 Hello and welcome to episode three of talk to the hand the talk show about Manos the hands of fate It has been four months since episode two. I did not realize I had allowed that much time to go by We are approaching the end of January 2013 and episode two was released last September But whatever the case I believe you will really enjoy the interview I have for you this time today I will be talking with Sam Betos a graphic designer from England who has created a retro 1980s Nintendo style video game of Manos the hands of fate that is all the buzz right now Before we get started number one if you have never seen Manos the hands of fate you really should We're gonna be talking about all sorts of things that you won't know anything about Also, I recommend that you watch a video that I made a few weeks earlier with Jackie Ray Naiman the woman who played little Debbie in Manos the hands of fate where we played through About half of Sam's video game We will also be talking about a complete playthrough that you can find on YouTube by a user named CestrinNK I Will put links to all these things in the description below Please go watch those they're worth it And one other thing before I get to the interview with Sam His game is not the first video game to be based on Manos the hands of fate. There are two that I'm aware of You should be able to find them online One of them can be found online by searching for Manos the hands of fate version 1.2 And the other one is called Manos the revenge of Torgo Now go find them if you want to see what you think of them And I will say before I introduce Sam that Sam's game Solves the problems that the other two games have number one It is very relevant to Manos the hands of fate and to the retro 1980s Nintendo Design scheme that he was going for he's he combines both and does it very well And it has excellent and authentic gameplay the game plays like an authentic 1980s Nintendo game and now before I think of some other reason to ramble further. I will Play you my interview with Sam bettos. Here it is Thanks for thanks for doing this is a pleasure to talk with you Tell me about Yourself first of all Tell me about your background in game developing how you got into it what you've done before well, you know, I Mean I started properly making games in in 1997 and I was in school and I just do it as a hobby and Actually a bit of game it was I mean it was in the 90s, you know, everybody was It was arguing about Nintendo and Sega, right, you know, that was a thing back then and I made a game Mario versus Sonic. Oh Which was a sort of a free web game and it got some attention Uh-huh, and so, you know, I used to just build games as a hobby in my spare time and Of course, you know life got in the way and right didn't really get to continue the hobby and you know very recently With the launch of the iPhone and everything. I just realized that it's it was worth getting back into because you can you know I could make a career out of it. Yes. Yes, but I mean I was programming at And it's called a BBC micro computer, which is like the British Commodore 64 Right, right when I was you know when I was eight years old, right It's just always been part of my life really right right. What were you studying in school? Oh I did graphic design in college You know some computer stuff I say I mainly do web development and You know, I only recently am I trying to sort of turn freaks on games into the the full-time career, right? right well the graphics and web design and Animation are all so closely connected these days. Yeah, well if you can do them all as well, you know Develop a game. You don't have to hire a guy to do your graphics. Okay. Yeah, how old are you by the way? If you don't mind me asking. I'm 27 you grew up playing games. I assume. Yeah My dad was a gamekeeper. That means he used to go and he'd work in the woods and he'd rear and breed pheasants for the you know for the sort of upper classes and Okay, a definition of the word game. Yeah. Yeah, not not video game, but game birds, you know, and We so we weren't overly well off And so, you know, well my little of my friends were playing at Nintendo's I would go to a youth club and play the Nintendo there, you know, the the NES right below the Nez Here in England used to play that there But what would happen was friends would kind of say, oh, we've got this old computer that we don't use anymore Do you want to give it to your boy? They'd say to my dad, you know, and I'd get these what people would thrown out and the one was this BBC micro computer and it came with a book on On how to make, you know, you make games using basic which was all programming. Oh, yeah And you know with with no Sega to play on and this book I just kind of started typing away and learned a lot. Yeah, I mean eventually I got a Nintendo of course I did and I was said, you know work hard save up your pocket money for one of those, you know, right Of course when you don't have one and you've got these you got this book. It's like, well might as well do this What were your favorite games growing up? It depends on how far back you want to go Super Mario Brothers, you know when I was a kid non-stop on that, you know, Manos was heavily inspired by Castlevania Right, which was a okay a big one Then there's the Sonic the Hedgehog games those I mean I still play those now I'm sure you love that stuff and the Legend of Zelda. They're all games that I never played What did you used to play? Well when I grew up, there were no video games by you know in in the 70s I had cousins and friends who had Pong consoles and then I guess when I was in junior high We got an Atari and then shortly after that we replaced it with a Coleco vision with the attachment that could that could play the Atari games And then by the time Nintendo came around and revolutionized video games. I was in college and I was not interested in video. Yes, I had friends who had Nintendos