[MUSIC]
My name is Greg Johnson and I am an independent game developer.
I run HumaNature Studios and we are making a New version, a reboot.
The new game is called ToeJam & Earl Back in the Groove.
[MUSIC]
It's a very sort of chill game, much slower paced than a lot of games are.
[MUSIC]
It's It's got a lot of memories for people.
This time, we're gonna do a true reboot of game.
[MUSIC]
[MUSIC]
ToeJam & Earl was originally released in 1991.
Second game came out in 93.
That was called Panic on Funkotron.
The original game Came out for the Sega Genesis.
[MUSIC]
Sort of a by product of my background I think.
I grew up in the 70s.
with a lot of funk music.
I know I don't really look at now but I'm halfway, half glad.
That's what I look like in 1977.
That's me with the fro.
[MUSIC]
So Toe Jam and Earl Are African American characters.
Yo, what's up, my name is Toejam.
This is my homeboy Big Earl, say what's up Earl?
Yo, what's up?
That was just kinda came out because that was my world.
[MUSIC]
I made the game with my business partner, Mark Voorsanger.
Co-creator, it was just the two of us.
we had this idea that we were gonna do a dynamic split screen when two players walked the part, the screen would split and then they'd come together again and it comes back together, and we mentioned that Sega, they said, sorry, there's way the hardware is gonna do that, it just can't do it, thankfully Mark is a little bit stubborn And actually managed to make it happen.
[BLANK_AUDIO]
[LAUGH]
I see a whole pile of original artwork here.
This is some of the very original art.
This is one of the first drawings ever of Toejam.
We did a turn around.
You got to do that of course when you're designing a character From all angles, and these were like really, really, early sketches.
[LAUGH]
Well, that goes way back
[MUSIC]
The new game is kind of a mix of game one elements and game two elements, and then a bunch of new things too that we've brought in.
So it feels old but it's just better.
[MUSIC]
We ran a Kickstarter campaign.
I think our goal was 400k.
We came in at 500, a little bit over.
[MUSIC]
We added a bunch of new characters in this game.
There's now nine playable characters instead of two.
You can play Toe Jam and Earl in their new forms and in their basset forms.
[MUSIC]
We have the rhythm matching that was in game one.
Now you can create your own beats and that's particularly fun when you're playing with other people because then they have to match the beat that you've created.
[NOISE]
You know I wasn't going to do the voices for this game initially and then we started getting feedback from some of the fans on the forum.
A lot of them said no, no, no, we want the original voice.
We want to hear it again.
Wake up, wake up.
[MUSIC]
[SOUND]
The insane dentist, I had to do that one when everyone left the office.
I had a [UNKNOWN] that went like [LAUGH].
[MUSIC]
[MUSIC]
The music is exactly the same.
It is very very pure old school funk.
We're gonna be out PC and on the consoles.
[MUSIC]
I just want people to love it.
In this case I want people to feel like we did justice To their memories, to feel like it really is true to the spirit of the original games.
If people feel like we did that, like we succeeded at making them feel those joyful memories again.
Then I feel like we did it.
[MUSIC]
