Retro ASSIST ME!

I remember getting the call from Max somewhere in the middle of filming season 2. Probably between the Chris and Phoenix episodes or around that time anyway. Just a bit before E3. We were in touch with Andrew from CAPCOM's marketing (I think?) department. Stand up guy. Laid back, easy to work with.

We were let in on what the deal was. We knew about Origins before it was public, and knew we'd be making general tutorials based on that. Really early on we thought "these are games from when we were kids - we need to honor/bash that time period as much as possible." That's where we got the idea to make the story about time travelling to the 90s.

Max and Simmons are both gigantic fucking BttF fans. I'm not. I'm a casual fan. I originally wanted the first episode to be a BttF parody, the second to be like a Terminator 2 parody, the third to be a 1984 parody (where Captain Commando is Big Brother) but that didn't happen. The guys were insistent on this BttF parody so I was well and truly outvoted.

The writing for this one was done differently than before. With Wesker in the mix as a main character, we had more characters to take into account. Max and Jessica had also just moved, which we worked into the S2 ending, so Max was swamped and while he made the guiding decisions he largely left writing duties to Simmons and I. I was used to it, having written most of S2 (Simmons and Max had rewritten part of the Phoenix episode) but Simmons had also rewritten Rocket Raccoon and had done the Vergil script all by himeself. He was no stranger to it.

The thing is, I think Simmons' passion for BttF made his writing in Retro shine. The jokes he wrote, be they BttF related or not, were so good in episodes 1 and 2 of Retro. I think it's the best stuff he's written for the series bar none. I especially loved Doom's dialog when they first travel back in time and he's like "Well we don't have to deal with DLC, or patches, or system updates..." all the bullshit of modern gaming. And then later on when he's sick of the 90s he's like "I can't wait to get away from all these corded controllers, and rumblepacks, and game genies..." I loved that shit. Such good writing.

So Simmons wrote parts 1 and 2, I wrote parts 3 and 4. Since I wasn't really that into the BttF parody to begin with, I tried to avoid BttF jokes as much as I could. I used the movies and dialog to structure the scenes, but tried to make the gags totally fresh.

There was one gag in particular that I wanted for episode 2 when they go to the arcade. We had to cut it because Marvel made us. The more learned reader may know that Magneto once had a comic book appearance based on a uniform worn by King Juan Carlos of Spain.

That costume got Marvel in trouble with the Spanish government. No, that's not a joke. They got a nasty letter and everything. When the guys at CAPCOM told us this story, I fucking died. It turns out that when they planned to use the costume in UMvC3 as DLC, they weren't aware of the... I'm sorry, it still makes me laugh... serious issues it caused with the Spanish Crown.

I had suggested that to get Max to face Thanos alone, Doom looks off-screen (originally the scene took place inside the arcade with a few extras, but filming restraints caused us to shoot from outside the arcade) and sees Magneto in his alt costume. The scene went something like:

Doom: "Hey... hey it's King Juan Carlos, of Spain!"
Max: "What? No dude, that's Magneto."
Doom: "You're full of shit, Max. Me and Juan are practically neighbors. HEY, JUAN!"

And then Doom would march off-screen and Max would have to face Thanos alone. You'd never even see Magento in the costume, and even though the guys at CAPCOM liked the joke Marvel wouldn't let us keep it. Marvel was also so strict about their characters appearing in the series that we decided to cut out all of them except for Doom and Thanos. When we first shot Thanos, I had to wear this nightmarish prosthetic mask in the heat of August. We spent all day filming his scenes and it was terrible. Marvel saw the footage and was like "eh, doesn't look enough like Thanos. Can you shoot it again and not show his face?"

Piss on you, I'm gorgeous.

So we did. Re-shooting Thanos threw us off schedule by a whole weekend (and when you're in crunch time after trying to make a Captain Commando costume while Max settles into his new home - that's a big setback.) We squeezed to film Captain Commando before the episodes were due. I felt really bad for Max especially having to edit all that shit together so last minute.

But again - we got it done.

That was the last time I worked for CAPCOM. Max seems to have picked up some work with them since then, but it's been lower-key stuff. I doubt if we'll ever do another official Marvel project (largely because Marvel is so tough to work with for character appearances) but also because the series is kinda dying, if I'm not mistaken.

It was work, but we had fun with it. In the end though, I prefer to work on the main episodes of the show. It's just easier when we don't have to answer any companies about what goes into it.