I spent plenty of time with them, but I never played and this is something I didn't realize until just About a year ago. I never played any Super Mario games. I played Donkey Kong in the arcade, of course And I was a big arcade game player because those were that was the only place to find games Yeah in in really the early 80s I was really big on defender defender was my game when I was in early high school I would go to the local arcade and I would put a bunch of coins in the jukebox and I would play Rage in the cage by J. Giles band over and over and over and just played defender all evening I don't remember I have to tell you playing defender on a console on your TV or on your computer on emulator It's not the same. It's never been the same and but I still play Gallagher people still have Gallagher machines It's one of my favorite games in the pizza pizza parlors. I got so much tendonitis playing Gallagher When I was a kid, but well like like I was saying before I missed all the Super Mario stuff and When I downloaded an emulator and again this was about a year ago and and played it and tried playing Super Mario on my computer and I Had no idea what to do and it was it was that that was the first time that I realized you know what? I never played this you know I'd like to think it would have that sort of Star Wars style thing where you know if you haven't seen Star Wars You kind of have because there's been so many parodies and right and so much is derived from it that you've you've seen it Right, I would have thought that Mario would have had well. I've seen it. I've seen so many reviews of it I watched so many playthroughs. I know all the music and everything But then when I sat down to actually use the controls and play it myself Mario has this kind of sliding feel to it very yeah, he speeds up and he slides when he stops and That's what I was what I was coming around to was that your Manos game doesn't have that No, no Manos is quite rigid and you were comparing it to Castlevania Castlevania, which yeah, which again is something I've never played so so anyway I I missed all those 80s and Nintendo games and yeah when I really started spending Many many hours playing games was when I got a PC in the early 90s and I discovered doom. Oh, oh, yes Yeah, and then amazing game right and then and then descent and then Tomb Raider Tomb Raider. Yeah. Yeah, I still do to this day. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I still dream about doom You know what I mean running down those dark corridors. Oh Yeah, well tell me Why Manos? Well, why did I choose to adapt? Yeah, why Manos? You know, it's it was something that I mean I I generally develop the games myself But I you know, I throw ideas around with other people as a guy Chris who I kind of consider him Part of Freakzone games because he so many concepts, you know, he's helped me out with and he's submitted and you know We we love watching terrible films, you know, right? right good good be movies bad be movies we got into mystery science theater all that and You know Manos is it's a running joke with with everybody that's into these kind of movies And you know, we'd always joked about adapting Manos for years and it went through so many I it's It when we found out as well that it was kind of essentially it had a public domain status Right, we could adapt Manos, right, you know, that was perfectly legal. It was there for us to do that with It was no question that was going to happen, but I mean it went through so many Different versions we had a sort of point-and-click adventure You know kind of wandering around these these small rooms of the Valley Lodge and that and we had a We had a Torgo's adventure, you know these kind of things but It was it wasn't till I was playing I played playing home alone to on the SNES Super Nintendo, yeah, and it's not a good game not a very good game, but You kind of brought to my attention the way they used to adapt movies into games, you know Home alone. How does it how does home alone to turn into a game? I mean, I don't know do you trap? You know do you trap burglars? I don't know but this game was You know, it was it was in a hotel, you know, right on to and this game You would have this little terribly spry to Macaulay Culkin with pretty much every possible thing You could imagine being in a hotel lobby out to get you, right? You know you'd have suitcases room keys lamps things just hovering and just trying to attack you and it's made no sense And I love that I went back and looked at say Friday the 13th and a nightmare on Elm Street and things, you know And and just the way these adaptations worked it started to make sense and I thought, you know, there's a there's a moment in Manos where Where Mike is running out in the desert and he's attacked by by stock footage of a snake, right? And he pulls out his revolver and shoots at the snake to scare it away And you know in by this logic this game should have deserts full of snakes Like unloading bullets from a revolver right throughout Do you see you see my I do I do And so that's where that started and it was well, we need to make this a 80s nintendo adaptation of Manos Because that's that's the way you can adapt a story which doesn't really It doesn't really work as a game if you do it in that style You anything would work as a game, you know, they could have made office space into a game in the 80s Um So it kind of started from that and I felt that um, I loved how Manos out of all the mst3k movies Manos was like this kind of uncovered relic, right? If you know what I mean, it was, you know, we wouldn't have known Right and we wouldn't have known if mst3k hadn't found Manos, you know Whereas troll too, you know all of these famous bad films. They they kind of dug themselves back up Um, and and I like the idea that if Manos was made like an 80s game It's almost as if the game has been uncovered something that nobody noticed in