More On Sony ‘Smash Bros’ – Now ‘Title Fight’

Earlier in the week, we brought you a rumour that SuperBot Entertainment are working on a Sony equivalent of Nintendo’s brilliant ‘Super Smash Bros’ series of franchise-mashing brawlers. Since then, NeoGAF have been doing some digging around, and it looks like the game – currently with a working name of ‘Title Fight’ – is all but confirmed.

SuperBot describe themselves as “a fresh, new independent game studio located in way cool Culver City, California” – a bit strange for Sony to be handing off such a big project to a startup, I hear you ask.

They go on to say that their team, currently working on a yet-to-be-announced exclusive PS3 game, is “comprised of long-time industry veterans and creative powerhouses who have worked on some of the most groundbreaking and successful titles the games industry has ever seen.” Well that makes a little more sense.

The studio was actually set up in 2009 as Broodworks by Shannon Studstill, the producer of God of War 1 and 2 – at that point, the studio was to work on “medium casual” games for the PSP. Since then, Studstill returned to SCE America to take a “senior director of product development” role, and Broodworks changed their name to SuperBot, remaining a second-party Sony studio.

Anyway, back to ‘Title Fight’. It turns out the game’s senior level designer was pretty vocal about the game’s development on his – now deleted – Twitter profile.

As well as posting miscellaneous pictures of the studio itself, there’s also images of developers “getting their brawl on”, a crashed game screen with ‘Kratos’ mentioned in the error description, and a shot of Twisted Metal’s Sweet Tooth in an early version of the game, all of which you can see below.

On top of the pictures, he talks plenty more about the game: “Racing to finish a level design doc for today’s review – map layout is looking spiffy if I do say so myself” he says, following it up with “Slam! Second level design pitch approved by our studio leads! Now onto Sony Santa Monica for a final green light.”

Most telling to the rumour of a cross-franchise brawler though are two tweets: “Checking out the original art assets from a Sony IP title we’re appropriating for my level – very cool seeing this environment in raw form,” suggesting the studio is being given pretty extensive freedom when it comes to designing the game’s stages, and “New Sony Playstation commercial vaguely foreshadowing our soon to be announced title,” where he – you guessed it – linked to the multi-character ‘Michael’ ad from not too long ago.

Moving away from Twitter, the original game tease PaulGaleNetwork has been posting more details on the game:

• On graphics: “Characters look like themselves. Kratos is as you remember him in God of War 3, Parappa is completely 2D, Fat Princess looks like her real self, Nathan Drake is similar to the build in Uncharted 3, Sly Cooper is cel-shaded (a bit like Toon Link), and so on.”
• On controls: “The way you pull off moves is similar to Super Smash Bros. Brawl, in that you can press any of the attack buttons and do a basic move, but when pressed simultaneously with up, left/right, or down, you will pull off a more special attack.”
• On characters: “The development team is looking at approximately 20 with the number looking more likely now than two weeks ago, to be slightly higher. It could be less though, initially, with room for an expanded roster via DLC, but these types of things are still being considered. The developer primarily wants to have as well varied a cast as possible, made of stars from lots of PlayStation exclusive titles.”
• On stages: “In the LittleBigPlanet stage, Buzz! pops up on screen when triggered (you pick up a Buzz! remote and use it) and asks you certain trivia questions and there are different platforms that appear that you can jump on, with each having a different answer. Get the answer wrong and it’s bye-bye by pie in your eye (KO’d).”
• On James Bond: “Sony is helping MGM make the next James Bond film which is expected to see release in 2012.”

There’s more in his posts (1,2, 3, 4), including talk of Move compatibility (“it’s not in the latest builds”), that the game is now being tested externally, and mention that the team is targeting a 2012 release.

So, with a little bit more detail, what’re your thoughts on the prospect of a Sony mashup brawler?

Sources: NeoGAF, PaulGaleNetwork, LinkedIn, PlayStation LifeStyle