I got the awesome chance to interview Perfect Run, makers of Mr. Blocko: Super Tournament Edition, Intercept, Goldeneye 2D, and the soon to be released Super Banana Nababa and Ninja Gunman.

I got the awesome chance to interview Perfect Run, makers of Mr. Blocko: Super Tournament Edition, Intercept, Goldeneye 2D, and the soon to be released Super Banana Nababa and Ninja Gunman.
Handsome lamb: Welcome, tell us who each of you are, what you do in the team, and who the other members are and what they do, who sadly couldn't join us today...Phlog: Name's Eirik, but I'm known as Phlogiston on the interweb. I do music and sound fx. I also do testing and bring forth lots of ideas that are never put to use.
Bisse:Heya, well I am Bisse and I do all the coding pretty much, and other miscellaneous stuff that needs doing (such as the webpage). Grindie makes all the graphics, and can't join us because he's moving house!
Oh and there's HOi who does nothing at all ever.
PH:Yeah, throw HOi out, already
BI: : >
HL:Okay, well for those who don't know who you are, maybe a bit of history is in order? How did you guys become Perfect Run...BI:I'll take this one
PH: yep
BI:Well I met Grindie on GW a few years back. We started chatting nonsense, and then I helped him out with some RM2k game he was making that never got anywhere. Then it went on from there. As I learned GM and Grindie got better at pixelling, we started taking on more serious projects, and we got a lot of people to help us out, and eventually HOi and Phlog joined up as well.
PH: I joined up when I saw some screens from their/our game Run n Gun, and asked if they needed music for it. I was THRILLED to be part of something not RPG Maker
HL: How did you guys get the ideas for Mr. Blocko + Intercept going? Did it just "come" to you, or...?PH: We stole 'em
BI: Yes we are shameless theves.
No really: I'm the one who came with Blocko, I wanted to combine a puzzler and action game and it just came to me. Credit for it is ALL MINE! As for intercept, it was a school project inspired a bit by warning forever. Originally it was going to have a lot more features, for example you could pick up orbs that stuck to your ship and by making three in a row with them like in bubble bobble you got upgrades, but I just didn't have time to do it. Me and grindie made it less complicated to meet the deadline.
HL: OK, this one is to Phlog
PH: right
HL: What is your process when you're making music for these games? Do you actually play the game first, or what?PH: I'd say it's a good combination of both doing stuff prehand, and then adjusting as I try the games out. Over the last few years I've written alot of music for alot of games, and the thing is, most of those games were never finished. So I usually won't bother with writing the music untill the game has gotten pretty far along.
HL: Ah, I see....any bands that inspire you?PH: My favorite bands are Chromelodeon and Sigh. Two very different bands, but so, so good. But for my game music I'm mostly inspired by other game music. Alexander Brandon, Chris Huelsbeck, Jake Kaufman, Yoko Shimomura, Nobou Uematsu. Just a few names for ya', there. Lots and lots of NES and SNES music.
HL: Awesome! After the smash success that was Mr. Blocko: Super Tournament Edition link], is there any plans for a sequel somewhere down the road...?PH: PSP version is in dev, as well as DS version
BI:Hahaha, no. Well honestly I could imagine bringing it to like XBLA or something but we don't have anything planned for it at all.
HL: Alright. In a follow-up question, I received an anonymous question, asking about an Intercept 2, as well. Possibly something with more enemy ship designs, etc? Also, are there any plans on expanding Goldeneye 2D?BI: We are planning to expand GE2D with more levels, dunno when that will happen though. As for Intercept 2, we have lots of shooter ideas, but none of them are Intercept 2. We love making shooters so who knows what happens, but honestly I dont think Intercept 2 will ever happen.
HL: Alright.
PH: Maybe Lazrael will make Intercept 2 to pay us back.
HL: Haha!
BI: Naw hell jsut sue us over SBN.
