I received word this week that a secret Matt Hazard game was pirated back in the 90′s and placed in a time capsule by 3 young lads of the Unofficial Matt Hazard Fan Club and was uncovered via a time capsule they placed deep underground.  Location not known…

Here is what was revealed -

Inside The Matt Hazard Time Capsule

It is great to see Lord OctoSurgeon make some news again as it has been some time since I have heard his name and I don’t believe he is in the upcoming Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard which I hear shipped this week.  I can only wish that Lord OctoSurgeon is getting the help that he truly needs.  Addiction to mana potion can be a painful thing to see. 

www.matthazardextreme.com

So best of luck to Lord OctoSurgeon and in addition to Matt Hazard in his new game.  All this news brings back so many memories.  Time for me to finish up Super Adventures of Matt in Hazard Land Extreme Alpha Advance so I can go to GameStop before they close to pick-up Eat Lead. 

www.matthazardextreme.com

www.matthazardextreme.com

The year was 1994 and a so-called other ex-football coach was making tremendous momentum with a official playbook style football sim and us folks on the business side wanted a piece of the pie.  Of course we needed to be unique from the others and not a simple copycat.  There were already football games out there that focused on aliens, roided-out players, 10 yard scores and bootlegs to a famous San Francisco fullback.  

Like where many great videogame ideas begin, we got together around the board table and started fleshing out ideas.  With us being very shooter-savvy at Marathon Software we came up with the idea of including a sports/shooter game where a certain player during the huddle will be handed a handgun and his duty would be to defeat the opposing team of Prison Robots on the football field.  Object of the game was to score the most points while keeping your 11 players on the field from your original 53 to win the game.

That idea came from one of our marketing fellows who for some reason was going through a huge white tank top and leather coat phase in his life and thought of this idea after sitting through some movie about a last cadet, no boy scout or something.  However, the idea did not pass focus testing as a mature football videogame would not slide with mainstream populations.

One idea that did latch on was that we did look into creating a perennial Mike Ditka Football videogame series that could light up the charts  However, Marathon Software had invested their cash flow poorly and was beginning to feel the pinch from their fleet of corporate jets.  They began to look for ways to branch out all of their licensed properties, when a love affair involving some stalwart Chicago Bears fans and there head coach had inspired some of the designers to pimp out this Hall of Fame coach with a special Matt Hazard.

What started as an idea of Mike Ditka vs. the 1994 New York Giants morphed into Mike Ditka vs. the World in which he faced off against other fit badasses such as Ditka vs. Norris, Ditka vs. Seagal, Ditka vs. Lundgren, and Ditka vs. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir.  The whole idea would culminate around the ultimate boss battle/opponent level “Mike Ditka vs. Matt Hazard: It’s Supper Time Bitches”.  By synergizing two strong brands and making a bid to purchase one of the most expensive Super Bowl commercials involving lots of free beer, hot chicks, towers of pizza, Oompa Loompa actors, and a baby’s smile…Mike Ditka vs. The World could have been the beginning of a long lasting franchise.  Unfortunately, Marathon Software was still throwing dollar after dollar to the follow-up to their award winning 2D shooter and that idea crashed faster than a bug into a windshield.

Luckily from this, we learned at Marathon that partnering our popular character Matt Hazard with another star can prove to be rewarding and luckily it made millions with the Matt and Dexter series.

Good luck to all in the Super Bowl and just be thankful you aren’t playing Ditka cause it would be Ditka 192 – 2. Believe that!

NPH is probably one of my favorite stars on TV. Back in the 80’s, celebrity VO was not as prominent as it is today. The technology just would not allow it, we repeatedly in development tried to make something work but usually ended up just doing muttered sound mixed with subtitles. If Doogie Howser and Matt Hazard teamed together for a CSI-esque game, it would have been fabulous. I would say Doogie’s typing in his nightly journal would probably be one of the most realistic TV to game crossovers to date. The duo of Matt and Neil could have prevented the headaches induced from the Matt and Dexter games that preceded the fall of Marathon Software.

But I digress, I will be sure to have my TV set for Sunday and watch my fellow game industry friends accept awards for the best games of the year and I can’t wait to see NPH on stage.

It’s going to be….

Black Friday is here and with the announcement of Eat Lead going next-gen, Matt Hazard needs to upgrade his playing experience (as the last time Matt starred in a game was Choking Hazard in 2002) with a whole new home theatre for himself and some additional goodies to give for Secret Santa.

EAT LEAD TAKE OVER!

