Recently, I had a stand up interview with Michael Mendheim, the creator of Mutant Football League and Tim Kitzrow, the voice behind the announcer of MFL at the Midwest Gaming Classic. And as a professional, I had complete and total control of the interview.
OSG – Why did you want to create Mutant Football League and give it a new name?
OSG – Now if you don’t remember, Tim Kitzrow, just think back to the voice for games like the NBA Jam series, NFL Blitz series, and a handful of famous pinball machines. So what was your first reaction when he said, hey, I’ve got this new game coming out?
TK – I just wanted to see his wallet. MM – Yep. That was it.
TK – Yeah. but you know, business transaction as it was, I was excited because this is up my alley and there are not a lot of games, as you were describing, that are arcade style, that I cut my teeth on. Those were all my big hits and then where did I go? I was a dinosaur. I was in the tar pits. All of a sudden games came along. No one wanted big mouth anymore and this guy had a big game and he needed a big mouth and it all worked.
MM – Well, game players have no options, right? There’s one football game to play on console and we wanted to change that. So now game players have alternative to a sports simulation. They can play an arcade action football game. We wanted to create a niche. It’s not really a remake of the original game. It’s a brand new vision. It plays like NFL Blitz and yeah, we have monsters. The original game had monsters and mutants, but this game has so much more.
MM – Signing Tim to Mutant Football League was awesome, because it brought credibility to the product. It was basically like a trademark for the game, because it’s Tim Kitzrow and he’s just associated with arcade sports style games. That really helped with the whole marketing strategy of the game and Tim also brings a creative energy. He doesn’t just go into the studio and do this dialogue. I mean, he actually helps write the dialogue and then he goes in and he ignores the script and he just goes off and that’s how we get some of the really crazier stuff.
TK – We thought it was going to be the biggest college game, but we didn’t realize — like the generation that came in and found Blitz and Jam who were eight years old are going, oh, you’re the voice my childhood from 1993. They’re going to be the same kids 20 years from now going, oh my God, this amazing game I found at the MGC, and I can’t wait for it to have that same kind of impact that people are going to be talking about 20 years later like, “remember when that game came back and it was the biggest game that we’d see in the past 10 years”?
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Brad has been a die hard arcade fan ever since he can remember. From the first time he played Space Invaders, to the first time he played Pacman, Brad has always had a love for video games. Hanging out at either the Great American Fun Factory in the mall, or spending the night in front of the glowing games at the local roller rink, he was always thinking about when he can spend the next quarter. He also worked at Babbages, which is now GameStop, for over six years. Mostly because they had a really sweet checkout policy on new products and great discounts. But since he had the Atari 2600, he has never looked back and owned some of the greatest home machines, NES, SNES, GENESIS, Turbo Graphix 16, GameBoy, Game Gear, Lynx, Playsation 1,2,3,4 and Vita, XBOX, Gamecube, and N64...just to name a few. Brad is also a reviewer for Mobile Beat Magazine as well as a freelance videographer, part time disc jockey, performing artist and photographer. But has a true love is for video games and Star Wars, as he is a member of the 501st Central Garrison. His ultimate dream is to own a fully working pinball machine and arcade machine. Difficult to say which one, but a Star Wars one would be nice start.
