The following is an interview done via email between me and Simon Strange, a developer from Pipeworks who worked on Godzilla: Save the Earth. This interview was conducted between April and June 2005 and done solely for Godzilla fans and those who want to know the back-story on the game. To my knowledge, this is the first time ever a developer has granted a post release interview in such depth to anyone much less a fan. I tried to think of every possible question that someone who owned the game and the one previous game would want to know. From the information provided here, it’s very clear that this game was to be VERY different than what was released. I hope you all enjoy the interview. Also, I’d like to give a HUGE thanks to Simon Strange for allowing me to interview him for Godzilla fans worldwide! Thanks Simon!

-Chris Mirjahangir

Question: What happened to the single player destruction mode?

Simon Strange: We had to re-do the menu system. Destruction is now a sub-set of melee mode. Since there is no single-player melee mode, single-player destruction was cut. The destruction mini games were better, anyway. I was glad to be able to respond to fans by including it in the Xbox release of G:DAMM, but honestly it wasn’t that great of a feature. I was very willing to drop it in favor of the sleeker menu system.

Question: Where did the instant replays go?

Strange: There was no way we could make these work on PS2. Replays were actually the most difficult thing in our game the first time around. Replays mean that the game must remember everything in the world all the time - a tremendous feat, and something not possible on the PS2 with its tiny memory capacity.

Other fighting games can do this because they have only 2 things in the world - the two characters. We have thousands of buildings and AI's running at all times.

Question: Why is the music volume so low at the default setting?

Strange: Is it? I never noticed. This just happened - it wasn't an intentional change. It might be set to surround by default - so with stereo output you might be getting only half the volume by default.

Question: Where are the jets that were supposed to be in the game?

Strange: They were cut along with the adventure mode. They were too hard to see in normal fight cam.

Question: Where does the menu setting take place? (The command center base)

Strange: It's onboard the sub sent to investigate Godzilla at the bottom of the ocean.

Question: Who are the people in the command center?

Strange: G-force folks. That command center is onboard their sub.

Question: Why does MechaGodzilla 2 have different moves from his movie self? Finger missiles (MechaGodzilla '74 move), mega jump-which is actually a move Kiryu has, and eyebeams (MechaGodzilla '74, again, although it was a rainbow colored eyebeam).

Strange: Originally, (G:DAMM) we had only 1 Mechagodzilla. So I gave him a combined move set from all three flavors. When we added Kiryu, Atari wanted to basically leave the original Mecha alone - so we did. In some cases, like the space jump, I thought it was more appropriate for a ranged fighter than a melee-fighter, so Mecha2 got that move.

Question: Explain collecting G-cells and why when you collect them, your meter turns to green and when your opponent gets them, it turns red.

Strange: Originally, collecting these was the goal of each level. We just threw them in at the end to flesh out the points system. We turn them red on enemy collection so you don't spend time searching for G-cells which have already been collected.

Question: Why does Mothra have no rage?

Strange: Because she's a monster of peace! Seriously. I thought it was cool to give her no rage move. Also, she gets health and energy back instead. I like making the monsters different, and this was an easy way to push that agenda.

Question: Is it possible to aim your beam at Battra and zap him out of the arena?

Strange: Yes. The feedback on this isn't very good, but it's totally possible. Holding the L trigger auto-targets ground AI, and holding R trigger auto-targets airborne Ai. Monster targeting overrides this in some cases.

Question: Why have the green barriers in the arena?

Strange: Because we can only support so many buildings in a single city. If you have no limits, we'd have to build the entire world. We could have closed you in with terrain, but that would have looked dumb. We actually had Shield Corp. as a major player in the original storyline - those barriers are actually powered by Vortaak-tech, provided by Vorticia in her human guise.

Question: Why are the "getup moves" unblockable when you can always roll away?

Strange: Because you can't always roll away - if you're stuck against the green barrier, for example - or a cliff. Unblockable getup moves was our most important balancing feature in G:STE - it fixed a ton of old balance problems. Again, look at other fighters – there is no terrain to hold you back. The presence of an unpredictable, mutable environment created the need for a bunch of special design considerations.

