It looks like famed Australian writer and director, George Miller, is very keen to dip his toes into game development. George is the guy responsible for giving us a slew of Australian film classics and international hits like the Mad Max series, Babe, and more recently, Happy Feet. A tiny news snippet from news.com.au reveals that he's looking into game projects in the future...
"I think the narrative in film and the narrative in games are really heading in the same direction and converging. I think it's a natural step for film-makers," he said.
Yes, it's a very brief news item, and one wonders if he's planning to set up a local game studio like fellow director, Peter Jackson...
oh god, happy feet the game..... wasn't it enough that hollywood "validated" that with an oscar?
Mad Max game!! Mad Max game!!
Oh wait isn't a studio already working on this?
Red Tribe I heard had the license
Actually, I heard that they DON'T have the license, at all. They just play at wanting it for whatever reason they have.
Mad Max is old news. It's way past its use by. How about something ORIGINAL guys ?
We're not doing Mad Max. It looked that way for a while, but it's DEFINATELY NOT Mad Max.
The Mad Max movies are certainly dated but they still have some really strong overall design elements that could make a great game, if well updated. Especially given the near limitlessness of the post apocalyptic genre. With a good team driving the development it could be a great title. I'm also surprised nobody has made a Mad Max game since the NES...
I completely agree, that license has wicked potential, not only for game features but for nostalgia and aesthetics as well. Imagine what you could do with post apocalyptic Australia? There would be no other game like it, the sky lines, the lighting, you have access to any and all environment types, vast deserts, bomb shelters, underground fortresses, and the characters...... what breadth you could get from just the characters alone is phenomenal. You could have any tribe at all, Arabian style nomads, urban street gangs, bikers, maoris with kick ass moko tatts, cannibals, radioactive freaks, cult extremists, a unified veterans league, communists, Imperialists, a militarized version of the police force.... The political and social commentaries you could make, its human nature in its most rawest of forms, and with the era you could have the entire game running to a Smiths or Depeche Mode or whatever soundtrack... can someone say 'awesome'? The best thing about the MM license is how they really defined nothing in the back story so it meant you could do basically whatever you wanted.
Unfortunately I personally didn't get to work on it, but just in the first few hours of thinking about its potential I got some seriously kick ass ideas for that game. I mean the whole nature of the movies was free roaming, imagine scavenging through banged up cars to collect engine modifications and weapons to take back to your garage and construct your own customised armoured Mustang or dune buggy. Imagine trading with some modernised Aboriginal tribe, getting a mission then rolling across this completely silent desert with only the flat hum of your 20B rotary or supercharged V8. The sky turning blood red, laying testament to the danger of your destination. Then you arrive at this blackened out skeleton city which you have to silently search through for you objective, hoping to not alert the local gang of some weird cultist fanatics to your presence. Dealing and trading with tribes and individuals like the Wolf Creek guy, Sleeping with the daughter of the boss of some biker gang and gettin chased out of the settlement. It'd be like Mercenaries, Half Life, and Shadow of the Colossus all in one.
I don't know what happened or what RT are doing now, but Mad Max was an awesome license and I would love to work on something with half that amount of potential. But... it's not about the theme or the license, its about how you can deliver it. I remember one suggestion of making it a direct recreation of the movies and thank christ that didn't happen, I mean what a waste that would've been. It's better dead and buried than that in my opinion.
I remember a big muscle guy wearing bondage gear and another dude with a Mohawk on a bike. There was another dude too that was the Mohawk guy's sex toy. Movie wasn't too bad for it's time. Not really good enough for the DVD collection. When I was at Uni in 1980s we had a Mad Max thparty. Mainly a lot of bondage gear and plastic weapons. It had a bit of a cult following back then particularly amongst the more open minded amongst us.
Reason why Mad Max was never made into a title is the copyright owners are very hard to get rights out of in the past. One australian game studio has already tried to get the rights in the past (who have a good name in car titles) but weren't able to secure the rights.
I remember Mad Max on the NES, I think that was the only official Mad Max game ever made.
Might have to download the ROM and play it on an emulator sometime to see what its like.