Greetings, puny Earthlings!
We’re catching up from E3 this week. Part of that is just taking care of all our equipment and catching up on emails, but the fun part is checking out the new press coverage and following up with all the great fans we got to meet face to face. We all had a wonderful time this year – busy of course, with so many titles, but it was also our first chance to show a lot of what we’ve been working on. (Not everything we’ve been working on, of course, but we’ll talk about that a little later.) We had a total of nine titles on display this year, and while we loved introducing so many fans to our bigger ones like Trails of Cold Steel and Estival Versus, it was also great to see players warm up to the charms of Earth Defense Force 2: Invaders from Planet Space.
We picked up EDF2 together with its PS4 cousin, Earth Defense Force 4.1: The Shadow of New Despair. Both games have the same basic premise, about human military forces fighting against invading aliens and monsters, but while 4.1 has the sleek, modern feel of big-budget Hollywood, 2 hearkens back to the old B-movie days, when movies like Gamera, War of the Colossal Beast, and Them! ruled the Saturday matinee.
As a twenty-year fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000, and particularly of its old sci-fi movies like The Creeping Terror and Prince of Space, I jumped at the chance to edit a game that captured that same tone; earnest to the point of cheesiness, but still giddy and fun if you let yourself get into it. To bring that vibe across, we wanted to come up with an appropriate title, something that gave the audience just the right kind of wink.
The original official title of the game was Earth Defense Force 2 Portable V2, so to give it a little more kick, we held an office brainstorming session. This quickly descended into all-out chaos, but eventually we cleared away enough of the debris that we can now bring you this, our list of rejected titles for Earth Defense Force 2: Invaders from Planet Space. In no particular order…
*****
Earth Defense Force 2: Too Big to Fail
Earth Defense Force 2: The Harder They Fall
Earth Defense Force 2: Planet in Peril
Earth Defense Force 2: War of the Humungasaurus
Earth Defense Force 2: They Came From Beyond
Earth Defense Force 2: The Forcening
Earth Defense Force 2: Force Multiplied
Earth Defense Force 2: Unlimited Force Options
Earth Defense Force 2: Shadow of the Colossal Invaders from Outer Space
Earth Defense Force 2: Invaders from Planet X
Earth Defense Force 2: Kaiju Chaos
Earth Defense Force 2: In Soviet Russia, Bugs Squash You
Earth Defense Force 2: Revenge of the Space Giants
Earth Defense Force 2: Are You &*#$ing Kidding Me
Earth Defense Force 2: Giants in the Playground
Earth Defense Force 2: Size Matters Not
Earth Defense Force 2: Blast the Aliens
Earth Defense Force 2: Big Ben Boom
Earth Defense Force 2: The Ant Bride
Earth Defense Force 2: Revenge of the Gi-Ants
Earth Defense Force 2: Badass Rumble
Earth Defense Force 2: Defense on Titan
Earth Defense Force 2: London Bridge is Falling Down
Earth Defense Force 2: Thames for the Memories (Note from Nick: “‘cause it’s in LONDON, right?”)
Earth Defense Force 2: Attack of Killer Bugs from Outer Space
Earth Defense Force 2: The Giant Ant Invasion
Earth Defense Force 2: Fire in the Skies
Earth Defense Force 2: Reign of the Insectoids
Earth Defense Force 2: The Last, Best Hope
Earth Defense Force 2: Let Freedom Ring
Earth Defense Force 2: This Time It’s Global
Earth Defense Force 2: Big Aliens…Bigger Guns
Earth Defense Force 2: Mobile Command
Earth Defense Force 2: Nothing Personal
Earth Defense Force 2: Concealed Carry
Earth Defense Force 2: In the 21st Century
Earth Defense Force 2: This Time, It’s Earth-sonal
Earth Defense Force 2: Extinction Event
Earth Defense Force 2: Bug Repellant
Earth Defense Force 2: Doomsday Revenge
Earth Defense Force 2: Alien Scum Eradication
Earth Defense Force 2: They Came Back
Earth Defense Force 2: Alien Raid Revisited
Earth Defense Force 2: It’s Raining Bugs
Earth Defense Force 2: You Eff OH!
Earth Defense Force 2: Bug Report
Earth Defense Force 2: Planet of the Earth
Earth Defense Force 2: Kaiju Rumble
Earth Defense Force 2: Things Explode
Earth Defense Force 2: Kill Everything
Earth Defense Force 2: Bugs Bugs Everywhere
Earth Defense Force 2: London Extermination
Earth Defense Force 2: Attack of the Killer Kaiju
Earth Defense Force 2: Bomb-ass Bugs
Earth Defense Force 2: Radical Extraterrestrial Eradication
Earth Defense Force 2: Sick Space Skirmishes (The note from Kelly on this one says, “This name is my jam, it’s so fly”)
Earth Defense Force 2: Defending the Earth…by Force
*****
Our thanks to Brittany for coming up with “Invaders from Planet Space” and bringing the madness to an end.
We’re looking to bring both EDF games out in the fall, and we’ll have plenty more to say about them along the way. Until then, then, remember: Your ray guns will have no effect on me!
– Ryan