Here’s that awesome trailer again:

Ska Studios at E3!
You read that right. James and Michelle will be at E3 so if you are attending, please be sure to find us, say hi and get a guitar pick! (Note they will be in guitar pick form, not custom jewelry form.) Check back for more information!

Update: We can now say that Charlie Murder will be playable at E3. Come check it out and also still say hi and get a guitar pick!

Charlie Murder Trailer!
Another wild Charlie Murder trailer appears! If you missed it the other day, here it is in all its glory!

Burning Questions
More burning questions again!
Q: We got info on the rest of the crew but I can’t recall getting any info about “Charlie Murder” himself. So who is Charlie Murder?
A: I knew I forgot someone! Charlie Murder info to come in a week or so after E3.

Q: Is the music being done by The River Road Noise Machine?
A: River Road Noise Machine was a band James was a part of ages ago but no longer exists. All the music in Charlie Murder was created by James Silva with some cameos by Michelle so in part yes but not the original band.

Q: Do each of you, James, Michelle, and Gato, have a favorite character that we’ve seen so far in the game? Or item? Or move? Once the game is officially released, are you two/three going to do online sessions with the fans?
A: James’ is Charlie, Michelle’s is Kelly or Lester and Gato’s are those giant rat monsters in the sewers. Michelle likes the Honey Badger Claws glove item and Skelekitten’s “Mindbork” Anar-chi skill. James and Gato could not be found for further comment for this question. For the last question, yes! We plan to have a play with the devs night where we’re playing with other players across the great, wide internet. We’ll also probably be playing here and there, secretly popping into other players’ games.

Q: Can Charlie Murder see why kids love Cinnamon Toast Crunch?
A: Charlie is a kid at heart himself so absolutely!

Q: Level cap?
A: 50.

Q: Who was the singer for Yuki’s Death in Dishwasher? Love that song. All the music so far is good though. Hopefully it is just as great in this ^^
A: Bill Peterson was a guest singer in two songs in The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai.

Q: Will Dishwasher make a cameo appearance?
A: I think we answered this vaguely last time but for some more vagueness: he probably will and in more than one location!

Q: Will you be able to do co-op attacks? Also… Why hasn’t Gato been in a game!?
A: Yup. Each character has their own special team up attack. And:

Be sure to keep checking back for more good E3 info!

We do get asked pretty often if The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile will ever come to PC.  And we’ve always given roughly the same answer: we’d like to, but we’re busy. And I’d like to rework some things, and I’d like to sharpen the graphics, but we’re still too busy.  And we’ve been under ultra-super-mega-crunch this week: we’ve got E3 coming up and a Charlie Murder to launch.  I don’t entirely understand why I have to say this, but here goes: the reason The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile is not on PC is not because of something secret and evil.  Porting is a huge hassle, it’s not trivial, and I simply haven’t made time for it.

“Barabus,” the guy responsible for the port/hack, is not a bad guy, and I think he didn’t intend to come across the way he came across.  I really am honestly flattered that he took the time and effort to reverse engineer Vampire Smile for PC.  I heart your enthusiasm, Barabus! (just stop calling it justice, please!)  Of course, we can’t condone it, but we definitely recognize that the only thing we can really do about it is the original plan: port to PC.

Porting Vampire Smile to PC as an enhanced Director’s Cut has been something I’ve been wanting to do since launch (I was calling it Georgelucasing until Michelle made me stop), and we had actually broached the subject with Microsoft last Friday, almost a week before this happened.  Nothing’s set in stone, but we got the go ahead to make a pre-announcement: we’ll be working with Microsoft to bring our stuff to PC.

So there’s love for Vampire Smile, and that’s cool. I love Vampire Smile. But we’ve also got some brand new hotness: our official Charlie Murder launch trailer!

We’re releasing this summer!

Indie Hemoglobin
XBLA Fans posted an in-depth article last Friday, “For indies, working with Microsoft is a horrifying mess…right?” covering multiple sides of the hot topic of what it must be like to work with Microsoft. They included our view and linked to James’ Blood of the Indies post, which was nice.

Of course, the big weirdness we want to tackle relates to the announce of Xbox One! First off: yes, we are excited about it, despite being with the rest of the world in wondering when we’ll get TEH GAEMS. Honestly, all Microsoft had to do to redeem themselves for all that TV focus at the reveal was to show five minutes of a Dark Souls II player waiting by his summon sign while simultaneously watching Archer on Netflix in Snap mode.  It’s just “Lana. Lana. LANAAAAAAAAAA” and I’m summoned!

