Due for a North American release on February 25, Kung Fu Chaos, is the newest fighting game for Microsoft’s Xbox. But this isn’t your ordinary fighter. Kung Fu Chaos is a four-player Hong Kong movie-inspired arcade-style fighting game with cartoon graphics and plenty of humor packed in. It’s the first game to be developed by UK development house Just Add Monsters. Tameem Antoniades, the Design Director, Nina Kristensen, the Producer, and Mike Ball, the Technical Director on Kung Fu Chaos answered The Armchair Empire’s questions about what Kung Fu Chaos has in store for Xbox gamers, including the unique taunting combat system. Tameem, Nina, and Mike are also the co-founders of Just Add Monsters (part of the Argonaut Games PLC group). Thanks for your time, Nina, Mike, and Tameem!

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Just Add Monsters (Kung Fu Chaos) Q&A

Conducted by Lee Cieniawa

Just Add Monsters is a relatively young development house. How excited were you when Microsoft decided to publish Kung Fu Chaos?

Tameem Antoniades (TA): It was great! As a developer you must get support from a strong global publisher to succeed. Microsoft Games Studios was just that and much more to us.

Nina Kristensen (NK): Yes - it was brilliant! We had quite the celebration after signing up. Microsoft is one of a handful of top global publishers out there and we are thrilled to be working with them.

Mike Ball: Well, there was a lot of beer, some champagne, Tequila.... oh dear god, the Tequila.... Quite simply, it's a dream come true!

The game had been pushed back from its initial release. What caused the game to miss that earlier release?

NK: It was the most incredible thing! We had actually completed the game but Microsoft turned around and decided to delay the release and pump in some more time. Not for more levels or characters or features, just for pure gameplay polish – they believed in the title so strongly. This is a scenario so rare as to be virtually unheard of in this industry. Kudos to Microsoft – it has made an invaluable difference to the game.

Many of Just Add Monsters staff has a lot of experience creating PlayStation titles. How different is it developing a game for the Xbox compared to a Sony console?

MB: All of the current set of consoles are fantastic machines for us to develop on, but the Xbox just has so many goodies inside it that we were really able to add features to the game that we had only joked about in the past; "wouldn't it be cool if we made it look like a real movie..." From a pure development point of view the technical support, toolset and libraries for the Xbox are absolutely top-notch – that really counts for a lot to a developer. It enables you to work with the machine and coax the best out of it rather than constantly fighting the machine.

Kung Fu Chaos doesn't seem to fit into a definite genre. Is it a fighting game that parties or a party game that likes to fight?

TA: You know how in International Karate or Street Fighter you get challenges in between the fighting? It's the same with Kung Fu Chaos except that there are lots of these challenges both for single and multiplayer. I guess it is a point-of-view thing but I would call it a fighter that likes to party. What do you guys think?

NK: Yep – a fighter that likes to party.

MB: I see it much more like a brawler... it's you and a bunch of people – it's your task to beat them any way you can, whether that's duking it out, kicking them when they are down or feeding them to piranhas. We just provide lots of different environments and game types for you to beat on your friends!

What will we see in Kung Fu Chaos that is different and fresh in comparison to the usual fighting game?

TA: In terms of brawlers we put more effort into combat mechanics than other games in this genre. Layered over the combat system is the taunting. This is the first fighting game that has a genuinely useful use for taunting. Knock someone down successfully and you can follow your combo with a taunt that causes expletives to fly out and pummel your opponent into the ground. This allows you to kick or throw them off the film sets! For every successful taunt you get an orb over your head. Get three orbs and you can pull off devastating Super Attacks. However, opponents can steal taunts off you by taunting you instead. It's fun!

NK: Humor! Kung Fu flicks are inherently hilarious and we've tried to cram in as much of that as possible! Tameem loves Kung Fu movies so he designed in loads of references and streamlined the humor style throughout the game. Our writer also had a deep appreciation of Kung Fu movies and we were delighted by how well his writing style captured the weird translation idiosyncrasies. Plus his writing style is dead funny!

