Champions

Cancelled!

GameSpot: Can you provide any specifics regarding the story (or stories)?

Peterson: There were about 20 stories included; some were stand-alone episodes, others were continuations of storylines. The most important storyline followed Mechanon from his origin, through his recurring attempts at gaining greater power, to his final bid for domination of the city. There were several stories that revolved around your secret identity, and subplots involving your job and significant other. The stories were designed to give you a solid game experience in about one to two hours. And, of course, you go just go out looking for random encounters, or go work out in the specially equipped gym at a research lab.

GameSpot: There were a lot of rumors about the Champions PC game. One of the most common is that players could go anywhere (even to specific street addresses) and do almost anything within the game world. It's easy to see how this would create balance and pacing issues in a PC game. Did this have anything to do with its cancellation?

Peterson: Well, you couldn't go to specific street addresses. The game was not map based, but plot based. You could only go somewhere if it was important or interesting or useful; we cut out all the boring stuff. In other words, it was much like a real RPG (we think of face-to-face RPGs as the real thing, and the electronic versions up to now as pale imitations). What's the point of walking down the street aimlessly checking building after building? That's not the way comics work. You could wander about a bit on the combat view, but remember you'd only get there in combat. If you were exploring, somebody would be busy taking your head off with a laser beam or robbing the bank. You were always free to make stupid choices, but the usual result was that you'd either get attacked, or the villains would succeed in their immediate objective, and you'd head to the next part of the story. Things would keep moving; you'd never get stuck scratching your head over what to do next.

This was indeed ambitious, but not really as difficult as you might think. It's an entirely different structure than other RPGs - more like adventure games, but with some key differences. Still, this had nothing to do with the cancellation. We had solved all the major design issues and had a good handle on the task.

GameSpot: What led to the cancellation, then? Was the decision wholly Konami's? Or did Hero Games have any say in the matter?

Peterson: The cancellation was entirely driven by Hero Software. Essentially, our team came apart. We were entirely self-financed, and the project proved to be beyond our scope; it was very stressful for all of us. The two lead programmers (who were married to each other) got a divorce and we were unable to work together any further, so we threw in the towel.

The superhero curse