OHR House Heroes: Super Surlaw Chef
A Commentary by Paul Harrington and Red Maverick Zero
Download Here (Press C on main menu to access Surlaw Chef)

	Red Maverick Zero: Around the time the idea for Surlaw Chef came out, I was waiting on the completion of House Paranoids. The idea in the game isn't even the original idea, heh. Making it be a modified version of Gohrillas was a last minute attempt to save the Easter Egg, and that barely happened. I got lucky and got the mini-game from Moogle the day before his kid was born. I was talking to Surlaw about this one day, and he said "I'd like to do another Easter Egg", so him and I brainstormed and he said he wanted to do a sequel to Super Walrus Chef. Nobody was going to anticipate this, and people would love it. It also fit perfectly for Week 7, since it was the episode that Walrus Man appeared in the show. I think at the beginning of the brainstorming stage, Surlaw wanted to do just a rehash of Walrus Chef, and I encouraged him to mix it up. Actually show the food, instead of it just being a random pile of ingredients. Then after this was established, I proposed the idea of making actual complete meals. Surlaw was a bit hesitant about this, because I think it was a fair amount of extra programming, but he did it anyways. And in the end, the engine is fantastic, and in my opinion, beats Walrus Chef. The story is basically a "forgotten part" of Week 7. We took the same concept from House Villains, where I have a vague idea of how it fits into the main show, and then Surlaw crafts the rest of it. We both picked an OHR hero that wasn't in the show already for the first two opponents, then it was Walrus Man as the final one. Originally, Surlaw had made Walrus Man look like a pimp with a chef hat based on his descriptions, but having just played Walrus Chef I wanted to make sure Walrus Man had a goofy costume like in that game, so I picked Batman. I think everything about Surlaw Chef turned out great, and I'm very happy and honored that it made it into House Heroes.
	Paul Harrington: Hello, I'm that guy that runs this magazine. I wrote most of Super Surlaw Chef (perhaps it should have been called Fehc Surlaw Repus or Bob Foodlaw) and scripted the gameplay. I'd wanted to do a sequel to my old Super Walrus Chef game for a long time, but I'd never gotten around to it. While this new game isn't a full sequel, it's definitely a spiritual successor. There are no money or item collection elements and there's no town to explore, but the core gameplay of cooking to please judges is a direct continuation, and the actual gameplay parts are a big step up from Walrus Chef's rather sloppy menus. You will also notice that judges are scripted this time, rather than chosen at random. This makes it slightly less silly, but it also makes each battle more of a puzzle, and less up to random chance. It does ruin the ability to replay the game once you've beaten it, though. Most of the jokes you see in this game are mine, which explains why some don't mesh with character personalities in House Heroes. I think my Surlaw here is pretty different from the one in the show. Some jokes were changed, cut, or added when RMZ imported the text into the game, but the only character who really changed between my script in the final version was Kikraizer. I wrote him as an abrasive gangsta with a passion for slang that confused Walrus Man immensely. He really wasn't anything like the character on the show. Powerstick Man's also fairly different from his House Heroes personality, and is more of a sarcastic jerk. RMZ threw a corny joke in to one of the endings for PSM to deliver at the last minute to make him mesh a little better with his attitude in House Heroes. Also, the description I wrote for Walrus Man was for him to have a gold and purple cape/robe, so he'd look like one of the Iron Chef guys. I guess a pimp may also dress that way.
Kikraizer, before and after. Also, check out the horrible place holder graphic used for meals during production.
	RMZ: I think, if I'm not totally mistaken, part of your inspiration for this mini-game was the scene in Week 7 where Surlaw is eating spaghetti and is covered in marinara. Am I right? I was on board for whatever, what exactly made you say, "Hey, I want to make a Walrus Chef spin-off"?
	PH: I just wanted to write a "Walrus trains someone to be a chef" plot, and the scenes where we see Surlaw gluttonously devour all the food he could get his hands on made me decide that that someone would be Surlaw. Surlaw eating the spaghetti was a well animated sprite, and it seemed like a good one to re-use! Originally it was just going to be a movie, like House Villains, but the more we talked about it the more a game sounded like a better idea.
	RMZ: I'm actually glad we talked about it for about a week before we did anything, because in that week, we really worked out all the fine details of this game. If you remember, it was just going to be a cheap re-hash of Walrus Chef.
	PH: Well, it's hard to call anything cheap, because I lost all of the Walrus Chef scripts years ago. Everything here was done from scratch, and the new Custom Menu feature in the OHR Engine was a huge help. I couldn't just take the Walrus Chef file and drop in some new graphics/text. The addition of meals to the gameplay really added a ton to it, though. Not all of them are perfectly logical, but what's there is great.
	RMZ: Hey, most of them make sense. I picked most of them, and I was trying to generalize and simplify each recipe to make something. Like bread + chicken + butter isn't exactly what you need to make fried chicken, but people can fry food in butter, and crumble the bread and make bread crumbs. All of the pasta dishes were pretty easy. Which reminds me... when we tested, I never really made any egg dishes. Can you even win any matches using eggs?