Our Joe The Plumber

Matt Hazard’s impact on previous elections:

1988:

At the height of Matt Hazard’s popularity, both Bush and Dukakis were looking for new ways to tap into the gamer audience.  8-bit graphics was all the rage, and The 1987 Western videogame “Fistful of Hazard” featured pixilated ads by the Republican Party. Unfortunately nobody wanted to see ads of Bush in the background yelling “No new taxes”.  Marathon Software luckily eliminated most copies before it shipped to stores.

However, the popularity of Matt’s tank-game, “Boom Tanks”  inspired Dukakis to take that ill fated photo op ride in the tank that cost him the election.

1992:

While Bush hoped to sail by promoting Family Values and vilifying Matt Hazard and other violent video games, Clinton took a shrewder approach by playing the theme song to Matt Hazard Land Two: Haz World on his saxophone live on the short lived Gamers Basement Tonight TV show.

1996:

Sales from Matt Hazard 3-D were so insanely high, selling millions of units a month since 1994, it was singled handedly credited for keeping the 90s economy afloat and Clinton profited from the recent years of prosperity in his defeat of Bob Dole.

2000:

Matt Hazard’s time traveling game from 1997 “Bridge to the 21^st” Century was inadvertently used as a slogan for both the Bush and Gore campaigns. However, more ominous was his Alligator wrestling simulator “What a Croc” which was released on election day and featured a Florida swamp setting where Matt took on various enemies in the Gator Gang. The game was later hacked to include Bush and Gore mods into the fighting ring.

2004:

While Matt’s career as a videogame superstar was well into its decline by the time Kerry and Bush made it to the polls, some Republicans did include a SwiftShooter ad campaign featuring a stolen Matt Hazard character model talking about Kerry’s inability to pull off a good head shot in a multiplayer match.

Well, as promised, I did some more digging into that box of stuff in the basement.  And I found GOLD — one of the original Sunday editions of Boom County, a sponsored comic strip based on Matt Hazard!

Boom County was a marketing initiative from the early 80s — I hired a comic strip artist to create a hilarious series based on Matt Hazard and then placed the strip into daily newspapers across the country. Boom County was a smash hit and ran for a marvelous three months before it was discontinued by editors who felt it was “marketing” and not a real comic strip.  I wrote the script myself, and, I must say, it’s STILL HILARIOUS!  Note the timely jab at the “Where’s the Beef?” commercials!!!  HAHAHAHA!!!

To clarify, the Dinosaur friend in Boom County is a character I created for the strip — when Hazard travels to the time travel zone of Xenon 5 in The Adventures of Matt in Hazardland, he saves this Dinosaur, “Opie,” from annihilation during his epic battle against Neutronov’s Mega-Nuclear Robo TyranoToxic-a-Saurus. Opie comes back to our world timeline to live with Matt in Boom County.  Genius!!

A Rare Copy of a Sunday Edition of "Boom County"

We had planned a spin-off Saturday morning cartoon series, a video game for kids based on the strip, and plushie dolls based on Opie, but the newspaper cancellations halted all work on those projects.

- R. Tokey

The “official” IGN Blog for the Eat Lead game has been updated introducing a couple people from the development team at Vicious Cycle.

Go here to check it out:  http://blogs.ign.com/MattHazard/2008/10/29/104838/

It should be noted that there are more people in this article than were on the ENTIRE original Matt Hazard development team.  Do I remember their names?  No, of course not, because they faded back into the darkened recesses of nerd obscurity where hired programmers belong.

Where’s my profile, Mr. IGN Blog?

- R. Tokey

EXCLUSIVE Neutronov Character Art from Eat Lead!

As promised, today I am going to take a look at one of Matt Hazard’s most malevolent adversaries (the man you might remember recently calling Matt a capitalist pig but a worthy adversary on national TV), the dreaded General Neutronov.  Pay attention, kiddies.  The things you learn here could save your life in the next game…

Don’t ask how I managed to get art from the new game — I have sources and they cannot be compromised!

GENESIS

Back when we were early in development on The Adventures of Matt in Hazardland,  we were having trouble finding exactly the right foe to cast against the most ultimate of badasses, Matt Hazard.

We knew we wanted a character that would fear-monger with the threat of nuclear war.  We knew we wanted to use the “evil Soviets” as a backdrop — I mean, it WAS the 80s!  We just couldn’t put our finger on a character name or history.  All our writers came up with was SUPER COMMIE ATOM BOMB KILLER FASCIST and “SCABKF” didn’t spell anything.  We were totally stumped.

