Coming to PSN: Joe Danger

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My name is Sean Murray. My three friends and I are making a game for PlayStation 3 called Joe Danger!

We’re a tiny indie outfit based in Guildford, UK (across the street from our friends at Media Molecule), and we’ve been having the most insanely awesome 2010 so far. To start, we revealed Joe Danger, then had lots of important people say really nice things about us. We’ve been nominated for two Independent Games Festival awards, a Direct2Drive Vision award and now we get to announce that we’re coming to PlayStation 3. It feels good to finally tell someone. Whoop, whoop!

Joe Danger is the star of our game. He’s a down and out daredevil, this hapless little dude who’s known as, “The World’s Most Determined Stuntman.” You need to take Joe on the ride of his life and go from zero to hero, across over 50 eye-poppingly gorgeous and eye-wateringly dangerous levels. It’s what we like to call a “Stunt-‘Em-Up,” and your job is to combo, boost and pull ludicrous tricks to fill stadiums and put Joe back on the podium.

You’ll help Joe to wheelie his way into the record books, as you smash through hardcore stunts and take on some of our ridiculously addictive mini-games like Coin-Dash, Bowling-Bounce, Crazy-Puzzle and Target-Grab. To regain the title “Master of Disaster” though, you’ll need prove you’re the best, race against your rivals, out-thrill your friends and defy death to defeat the dastardly Team Nasty.

Before starting Hello Games together, we all worked at much bigger companies on huge teams, making some amazing games like Burnout and Black. Creating our own games is what we always wanted to do though, and PSN gives us the opportunity to get ’em out there to you lovely people.

About two years ago when we first left to do our own thing, we sat around talking about what our very first game might be. We knew for sure that we wanted to recapture some of the arcade magic of games we grew up with from the SNES and Genesis generation. Then Grant, our only artist, brought a box of toys in from his parent’s attic, and something kind of beautiful happened. There was an instant, awesome power to demonstrating your latest game idea with Optimus Prime in your hands. We kept coming back to one toy though — an Evel Knievel stunt cycle. We sat and played with it, building bigger and bigger ramps, launching it out of windows and down corridors. It didn’t matter that he crashed all the time; in fact, that was almost the point. Just like that, Joe Danger was born!

The really important thing about playing with that stunt cycle was that building ramps was as much fun as launching yourself over them. So with Joe Danger you can freeze the game at any point to enter edit-mode and change your world any way you want. You can put a ramp down just before you land or place a ring of fire just before you go through it. It’s really easy and allows you to create the most ridiculous stunts you can think of, then use them to smash some world records! You can even share your creations with all your friends and torment them with your devious creations.

Joe Danger PSN Screenshot 3


We’re a pretty competitive bunch here at Hello Games, and never more so than when we take each other on in some outrageous split-screen face-offs. The key to success is to pull tricks and create combos which will earn boost, allowing you to reach ridiculous speeds and pull even bigger tricks. Once you master your motorbike, you can take on the world with your high-scoring combos. We’re really looking forward to having some competition when the game is released.

When people ask me what my favorite film is, I like to tell them it’s Cinema Paridiso, because I like to look clever. It’s a lie though. My favorite film is actually The Naked Gun. I’m a big fan of slapstick, especially people getting clotheslined at high-speed, and that’s something we’ve tried to fill our game with. We use advanced cartoon physics to create a world ripe with humour. As a stuntman you laugh in the face of Danger, but it laughs back when you crash, as you bounce from boulder to boulder on fire, towards a pile of giant mousetraps. Even when you’re flung from your bike at high speed though, you can still make a last ditch attempt to please the crowd by pulling poses mid-air and nudging yourself directly into the path of Danger to score some extra points.

Joe Danger PSN Screenshot 1

Joe Danger is coming out really soon, some time in the next few months. We’re giddy with excitement about it and we think it’ll put a big stupid grin on your face.

You can keep up to date with Hello Games and Joe Danger on our blog, follow us on Twitter or even just send us mail!

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84 Comments

2 Author Replies

  • This looks like so much FUN!!! Will it have on-line? I also hope the game is no more than $9.99!

  • PLEASE BE A PSN EXCLUSIVE! This looks fantastic! SONY buy them IP if thats ok for hello games :D When we dont get trails HD we get this better version! Should be an exclusive!

  • If you could directly capture your videos and put them on YouTube I think that would be awesome

  • I’ll pick it up if its exclusive to psn

  • I saw this on GTTV with GOWIII and it looks awesome, count me in!!! 8)

  • @x-former that’s a PS3 triangle button man…might want to look into glasses or contacts lol.

  • @xiked they say in the article it’s a PSN exclusive.