Question: What was the overall mood in pre-production, production, post production on the game?

Strange: Mood was good initially, then plummeted once we started to build GTA:Godzilla. That stunk. We pulled it through in the end though, which was a relief. Overall, it's been the least satisfying game I’ve worked on in my 7 years experience.

Question: What do you mean by GTA: Godzilla?

Strange: I just meant that Godzilla wanders around, with some goals available, but mostly he's just exploring the world, destroying stuff. That's the GTA-model. It really doesn't work well for Godzilla, because nothing except another monster is any threat to you, and thus the exploration is boring.

Question: How did the game sell?

Strange: Too early to tell. G:DAMM is still selling 10-20 thousand units a month, and it's more than 2 years old. G:DAMM is well past the 500,000 mark. G:STE sold around 250,000 copies in the first three months - but some of those are returned and won't count. It's just too early to tell. My gut feeling is that both games have made some money for Atari.

Question: Is Pipeworks interested in making another Godzilla game without Atari?

Strange: Speaking for myself, yes. I really like the system we’ve got going there, and I’d love another crack at bringing it to a wider audience.

Question: (Follow up) Will Pipeworks finally be able to make the game they always wanted to? Will Pipeworks hold onto the story if part 3 is made?

Strange: Honestly, there's no such thing as "the way Pipeworks wants to" - we all have different ideas. Several of us want to focus on story and presentation, but others want to focus on technical or marketing aspects. There are just too many people involved in a title like this for me to predict what will happen when/if we make part three.

Question: What happened to the color effect in Anguirus' Sonic Roar?

Strange: It was goofy. The colors didn't look right from all angles, and were inconsistently drawn, so I scrapped them. (This photo is the "best" look for the colors. I'd have kept them if they always looked this good.) - The colors were Full-charge only.

Question: What happened to the option to turn the military off?

Strange: We couldn't do it, because of the larger role played by the AI's in this game. Turning off military would have meant turning off traffic & power ups, because they share a framework in G:STE that they did not in G:DAMM.

Question: When did work first begin on the game? How long was it in preproduction to development?

Strange: We started around March of 2003. Pre-production was 8 months or so. Roughly.

Question: When did the game get completed?

Strange: June/July of 2004. Our gold date was August 1st, but we were essentially done several weeks before then.

Question: How were the buildings designed destruction wise originally?

Strange: We had a dynamic destruction system which allowed you to take gouges out of the buildings. The problem was that creating such buildings takes significant artist time, and we were uncertain as to whether or not the system would be in place in time. We started making buildings the "old" way, and then it just became too late to re-make all of the thousands of buildings.

Question: What other monsters were talked about to be in the game?

Strange: Titanosaurus and Hedorah (playable) were the main ones. I think Varan would be our next choice. We also wanted Mecha 74 and Godzilla 54 in as secret monsters.

Question: How was Titanosaurus a licensing issue?

Strange: No idea. I heard from Atari that "Toho says there is a licensing issue, and we will not be able to use Titanosaurus" - that was it. I was actually pleased, because that meant that Megaguirus was a go, and Megaguirus is awesome.

Question: Why isn't the Golden Gate Bridge destructible and why are there 2 of them on the San Francisco level? (By the lighthouse and by the big shiny building)

Strange: Because the Bridge destruction looked bad with the old destruction system. I couldn't say why there are two. We needed a second bridge, and I guess we figured it was better to save our art resources for other areas. As I recall, you can't see both of them at the same time, so this falls into the "picky details" category.

Question: How long did the online play take to get finished?

Strange: 11 months. This was the most challenging part of the process.

Question: In Action mode, why do you always start on Monster Island?

Strange: Huh. I guess this was changed. I was looking at my original documentation (I can't check things easily in the game anymore - we've switched from Xbox to Xbox2 dev kits) so I suppose we adjusted this at some point and the doc was not updated. My mistake.

