LEGO®

Wowsers! Hi again – it’s me, Arthur. I’ve finally managed to sneak away from development on LEGO® Marvel Super Heroes™ to update you guys. Apologies for not getting back to you sooner, but we have been incredibly busy squeezing some jaw-dropping content into the game over the last few weeks here at TT Towers.

So the first footage of LEGO® Marvel Super Heroes™ has been revealed recently, with some brilliant screenshots and gameplay footage. If you haven’t checked it out yet, then you really should – we were delighted with the final demo that we showed off. Even though I’d played the demo through hundreds of times, I was still impressed! It featured Hulk with his awesome BigFig moves, and his super-cool ability to transform into Bruce Banner, plus Spider-Man and Iron Man facing off against both Sandman and Abomination, two terrific bad guys from our unbelievable cast. The giant Sandman boss featured well over 7,000 LEGO elements! Our programmers really pushed the technology to be able to get so many LEGO elements on screen at once.

That, however, is old news for us now! As motivating as it is to see the fruits of our labour, we are beavering away, making sure the next demo of the game is even more brilliant. There is still an electric atmosphere among the team (thankfully this isn’t because Thor has filled the office with lightning!). This really is a project that everybody on the team is buzzing about. New content is appearing in the game every day now: new levels, new characters, new animations, and more importantly, absolutely bucket-loads of new LEGO. Every day in the office is different – part of the reason the team and I love making LEGO videogames.

So in my first blog post I promised you guys some secrets relating to the characters that will be appearing in the game… things that nobody else knows at the moment – you know, the TOP-secret sort of secrets. Those secrets that even SHIELD agents don’t have access to! But to make sure that I don’t get into trouble I’m going to do it in code, so you’ll have to read the next part of the blog carefully :-). Remember though –  keep this to yourself. It’s a secret, right, but the clues should lead to one of my favourite groups of characters!

I’m heading back now onto the bustling streets of LEGO Marvel New York, where we are working really hard on the game overall, but concentrating on something pretty magical for the huge computer game trade show in Los Angeles called E3. This is where thousands of people come to see the latest and greatest games, and we are going to make sure that everyone is talking about LEGO® Marvel Super Heroes™. You see THE THING is, we get excited making the FANTASTIC content for the game, knowing how much you guys are going to love it, and we also then love to read news stories and also the comments that you guys post in the forums. They create quite a STORM in the office, so keep posting your thoughts on what you have seen of the game thus far, and what you’d like to see.

Until next time I’m signing off, but maybe we can discuss the awesome Iron Man 3 next time round. Which reminds me – I’ve got my Iron Man Malibu Mansion set to go and build… If only I could find some space on my desk….

LEGO Marvel Team, Assemble!!!!

Well, hello and welcome to what I hope will be a regular toe-dip into the fantastic and exciting world of LEGO Marvel Super Heroes. Yes, that’s right – I said LEGO Marvel Super Heroes. WOW!

While you have all been excitedly playing the other brilliant LEGO videogames, we’ve assembled a crack development team of our very own videogame-making Super Heroes, and have been busily working away on LEGO Marvel.

For the past few months I’ve been bursting at the seams, wanting to lean out of the window to shout out and tell everybody about the game. However, we need to keep these things top secret, under wraps, behind closed doors and behind our reflector shields, just while we make sure that the game design is brilliant and sensational…  that is until NOW… so WOW! LEGO Marvel… how amazing is that?!!!

My heart still beats a little faster when I say it, how exciting, hey! Getting to work on a videogame with all of your and our favourite Marvel heroes and villains! We are all enjoying work on this game here at TT Towers.

So my name is Arthur, I’m the Game Director, and I will be your guide as we explore LEGO Marvel over the next few months, giving you a little behind-the-scenes information, a sneaky peek into what we are doing.

First things first: there are a few characters in this game – in fact, quite a few characters! So make sure you let us know who your favourite LEGO Marvel minifig is so that we can try and squeeze them into the game. For now, though, I can tell you that we have got (deep breath) Iron Man, Hulk, Loki, Deadpool, Thor, Captain America, Wolverine, Hawkeye, Black Widow, and (pause for breath as I am exhausted after all those cool characters) Spider-Man… WOW again, right?!

Right now I’m working with the design team on making sure that flying around as Iron Man is as fun as it possibly can be. We’ve just got his Repulsor blasts working, and his arc reactor fired up, and WHOOSH… we are blasting through LEGO Marvel New York. And as we land and swap to another character, I’ve just seen something that the superb animation team has put in: Iron Man is dancing the robot, body-popping away… before I know it, there are 5 – in fact, 6 – people around my desk watching and laughing. That’s the thing with a game like LEGO Marvel – the entire team are all adding their own fun touches everywhere.

What else are we working on right now? Well, we are busy piecing together something completely new for LEGO games, what we are calling Bigfig moves. We all know and love Minifigs; however, in LEGO Marvel we have characters much bigger than this – like the incredible Hulk – which we are calling Bigfigs. Right now we are putting the finishing touch on his pick-up move, where he can grab and pick up any of the LEGO vehicles driving around New York. This really is EPIC, and you will have great fun being Hulk. HULK SMASH!!!!!

Anyway, I need to get back to work and check out some of Spider-Man’s cool new web-swinging moves before someone notices that I’ve been telling you guys all of this. So until next time I’m going to sign out, but stay tuned for more news from LEGO Marvel, and I’ll see if I can reveal a few more characters that will appear in the game next time around… I need to tell somebody, and I know you guys can keep a secret, right? :-)

Oh, you’re back. Great! We lost you for a moment. Time to continue the -

What’s that? As we were just walking up the stairs together, you were grabbed by a giant squid, yanked right through the wall and into the street outside, then pulled slowly and relentlessly towards the creature’s hideous maw? And suddenly rescued by the flaming arrows of a dozen Elvish archers, parachuting in formation down from their multicoloured gunship?

Yeah, that happens a lot around here. Sorry.

Glad you made it back, though. Time to continue the tour!

The effects you just experienced are highly localised reality distortions caused by the fearsome forces at work in our core technology laboratory. Here, at the very heart of TT Games, a band of highly trained programmers do daily battle with the primal essences of the universe - the ones and zeroes without which our worlds could not exist.

Take a look through this special protective security window. You see how boldly they wrestle with the code? How fearlessly they debug? Researching never-before-imagined ways to bring magic to the games. Splitting screens. Changing the very laws of physics with each update. Amazing, isn’t it?

Oh, by the way, while you were out with the squid, we announced the release this year of LEGO Marvel. You saw some of the designs downstairs, I know - but now we’ve made the announcement public, so we can let you out of the building without wiping your memory.

I mean - um... Nothing.

So come through to the Art department, and you can take a closer look at how LEGO Marvel is shaping up...