Interview with Roel van Mastbergen, Senile Team
You will undoubtedly recognise the name Beats of Rage; a free side scrolling beat 'em up which appeares on the Dreamcast, amongst others. Recently we spoke to one of its creators, Roel van Mastbergen, about his current activities and one of his new (Dreamcast!) projects Rush Rush Rally Racing.
1) Beats of Rage (BOR) was your first game. This tribute to Streets of Rage (SOR) was received with praise by fans around the world. Clearly you also have a great affinity with SEGA?
Yes, I certainly do, I especially loved the Mega Drive. Of course I also have a Saturn and a Dreamcast, and I still have a Game Gear lying around somewhere. The original Sonic (back when he was still good) is a personal favourite of mine. The absence of the 'spin dash' in particular made the game better than its sequels. By the way, I still play Streets of Rage every once in a while!
A look into Senile Team's digital kitchen
2) Rush Rush Rally Racing (RRRR) is a new twist compared to BoR and the upcoming Age of the Beast. Why a racing game?
Originally because we thought we'd "get it done in no time". Three tracks, just a few cars, etc. It didn't turn out to be quite so simple, though. The project kept growing and growing. So we developed RRRR into a full product worth buying. We also don't want to be seen as a "one-trick pony", so after RRRR and Age of the Beast you can expect to see something completely different again.
3) Where did you draw your inspiration from? RRRR strongly reminds us of Super Off Road (1990) and Thrash Rally (1991), for example...
I did play Off Road and other top-down racers in the past, and there's a little bit of every one of them in here, both deliberately and incidental.
It's all original, hand-drawn art!
4) Why did you choose Dreamcast, and not some other commercial platform such as WiiWare, XBLA, PSN or iPhone?
It had to be a Dreamcast game since we intended to enter a competition, sponsored by Lik Sang (online retailer which no longer exists). The competition was to create a Dreamcast game, and RRRR was supposed to be our entry.
That being said, I personally don't think the iPhone is a suitable platform for this game; it requires tight controls. Xbox Live Arcade is too costly, besides I don't even have an Xbox 360. WiiWare is interesting, though.
5) What can we expect in the future? Will you stay in the indie scene or do you have ambitions to become a licenced developer?
I certainly am interested, as I said before about developing for WiiWare. Unfortunately Nintendo has certain requirements which we cannot meet at this time.
The zebra crossing isn't that safe after all.
6) Early on in the development of RRRR there was mention of VGA support and a 16:9 mode. Pretty unique since few retail games ever used both features. We can only commend you for it, but why did you decide to implement this? Has this choice led to any technical problems?
Unfortunately, technical limitations forced us to cancel the 16:9 mode. But we will try (again) to offer this mode in AotB. Fortunately, VGA is still supported.