the 80s Like, you know, we made it last year, but it could have been made in the 80s And that was kind of the the idea behind it. Yeah. Yeah The game I do again for those who haven't followed you or me on facebook or who haven't seen our Other gameplay videos or whatever. I've played the game all the way through It's obvious that you've been designing games for some time. I mean, it has a it hasn't accomplished Maturity to it and you've obviously been working on it for like you were saying you you've been thinking about it for years Yes, and so so you spent quite a great deal of time deciding how this would be put together how it would look What the what the ethos would be and it looks it Uh as a finished product it's you've I think you've accomplished something Really fantastic here. It's There's one thing there's one thing that you did right at the beginning of the game It's when when you approach that Uh that first jump and you see the snake fall into the pit. Yeah That's uh, that's the kind of thing that someone who's Who's experienced designing games will do Uh, yeah, it's a warning. It's right. It's sort of firstly you see us. I mean there's a before you Before you go to jump over the pit. There's a wall blocking you right? So by the time you've got by the time you can get over the pit the snakes falling down the hole Right. Um, anybody that's not played the game yet. This is going to sound strange too But we have a pit a snake falls down a hole You're not able to get over the pit until it's fallen down due to a little structure I've placed that you have to jump onto It's the things like that is the idea is well firstly you've been warned that there will be snakes now You've also been warned that they will be dumb snakes so that they'll fall to their doom if they don't But also the idea is that look this is a bottomless pit. Don't fall down here The snake just made the mistake that you don't want to right You see what I mean you right all these dual meanings. Similarly the um, the there are these um statue arms Which you shoot to get your uh, you know your gems and your hearts and your power ups And uh, I mean I I've always believed and and I still do for the most part that instead of having all of these tutorials pop up You know or this helper character saying oh mike mike shoot this this arm to get a power up and all that I just believe you should just you can just discover that And with say these arms they're often overlapping the enemies They're in places where you're going to be firing bullets and the idea is that Eventually by the end of that first level that player is going to have accidentally shot one of these arm statues and they'll have found out that you shoot that to get a power up You know, it's you're sort of teaching you how to play the game through the level design It's always believed in that well as long as I've uh, I've been into game design I yeah, I noticed that immediately partially it's from Because I've played games myself And also because I've I've watched so many recent game reviews where they talk about those very things Particularly there's this lengthy Mega man review a sequel like this. Yes. Yes. Yeah, he talks about that very subject Teaching the the player especially a new player how to play the game without having tutorials You know, sometimes you do need a tutorial. It's You know some of these 3d games you got a nintendo 64 controller so many buttons You're not just gonna find these things out But I do think it's it's it's better game design if you can just have people pick up the game by playing it You know learn to swim by jumping in some water Right There are games that are difficult because they're badly designed and then there are games that are difficult because they're well designed Um, the the badly designed games You're just getting hit left and right and you can't survive Yeah, because because there's nothing you can do because the controls are bad because you don't know where to go But you avoided all of that and uh, yeah, it's important that if you you know If you lose a life in a game, it's important that it's your fault Right, you know the challenge the challenge has to be in the game design Not in you know wrestling with the controls and everything like that You know, you find little things like I mean the closest I got to being unfair in manos was maybe the plane level I was very harsh there and Maybe sort of the last few minutes of the master's temple at the end But you kind of you kind of go. Okay. I've been really harsh here So here are a bunch of extra lives for you so you get plenty of chances to do it You know, you got to really think about that kind of thing. Yeah, and you know, even the uh, the the big uh You know the big names fall into these holes sometime I know that the uh, sonic one of my favorite game series and still is it had a real bad patch around sort of 2006 and they fell into mistakes that you know, even you see amateurs don't make Mm-hmm Yeah, the airplane level in the manos game was the fighting the giant claw and torgo at the same time That was the most difficult for me. I probably I died 25 26 times in a row at least There's a a safe zone in that boss battle, which uh, the very top left of the screen While you're fighting the giant claw his head does enter that spot So you have to avoid that but torgo won't go in the very top left of the screen Okay, well don't don't give away too many too many secrets. I was really surprised when I watched the uh, uh, the complete playthrough by Um, hk. Yes What's his full name? I I forget but he was very good at it Yeah, I was surprised that that there were hidden things in some of the blocks You could shoot some blocks and I was surprised that he found them if I'm honest I thought I thought that was something that was just gonna be I would know or maybe somebody would Uh, there were um, uh, I had no idea. There were more hands of fate that I was missing