2 proves that it's hard to expand on a winning formula without breaking it. Thankfully, rather than break the formula, the game simply garbs itself in a pretty new veil. The sceneries and vehicles are bright and beautiful diversions, when in fact the game plays much the same as before. What tempers this is that what came before is still a bit special. As are many sequels, Joe Danger 2 is a strong pretender to its predecessor, but no more than that.
Joe Danger 2: The Movie is coming to an Xbox Live Marketplace near you on September 14. Hello Games confirmed the date to us today, along with the Admit One fare of 1200 MSP. The sequel to the 2010 side-scrolling racer sees our helmeted hero ride mine carts, police bikes, skis, and even a unicycle in his quest for daredevil glory. When we saw The Movie at this year's gamescom, Hello Games founder Sean Murray told us the game had a more structured, Nintendo-like feel than its predecessor. Well, The Movie is only showing on Xbox at the moment, where this week you can find the first game on sale.
Imagine Joe Danger, but with skis, minecarts, jetpacks, and unicycles in addition to the familiar motorcycles. Then stop imagining and watch this trailer for Joe Danger 2: The Movie.
Anyone will tell you that being a stuntman makes for a dangerous career. Most stuntmen, however, make it through more than three projects. With Joe Danger: Special Edition only days away, Hello Games has revealed that next year's Joe Danger: The Movie will be the last Joe Danger title.
"We're only doing The Movie because we had a good idea for it," Hello's Sean Murray recently told the IGN UK Podcast. He noted that the company wanted to "explore" Joe Danger "in every possible way," but after The Movie, Hello is "done with that idea."
Said idea certainly seems big. Earlier this year, Murray stated that the game is "huge" and that "the entire gameplay experience of Joe Danger on PSN would be just one short scene" in the upcoming sequel. Joe Danger: The Movie is slated to be released next year on "consoles everywhere," likely through PSN and XBLA.
With Joe Danger: Special Edition hitting XBLA next week and Joe Danger: The Movie incoming next year you may have thought that Hello Games had found their Mario, but company founder Sean Murray says there will be no more from the cunning stuntman after The Movie releases next year...
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Back when I thought my time at the Penny Arcade Expo was going to be shortened due to a hurricane, I rushed to the area of the show where Hello Games was showing Joe Danger: The Movie. More »
Joe Danger is one of the very best games available from the PlayStation Network. A cross between Excitebike and Trials HD, the cartoon stunt racer earned a 9.5 from IGN last year. Developer Hello Games recently announced a sequel, Joe Danger: The Movie, which it is showing off here at Gamescom. It's a much bigger game with many more vehicles for defying death...