It was always planned that the initial 6 would start in Monster Island, and the others would start wherever. But it's not a big deal, really.

Question: How many levels were there originally? (Locations etc)

Strange: Our original contract was for 14 levels. We scaled it back to 10, and then dropped the adventure mode completely. Originally, all levels were to be an interconnected section of Japan.

Question: What other military vehicles were planned/taken out?

Strange: I'd rather not say. Our original story had a strong vehicle-enemy component that we might still use.

Question: At what stage in development did the story mode get cut?

Way too late. We officially cut it about 3 months before we shipped the game.

Question: How far along in development was Biollante when she got cut?

Strange: She was complete. I believe she was cut for political reasons, probably stemming from the bad blood that developed between Pipeworks and Atari.

Question: In August, Atari showed the game at a game conference in Mexico. Different character select icons were shown and Biollante was listed on the splash screen. What version of the game was this?

Strange: No idea. We create builds every few weeks - any one of them might have been shown. Our final character select icons came in rather late - we used captured images from movies for most of the project.

Question: If the game was gold in July of 04 with the story mode cut, why did Atari continue to tout the story and the online token system?

Strange: Atari is a large company. It's very difficult to communicate everything to everyone who might want to know. Frankly, it was probably a choice between touting the now-cut features, or not giving any press at all.

Question: Why does Battra make no sound?

Strange: Toho never gave us a good sound for Battra. We should have pressed on this, but we were scrambling at the end of the project, and this got dropped.

Question: How long did it take to design the buildings?

Strange: We were pros at this by the time GZ2 came around. We whipped these out by the bushel. There was essentially no design time, all production.

Question: What's GZ2?

Strange: Godzilla 2 - GZ2 was our in-house shorthand for the project that became Godzilla: Save the Earth.

Question: In your opinion, how much longer in development time do you think the game would have needed to have been complete?

Strange: With the original story mode? At least another year. The time we had was sufficient for what we eventually produced. Had we known at the outset where we were going, things would have been a breeze.

Question: How long did it take you to come up with moves for each monster?

Strange: Initial design was 2-3 days per monster. Generally 80% of those were kept; the others were iterated on over the course of several months. We tweaked animations every single day.

Question: What monster was the hardest to design?

Strange: MOGUERA's design changed dramatically, I'd say it was the biggest headache. Mothra, which we all dreaded, actually came together pretty readily.

Question: What movies did you use as specific reference points?

Strange: For me, MechaGodzilla 2 is the best example of a G:DAMM fight. GMK's fight with Baragon is a close second. I also liked the SGZ, MOGUREA, GZ fight at the end of Space Godzilla. I watched all of the Godzilla movies (even the original Baragon/Frankenstein movie) when preparing.

Question: If the story mode had been kept intact, how would it have been different when using a monster other than Godzilla?

Strange: We had three versions of this:

1 - you select a monster at some points, and are forced to use a particular monster at other points.
2 - you follow the girl reporter, and she watches various monsters, which you control.
3 - inter-woven stories for all monsters (each monster has their own stories, which maybe 60% overlap)

Question: Who’s is the girl reporter?

Strange: She was "you" in the story mode at one point. She wasn't developed fully.

Question: Why are there not many famous landmarks in the game such as Tokyo Tower etc?

Strange: Each of these had to be cleared by Atari guys. Should they have put more effort in? Maybe. I wasn't involved in this at all.

Question: Were finishing moves considered for the game?

Strange: Mortal Kombat style? Never. I don't care for that type of gameplay. Also, Mortal Kombat can get away with that because they have a 2D game, with no environment to speak of. Our game is unpredictable, and so long canned sequences are spotty. Look at our special throws - we're already pushing the limits of what we can expect to work consistently there. Have you tried grabbing Mothra with a burrowed Megalon? It's not pretty.

Question: Are there differences between the US version of this game and the Japanese version?

Strange: Yes. There are a few tweaks. Most notably, I fixed a horrible exploit which was possible with G90s. No, I won't tell you what it was. I saw one guy online who had figured it out, and it was horrible. There were a few other minor tweaks. I believe Baragon's weapon does 20% more damage, but I can't be sure.