Uh, yeah, there was uh seven. Um It was it was a bit of an homage to sonic the hedgehog. There was always the seven chaos And you get a good or a bad ending whether or not you managed to get these chaos emeralds, and it was kind of a homage to that but it was uh, it was just crystal hands and we Designed a document it was crystal hands crystal hands and it wasn't until the game was nearly finished But why don't we call those hands of fate? Right? Okay, that was brilliant by the way hand of fate found that was perfectly 80s That that was yeah, I laughed out loud when I first saw that If you notice as well, we've done Pretty much the only punctuation that you'll find in that game is a sentence ends in a space and then two exclamation marks Um, it's you know, it's not bad typing from me. It's just something I noticed It was a common in a lot of these old nintendo games They would they'd have two exclamation marks on the end of every sentence and it was a space before them and it's just Yeah Every game did it for some reason. Yeah Well, I'm I'm I'm glad you you uh, you didn't go so far as to put the misspellings in bad english I'm glad you didn't do that. Yeah, when I was first Advertising it. I was referring to it as the grind house of video games. Did you ever see grind? No? Well, there's Tarantino Rodriguez film where they actually kind of paid homage to the the bad Exploitation films, but they made a good film out of it And I wanted manos to be a a good thing made out of bad things and so there's things like say bad spelling and things That where it's almost that it could be seen as unintentional, you know, I wanted it to be a good game That's why you know that that's why we don't have any Level design that's unfair or anything like that. We really wanted it to be a good game But to also reference all of these bad movies and bad games When did you first get the idea to put in other B movie characters like the robot monster and the giant claw? Oh, do you know what that was? It was a eureka moment that was because um, I was uh, I had uh the enemies. I mean I was just drawing enemies. What would you find? Similar to that home alone two game. What would you find in a in an old lodge or an old hotel? I could think well the theme of manos is hands and so you know straight away I'm drawing a severed hand and having it crawl around potentially hands of previous You know people the master has stolen their hands the way he did right, right, but uh, I was like I was looking at it and and just I saw it and that is a crawling hand the crawling hand You know and it just it just hit me. I just thought uh, well Not necessarily monsters from other bad movies as such, but they could well be named after bad movies I mean there are some like killer shrews that they A killer shrew is a killer shrew but things like the uh, I've got some floating eyeballs, which I call the eye creatures And uh, you know, they don't look like the eye creatures from the film the eye creatures But I named them that there are a few there's uh The goblins from troll 2 that you find in the um in the third level they're pretty much You know, I mean as as far as I legally can they are they have likeness to the trolls from troll 2 But um, I'd say there are a few the green slime things like that We're just the screaming skull, you know, I don't really remember many points in that movie Where the skull actually screamed or floated around in the sky, but you look at it and you say it's a screaming skull Right Yeah, well, it made it made the whole thing very entertaining. It gave you a sense of of uh, of discovery And where's that sort of um that geek kind of right moment, isn't it where you go? That's the thing that I know and and not everybody else does and right and and the the underground level when the uh The airplane is inexplicably. Yes romance cave parked underground. Yeah, I I you know the the first thing in there is the bubbles coming up from the ground The bubbles that hurt you and all the way through it. I was thinking why bubbles and then robot monster shows up Oh, of course The the bubbles right the million bubble machine or whatever they call it And those bubbles actually the way they move the way they come up from the ground and they They kind of zigzag up towards the top that is in reference to legend of zelda 2 So he kind of got a double reference in I had the bubbles and I had the zelda 2 and I it was just it's romance cave It's gonna be full of all these bubbles You know, so there was a lot of these sort of double references and things. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah Talk about more of the references references that people might miss Okay, um, well, I don't think many people are going to miss the uh the familiar gumball machine Right, you've probably noticed you probably notice the valley large is a lot bigger Yes in their game. It's more of it. I thought it needs to be an old hotel Really because you need to fit you can't just walk to the right and you're at the end of the room It's going to make for a very bad game But we have references such as uh, if you when you finish the game You'll have the names all the enemies you see their names in the credits And so people will see names like the eye creatures hobgoblins All of these things. Um, but also we have some game references, uh The uh, I don't know there's the fourth level is kind of a repeat a harder version of the first But at night time, right with the auto scrolling and everything and when that begins, um Mike says what a horrible night to have a curse, right? And that line comes from uh, Castlevania 2 Where this line would be repeatedly Uh, we've repeatedly come up on your screen every time it turned from day to night when it went from day to night The colors would change to a dark blue Enemies would get more vicious more hazards would appear and it would it would take you by surprise and um The idea of of mike going outside of