Every day from today until Christmas day we will bringing you a special bite-sized nibble of gaming chocolate in the extra special and not thought at the very last moment, TSA Advent Calender! Each day will be a surprise – perhaps some gaming trivia, maybe an amusing story or even a poetry recital from Lorcan – you will have to wait and see. One thing I can practically guarantee is that as the wintery weather draws in, certain TSA alumni will use this feature for pictures of huskies..
Day One: Gaming Trivia
Classic Amiga, ST and Commodore 64 beat ’em up “IK+” featured a move directly copied from the hit film ‘Grease’. Programmer Archer Maclean was looking for new moves to include in his game and decided upon a back flip.
“Now, to do something like the back flip – which hadn’t been put in a game before – I tried all sorts of things,” said Archer, “One was just drawing it, but I couldn’t get the flow of it right. Then I went out and bought a video camera, and filmed myself jumping around. That didn’t work, either. I looked at hundreds of cartoons, karate films, all kinds of movies, looking for these moves I wanted. ”
“One afternoon I happened to be watching Grease with my girlfriend. At the very end of it there’s a fairground scene… and in the background, sideways on, there’s a guy doing a back flip. I watched it over and over and over, and said: that’s it! A real person, doing a proper back flip. It was perfect.”
To capture this move Archer devised an elaborate plan that was similar to the technique of rotoscoping. He disassembled his television set and adjusted it so the back flipping Grease character was the same size as the fighters in IK+. He then placed cellophane on his TV screen and traced round the character before advancing the movie by a few frames and tracing the next part of the back flip. These drawings were then copied back in to the game to create the final move.
Archer declined to comment if the classic “trousers falling down” move from IK+ had been copied from a Carry On film.
Source: Edge