Question: The manual says that there are moves that are not printed in the move lists. Could you give an example?

Strange: Each monster has at least these moves: (except Mothra Larva)

3 jump attacks
4 A finishers
4 B finishers
4 X finishers
1 Rear attack

Most monsters do not list their stomp, for example. I tried to list only those moves which were representative of the monster's feel.

Question: Why is there only the Godzilla theme in the game during the end credits and why not more music from the movies?

Strange: Those cost money to license. Also, Toho does not own the rights to and Godzilla music - the individual artists own it. So it's hard to broker a deal. It just wasn't cost-viable for Atari.

Question: Why can't certain monsters like Destoroyah and Jet Jaguar fly like the did in the movies?

Strange: That was my decision. I wanted Rodan and Mothra to fly. I didn't want anyone else to do so. Megalon + Gigan I just grounded because they already have movement options. I gave Mecha2 his flight from his movie (he hovers just like that at one point) and I gave it to Mecha3, even though he flies even less.

Question: The Godzilla/Moguera railer levels look very different from the rest of the game. How long did they each take to complete?

Strange: Months. Months poorly spent, in my opinion. We put about 6-7 months total into those two levels. I personally had very little to do with them.

Question: In Action Mode, why do some levels repeat (playing in Boston for example happens around 3 times in Action Mode)?

Strange: I selected the stages based upon what I thought would be fun. Some monsters like open areas, so they get them early (when it's supposed to be easier) and get the cluttered level later. Some monsters are the other way around. As you already pointed out, my design was changed somewhat so that Monster Island is always first. That's a pity.

Question: Were there any monsters/characters that the team wanted to put into the game but were nixed and who was the favorite?

Strange: Hedorah is the only one we gave serious consideration to which didn't make it in. We had also considered Titanosaurus briefly, but we were told quickly that he was unavailable.

Question: Why does Godzilla have no special move?

Strange: There were 2 reasons:

1 - to drive home the fact that Godzilla is "vanilla"
2 - because he had a special move which was action-mode only.

Question: How did the upgrade tokens work?

Strange:
Level 1 - 0 tokens
Level 2 - 5 tokens, max of tier 2
Level 3 - 8 tokens, max of tier 3
Level 4 - 11 tokens, max of tier 4

Each monster had a 5x4 grid, with "tiers" along the vertical and "categories" along the horizontal. You placed tokens into the grid according to the table above. Each tier 1 ability improved some stat by about 10%. Tier 2 gave a new ability related to that stat (roar to heal 5% of your life, for example), Tier 3 gave a 60% bonus to the stat. Tier 4 gave a very strong new ability. (Roar to enter rage mode.)

There were 11 categories, each monster had 5 of those available for upgrading. Godzilla, for example, could upgrade his health. Jet Jaguar couldn't upgrade his health, but could upgrade his resistance to blunt strikes.

Players used points to buy each level of monster. Once a "Level 2" Godzilla has been paid for, you can order the tokens as you wish. A small fee was charged (game currency) for each additional version of "Level 2" Godzilla. You could store up to 3 versions.

When selecting monsters, you could toggle through the 10 possible versions with the L and R triggers.

Upgraded monsters are used only in vs. and melee games. Mismatch games are allowed. But players are warned.

The point of the system is that maybe you think dealing 400% damage with Godzilla's weapons and having 150% health is better than having 200% health and dealing 175% damage with all edged attacks, plus doubled energy regeneration. You can see the balancing difficulties here. I was confident that the system was not overly broken, but I’m sure some imbalance would have come to light with a wider release.

We had the system completed, but there were fears that we couldn't balance it at all before we shipped. Again, there were political things going on between Pipeworks and Atari of which I was not fully aware.

Question: How do you feel about the outcome of the game?

Strange: It wasn't the feel-good project G:DAMM was. I think the monster fighting came out really well, and I'm pleased with the system. I wish more people understood the depth of the system, but due to all the other problems with the game, I'm afraid nobody will give it a fair shake.