the valley lodge at night Uh, and then saying what a horrible night to have a curse Do these uh, you know, I I thought it's it's nice to me even if it's only a fraction of the people playing They'll remember Castlevania 2 to just make them smile in that way. Um, well, that's part of the mystery science theater Uh ethos as well So you you make the jokes that are funny to you and that and that you get and the people who will get it Will get it and everyone else will just laugh at it. Well, yeah, you just got to make sure that it doesn't It it still makes sense if you don't get the reference. It can't just be out of things like the giant claw the the bird The bird as big as a battleship Being in the game twice The idea behind that was that, you know, anybody that's seen that the giant claw or or any of these videos referencing the giant claw Will will you know immediately? Twig it but those who haven't will say oh, this is the master's giant pet bird that he keeps in the basement, you know We originally had togo actually Riding on the back of the giant claw in the in this in the biplane level We had the the idea was that mike would be riding on some kind of bird and he would be fighting toga Who's riding on the giant claw? but just with the thought of togo in a biplane just came up in conversation and it was uh, you know We were rolling around for a while Yeah, I can picture and and uh Characters and airplanes were so common in video games Yeah, that it just makes sense. I mean it just seems perfectly natural somehow I remember it was in super mario land on the game boy Um, there was you know, it's a platform game But there's uh, which is one level where you're in a in a sort of a ship just flying around and shit And there's one when you're in a submarine and I quite like that Just a little bit of changing things up and it was also good for the development time because You know a platform level it it takes a long time whereas at the plane level it's you know Move up and down and shoot some things. It's it goes by a lot quicker. So we were able to you know, get You're able to get more out of the game Without having to cut it short And um, you know, and it did I mean so many of the websites kotaku and places like that all just said togo in a biplane. I'm sold I came a highlight of the Of the game. Yeah, it's it's it's a funny idea and it's again. It's perfectly natural for a video game Some subtle things as well. I mean the snakes are based on the fact that mike shoots a snake in the film But you know We want everybody playing that that that likes mystery science there to just look and say watch out for snakes, right? You know the Yeah, I'll let that's a reference right there. I'll just let go and if people get it they get it And if they don't they And then there's the mods. Oh must yes That was in reference to the fact that the a stage lights attracted so many moths in the film Right, that was that was the only reason they're there. They're not a bad movie Other than manos, right? Well, they were they were in the movie whether they were wanted or not They were again, it's the home alone two thing is what can I see in the movie that I can use it? Well, there's an awful lot of moths here. So, you know It was also we waited till the nighttime level before we included them, you know And uh, yeah a little bit of game logic in the following level, you know You're uh an entire biplane can explode from touching a moth right right 80s game logic. Love it Yeah, the death animation for mike when you when you've taken enough hits and you die instead of say Jumping off of the screen the way super mario did or wherever, you know, he turns into like a sort of angel Sort of ghosts and sort of flies upwards off the screen and yeah, that's referencing old sega game called alex kid in miracle world Have you ever heard of that? No Alex kid in miracle it was before sega came out with sonic. They tried to Respond to mario with this character called alex kid And he used to he was it was a one hit kill game. It was very very good But it was very very frustrating and you know a slight misstep and you would die instantly There was no health or anything and he would he would go Just float up off the screen like that like a little ghost and you saw it so often in that game Right because it was one hit kill and and I just thought those people that remember that game can get a little bit of a A laugh out of seeing mike do that in manners Tell me about designing the graphics. You do this yourself Yeah, yeah, I mean generally in games. Um, I'm Often building, you know more complex graphics on on the mac over here and you know in illustrator and photoshop And you know really drawing some complex stuff and then I then I swivel my chair around over to my laptop And and then program it into the game But with with manos I mean I could just click these pixels straight in on the development kit on the laptop and it was You know it is it to get those retro graphics. They're they're very easy to do Very quick. So I was able to spend more time on the actual content of manos say my previous game awesome land Which was a kind of a mario parody That used a I called it HD pixels and it was it looked like sprites made of pixels But then if you look to the fine details of those pixels, they were a texture So this guy looked like it was made out of blocks like mario But those blocks would be textured like skin or or like jeans or whatever it was that those pixels were representing and um And the problem there is when you spend the time adding those textures, etc. And then you go to program the game You know you've got less time to actually add more content So that was kind of the super mario style the same graphics and the same Everything just different levels or as manos was able to have, you know Long levels with a different boss that behaves differently at the end of each level and you're able to add a lot more content