Iron Man interview: breaking the mold for comic book based games

We’ve all seen our fair share of comic book super heroes ported onto the big screen or your favorite console. So when Marvel announced that they would be making an Iron Man movie next year, it was inevitable that Sega would get in on the action and make a video game to coincide with the comic book company’s iron-clad warrior silver screen debut.

In an interview with Justin Lambros, Vice President, Interactive, Marvel Studios and Executive Producer on Iron Man (PC, Xbox 360, PS2, PS3, PSP, Wii, DS), he reveals a few tidbits on how the game will play and how it plans to break away from the mold comic book adapted video games over the years have been critically received.

The plot of the video game will closely follow the origin story of the movie. Fans of Iron Man will be pleased to know that the movie (and consequently the video game) will follow the comic book as closely as possible when it hits the big screen. Lambros also tried to get as much of the cast as possible to lend their voice talents for the game.

Lambros, however, admitted that the scope of Iron Man’s controls was something they were still working on. Considering he can soar freely using his suits boosters and take on opponents on land and in the air is a task the developers from Secret Level had to take into consideration. They wanted Iron Man to have all the kinks the original one had – from repulsor blasts to all the fancy upgrades that go with his suit.

Speaking of upgrades, he also mentioned that the game will feature a customization system, similar to how Tony Stark’s character constantly updates the features of his Iron Man suit. Players will get the chance to step into the billionaire inventor’s shoes as he fights against the villains of the Marvel universe.

Lambros also explained how he planned to change the critical view people have had on video games based on comic book characters during the past few years. This is what he had to say:

There are a lot of unique challenges for each of these kinds of projects. And one issue they always have is with the timeline. Movies just take less time to make then high quality video games, so you have to be out in front of the film’s timeline to get over 2 years of development time, which rarely happens, unfortunately. Iron Man is a great character for a video game, so that’s a good start.

We’ve had tremendous cooperation and interest from the film team, which has helped us keep moving forward. We are doing our best to focus the gameplay experience to deliver something fun and different that feels true to the Iron Man everyone will see in theaters next year.

We’ve all seen our fair share of comic book super heroes ported onto the big screen or your favorite console. So when Marvel announced that they would be making an Iron Man movie next year, it was inevitable that Sega would get in on the action and make a video game to coincide with the comic book company’s iron-clad warrior silver screen debut.

In an interview with Justin Lambros, Vice President, Interactive, Marvel Studios and Executive Producer on Iron Man (PC, Xbox 360, PS2, PS3, PSP, Wii, DS), he reveals a few tidbits on how the game will play and how it plans to break away from the mold comic book adapted video games over the years have been critically received.

The plot of the video game will closely follow the origin story of the movie. Fans of Iron Man will be pleased to know that the movie (and consequently the video game) will follow the comic book as closely as possible when it hits the big screen. Lambros also tried to get as much of the cast as possible to lend their voice talents for the game.

Lambros, however, admitted that the scope of Iron Man’s controls was something they were still working on. Considering he can soar freely using his suits boosters and take on opponents on land and in the air is a task the developers from Secret Level had to take into consideration. They wanted Iron Man to have all the kinks the original one had – from repulsor blasts to all the fancy upgrades that go with his suit.

Speaking of upgrades, he also mentioned that the game will feature a customization system, similar to how Tony Stark’s character constantly updates the features of his Iron Man suit. Players will get the chance to step into the billionaire inventor’s shoes as he fights against the villains of the Marvel universe.

Lambros also explained how he planned to change the critical view people have had on video games based on comic book characters during the past few years. This is what he had to say:

There are a lot of unique challenges for each of these kinds of projects. And one issue they always have is with the timeline. Movies just take less time to make then high quality video games, so you have to be out in front of the film’s timeline to get over 2 years of development time, which rarely happens, unfortunately. Iron Man is a great character for a video game, so that’s a good start.

We’ve had tremendous cooperation and interest from the film team, which has helped us keep moving forward. We are doing our best to focus the gameplay experience to deliver something fun and different that feels true to the Iron Man everyone will see in theaters next year.