Tim Schafer was on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon tonight. I watched for two reasons. Sure, I was interested in Schafer, but I wasn’t expecting anything I hadn’t heard previously. However, I was also curious about how Jimmy Fallon was going to handle having someone from the gaming industry on his show. Fallon has claimed that he wants to treat big video game releases similar to big movie releases. He had four guests on his show – Drew Barrymore (plugging her movie, Whip It), two people from The Universal Records Database (for storing world records), and Tim Schafer.
For those who don’t know him, Tim Schafer is the designer of the upcoming Brutal Legend. I’m looking forward to it a lot. It seems like Tenacious D: The Game in a lot of ways. Schafer worked Monkey Island 1 and 2, Maniac Mansion, and Psychonauts among other games, and Brutal Legend is developed by Double Fine, developer of Psychonauts.

 
Fallon wanted to know how Schafer got the idea for Brutal Legend. Schafer explained that when he was younger and listening to music, he’d look at the album covers. Unlike today where people listen to mp3s and go about their day without looking at the music at all, people used to actually pay attention to the art on the record jacket. Metal albums often had intricate details such as runes on the first album Tim Schafer owned, “Diary of a Madman” by Ozzy Osbourne. He wanted to explore the world of metal that he saw when he stared at the albums.
In Brutal Legend, a roadie is sent back in time to a past during which mankind was enslaved by demons. This is the world of metal the Schafer imagined. He went on to talk about how the main character uses a battle axe as well as a guitar. There was no mention of the term “axe” being used to mean “guitar,” but I suspect that played a role as well. The guitar is amplified by the magic, and the main character uses it to summon lightning, pyrotechnics, etc. When asked how he got Jack Black for the role of the main character, Schafer replied that at first he just wanted to make a game that Jack Black would like. To Schafer, Jack Black was the type of person at whom he was aiming the game. There was also mention of Jack Black and Tenacious D loving the serious aspects of music while still appreciating the over-the-topness of it, which is exactly like Brutal Legend. When they were casting the main character, Schafer wanted someone who would sound sort of like Jack Black. Then he found out that Black was a fan of his previous game, Psychonauts, they invited him to play the role. He also said that Ozzy Osbourne is in the game as well.
The interview with Tim Schafer was pretty interesting, and I’m glad I watched tonight. I’m also glad that Jimmy Fallon does seem to be treating games similarly to movies. Yes, movies get more of the spotlight than games, but this is still a nice start. I’m definitely not going to watch Fallon’s show regularly because I’m just not interested in the movie industry, but I’ll check out his show in the future if there’s a guest who’s from the video game industry.