  • I could not help but smile while watching the entire trailer! It just looks so fun. day 1 buy for me!

  • @ Sean Murray

    Can we get some feedback to our questions?

  • I hate to say this but the makers of excite bike are going to hate this cause it so much looks like excite bike in next gen

    which could cause a copyright infringment for in-game content issues

    hello games, just be careful!

  • Finally! A sequel to the Kickstart series on the Commodore 64.

  • Hello Everyone,
    Sean Murray from Hello Games here (honest ;). The lovely people who run the blog are trying to help me out with a developer sign-in for the US blog. In the meantime I’ve set this one up so I can say Hello!

    We’ve not done this before, but hopefully it will all get sorted soon.

    Please keep the questions coming…

  • @KILLZONE79 if that were true then Sony should sue Dante’s Inferno and Darksiders. but it’s not. some games are inspired by old games (or sometimes even current titles) but as long as you put your own flare on it and create a cool game there’s no issue. some of the mechanics and structure may be the same but this looks like a cool game from a small indie company that i think has some potential to be great.

    everyone called Uncharted a Tomb Raider knockoff but after playing both games everyone forgot all about those comparisons and praised them for the great games that they are.

  • Hey, and Welcome SeanHelloGames!

    Can you give us an idea on when this is coming out? Late March, April, or May? Also will there be on-line racers? And how much will it cost? This game looks really fun!

    • We’re working round the clock at the moment, on those final stages of the game. This is our baby and depending on the night, I don’t sleep either out of excitement or pure terror, thinking about what it would be like to release it.

      We’re aiming for a Spring date, but with just the four of us, the common cold could delay the game ;)

      Wish us luck!

  • My most wanted PSN game at the moment. Really, seriously, cannot WAIT for this.

    @ x-former: That’s the X button for PS3, not 360. Last I heard, this IS PSN exclusive.

  • Sean Murray, Congratulation on your new baby!! I hope we see it born real soon!:)

  • Really looking forward to this. Another great PS3/PSN exclusive, at least for now..

  • i am getting this.

  • SWEET!. I found out about your game a few weeks ago and I’m totally stoked to try it out. It looks like Excite Bike combined with Uniracers!

  • Reminds me of Excitebike but looks more fun

  • @ Sean Murray,

    2nd request for you to answer our questions… PLEASE!

  • Can’t wait to play this. PSN has some of the best games period, right now Sony is bringing a lot of games so to all those who said where are the games? The last year has been really good

  • I saw the trailer a few day ago, and was very impressed with what I saw. It’s instantly reminiscent of Excitebike and the Kikstart series, but looks like it’s also got a trick combo element similar to what we’ve seen in the Tony Hawk games. I’d love to toy with the level creator–I used to have a lot of fun cranking out levels in Kikstart 2 many years back. The graphical style is appealing as well.

    One other thing I’d like to see (which others have already suggested) is a way of recording replays, either by saving them in the game engine, or exporting the video to YouTube (preferably both).

    I’ll be sure to pick this game up!

  • I love the style, the music, the gameplay, its a day one buy for me.

  • TheThunder2008CA

    Game looks great. Well done guys.

  • This looks so sick, i want it!
    $15 and i’ll buy it…

  • looks awesome saw the trailer on GTTV will be looking forward to this on PSN

  • Thank you for making it split-screen. I miss being able to play games of any kind on the couch with a dew friends. It looks like a flash game you play for hours on the computer but only a million times better. I guess i have mor money dropping out of my wallet :P

  • This looks great! Hope you guys have a lot of success with the game.

  • A game like this is definitely due. Love the on-the-fly create mode. The camera moving up and down to follow the bike seems unnatural. I’m not used to seeing the camera do anything but stay smooth along the horizontal. Also, the bike seems to lose all momentum on some of the more vertical jumps, I wonder how that will factor into the racing strategy. I know you didn’t ask for our opinion. Oh well, I just have high hopes for this game!

  • the_lone_wolf_42

    You should make time to answer some of the questions people are asking. People feel more obligated to buy if they get their answers questioned. Just putting that out there, I love seeing developers reply to potential buyers. It lets us know that you don’t just care about the money, you care what we think about the game. ^^

  • the_lone_wolf_42

    hahaha oops I meant questions answered.

  • @ Sean Murray

    Lone_Wolf is right! I’m actually thinking of skipping this title until it goes on clearance on the PS store.

    Thanks…

  • Looks great alright and cant wait, but willing to if i have to for it to be really great, amazing looking if it’s just from four guys! Give them a chance though as some games would have that many working on answering comments.Best of luck with it guys and make sure its the best it can be!

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