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LOS ANGELES - Following the success of its MTV television series and two feature films, Jackass is getting its own video games.
Fans of the show will be able to interact with the cast from the films and TV shows in original games for PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable and Nintendo DS beginning September 24.
Johnny Knoxville, Bam Margera, Steve-O and the gang provided their likenesses and original dialogue for the games. They also worked with the publisher to bring original stunts to the game that they'd thought up but hadn't used in the films or TV series.
"We're excited as all hell about it," Knoxville said. "It is kind of odd that people will take on our personas and depressing that they're going to have to do that. We've never really worked on anything like this before. This is our first video game. We just hope that our video game is as crappy as our movies."
Said Henry Price, senior director sales and marketing at Red Mile: "The premise for the games is to have the player create their own Jackass episodes across an array of stunts. These stunts are set up like minigames, which provides a great deal of diversity in the gameplay."
Among the 35 stunts gamers will be able to set up are bumper car races across New York rooftops, unicycling though a construction site, rolling down San Francisco streets in a trash can and destroying a golf course with a golf cart. Price said the original TV series was the primary inspiration for the game, if only for the amount of stunts that were performed during its run that the team could look to for design ideas. Only a couple of stunts in the game are from the show.
"Most of what we have in the game are extreme versions of the original stunts," Price said. "We have the luxury of throwing characters off a 50-story building into a pile of elephant dung without worrying about our insurance rates."
True to the show, stunts don't always go as planned in the game, but that doesn't necessarily mean a failure. Players have the option of pulling a Bail-Out, which throws the character into a ragdoll position and tallies up the resulting injuries. Because the game features dynamic physics and ragdoll modeling, no two stunts will be the same.
The more punishment inflicted upon the characters, the higher the score. The game includes a detailed in-game injury system that tracks everything from broken femurs to ruptured spleens.
With the group currently thinking up ideas for another feature film, Knoxville hopes the Jackass video game takes on a life of its own.
"We would love for it to become a game franchise," he said. "There's a never-ending amount of stupid things you can do to yourself or your bro, so the content will be there."
- REUTERS/Hollywood Reporter
