Our
Winter Sale is up and around! Over 4500 titles with up to -90% discounts – brought especially to you by the jolliest season; ending on January 2nd, 11 PM UTC, with some additional surprises on the way!
Having said that, we’ve cut the prices of awesome action-adventure platformer Kao the Kangaroo for its 2022’s version (-40%), it’s A Well Good Bundle (-40%), Oh! Well DLC pack (-25%), as well as Original Trilogy (-25%)!
And that’s not the end of great news. Today, we bring one of the said extras of the
Winter Sale: an exclusive interview with
Sean Halliday of Tate Multimedia, creator of Kao the Kangaroo!
We all know
this fella – a cute, sassy animal, an icon of one of the most popular platformer games series; one that many of us remember with deep nostalgia… After all, times were easier when all we needed was PlayStation 2, a single DVD and a bowl of snacks.
Some of us, though, met Kao only recently, in the newer releases, and fell in love with his twisted adventures just as much –
what’s the secret of this little boxer, hopping around and punching people through and through, not slowing down despite the years past?
Kao the Kangaroo is for many a symbol of a first, childhood experience with gaming, yet still popular. How did you manage to achieve that?The series was blessed enough to see itself appear on a host of hardware throughout the years. Starting on the Dreamcast, we wanted to craft something in the image of the games we were enjoying at the time.As time went on and 3D platformers evolved, so did Kao. The magic of Kao was always the character. He was small, feisty and not afraid to make fun of himself. We never took Kao too seriously, allowing him to be pretty much whatever we wanted him to be. Children resonate with that sense of imagination which allowed them to embrace Kao!Of course, Kao’s popularity began in Poland and unlocked something within the population that made him endearing. From the perspective of an Englishman, Kao The Kangaroo 2’s presence on the PS2 was my entry point into the series and it was quite clear there was a lot of charm across all of the game. I think for me, Kao’s wholesome nature and hunger for adventure captured my imagination, reminding me a lot of Croc.Huge, boxing gloves are the symbol of Kao, but what makes him so special apart from that?Everyone has their ‘thing’ be it a red hat with a letter on it or floating limbs. The boxing gloves stem from the notion of Kangaroos boxing. It’s not a grand concept or anything of that sort, but part of the character that hangs on some level of relevance to the real life creature. For us, the thing that made Kao special was this self-aware charm. By the time Kao Round 2 was released, his personality had developed as a quirky character.While there’s no dialog from Kao, there’s plenty of little details that paint his overall picture. Things like his idle animations, trying to jump-scare the player, putting his boxing gloves together to make binoculars (biboxculars?), the neck-extending or his little joyful skip when he defeats an enemy. It’s the small things that people tend to remember from the first two games, something the YouTuber NitroRad cited as a primary reason he fell for our little furry friend.
Talking about being a symbol – your first Kao the Kangaroo title was released in 2000. It is now a cult classic with a huge following, especially in countries like Poland. What was it like to revisit the series more than 20 years later and try to meet very high expectations?For a fair amount of people, Kao The Kangaroo 2022 will be the first they’ve heard of the series. It’s staggering to think he’s been around since the Dreamcast, appearing on PS2, GameCube, Xbox, Gameboy Advanced, PSP and the last and current generations of systems. The term cult classic tends to be thrown around a lot these days, but I think it applies perfectly to Kao. We had a fairly long gap between Kao games, releasing the Urban Trial titles, and Steelrats in that time, but the return to the series wasn’t exactly our idea. At least not originally.We caught wind of a social media movement from within the Kao fanbase called #BringKaoBack. It slowly grew and grew to the point where we decided to remaster Kao The Kangaroo Round 2 and release it. We were blown away by the amount of people who ended up trying Round 2… so we got to thinking “what if?”That ‘What if’ started as a remake of Kao The Kangaroo 3: Mystery of the Volcano, but as development went on it turned into a reboot of the series in general. Whenever you are bringing a series back or rebooting it, there’s always the worry of if it’ll be too much of a change or if the charm is lost along the way. We didn’t want a Kao The Kangaroo Forever where an older franchise is trapped between decades of video game trends.In the end, we decided on taking a similar approach to how the original Kao came to be. We tapped into our love of 3D platformers, thinking of ideas, themes and designs based on passion and endearment over market research or Power Points. Trying to meet expectations is always a worry, but we were always confident that fans of 3D platformers, both new and old, would be able to feel that flow of appreciation for the genre in Kao and join us for the ride.
Tate Multimedia is a veteran of the genre. What elements would you say make up for a good platformer title?It’s a hard question. Even more so given how the genre has changed over the decades. At the heart of it, there’s three pillars: good characters, interesting levels, and good controls. It also helps if you have big eyes… like think about it, all of the biggest platformers have characters with huge eyes.The three pillars were something we kept in mind, as well as replaying a whole load of platformers. Even some of the more obscure ones. Apart from Bubsy 3D, unless members of the team were late for a meeting, then we’d make Bubsy 3D their punishment.2022’s Kao the Kangaroo is a great game. But maybe there’s something in it that you are particularly proud of – something that you know makes the players fall in love with the series all over again?I’m sure various members of the team would have their own answers for this. We were proud to see Kao return and for people to relive their childhood all over again. The response we saw from our community will probably be the thing that most stands out for us as a whole. It was humbling to see so much buzz and creativity from people. Be it fan art, videos, streams, or even just posts expressing excitement. It’s always a pleasure to see people just happy about things; it’s something we tend to take for granted, especially in video game circles.But the thing we're most proud of is Kao’s neck.
We’d like to kindly thank Sean for talking with us about Kao and bringing a fresh insight on the franchise and its history. And may all of you, players, keep on the legacy of the cutest kangaroo in the world, in the newest Tate Multimedia release, now with a -40% Winter Sale discount!