Then we got lucky.  One of our designers sons, Billy Edson, was just a dumb, dumb boy.  He was so stupid, this kid, that instead of answering questions on his science quiz, he drew the following doodle and turned it in:

6th Grader Billy Edson Doodled The Future of Video Games

His draconian teacher, Mr. Brown, took off 5 points, giving Billy a quiz score of -5. What really cheeses me off is that the TEACHER misspells “unnecessary.”  WTF!

Anyway, the school sent the quiz home to be signed and Billy’s Dad, Dave, knew immediately he had stumbled upon the answer to our prayers.  We were blown away.  We liked the concept so much, we immediately secured copyrights, fired Billy’s Dad, and created what is now known as the baddest video game bad guy of all time, General Neutronov.

Man, that whole family was just so dumb!

SO, WHO IS GENERAL NEUTRONOV??

EXCLUSIVE First Reveal of the New General Neutronov from Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard!

FULL NAME: General Alexei Plutoniovich Neutronov

NATIONALITY: Soviet Union

BELIEFS:

- Superiority of the Soviet Union

- Nuclear Proliferation to Mad Generals is Solid Foreign Policy

- Inevitability of Matt Hazard’s Demise

- Matt Hazard and the Other Money-Hungry Americans Can’t Stop Any of His Plans, Ever, No Matter What

- Fur Lined Coats are Both Cozy and “Evil”

- Undershirts are for wussies; crossing leather straps over exposed chest say “Militant Debonair”

FAVORITE WEAPONS (in past titles):

- Ranged Combat: Grenade Launcher

- Hand to Hand: Nuclear-Tipped Soviet Bear Tooth

- Fixed: Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles Tipped with Multiple Nuclear Warheads

HOME: “Korblanskivich Missile Silo Farm,” Siberia, Soviet Union

FIRST MH GAME APPEARANCE: The Adventures of Matt in Hazardland

KNOWN ASSOCIATES: Lord OctoSurgeon, Mightus Conjunctivitus

The Background:

General Alexei Plutoniovich Neutronov was a highly-decorated Red Army officer who served with distinction for the USSR prior to the end of the Cold War.

Neutronov made an appearance as the nuke-toting villain in the budget title Doctor Nyet!, a groundbreaking side-scrolling techno-spy game that set sales on fire upon its release.  He was such a popular villain that Marathon executives decided to create a whole series of espionage-inspired titles.  In conjunction with this, the marketing department created Neutronov Halloween costumes, lunchboxes and even sponsored a professional wrestler to represent the General’s Soviet inclinations!

Thunder Eye hit the shelves in early 1992.  Despite missing the Christmas season, sales were through the roof.  Fans and critics alike raved over the ending in which Matt, having dispatched all of Neutronov’s Soviet separatists, lures the General to a grisly end that involves two AK-47s; a red, a blue, and a green keycard; and the engine intake of a Soviet MiG-25.

What transpired was coolly described in a review as “WICKED AWESOME — 11/10!!”

The game was so popular that a sequel was immediately greenlit.  Neutronov was brought back to life through a convoluted plot twist and went on to reprise his role as a villain in the aptly-titled You Only Live 1,317 Times-in which he met a similarly uncomfortable end.

General Neutronov always longs for the glorious days when the Soviet Union was just one step from almost getting ready to start thinking about having the resources to prepare to plan to approve a strategy to initiate consdierations of taking over the world.

To this day, General Neutronov still has only one goal in mind:  to someday defeat his number one enemy, Matt Hazard.

- R. Tokey

One of IGN's New EL:TROMH Screens

This is pretty exciting — it seems that D3 has started showing the new Matt Hazard game, Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard, to press.

They even have video!

While the writer is woefully uninformed about the history of the franchise and Matt Hazard in general, and clearly has not read a lick of this blog for gathering background info, he at least has some new artwork and starts talking a bit about the concept.  Seems like D3 must have their hands full if the characters are breaking free of the game world… Neutronov always dreamed of such a thing… hmmm…

Be sure to head over and check it out:  http://ps3.ign.com/articles/923/923928p1.html

- R. Tokey

Ralph Tokey, circa 1985, Marathon Company Report

Did you know that in the short month or so that I’ve been writing this blog, The Real Matt Hazard has had WELL OVER 5,000 visitors?  Ya.  Amazing.  Thanks for being part of it and caring about the history of video games.

As a thank you, I just wanted to answer some of the questions that have been emailed to me on the past 2 weeks or so.  I’ll continue the blog very soon – the next update will be a character profile of one of Matt Hazard’s most feared foes!

On with the Exclusive Ralph Tokey Interview!!

What the hell is this Matt Hazard thing?