Question: Is there anything you would change?

Strange: Well, I thought Biollante was pretty cool :)

The scoring system is very lame. I was also very unsatisfied with the challenges. I basically had nothing to do with them, because I became disenchanted with them early on.

Question: Why is there no online play for the UK version?

Strange: Because online play is very complicated, and supporting multiple languages for the interface screen was a nightmare. It would have taken another month or two to work this out. Think about it like this: 2-4 machines need to be running the game, making the same choices at the same time for the games to remain in sync. If one is set to German and the other to Italian, some small number of things are different. (Different length sound clips, for example.) This starts the Chaos effect where after only a few seconds, the games lose sync.

Resolving this requires a fundamental architecture adjustment that we did not have time to implement. If we had considered the problem from the outset we might have done better there.

Question: What are the difference between the US, Japanese, and UK versions?

Strange: US version was first. I believe Japanese and UK versions are basically the same. MOGUERA's moves were tweaked slightly for Japan, and an exploit in G90's combos was fixed. I believe Baragon's flame had its damage tweaked as well.

Question: A couple of DAMM questions for you: When did the Playstation 2 version of G: DAMM get released and what's the story behind it?

Strange: A PS2 version was planned, but never completed.

Question: There's a rumor that a code for Baragon was found by someone who hacked into DAMM. Was he like Biollante? Created then scrapped?

Strange: Baragon was planned for the PS2 version of DAMM. Mecha3 was the new character for the XBOX, and Baragon was the new character for the PS2. (Everyone demands that they have exclusive content.) Baragon was only ever about 70% done before the PS2 version was dropped. We came back to him a year later to finish him for G:STE. I’m certain that a few files on the G:DAMM disc still included Baragon, for example his weapon effect was probably there.

Question: How many cutscenes were removed?

Strange: We originally had plans for ~30 NI sequences (Non-interactive sequences) of which the majority would have been in-game. So maybe 7 or 8 CGI sequences. That was the "original" plan, and even if we had gone forward with it, it almost certainly would have changed. No cutscenes were created other than the 2 we have in the game.

Question: What happened to Titanosaurus and Biollante?

Strange: Titanosaurus was a licensing issue. Biollante was cut for other reasons. _Exactly_ what those reasons were, it is hard to say. Biollante was working on my end, but she was perceived as being "behind schedule" - so cutting her may have been a political move. Or a mistake. Or both. We never had her final design cleared with Toho, so about 2 months before we released the gold master it was already too late to get her in. I suspect that we didn't push hard enough to get her approved, because some people thought she would be cut - thus they created the situation they expected.
I don't have all the answers here. Obviously I really wanted her in the game.

Question: What other monsters were considered?

Strange: Hedorah and Battra were the other big contenders. We also thought about giving Mecha2 his back pack.

Question: Why was the PS2 version released first and the Xbox version later?

Strange: That was simply a function of when manufacturing dates were available. We were hoping for a simultaneous release. Because of the delay, there is one small change between the PS2 and Xbox versions (on the monster side). I won't say what it is, because it involves an exploit.

Question: What was the story of STE?

Strange: It changed. Originally we were going to have aliens infiltrate human society, and trick humans into extracting Godzilla DNA. The first few missions would be vs. human military. Then the aliens would reveal themselves, and you'd start fighting more alien attackers. Vorticia was originally the nemesis of the human protagonist (name undecided) -- a Japanese scientist who originally assists in stealing Godzilla's DNA, but rebels and leads the human revolution when the alien deception was revealed.

Question: What happened to all the cut scenes etc? Were they archived somewhere or?

Strange: They were never made. Those were contracted to another studio through Atari.

Question: Do you have a "full" version of STE with Biollante/cut scenes?

Strange: My Xbox dev kit has a version of STE with Biollante enabled. Actually, Biollante is in the shipping version, you just can't access her because we disabled the cheat. Originally, if you held a certain button while selecting G2k, and all monsters were unlocked, you would play as Biollante.

