Interview: Brandon Cobb of Super Fighter Team
Brandon Cobb is the president of independent video game publisher Super Fighter Team. The publisher have a particular focus on bringing games to “dead” systems like the Mega Drive/Genesis and Atari Lynx, but also dabble in releasing independent games for PC. Super Fighter Team have just announced releases for another 2 Genesis games namely Cascade and Magic Girl. We thought this would be a great time to catch up with Brandon and quiz him about the company as well as their new games:
Do you contact the original developers to discuss re-releases or do they contact you in regards to getting the games released in regions they wouldn’t have been able to release in if they had self-published?
This is a niche market business. No one thinks there are still new games being produced for the Sega Genesis, so you can understand that company reps aren’t exactly knocking down our door to offer up licenses. That said, you’d be surprised to learn that not all of these firms are fueled by pure greed. It’s true! A good number of these companies, despite having a well-defined place in the modern-day industry, are touched to learn someone wants to publish their game for a machine like the Genesis. They think it’s neat.
You have predominantly worked on releasing Genesis games. Do you have a particular interest in the console?
It’s far from perfect: I hate the on-screen color limits, and you can only do so much with the digital sound output. But still, I really do dig on the Genesis. I grew up with a PC, playing lovely DOS games. The screen resolution of the Genesis (320×224) is nearly the same as the VGA graphics mode of the PC (320×200), so it’s easy to adapt DOS games without having to shrink anything. (Unlike with the Super Nintendo, where you lose a good chunk of horizontal screen space.) Plus it’s a developer-friendly machine, which helps a lot.
In regards to the production of games for the Genesis, is this a costly procedure now the official support for the consoles have ceased?
Some people seem to think that since we’re dealing with discontinued systems, the production costs must be cheap. Well, no, not quite. There’s a reason cartridges went extinct, and it wasn’t just from data storage limitations. They’re expensive to make!
Are there any plans to produce another run of Beggar Prince, Legend of Wukong and Star Odyssey as there is still quite a large demand for these games on auction sites.
That would be nice, wouldn’t it? To introduce more people to the beautiful, complex world of Beggar Prince, the deep, moving space opera that is Star Odyssey, and the outrageous pig-snorting adventures to be had in Legend of Wukong. But I don’t know; the jury’s still out on that one.
Why announce pre-orders for Magic Girl and Cascade when the release date is so far off?
When we first started out back in ’04, pre-orders were a necessity because we had no capital to fund the manufacturing. I never much cared for the concept though, and looked forward to doing away with it. But you know what? Once we became self-sufficient and just started taking orders on product launch days, people begged us to reconsider! So the pre-orders are back. And the people rejoiced.
Will every pre-order for Magic Girl and Cascade be honoured or is there only a limited production run being produced?
Well, we always have to cap production somewhere. At that time, no further orders will be accepted. But of course, everyone who pays for a pre-order will receive a copy. Hooray!!
SEGADriven would like to thank Brandon for taking the time to talk to us. You can pre-order Magic Girl and Cascade now by clicking the links below. Both games release in 2015.
