September 10, 2009

How Do You Bring a Theme Park Attraction to Wii? Toy Story Mania!'s Amy Kalson and Richard Robledo Have the Answer
By Louis Bedigian

“It's a carnival that the toys have envisioned and made themselves, and you and your family get to experience it as if you were a toy.”

It goes without saying that Toy Story was as important to Pixar's early years as Mickey Mouse was to Disney's. Without Buzz and Woody, we may have never swam with Nemo, raced with Lightning McQueen, or journeyed up, up and away with Carl Fredricksen.

Like all good things Disney-related, Toy Story has found its way into Disney's theme parks, most notably in the form of Toy Story Mania!, a shooting gallery with advanced 3D technology. Now that attraction has been adapted to a Wii-exclusive video game due September 15. "It's inspired by the Toy Story movies as well as the theme park ride at Disney's California Adventure," said Amy Kalson, Senior Design Producer, Disney Interactive Studios. "The story is that Andy got an incredible play-set as a gift. But before he can set it up, he gets called away, and the toys are so excited by this that they decide to put on a carnival themselves using pieces from the set and stuff they find in Andy's room.

"So really, it's a carnival that the toys have envisioned and made themselves, and you and your family get to experience it as if you were a toy."

Prompting Its Creation

"I think about 10 people got the idea at the exact same moment, throughout various aspects of the company, Disney Imagineering," Kalson says of the game's origin. "They said, 'Hey, this would make a great game,' and we at Disney Interactive came to the same conclusion. It just seemed like such a natural match.

"A lot of research went into the game. We did a lot of research at the parks, which is always a lot of fun to do. Really, we spent a lot of time talking to Imagineering about their vision and talking to Pixar about the characters, and really riding the ride over and over again. It was really pretty cool because they actually let us into the park after hours and we got to ride the ride just repeatedly over and over again. And then we got to turn on the lights and walk through the ride, and spend a lot of time going over every little detail, because we really wanted it to be spot-on.

"Pixar has been extremely involved. Toy Story is their baby and we wanted to involve them as much as possible. They've been so receptive. They made sure the story was in line with the Toy Story universe and helped us with our animation. It's been really great."

Regarding the decision to make Toy Story Mania! exclusively for Wii, Kalson says that they "talked about other consoles but the nature of the attraction makes it essential to Wii. We really wanted people to get up and play, not just play on the couch, but really use their bodies. The Wii is wonderful that way because you've got so much freedom of motion. It matched the ride perfectly."

Choosing Papaya Studios

Despite the vast number of developers to choose from, Disney Interactive didn't need to think twice before selecting Papaya Studios for this project. "We love Papaya," said Kalson. "We worked with them in the past and have a really good relationship with them. We knew with this title, because it's based on Toy Story and because it's a Pixar property, we just wanted the art to be as good as it possibly could and we knew that Papaya would do extremely well.

"Sort of a secondary benefit is that Papaya is located in Irvine, so they could actually go to the park and experience the ride, and talk to Imagineers themselves. It could not have been more perfect of a match."

True to the Source

"We tried to include as many of the core characters as we possibly could," Kalson assures us. "You've got Woody, Buzz, the little green aliens, the army sergeant, Bo Peep, Rex... I'm sure there are many I'm forgetting! [Laughs] Zurg isn't included as a playable character but we used him as the basis for a lot of our level designs. There's a pinball level, and the pinball board is literally based on Zurg. So you can knock out his teeth with balls and if you activate him his arm kind of comes up. It's very, very fun.

"We were so lucky that we got many of the original actors. One of the really cool things about Toy Story is that the actors who voice the characters have so much passion for it. They love doing the voices, and if their schedules allow, they love doing the voices for our games as well."

Richard Robledo, Senior Producer at Papaya Studios, adds: "We have 30 games spread across five themes, so when you play the game you're going to be interacting with Toy Story characters. We have a western theme for Woody and Jesse, space-themed games, animal-themed games where you'll see Ham and Rex, an army theme where you'll see the toy soldiers. We've spread it across all the popular characters. If you're playing a tea party game, you're going to see games full of flowers and balloons; if you're playing an army-themed game you're going to see tanks, planes and submarines.

"We've had family members as young as three-years-old play the game here in the studio. They actually played several mini-games. Now, a three-year-old may not unlock everything within the game because that requires a certain level of attention to detail. But they understood the game mechanic enough to have fun. So the demographic, it pretty much transcends age."

Kalson concurs, saying, "Yeah, my niece is five and she loves it and my dad just turned 70 and he loves it too."

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