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Interview
with Roddy Toomim, Music and Concepts Director for Feet of Fury
By
Guest Contributer Rurouni Trelane
What exactly is Feet of Fury?
Well, the best description is that it’s like DDR on crack.
Why’s
that?
There’s so many twists that make it unlike DDR; things like throwing
attacks at your opponent, defending yourself with items you’ve
picked up. It’s entirely player vs. player, instead of just being
about getting the most combos or points.
This
is on the Dreamcast, right?
Yes it is, it’ll run on 94-98% of the Dreamcasts in America.
Why
did you choose the Dreamcast as your platform?
The fact that you can boot on almost every system without mod.
We can use the platform in almost every country, since it’s compatible
with PAL and VGA as well as NTSC. We’ve covered pretty much the
full scale.
How
did you come up with the Typing of Fury?
Dan came up with that. We toyed with it for months, trying to
figure out a good way to read the letters and not make it too
easy.
(FYI: Typing of Fury is an extra mode in Feet of Fury that replaces
the arrows with letters. The player must press the right letter
at the right time, instead of the arrow keys. It’s not as easy
as it sounds.)
What
was your inspiration for the power-ups and items system?
We actually had never seen anything like it before. We tried to
think of attacks and defenses that were pertinent to both puzzle
games and dancing game. Since each player has a health meter,
we have items that affect the health meter. There’s also items
that distract your opponent, like speed increases, vortex arrows,
and drunken arrows.
Who
wrote the music?
I wrote most of the music, 18 tracks of it, and all the sound
effects. There’s 13 other tracks by other artists, such as Aaron
Marx, who’s actually a UNT alumnus. We’ve got a group from Australia
called Kudos (they’re responsible for the most popular remix of
DJ Sasha’s "Expander"). And then we have Chojin, who
runs Chojinworld.com; it’s kind of a post-apocalyptic comic, and
apparently the music kind of goes with the story.
What
programs did you write the music with?
I use a variety of programs, but I try to keep it so that anything
can be reproduced live. I use Cool Edit 2 for one, Reason for
another one, and one song I wrote a long time ago on Dance EJ
2.0. But most of them were sequenced with Acid. I would lay down
a track that was usually the beat, and then I’d just layer tracks
and layer tracks and layer tracks… I think at one point I got
up to 25 tracks on one song.
Are
you a gamer?
Oh yes, very much a gamer. In fact, our company, Cryptic Allusion,
was working on an RPG before we had to abandon it and work on
Feet of Fury. Most of our artists ending up abandoning us, so
we had to drop it.
What’s
your current favorite game then?
Oh man… (thinks) I am first and foremost a Street Fighter fan.
I have a Street Fighter arcade machine with all sorts of boards,
including DarkStalkers. I really like ST3 Third Strike. I also
really like RPGs. I mean, I REALLY like RPGs. I still have sealed
copies of Skies of Arcadia for DC, Suikoden 3 and Wild Arms that
I haven’t even cracked open yet.
What
do you say to people who accuse you of copying DDR?
Granted, there is a lack of originality because it’s a DDR type
game, but we tried to make it a fresh game, give it a new turn.
That’s one of the nice things about Feet of Fury; you can make
your own discs. It uses DWI compatibility, and the only thing
it can’t do so far is tempo changes.
Are
you planning on adding that?
If we get the chance to do FoF 2, we’ll put it in and maybe freeze
arrows as well. We didn’t want to completely copy DDR that way,
so we left if out for now, but we might throw it in later.
Do
you fully support the Dreamcast homebrew movement?
Oh yeah, we gotta keep it going and keep the scene alive. Our
publisher, GOATStore, is starting a publishing division for everything,
including DC homebrew, as long as the product is decent enough
to be produced successfully. Our case was easy since we used KallistiOS
(a DC programming environment). Dan Potter, along with Jordan
DeLong have been contributing to KallistiOS over the years over
at Sourgceforge. It’s downloadable, you can mess with the code
all you want. It’s just for the Dreamcast right now, but Dan’s
actually done a port for the GBA, since we planned on doing the
RPG for the GBA.
In
a nutshell, what is it that makes FoF a buy now?
For one it’s a limited edition, only 1000 made. For the players,
it’s original music, and it’s a challenge. Plus it’s got Typing
of Fury, which is a neat side game if you’ve got the Dreamcast
keyboard; it’s very much like Typing of the Dead. It’s actually
been suggested that we market Typing of Fury to schools as a typing-teaching
tool. It’s even been suggested we port it to PC.
Will
there be a PC port?
I’m talking to Dan about it right now. We’ve discussed the viability,
you know, trying to figure out if it would work. We figure marketing
it to schools would be a good lucrative thing to do. It’s very
good as a typing tool.
Feet
of Fury can be purchased at www.goatstore.com
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