What we really want to go out of our way to address about the Xbox One reveal, though, is self publishing. Ever since Shacknews reported (slightly misleadingly) that Xbox One Won’t Allow Indies to Self-Publish Games, the Internet’s been going wild with their slightly enhanced version of the original article title: “Xbox One Won’t Allow Indie… Games,” and, through a bit of anecdotal research, it’s become clear to us that no one knows what self publishing means.  So here’s reality, abridged version: Xbox One indie publishing is currently identical to XBLA indie publishing, and Microsoft is looking into ways of improving it.  James is probably going to let loose a torrent of his controversial “everything’s fine” vitriol, but in the meantime, rest assured that everything is 100% business as usual.  We’re finishing up Charlie Murder for XBLA right now (it will rock), and we’re planning on targeting Xbox One for our next game (it will rock harderish).

Anyway, James’ Blood of the Indies post got promoted on Gamasutra, so he added a nice foreword that makes it all relevant.

Art Friday
Enough seriousness. Happy Friday, every Ska-bro! I’d like to introduce Art Friday to be a part of Good Morning Gato from time to time. For this introductory segment, I present two creatures that can be found in Charlie Murder. These are the mermaid (the stupid way round) and the reverse mermaid. Here are a few of my old sketches.

Some years back I became obsessed with non-traditional mermaids and sketched a few variations. I managed to sneak two of these into Charlie Murder as monsters. The “fish on top” mermaid can be seen splashing up onto rocks in the background while the “lady on top”, yet not quite beautiful, mermaids will be monsters you can fight. One of these can be seen in a normal play-through but the other will take more exploration to discover!

Check out this sneak peak of the sprites of these beautiful mermaids. Hope you have fun seeking them out in Charlie Murder! Which do you think is the fairest of them all?

Q: The loot/cloth/items features, are there special ones clothes? , like in Diablo II where some have sets that combined with specific clothes give you more stats?
Do they have the same drop rate or the Obsessive Compulsive players *Cough* like me *cough* will have to spend hours killing thousands of enemies just for -that- one item? …Is the Dishwasher’s Hat one of those 1/1000 chance items you can get if you beat the final boss?
A: This was the question that inspired the other week’s post on our loot system. Find that post here! For more specific rare clothes, you’ll have to play the game.

Q: What are each of the characters’ personalities? Do they have a notable background(s)?
A: We’ve been gradually releasing more information on each character here on this very blog. Check out who we’ve covered so far:
Tommy Homicide
Lester Deth
The Rexicutioner
Skelekitten
Circe Bathory

Q: What is the motivation/purpose behind the conflict between Gorequaffer and Charlie Murder, on a more in depth scale?
Q: Do the members of Charlie Murder have personal grudges/rivalries with their respective counterparts of Gore Quaffer? (Singer vs Singer/ Drummer vs Drummer etc.) And if so, do they (band member rivalries) play into the story at all?
A: These are very good questions we would like to reveal in time. For now, please make due with the teaser we previously posted and the character information linked above.

Q: Will characters have different combos? Also, how big is the story? I know you guys said it’ll be told through music/rhythm sections through out the game, but can we get a little more insight/details into it.
A: Everyone has the same attack combos but the way they look is unique to each character. For example, a body slam for Charlie is an homage to the Izuna Drop while Kelly grabs the foe with her legs and flips them to the ground. Again, we’ll have to get to deeper story at a later time.

Q: Who was that guy in the karate outfit in the demo?
A: The karate outfit guy is a mysterious stranger who seems to be helping Charlie and crew. He can be seen showing the band how to deal with blocking enemies and making the best use of environment hazards. While he’s not acting as a guide, you can find him performing in his band at local bars.

Q: Will the game have hilariously bad fake band shirts? Like a shirt that says Brown flag or Living Reagans. (dead kennedys)
A: I considered not answering any questions I have to say no to because “no” is just so boring and saying yes to this would be so much more awesome. There are some graphic tees but sadly no band shirts at the moment.

Q: Which games most heavily inspired the studio’s games?
A: River City Ransom, Ninja Gaiden and more recently Dark Souls and Diablo III.

Q: How about a topic on how easter egg-infested some of your games are?
A: They wouldn’t be Easter Eggs if we did that, now would they? As for a hint on quantity, there’s not one on every screen or anything but there should be enough to keep the detail oriented entertained.
————————————————————————————————————–