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Starsky & Hutch Interview Feature
Stephen Leyton
14/04/2003
This is not your common plastic looking action game but one oozing class
They donât make TV cops programmes like they did in the 70s. They were fast moving, fun and offended no one. Starsky and Hutch, the two hunks from this series, never did much thereafter. David Soul, aka Hutch, made a number of hit singles but then faded away. As for his partner, Paul Michael Glazer, nothing much was heard of him after the series.
Empire, eager to bring car chases and bouffant perms back, see this famous duo as the ideal pairing for some 70s kitsch action. Staksky & Hutch is targeted towards the general gamer who wants a fast-paced and enjoyable racing blast in a large 1970s city, whilst playing a game thatâs arresting, compelling, but with a bit of understated humour, that doesnât take itself too seriously.
For those under 25 years old, during the funky 70s, Starsky & Hutch were the staple diet for evening viewing and playground banter alike.
The game will follow the style of the TV show and, weâre informed, it wonât be simply another driver/shooter. Derek dela Fuente spoke with Ben Everett - Lead Designer at Minds Eye - about their love of the TV favourites and how they got to grips with reinventing Starsky & Hutch.
Minds Eye productions has been creating games for over five years. As a company they've produced many products with Hasbro and Infogrames, and created the novel game Sheep, which was launched by Empire. Many of the team have worked on major flagship titles over many years at other development houses.
Ben: âIt's amazing how many people know of the TV series, even if they were in nappies when it was first aired. After all, Starsky and Hutch was the original buddy cop concept for TV. But for those who don't know anything at all about flares, sheepskin jackets and fuzzy hairstyles, there's just as much fun to be had.â
This is a real duo game in more than one sense as the core development is on PCs, with the lead machine being PS2 and the flagship format probably a high end PC - because that's where it will look and perform best. (In terms of core gameplay, the experience on all formats is virtually the same.)
Starsky & Hutch combines the idea of hectic driving and shooting in a busy city. Minds Eye has created an inventive way for allowing a single player to do this with minimum effort while rewarding skill. But if you play in two-player mode then you can take advantage of a unique steering wheel and light gun combination (console only), and that's really fun and challenging.
Although the team had no dialogue with Starsky & Hutch (after all they were fictional!) theyâve had masses of input from Antonio Fargas, who played the character 'Huggy Bear' in the series. âNow, Huggy was a really cool dude, know what I mean? He's the most fondly remembered of the original team, and he provides voiceovers for the cut scenes that link the game together. There are 18 TV episodes that take the police duo from some small time gangster crime to an attempt on the life of a Senator. Huggy provides the narration for all of this. The game also has unlockable video interviews with Antonio Fargas that we shot in Los Angeles earlier this year. In game you see Starsky & Hutch driving their cars and we have lots of dialogue between them and special camera moments in game that show off their personalities. You don't need to know the series to do well in the game, but those who've seen it may chuckle a little louder.â
There is always a debate when youâre mix gaming genres you end up with a weaker game although offering much more in terms of game ideas. Ben put their side. âWe have very high level physics, ranges of damage and a wonderful city-based AI system for suspect cars and city traffic. The challenge has been to make the cars drive in a way that's suitable for the pace and type of game weâre creating. The handling gets across what it was like to drive a powerful, throaty V8 in the 1970s, but itâs easy to handle, because when you're driving around city streets at 70 miles per hour and wielding a gun at the same time thereâs a lot to think about! We've combined driving and shooting so that for the single player targeting is automatic but the target chosen is determined by where you are aiming your car. And the skill that combines driving and shooting is that the longer you have a target locked on
(and remember this could be a suspect car dodging a police car and an exploding
gas tanker all at the same time) then the more damage you can create. Itâs a progressive system. A novice player can sit there and drive and take pot shots without thinking and have some success, but the skilled player who drives fluently and keeps a felon in sight will be able to do better. The game also has TV specials that are unlocked as you play, and one concentrates just on driving as fast as possible and another on causing as much mayhem and destruction as you can.â
Starsky and Hutch takes place in a large free-roaming fictional city called Bay City - a cross between Los Angeles and San Francisco. There's over a hundred miles (150 km for the Europeans) of 1970s road frontage to explore. The game is laid out as three TV series of six episodes each. The aim is to gain enough Viewer Rating points to get a next series commissioned. One episode involves the kidnap of Tami - Hutch's croupier girlfriend - from a local casino by local crime lord Paolo 'The Pig'. This is a three parter - first of all the player must drive the supercharged red striped Torino on a random checkpoint drive through the city as Paolo makes phone calls to
various telephone boxes about town. If the player gets to all the boxes on time, then they will receive information about where Tami is being held, and there's a dash to Paolo's warehouse, where the player has to drive through a series of buildings being attacked by numerous armed felons and forklift trucks. If the player gets through then they have to find the mincing machine where Tami is bound and gagged and work out how to turn it off before she's sucked into the machine. There are lots of special effects â“ jack-knifing lorries on the roads and exploding gas tankers - to get in the way.
Along the way there are secondary objectives in all missions - things the player can do that don't help you 'win' an episode, such as jumping 20 car transporters, as well as achieving the main episode objective. If the player achieves enough secondary objectives then up to three TV specials are unlocked. These are different games that concentrate individually on driving, shooting and performing stunts. Additionally, in each level there are hidden 'Huggy' tokens. If the player finds these then a Free Roam mode is opened up that has challenges throughout the city that are not mission based. And finally, in every episode there are hidden keys and these unlock cars - more about that later.
The game is entirely based on driving and shooting, and there is no interrogating. Some of the missions involve sections that require tailing hostages or suspects and if you do the wrong thing - such as shoot at them, or police vehicles or attempt to run over pedestrians - then you'll suffer a big drop in Viewer Rating. The viewing public want Starsky & Hutch to live up to their on-screen good guy hero images.
âYour aim, as Starsky & Hutch, is to clear the streets of crime. In each episode you have very clear objectives and as the game progresses you gradually uncover an escalating series of crimes that start off with small-scale car crime and eventually lead to a conspiracy to assassinate the local senator. The storyline was created by Matt Costello, the scriptwriter of Doom 3 and many other classics, so it's tight, fun and appropriate.â
In single player mode - the player is controlling both Starsky â“ who drives the car - and Hutch - who wields the weapons. This is all seamless and intuitive for the player. There's lots of friendly banter between the two dudes - and occasionally they will have a bust up if you do crazy things. It's light hearted and we've tried to be faithful to the way they interacted in the original show. The game is great fun in two-player mode. Grab a friend to sit at the steering wheel while you wield a light gun (you can use different combos in two player mode), and you can either work together to win, or you can have even more fun and try to put off your friend by swerving as he is taking an aim at a target. The in-game characters know what you're doing, and will start to get annoyed with each other.
As you would expect one of the stars is the Ford Torino - as the main car in the game - how could it be otherwise? But throughout the game the player can unlock up to eighteen cars, vans and trucks and gets a chance to drive all of them. In some episodes Starsky & Hutch go undercover and may start in a police car, and on one occasion even in a bread delivery van. In one episode they have to chase their own Torino after it has been stolen â“ and since Starsky is the proud owner he isn't too happy if Hutch takes some pot shots at it!
The ethos of the series is great character portrayal and action galore but done in a high tech, sophisticated way so this is not your common plastic looking action game but one oozing class