Because the graphics were so easily clicked together I mean, obviously it We did a lot of research into into what these these sprites look like in the 80s to get them to feel Right and to not have it look amateurish or anything like that. And uh, yeah I mean he the face is a based on mega man You know, these kind of cute cartoony face But then, you know, we want a kind of a creepy feel at the same time being there's based on a horror film So there's a lot of castlevania in there And we actually used the the palette after the original nintendo entertainment system We actually got the 64 color palette, right and for the most part 99% of the time We only used colors from that palette I tried to make sure that I only used three colors per sprite as well Which was another limitation of the nes, but again, there were times where I took liberties Just to get things to look right, right? That was a point to me. There's authentic looking. You know, not just retro Right, that was a point that I had started to make Um on my my playthrough with uh with jackie Yeah, was that um this This art form didn't exist at all when the movie was made Not even not just the eight-bit design concept, but not not even video games. They video games weren't even an idea Well, even the concept of pixels, right, right exactly and the uh and the and this eight-bit Uh pixel 64 color or three if they're limited to three colors, you say That that design concept that we're that we're still using today Was dictated by the limitations of the equipment Yeah, I mean it wasn't even an art style then it was just a limitation It was the best they could do whereas now we we look on it fondly and we actually use it intentionally not just to Create um, you know a faux nes games like I've done but in in many modern games and even designs We just use the uh the the sort of pixel look Right and yet when we when we look at it now Like with with this game you've made it seems perfectly natural these days. I've been around so long There must be somebody somewhere that's done a that's written a paper or done a study of Video game art as a form of uh minimalism Yes, yeah because minimalism was certainly certainly not new. I mean Um, oh no, I mean it's a yeah more than anything. It's a swiss concept from sort of the I mean You know you get your art deco in the 30s and everything where a lot of this stuff starts out Yeah, it's uh, it's all come from some way, you know, there's uh, you know color coordination I mean mario's mustache exists because uh when designing the sprite they needed a way to separate his nose from the rest of his face The dungarees are because the blue and the red they You know they separate his arms from his body. It helps him to look like a man And and isn't it amazing that he's what there's like two Two dark colored dots on his face and we see a mustache Yes, yeah, it's uh, it's uh, I mean psychologically, you know two dots and a curved line We say that's a smiley face. Right. It's not a face, you know, but it's in our psychology to uh You know to see those shapes that close together as a face to save us, uh, you know Valuable processing time in our brains, right? Yeah Well, uh, tell me about uh the music how you adapted the music Do you do the music yourself or? Yeah, I did I did a little bit. Yeah, I did a little bit of music Production in the past and uh, so I you know, I pulled that back out when I got back into game design I'm a bit of a one-man band with freak zone It's just I get other people in for ideas and level designs occasionally, but uh with manos it was uh Well, you know, it's not manos if it doesn't go Right over and over again if it don't have the togo theme and um And so it was it's got to have the togo theme and it's got to sound like it was on an Anness, you know right at 80s nintendo console and so you know straight away I just made an eight-bit togo theme and it sounded great And it was just do I now I did start just developing an original soundtrack for it You know sort of mario land kind of blippy chiptune music and it was just should I All moments in the film where the score is equally as memorable as togo's theme, you know Manos is is so much about the music. Oh, it's it's one of the most say competent parts about the film It certainly adds to the atmosphere of it and I did I I mean I put together a eight-bit rendition of the music when they're When they're standing around thinking about whether or not they'll be let into the valley large or not You know the strange kind of piano flourish that goes up and down and it's very memorable And I just kind of put that together in eight bit and it sounded like those sounds belong together You know, but here's the thing man I decided that the rest of the game should be apart from the boss theme the rest of the game is all You know eight bit renditions of music from manos the film and well Let's just say sitting You know on a laptop with your music software open and your sort of nes sound effects and that With manos the dvd running on a computer next to you Trying to copy like interpretive jazz music Uh that that opening theme for the film that kind of jazzy music, you know while they're driving around I mean that's not something that you can hum back to yourself. It's It's interpretive jazz. It's almost as if the notes were made up like an improvised and So I'm here rewind play rewind play rewind play with this music and it It it started to drive me absolutely crazy. I don't know if I can ever hear somebody sing row your boat ever again It I've got to be the only guy in the world that knows that that strange little jazz flute piece note for note It's I do kind of get shutters when I hear that that that driving that is uh The music for that movie is one of the mysteries about that movie that has yet to be solved And I I I I hope that someday somebody who is associated with the production of that music can be found I mean the fact that hal warren