	PH: They mostly make sense when you think about the base ingredients, but I can see how bread + tomato + cheese sounds more like a sandwich than a pizza. In the next game, I'll be sure to have both Bread and Dough as two separate things. I know you can win round 1 with eggs, but I'm not so sure about the others. Surlaw loves eggs more than the judges.
	RMZ: I remember we were contemplating it, but it would have been WAY too much work for this, to have different ways to cook. Right now, it's still fairly unpolished for a cooking game, since you just pick 3 random ingredients and hope for the best, no real skill involved other than making a decision. I wanted to have it where you could make TONS of dishes, and bake, fry, broil, grill, etc, which would open it up for tons of combinations.
	PH: That would make it a much fuller, more polished game, but good god is it horrible to think about programming that. It would have taken days to code the ratings for each judge and it definitely wouldn't have been done on time. I do think the game takes skill, in that the judges and their preferences are a big puzzle. You can't fail when actually cooking, so there's no skill required there, but the item selection and determining what to change when you retry can be pretty tough.
	RMZ: I think a lot of the charm that really shines through with this, is just how much detail we really put into it. We made this in a week, but I mean, the fact that you can make complete meals, and there's different dialog for each one, is really great, and makes it worth playing a few times, just to see different reactions to different meal choices (HINT: Make a chicken dish for the mystery judge in Round 2). I only did special animations for the 2nd opponent and Walrus Man, but they make the rounds shine. It's the little things that make this feel awesome. Don't you agree?
	PH: The animations are the biggest thing that make the battles more enjoyable than the ones in Walrus Chef for me. Not just the rival entrances, which rule, but also the little dance the chefs do while preparing their meals. It makes it feel more like a full game, and not just a series of menus, even though at its core, that's what it is. Sound effects are a huge boost too. The engine didn't have Custom Menus or sound effects when I made Walrus Chef, but I'll definitely include them in the next game.
	RMZ: It's actually kind of ironic. I think in 2004 or 05, I hosted the "Fool's Day Contest" and you entered Walrus Chef. Now, all these years later, you did another chef game for something I'm working on. This is the perfect sequel, only because Walrus spelled backwards is Surlaw. But Walrus Chef 2 still needs to happen. We've started doing too many rad things that you can use for that, to not. Besides, it would be Walrus Man's finest hour.
	PH: Super Surlaw Chef doesn't really roll off the tongue as well as Super Walrus Chef, but Fehc Surlaw Repus would have been the best title, even if it would have scared and confused players at first.
	RMZ: Since Surlaw Chef is filled with so many quirky hilarious things, what exactly is your favorite moment in the game? I personally dig the Batman jokes at Walrus Man's expense, and the fact that he flicks his cape around for his entrance.
	PH: My favorite part of the game was writing Mr. Triangle's geometry puns. They're not all hits, and they're not really in character, but they're the funniest part to me. Surlaw's crayon drawings are also way up there, I'm glad the images imported so clearly.
	RMZ: Mr.Triangle's puns were SO painful for me to read. I wanted to cut them so badly, but I left them in because you were so insistent. The crayon drawings didn't work out nearly as great originally. Lucky for me, Fenrir was able to edit them to fit. I actually went out and bought some crayons and notebook paper to take it the extra mile.
	PH: I don't think I could imagine this game without the Triangle puns or Walrus Man repeating things over and over again to convince people to listen to him (the "YES YOU CAN" scene in the opening). I'm glad I fought to keep these in. Between this and Village People: The Videogame, goofy puns are kind of my style right now. I'll use them whenever I see the chance. People who go in expecting this game to be Walrus Chef 2, dialogue-wise, are going to be let down. The actual Walrus Chef 2 will probably be the same way, and will be more family-friendly than the original. What can I say? I got old, and murderous, doom and gloom Walrus Man has grown boring to me.
	RMZ: We all got old. That's why our games take forever to make. Hell, I've been working on Halloween Quest 3 since 2006 and I still am not close to done. Heroes took almost 2 years, and I made myself finish this. We have a few people that are making games and doing it quicker. I'm still quite impressed with the amount of content and speed that Okedoke has had added to it recently. That game is pretty much the game I wanted to do when I was younger: cartoony, semi-serious (not really), and looking great. God I feel old.
	PH: I've been working on Surlaw Armageddon on and off since 2004, and it's still shorter than a game I only spent about two months on (Village People). I think having a set deadline really changes the way I work, and the only reason Surlaw Chef even got finished is because you set a deadline for when House Heroes had to be released. This got me motivated to make sure everything was done on time, just as contest deadlines usually do. It just feels more rewarding.
	RMZ: I agree with you there. We're all lazy without deadlines. But eh, Heroes is done, so people can love it, hate it, I don't really care. It's finally finished. Ha. It takes so long to finish a game nowadays, that it feels like a massive weight is lifted when it is, but at the same time, it sucks, because now that it's done, I can't have adventures with these guys again. I'm sure Fenrir feels the same way about Vikings, which is why it's STILL NOT DONE. Anything left from you, dude?
	PH: I'll probably be the same way with Village People. I'll keep adding features and sidequests and not finish the main story for years. It will rule when it's done, though! Update #3 for VP will be my next release, hopefully by year's end. That's about all on my end. Keep on the lookout for the next project I cook up!