Ask producer Ben Judd what two things Bionic Commando fans think made the game great, and the first will be the game’s swing mechanic. The second, as he puts it, “will no doubt be a certain dictator’s head exploding.”
“We had to give them the money shot,” Judd tells me of the Xbox LIVE Arcade/PlayStation Network remake, Bionic Commando Rearmed. “And it really does feel like a money shot, because those five seconds are what gave it that [M] rating. We’ve cut those five seconds from the Japanese version and it got a B rating, which is like 12. It’s a 2D game with an M rating for five seconds. Booya.”
He’s right, it really does feel like a money shot. When no one was looking, Judd quietly showed me the scene in question. I wouldn’t want to take the experience away from you, so I’ll spare you the gory details. But one thing’s for certain — you’ll never forget the sound.
“You know where the sound effect is from?” asks GRIN co-founder Ulf Anderson, laughing. “[The sound team] bought a lot of melons and s**t, and they were trying to make gore sound effects with them. Then, a dog shows up and starts eating the pieces.”
To demonstrate, Anderson makes a wet slurping sound with his mouth, and I make the connection. Surely, now we’ll all have the “dog eating a melon” image on my mind when I pop the dictator’s head in Bionic Commando Rearmed this summer.