chose Chose to commission original Soundtrack for this this movie and that he found some who was obviously some local lounge act to do it and that they did it They I often wonder if it was maybe a a friend, you know somebody that he was in it was a band or something and I mean it's it's I wouldn't have chosen it to uh to accompany a horror film. No, it's it's pretty uh, interesting music It's it's one of those situations that obviously was accidental and and they ended up with They ended up using What most people would consider the opposite of what they should use and it ends up being so complimentary That it makes the movie Yeah, it's sort of discord. Yeah, right and discord. That's a good that's a good word for it. And like you were saying before you chose to use adaptations of the soundtrack music for the game and here you are stuck Having to interpret this improvisational lounge music And with sticking to the nes 80s format and you did you you did an amazing job It was yeah, thank you very much. I appreciate that. Well, you deserve the congratulations for it and the It was probably the hardest thing to do right in all of the game. I can imagine. I I can imagine the the fact that you chose to to start the game with The lounge music instead of I think um Other people including myself would have chosen to just use recordings of the theme music which would have Yeah, it would have crippled the gameplay. I think because having it had to be this is authentic Nes game thing again You have to believe that you're playing on something that was made in the 80s Right for the idea to work and I think other game designers would have also just To two or three measures of the toro theme and just stuck with that and which would have driven you up the wall Um Originally, I did have the the toro theme playing when toro speaks to you and when you fight toro But it did it became this and it would have been you know for mst3k fans for people that Watch manos that would have been just great But this has to work for gamers as well I mean a lot of people that play manos on the iphone are just people that like iphone's and like Old style platform games, you know, there are a lot of people that never even heard of manos that love the game And I did have to cater for them. So I just had you know, toro steam plays when toro speaks Or when he attacks you in his plane and you know, just when he shows up But actually while you're fighting him, I couldn't use it as as great as it would have been for fans of the film It ruined, you know, it Damaged it as a game. It would have been too disruptive that the um So you started the game with The opening lounge music from the movie and you ended the game with the closing lounge music Yeah, you you did it correctly and your adaptation was very much recognizable as manos music But also recognizable as nes music. I mean you did. I think you did a remarkable job. I I really thank you It was it was very hard work. I'm sure it's been I hope it's been satisfying I'm very proud of the game. You know, I love making it. I love playing it back. I love showing it to people So, you know, it's it's not it's it's not a Quit my day job thing just yeah, but it's uh Well, I hope it I hope it gets there The freak zone is starting to pay my bills And that's a combination of manos and other games that I've developed, you know But I'm still in you know in web design and graphics for for the bread and butter But it's you know, it's done. Well, and it's been satisfying to just know that people are playing and enjoying Yeah, yeah Well, so freak zone is you basically Um, yeah, I don't like to just say my game It's my game because you know the ideas that people put in can I mean I'll give you an example with manos my absolute favorite moment in the game Was one that was pitched to me by Chris who I mentioned earlier where uh Um, you know, we were saying how do you adapt scenes from the film into the game and um, Chris just we were sitting in in Gloucester where I live and uh At a cafe and he said to me can we have Uh, the masters say you have failed this togo for this you must die and push him towards the flame And the way in the movie somehow togo's hand burns off like it literally the fire somehow severs his hand Can we have it so that the master puts his hand into the flame and then the hand just kind of bounces off the screen The way, uh, you know the way a cooper shell does right or the way you shoot an enemy and they just Jump up it just pictured this hand just pull off the screen like that and Ah That is funny. And so I you know made sure to put it in the game even I was I mean this was one of the last things I was doing getting that cutscene animated properly and you know It was so close to uh to release and but I had I was up in the the early house I've got to get that bit that is fantastic. It's important You know, so it is things like that that I think I couldn't have done that without Chris's input, you know and so whilst um You know, I he got a shiny new iPod touch out of it Anything like that, you know and make sure that people uh, so I like to say I like to credit people I like to say, you know freak zone and hour games because I couldn't do that without these other people Right, right. I I think that the ideas and the concepts are the most important thing Tell me about other people who are Who are involved with the input? I mean you credited a number of people if I remember Yeah, yeah, well, it's it's true. I mean you if you're sitting on your own, uh making a A video game that looks like it came out of the 80s out of Manos the hands of fate You know, there's there got to be moments where you just go. Am I doing the stupidest thing anybody has ever done? Yeah, I have to credit Chris more than anybody else because what is his full name by the way? Chris Ashwood. Chris Ashwood. Okay. He was my uh bad movie buddy, you know, we just got these films and everything together