Now that Rey J. has introduced himself and his titles (SF HD Remix and Talisman), here’s one of our other internal producers in our office, Robert Hamiter, who is producing Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix along with a cool new game called Rocketmen: Axis of Evil.

I know he’s super busy plus alpha trying to wrap up Puzzle Fighter, but he was kind enough to take a chunk out of his afternoon today to write up this intro to Puzzle Fighter and Rocketmen for me.

My name is Robert Hamiter and I’m the Publishing Project Coordinator at Capcom. My first job in the video game industry was at I-Motion (Infogrames, now Atari) providing technical support for Alone in the Dark games. I later worked at Disney, Activision, EA, Namco, and finally Capcom doing technical support and/or game testing.

As an avid gamer, I really enjoyed working in this industry but always wanted to have a more active hand in the games I worked on. After spending a year and a half at Capcom, I was able to move into the R&D department of our US HQ here in the Bay Area. As a project coordinator, I learned a lot about various 1st party/ESRB submission processes and was able to travel many places showcasing our upcoming games. A year after that, I was offered the opportunity to produce Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix and Rocketmen.

Click through to keep reading.

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Robert, in front of his old-school Puzzle Fighter poster

For Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix, I’m working with the talented folks at Udon Comics for the art side of the game. They have redrawn all the static character portraits and stage art (some stages are completely new to this iteration of PF). We are also upgrading the rest of the graphics quite a bit.

We brainstormed many ideas for reinventing Puzzle Fighter without taking away from its classic gameplay. Graphics are the most obvious area of improvement so we reworked the look of the gems, the in-game characters and the GUI. My personal favorite visual upgrade is the elemental crash gems which have dazzling particle effects based on the color of the gems—fire (red), water (blue), lightning (yellow) and gas (green). The first time I saw a fire crash gem explode a huge red power gem, I knew we were on the right track.

We also enhanced various game features while keeping all the core gameplay mechanics for X, Y and Z mode unchanged. We added an X’ mode which is basically a rebalanced X mode. X’ mode makes the “weaker” characters a lot more formidable, evening the playing field no matter which character you use. We’re also including a spectator mode (ala Hyper Fighting’s Quarter Match on XLA) where two players can watch another couple of players duke it out as they wait their turn in line to play the winner.

My other title, Rocketmen: Axis of Evil, is a licensed product from WizKids. WizKids makes a lot of different card-based games, and Rocketmen is one of their cool franchises.

Rocketmen is a refreshing take on over-head shooters (ala Smash TV) with RPG elements, character customization, and of course, shiny HD graphics. It’s been a blast (no pun intended) working on Rocketmen and I think people will be pleasantly surprised by the love and passion that has been poured into this game. There are 10 HUGE levels (with each stage huger than the last), 4-player co-op locally or online, a large variety of weapons/enemy types and some surprises that I can’t talk about just yet.

Just to speak about the RPG elements a bit more, when you start the game you’re given the choice to create your own character, changing the name, gender, race, class and some physical features (hair & eye color, etc) of your character. Or you can have the game randomly generate a character for you.

After completing a level, you’ll be able to use your gained experience and all the currency you collected in the level to upgrade your character’s stats (running speed, health, etc.), along with your armor and skill with weapons (rate of fire, spread, etc.). Even your default pistol, which is just strong enough to get the job done at the beginning of the game, will become a lethal killing force after several levels of upgrading.

Lastly, you’ll be able to buy and wear what I like to call “bling,” which not only looks cool but serves a functional purpose as well. Basically, with the depth of customization in the game, no two characters will be exactly the same.

Well, I have to get back to Puzzle Fighter but I’m sure Brian will shake me down for more tidbits in the future (probably while we’re car pooling home).

(Yes, we’re carpool buddies, along with one other guy)




Here’s where he works:

Robert’s desk, with the new PF wallpaper on his screen

Close-up of his original Udon Comics artwork

His collection

Actually, this isn’t the first time Robert has appeared on the Capcom blogs. Last year I showed him in some pictures he’d probably rather I not drag up again, here and here (towards the end).

So I’ll be working with Robert to bring you more info on and art from both Puzzle Fighter and Rocketmen. If you have any questions for him about either title, post them in the comments for this post and I’ll see if he can answer them in a future post.



—Brian