I've actually played all the way through hard action mode with Biollante. She was awesome. Not that I'm bitter.

Question: What happened with the buildings? In early reports, they were to be a little more destructible and you'd be able to see the actual insides of them when they were hit.

Strange: We did have a more robust building destruction system, but we ran out of time to make all-new buildings for it. Just one of many scheduling lapses. All our art time went into building single-player maps that we never used.

Question: How long was the game in production for?

Strange: 2 years, roughly. Probably only a year of "full production"

Question: How involved was Toho?

Strange: Moderately. We'd send them stuff for review, and they'd get back to us. They certainly weren't initiating any contact. We were contractually obligated to run everything past them, and we did.

Question: How many characters were there in the human plot?

Strange: 3 mains - the hero was a female Japanese scientist. Her father, a general, figured prominently as well. Then there was Vorticia. She turned out to be non-human, but she appeared human for the first part of the story.

Question: How many game modes were cut from the game?

Strange: Just 1 - Adventure Mode. This was the single-player game.

Question: Who was Moguera piloted by?

Strange: Our hero was flying MOGUERA in the space - shooter level. MOGUERA was flown by a generic pilot at other times during the story.

Question: Was there a Rodan railer level?

Strange: We did originally plan for one, but it was cut before we ever even did preliminary work on it. Basically, after we finished one, we wanted to cut back on that type of work, because the Adventure mode was ballooning, and we were afraid of it. (Rightly so)

Question: What is up with the Jet Jaguar concept art with the "amusement park"?

Strange: That was one of the levels. JJ was part of a machine in the center. You fought Destoroyah there, and the secret was to "activate" JJ to get help vs. Destoroyah.

Question: In the concept art section, there's a drawing of 3 Godzilla's fighting against some alien aircraft. What's the story behind that?

Strange: That was part of the secret alien invasion. It's just one Godzilla with 3 poses (its concept art, not to be taken literally. Think time-lapse shot of 3 cool things you could do while fighting.)

Question: Where does the Vortaak sub level come into play?

Strange: That was an early level. It's actually a human sub. We called it the Hammerhead. Godzilla begins asleep at the bottom of the sea. A remote sub (from the intro) gets close to extract G-cells. Doing so wakes Godzilla, and the G-cells are put onto three hovercraft. Godzilla chases and attempts to destroy all three hovercrafts. (The first level.) Then our hero - working for G-force, fight Godzilla back from a helicopter. She distracts Godzilla long enough for some G-cells to be loaded onto the Hammerhead sub. (First boss battle, with you actually fighting Godzilla.)

Godzilla dives to follow the sub. That's the third level.

Question: Where in the game did the challenge levels come in story wise (Transamerica building UFO attack, destroying Osaka etc)?

Strange: Nowhere. Challenges were always designed as small stand-alone things. For the record, I'm not fond of the challenges we selected. I wanted more Soul-Calibur style challenges - just fights, but with some rules twist.

Question: In the concept art, there's a shot of a lighthouse shining a light on Godzilla. What's the story behind that?

Strange: I believe that was part of the storyboards for the original intro movie. I'm not too sure on that one. I'm not recalling the picture.

Question: Why were there downloadable content/custom soundtracks in the first game and not in this one?

Strange: The PS2 does not support those features. Implementing them would have meant splitting off our builds earlier, which was not something we considered during the last month of the project. Things had already fallen apart pretty well at that point. Similarly, being able to select your monster to play a challenge fell out at this point. I was rather sorry to see that go, but our challenges were so lame anyway that I didn't put up a fuss.

Question: Why are there not separate power ups for Super-X 3 and Battra and why is it the Atari symbol?

Strange: We used the Atari logo as the unlock power up in the last game, and I liked the way it looked. Atari has a cool glyph. When it was decided that we had to support both SX3 and Battra, we needed a generic power up, and I wanted to go with the Atari symbol. We had to support both air strikes because of a strange slip-up. We submitted that Battra would replace Mothra as the air strike, which was approved. But then the SX3 came up as a feature we'd dropped in the first game, and we agreed to put it back in. In our heads, that meant replacing Battra, but Atari wanted both. Voila!

