TVG's own lily-livered seadog discovers what lies in store at the bottom of Davey Jones locker...

Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley return in a few weeks time with the much anticipated follow-up to the 2003 blockbuster, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. Missing the chance to tie-in a videogame adaptation and only at the last minute adapting Bethesda and Akella's Sea Dogs II, Buena Vista Games renewed focus has ensured there's plenty of swashbuckling adventures for gamers to get stuck into with the sequel.

With three distinctly different titles for the handheld formats, TotalVideoGames spoke with Matt Turnbull, Producer at Amaze Entertainment, about some of the features that will be on view for handheld gamers!

Can you list a few of the titles the team have been involved in previously?

Previous Amaze titles by this team include Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Many core-members of the team also worked on both Lord of the Rings: Tactics for PSP, and The Sims 2 for PSP.

What kind of material and interaction has the teams had with the makers of the film, and were there any aspects of the game that will expand upon the storyline of the film?

We received some absolutely stunning footage of the movie being made, behind the scenes special effects art, and some glamorous shots of the actors in order to make the pinpoint accurate detailed models for our game. In turn, the actors got to see themselves being rendered in realtime on the PSP, as well as the opportunity to make comments about the fun little details on the characters that don't come across necessarily on the screen. For example - do you have any idea just how many belts Jack Sparrow wears? We do now.

In recreating the key gaming elements from the film how do you decide on what to choose, what are the kind of issues that you encountered and how much involvement did BVG have during the design phases?

The movie is absolutely huge, and there are so many elements in it you'd think it was difficult to choose but somehow we knew exactly what we wanted players of our game to do - be Jack Sparrow. With that as our mantra, we ventured forth, figuring out just who Jack Sparrow was and how we could give the player the opportunity to truly feel like they were in his shoes. Jack's a pirate, he fights like a pirate, he womanizes, he cheats, he "pilfers". He's tricky, certainly not the best pirate, but he somehow always ends up on top.

The biggest problem with "being Jack Sparrow" was that Jack (unlike most video game heroes), doesn't always win, and even when he does a lot of the time it's more about a lucky twist of fate than anything Jack (consciously) did. It was tough, but we found ways to explore that even while still giving the player full control of their destiny.

Designing the game was definitely collaborative with BVG. We worked with some very talented Design and Art Producers there, whose job was to work with us to make sure we were nailing the type of gameplay we wanted, as well as bring a lot of great Disney-secret knowledge about Pirates of the Caribbean to the design process.

Pirates of the Caribbean became a popular hit for moviegoers, so could you expand a little on the storyline to the game and how closely it follows events to the movie based sequel?

The movie Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest is about Jack Sparrow's quest to save his very soul from the clutches of a powerful supernatural villain. To do so, he enlists the aid of his old friends, blacksmith-turned-pirate Will Turner, as well as the daughter of the Port Royale governor, Elizabeth Swann. In the movie, all of the characters get some great screentime - but our game follows the adventures of Captain Jack Sparrow explicitly, even when he's off-screen in the movie. We expand on the film's storyline, in fact our game starts a little while before the film does...

Can you tell us a little about how you've approached the different formats, and how you've tailored the game around the different target audiences?

Amaze developed three Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest titles, one for the Nintendo DS, one for the Nintendo GameBoy Advance, and one for the Sony PSP. As you mentioned above, all of those consoles are very different in terms of their capabilities, their controls, and the types of games players who own them enjoy.

Each of the Pirates titles is completely and uniquely hand-crafted for their platform - none of the games is the same, and certainly none of them is a port. The PSP game has a completely unique Multiplayer ship-battle mode, which plays almost like a First-Person Shooter on the water, with fast-paced versus and team gameplay, as well as modes like Last Man Standing, and Deathmatch, and power-ups players can pick up to give themselves an advantage against each other - like the Breath of Poseidon which gives them a burst of supernatural speed - even the mighty Kraken itself can be called up to deal with enemies. We found that the slightly older PSP gamers definitely enjoyed this style of gameplay, especially considering the fact that it supports GameShare - which means you only need one copy to play the game with your PSP-owning friends.

Meanwhile, the DS game features a fully-cooperative multiplayer game mode which takes advantage of their game following Will, Elizabeth, and Jack Sparrow, and will definitely please their audience.

The GBA version takes good advantage of the hardware's strength with crisp 2D graphics and fast-placed action gameplay. There are good reasons to buy all three.

Can you tell our readers the structure of the game; the missions, the progression of the game and one of the team's favourite events within the game?

The game follows the progression of the movie, so as not to spoil it too much - Jack finds himself in a lot of different places doing a lot of different things. The player has the opportunity to play levels as many times as they want, increasing Jack's "Notoriety" (which in turn increases Jack's fighting potential) as well as the Treasure Arenas - quick pick up and play levels that a player can get through in just 5-15 minutes and earn rewards.

One of our favourite parts of the game involves Jack fighting zombies as they pour out of an outhouse to attack him. We always wondered just what would a zombie even be doing in an outhouse? Some questions are better left unanswered...

Jack Sparrow got away from many situations in the movie using his skill and guile; can you elaborate on the moves and actions available to the player and the combat techniques at their dispersal?

Jack Sparrow's got a lot of different moves in the game and not all of them with his sword. In addition to the cunning swordplay, he's got an array of dirty pirate tricks up his sleeve, called Pirate Taunts, used to stun enemies or get them out of the way, or even open them up for tougher sword moves. These are attacks like hitting a pirate with the pommel of his sword, or kicking a skeleton in the pelvic bone, eliciting a jangle of bones as it keels over.

In addition to these, Jack's got several Power Moves, over-the-top killer pirate action moves which can take out many enemies at once, as well as several additional weapons Jack can find and use including pistols, throwing knives, hatchets, and even those little round black bomb things with the wicks.

Can you tell us about the settings and stages portrayed within the game ?

We follow the movie's storyline pretty closely, so without giving away too much - Jack finds himself in a dark and dingy swamp, in a derelict graveyard of broken down ships, on a vessel being attacked by a vicious beast, and even in a nasty prison cell, not to mention a lot of other places. All of the locales have enemies and traps specifically and uniquely suited to them, as well as different context-sensitive ways Jack can take out his enemies. It's easier to lure a cannibal into a pit of lava when you're fighting in volcanic caves - just as there are a lot more cannons for blowing up a bevy of pirates in the surly pirate town of Tortuga.

If you had to pick one real innovative or selling point of the game what would it be?

"Fight like a Pirate". The game gives a wealth of options for being a low-down no good buccaneer, and to really get the most out of the game (and just to get through it on the harder difficulty levels) you've got to use the whole arsenal at Jack's disposal, including the traps he's avoiding, his various weapons, his swordplay, and his dirty pirate tricks.