To put it simply — Matt Hazard is the baddest-ass, gunnest-toting, America-Firstest, Red-white-and-blue-bleedingest, change that we needest, hero-who-gets-the-girl-and-leaves-her-heartbroken-after-two-weeks-of-playing-in-the-sun-stroked-beaches-of-the-Caribbean, video game character of all time.

We created him in the 80s in an arcade machine and he grazed just about every system out there.  Except for the failed 3DO SKU, which only partially shipped. It carried an MSRP of $734.47.  Or something around there.

I saw an interview on GameSpot where some guys claimed that they made you up and created this blog as an advertising campaign.  What do you think of that?

Honestly?  Those guys are douchebags.  And, totally untrue.

Is Matt Hazard REALLY that tough?

If paper beats rock, rock beats scissors, and scissors beats paper… what beats all three at once?  Matt Hazard.

What is with the one bumpy shoulderpad on Matt Hazard?

Our original artist was a lefty.  He didn’t like to draw on the right side of the page and so he cheated.  Plus – inside secret – Matt Hazard’s right shoulder has always been programmed to be indestructible.

Where is Matt Hazard’s hair?

On his chest.  Thick, fuzzy, monkey hair.

If Lord OctoSurgeon is able to cast terrifying eyeballs… why can’t he cast terrifying fists?

That’s preposterous.  Nobody can “cast” a fist.  n00b.

BTW, did you know that OctoSurgeon didn’t actually have 8 appendages?  It’s true… he had 4, but he also had an extra 4 that were the appendages of a consumed, unborn twin.

Who the hell are YOU?

Not that I care for the tone, but I am the former VP of Marketing and Public Relations for Marathon Software, creators of Matt Hazard and pioneers of the video game industry you know and love today.  Without Hazard and Marathon… there is no jumping plumber.  There is no Space Marine.  There is no “open-world sandbox” gameplay.   There is no online persistent world.

Without Matt Hazard, the automatons at mega video corporations would be making Computer Tennis 32:  The Fight for Paddle Supremacy right now!

I was responsible for some of the greatest marketing and PR innovations that the industry is so used to now.  A short list of what I did first:

• Fake Screenshots: Sometimes we took photos of the staff around the office holding guns and then passed them off as amazing leaps in 8-bit graphics.
• Renders and Paintings: passed off as “target graphics” – why show what the game looks like when you can show what you want it to look like?
• Expensive Swag: mailings to editors to earn better reviews – I once sent each editor a 25 lb gold bar for the Fistful of Hazard review program.  We scored 113% on MegaCritic… of course, they assign a 250/100 for an “A” so it’s slightly skewed.
• Extravagant Junkets: involving booze, strippers, pools, beaches and repeated adventures in Cabos San Lucas, Mexico

Dinner At The First "Marathon Mexico Media Meeting" (MMMM...)

• The “A4S” Program: “Advertising for Scores” pioneered the art of bribing publishers to reign in “free-thinking” editorial staffs
• (!!!!): Excessive use of exclamation points – more exclamations = more sales.  Period!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
• Blackbeard’s Crew: That’s what we called the cursed journalists – the ones who scored Matt Hazard’s games below an 87.5 and therefore would never receive review copes again.  At one point, this included everyone in the video game press corps except one guy at a great little magazine called “Hazard Fancy.”

Do you have ANY information about this new game?  It seems like you’re on the outside.

Fair enough – I AM on the outside of D3’s new game and I would never have named it Eat Lead… although I am still convinced that goes back to my last words in the office… “Eat S***!”  However, I am quite familiar with the history of Matt Hazard – his games, the storylines and the characters…

To prove it to you – my next blog post will be a character profile… stay tuned.

What do you think was your single most important contribution to the video game industry?  Personally?

Back in 1986, we held a high level meeting at Marathon Software involving the product plan.  The idea was that we should diversify and define a “slate” of new products to be introduced over the next 36 months and we would decide this in a series of meetings dubbed “greenlight” meetings.

Some of the people on our PD staff were incredibly excited – this meant that new ideas, new gameplay styles and new franchises could be developed and we could extend our reach with fun and interesting content of the highest quality.  Some publishers have tried to copy this formula.

That’s my greatest contribution — the recognition that what people REALLY want are sequels upon sequels from the same characters with the same gameplay, but with the walls painted different colors!  Take your successful main character and just put him in ALL styles of games, don’t make new games with new characters.

All the mega successful publishers followed this trend.  Take a look – how many Elf, Plumber, Skateboarding and WWII games have you played?

Same game + different color scheme = MONEY IN THE BANK.  I did that.

You’re an asshat and represent everything that is wrong with this industry.  I hate you, you miserable marketing scum.

Haha!  Great quote from You only Live 1,317 Times!  Thanks for the shout-out!