MB: Huge and incredibly dynamic environments – in one level we actually allow the players to fight on a "Gigantic" ship that falls apart, snaps in two and sinks into the sea. On another level you ride a raft down a turbulent river with a ferocious Tyrannosaurus Rex chasing you! You not only fight your buddies, you need to fight the environment as well! Once you've finished the fight you then get to watch the fighting in an action replay with lots of visual goodies like film grain. Our Director shows the best of the action as you pull your low-down sneaky moves and combines it with action shots of the environment to make the whole thing look like a movie! You can even spot some items that you may not have spotted as you were fighting (e.g. the zipper on the back of the T-rex where the actor climbs in and out).

Not many fighting games have been released that have allowed for four players to fight at once. How hard was it to develop that aspect of Kung Fu Chaos?

MB: A nightmare! You cannot just create a series of animations and expect it to work as a fighting game! The system we build to make a fighting engine is unbelievably complex and intricate! And the fact that while you are fighting an opponent another one could step in and do whatever he felt like made things all the more complex.

TA: Disregarding the multi-opponent moves we have in the game for a moment, watch any Jackie Chan movie where he fights several opponents and you see that he actually fights one-on-one switching rapidly between opponents – that's what we went for. In Kung Fu Chaos you can start a combo on one person but knock out several opponents by the time you finish it.

By the types of gameplay modes included, Kung Fu Chaos seems almost like a natural for Xbox Live compatibility. Was developing online functionality for Xbox Live ever considered for Kung Fu Chaos, or will that have to wait for Kung Fu Chaos II?

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MB: Our primary focus for KFC was to make it extremely enjoyable when sitting in a room with a bunch of friends. We wanted to make it the best brawler available – so that was a massive undertaking for us, we've tried really hard to get it just right and I believe we've succeeded. Making it a Live title is going to be another massive step forward... but it's certainly something that we would love to try – there's just so much we can do!

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Unlike a lot of fighting games, where the story takes a back seat to the brawling, Kung Fu Chaos weaves a strong story (a humorous one at that) into the gameplay. Did Just Add Monsters see the inclusion of a strong story important to the overall development of Kung Fu Chaos?

TA: Oh, I don't know! The story's just an excuse to get into crazy scenarios! Never let story get in the way of gameplay, I say! I guess it's in keeping with the depth of the plot lines you get in your old Kung Fu Movies!

Most of today's fighting games are mature-rated bloody affairs. Kung Fu Chaos uses more cartoon-type violence. Do you think gamers are tiring of actual fighting gore?

NK: I don't think gamers are specifically getting tired of actual fighting gore, but I do think they are keen to see something new and most importantly be entertained. We've mixed cartoon violence and its slapstick humor with the crazy humor of Kung Fu movies. We think it's a pretty entertaining result and hope that gamers will have a whole lot of fun with it!

While most of today's fighters contain more realistic-looking character rosters, Kung Fu Chaos takes the opposite approach with its cartoon-style characters. Why did Just Add Monsters decide to use that cartoon look?

NK: There are a few reasons. For practical purposes, our super-deformed characters are easy to "read" on the screen - they're easy to identify and because they have huge heads, you can see their expressions that helps you to relate to them - they grimace when they are punched and grin when they pull off a cool move.

We also wanted Kung Fu Chaos to stand out – it's a more playful and "stylized" visual style. If you look at a screenshot of the game it's instantly recognizable as Kung Fu Chaos.

And with a cartoon style, you can be pretty extreme while still being charming. You can be playful with the violence.

What has been the biggest surprise to Just Add Monsters to come from the finished Kung Fu Chaos product that may not have been expected or planned for when the game first started being developed?

TA: I would say the single-player mode. We started without one at all! Now we have a single player mode that is both very fun and provides more gameplay than many dedicated single-player games!

NK: The sheer scope of audio was somewhat unexpected. On the Xbox you can do a hell of a lot more with audio than on any other console. Also in the earlier focus tests we had complaints about repetition of lines so we had to write and record about 8 times as many as we'd anticipated.

MB: For me it's just how widespread and popular Hong Kong movies are...I always thought it was a bit of a cult thing, but so many people are really excited by the game. I'm really hoping that we've been able to make something that all the Hong Kong film fans will enjoy!

(February 20, 2003)