So I have to credit him more than anybody else, but I've yeah I've I had a special thanks to the people that made the software development kit And and things like this, but there's also mst3k tumblr blog. I would I would plug it, but it's got a swear word in the name Okay, I know which one you're talking about. Yes. Yeah for anybody listening. It's f word. Yeah mst3k, right? Yeah And you know, whenever I announced something These guys would reblog it and it would get so many likes And so, you know, I made sure to befriend the guy who Learned the blog and I thanked him in the in the credits and everything like that And he's getting feedback like that Do you know that people are excited about it that made it important? It could well have been cancelled if it hadn't been for people saying, you know, I must get this game This looks great. I never dreamed that. I mean, I knew I was going to make a manos game But I never dreamed that I would uh, you know, then meet the stars of manos and you know I have it become essentially the official Manos game, right, you know So what what is next? What are you working on now? Yeah, yeah several things. I mean at the moment I've I've been working on a project that I I originally designed in 1997. I'm going back to this old idea It's called it's called frog ear And it's uh, it's it's it's a game where you uh, it is it's a little frog character with a long tongue Which it sounds uh cliched, but it plays very differently. It's for touchscreen, you know iPads and iPhones. I hope to to get talking and see if I can potentially do a manos too Uh-huh I would love to get it. Maybe a sega genesis game style of it You know get some low quality voice recordings of Jackie and maybe tom. I mean that would be awesome Yeah, I have some sketches down for a plan nine from outer space Uh, the you know again running on the manos engine, but uh with uh, A sort of black and white maybe game boy The manos engine Yeah, yeah, the you know, you use all the coding for manos You just put the new characters and levels and change it up a bit But you know, I have to clear everything up for uh plan nine make sure it's legal to do so because the film is public domain But I know that the music is uh is from certain stock libraries and things. I have to make sure everything is You know perfectly legal before I do that. This has been uh very entertaining and a real pleasure. It's an absolute pleasure Keith Thank you for doing this. Um, and thank you for making that That remarkable game. Do you know what? I can only hope people enjoy playing it as much as I did making it Yeah, I think people are enjoying it. I think uh, you know, that's all I asked for as well Yeah, I hope the uh interest in it continues to grow and I think it will Well, thank you again and uh, good luck. Yeah, nice talking to you You Well, that's it that was my interview with game designer sam bettos or about half of our interview anyway Sam and I rambled on for another hour. We talked about games. We talked about politics We talked about everything except manos, which didn't need to be included in this show But before we hung up the phone sam said One other thing about the game that you really should hear take a listen 10 times bigger. We originally wanted to actually have the game continue after that and for uh for mike to end up in a sort of A godly dimension where the actual deity manos, uh, wow, like if we had a pair of gigantic hands Like sort of claw-like hands that you would that you would fight You know, and they'd have like eyes in the palms and everything And this was the deity that he worshipped and everything and we had that all sketched out and everything But it was partially for, uh, you know budget and time sensitivity But also I I felt that if I you know, if I get to manos, too I can I can open up a little bit more with it. But I also kind of wanted a relatively um relatively faithful as As crazy as that sounds to the film and more so to hell's vision a lot of like the fact that the valley lodge is this huge Hotel in the game and that is it's a lot more creepy It was more kind of sometimes I tried to picture what hell was actually imagining the good movie that he had in his head You know Yeah, I think you made the right choice making it to Follow more facefully the end of the movie that would have been that would have been amazing though And I hope you do I hope the idea was those hands of fate that you collect the seven of those would then open up the The final battle with the manos itself But that is something to potentially return to for the for manos, too We had super torogo in in early versions of the game We had to torogo actually like, you know, the hat comes off and the the he loses his sort of Jitter and and he becomes an actual satire and he can jump around, you know a goat man and uh, there's the idea But it we found that just wasn't torogo You know, it's it's not torogo torogo is pathetic and that's his character So we you know, we kept him we turned him into uh knuckles from sonic the hedgehog where he just shows up We're in in sonic the knuckles used to be the sort of the misguided guy He was a villain But it just because the the main villain had tricked him was the idea and instead of coming and fighting you He would just come and press a switch that would spring a trap And things like that And so we had the idea that torogo would come after you in his plane and then he would press that the switch that would start the master's tower falling That's it for episode three Thank you all for listening. I hope you'll be back for episode four I don't know when that will be or who will be in it But i'm looking forward to it. I hope you are too All guests on this show understand that the interviews are recorded and that they will be edited for time and content And that the show will be published on the internet free to the public under a creative commons license That's it. See you next time