HL: Speaking of Lazrael, you have Super Banana Nababa coming out soon [topic], which is a collaboration between Perfect Run [link], and The Poppenkast [link]. What is different between the original smash hit made by Lazrael, and your new SBN version?BI: No one will beat SBN because it is the hardest game ever.
PH: Also, new music. Most important part
BI: Yeah, almost everything is new. Graphics, bosses and everything.
PH: On a related note, im9today of poppenkast is a wonder to work with. Yeah, he did not tell me to say that at all.
BI: Some of the bosses are based on the old ones in one way or two for cheap bonus points, but they all play completely different.
HL: That sounds really awesome.
BI: Also, we really want to make it extremely hard. There will be difficulty levels so everyone can playit of course.
HL: Is the hardest going to be on par with lazrael's Super Boink-o-Doink?PH:I can totally beat some of the bosses on Weak! I've never played any Super Boink-o-Doink, but I assure you this game will be hard enough.
BI: Well.... it is going to be harder, but in a different way. That game is all about pixel precision control of your character. But for SBN we are trying to stay away from things like bullet patterns and boss patterns you need to learn. It's more about reflexes and tactics. It's a much different kind of difficulty. We're going to spend a lot of time on it to avoid cheap kills and unfair attacks. I also have to give a shoutout to im9today, HL, he is great to work with.
PH: Makes some pretty pixel-art as well
BI: So yeah SBN will be hard, but in a good way!
HL: Alright then! Does Lazrael have anything to do with SBN, besides trying to mass sue you?PH: He made the game it's based on, that's all.
BI: Yeah. He's not involved other than making weird posts in our topics.
HL: DragonSlayer, an admin of GamingW, was wondering if there's anything you could comment about the music in SBN, PhlogPH: Well yeah, that's an interesting question. Sure there's lots of things I can comment on. The tracks you heard in the teaser trailer are WIPs, for one. All the music is written in trackers, like the old times. Alot of the samples I'm using for the music in Nababa, as well as the other games I'm working on atm, are from SNES games. It takes alot of time to learn how to write with those samples, as....I'm used to using NES samples primarily. Also, soundtracks from all my games will be avaliable through
www.iimusic.net eventually.
HL: Awesome. Your guy's games always have small file sizes, is this a design choice so that people on 56k can play too, or is it just the way it works out?PH: With the music format at least, the files are primarily small to keep away from loading times
BI: Yeah, it kinda just happens. Only time I can remember decreasing filesize like that was removing a music file from Intercept because it was huge.
PH: Small games = small sizes
BI: = small penis. Graphics dont take a lot of space for lowres games and tracker music is super small so yeah.
HL: From images on your site

Ninja Gunman looks super awesome, what can you tell us about it?BI: Well, not a lot at the moment. It's being made in OpenGL and will have all handdrawn graphics. We have a lot of great ideas for it but I can't really say anything right now other than that it's going to be awesome and me and Grindie are super hyped for it.
PH: Also, I'm doing the soundtrack (am I?)
BI: (i dunno are you?)
PH: (yeah)
BI: (You probably are!)
PH: Also, if anybody has a better name than Super Banana Nababa, feel free to ring the bell and let us know!
BI: PLEASE DO WE'LL PAY YOU
PH: Actually, calling it Dlork02 would be better than SNB.
BI: Stop insulting my game.....
HL: One last question, that I received via email: "Why do you guys have homophobic overtones in your games".PH: Yeah, we despise homosexuals. PerfectRun is just an anagram for PreferCunt. You try it. It's the truth.
HL: Well guys, thanks for your time! Good luck with SBN and Ninja Gunman, they both look super cool.
PH: Sure, man. It was pleasureable for sure.
BI: Alright man, no problem, it was awesome.
External Links:Perfect Run's Website:
www.perfectrun.netThe Poppenkast's Website:
www.thepoppenkast.comPhlog's Music Space:
http://iimusic.net/artist/phlogiston.php