Question: What happened to the ice level that's shown in the concept art section?

Strange: Part of the alien invasion plan (they had three plans that you would foil one by one) was a giant laser to melt the polar ice. Godzilla and 2 buddies (Rodan and Anguirus?) would travel to the north pole to prevent this plan. There they would fight a super-powered Ghidorah. To defeat him, you had to get him into the laser beam when it was firing. I was particularly fond of that bit.

Question: What brought about the change in look between the first game and STE? DAMM had more of a realistic look while STE has more of a cartoonish look

Strange: This was mainly due to the additional modeling work done in the face of Godzilla, especially. We had originally hoped to have facial animations, but we cut that early on. We kept the better face stuff, but it drew attention in, perhaps, an unwanted way to the face. G:DAMM's faces were more understated, which helped to create a better sense of realism.

The areas where we lost visual shine were primarily due to having to make the engine work on PS2. That was painful.

Question: Why couldn't the Xbox version of the game be different from the PS2 version in the area of downloadable content and custom soundtracks?

Strange: Sony simply does not allow "inferior" versions of games on their console. Neither does Microsoft. (Of course, if you're a guaranteed hit, they'll make exceptions.) We could not do simultaneous release to two platforms with different features.

Question: How was the game received in Japan?

Strange: I don't know. I know that overall sales are not too bad - about on par with G:DAMM. I believe our Japanese sales are much higher. But I might be wrong.

Question: What happened to being able to punch while you were crouching?

Strange: I took it out. I didn't like it. It was useful only in degenerate cases.

Question: Why was there such little promotion to the game?

Strange: That's Atari's call. It's all about how much money they have to spend. Be thankful you don't have to worry about problems like that.

Question: Is there anything you felt needed improving as far as environments/monsters/moves/AI that wasn't able to be finished?

Strange: Well, the stiff-when being held thing was a very bad call on my part. I changed it at the last minute that you only would struggle when mashing buttons. I thought it would encourage people to mash - instead it just made being held look bad.

Question: How come there's only 15 battles in survival mode (at the end of the 15th battle), you get a message saying "Survival Mode Completed!"

Strange: People really wanted to "complete" survival mode, as opposed to making it never-ending. If you completed it on Hard, I am very impressed.

Question: Why do you start with Mothra in moth form in survival mode?

Strange: Survival mode is a test of our monster-streaming ability. We're constantly loading in the next monster, so that you don't have to exit the game between rounds. Mothra's transformation also uses streaming, and we can't stream two monsters at once. So Mothra could only be in one mode - I selected Moth mode.

Question: What improvements/adjustments/things would you add/remove in the game?

Strange: I'll take the 5th.

Question: What would have been the cheat to activate Biollante?

Strange: Hold L trigger while selecting Godzilla. It’s the same feature that allows you to see either Adult or Larval Mothra’s stats in Action Mode select.

Question: Would it have been possible to access her via a pro action replay code?

Strange: No.

Question: I'd have to modify my Xbox to even get to Biollante wouldn't I? I had heard a story of a guy who had a modded Xbox and saw a 3d rendering of her.

Strange: You cannot get to her. The data is there, yes. But she is not accessible, even if you mod your Xbox.

Question: There's only 1 end movie in the game and it's in hard mode and only available if you beat the game with Godzilla 2000. Where was the battle supposed to take place (since it differs from where the actual battle takes place)? Did each monster have its own individual ending and if you could say, what were they?

Strange: There was only ever one ending movie - when it got time to write the movies, we'd already gone down to just 1 playable action character.

That battle was supposed to take place in the crater of Mt. Fuji

Question: What were the events that led up to that battle?

Strange: You had to climb Mt. Fuji, with almost every monster in the game fighting you on the way up (2-3 at a time, naturally.) You see, Space Godzilla was an ally of the Vortaak, and was working the mind-control rays for them.