They took his treasure and his pride… Now, they will pay with their lives!

Hey, I’m Matthew Oswald, ArenaNet’s Cinematics team lead, and I’d like to share a little behind the scenes info for the Super Adventure Box commercial.

In the opening shot of our commercial (which is based on this incredible classic video game commercial) we needed to show our young actor beating a 16-bit platform game.

The game needed to look like it was being played on an older revision of the “Super Adventure Box.” (Think SNES to N64)  So, we came up with a game called Rytlock’s Critter Rampage.

Originally, we just wanted to build out a couple sprites to fake the game in After Effects, but one of the cinematic artists on my team (Delly Sartika) has long harbored an interest in building his own retro platformer, so he volunteered to build out a playable version of our totally fake game.

The version that you see in the commercial was just the first draft. It took Delly about three weeks of work to flesh out the final version. Without further ado, I present the fully realized vision of Rytlock’s Critter Rampage, which I invite you all to play. Good luck, and try not to smash your keyboard in a fit of rage.

Pro-Tips & Hints

• Play on “Easy Mode” unless you are a wizard
• There are 10 secret treasures
• There are 4 Special endings:  3 for “Rytlock Mode” and 1 for “Easy Mode”
• Save often!