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Ep 166 Street Cleaner 3 Developer Interview with Books and Jesse

Indie Arcade Wave·video·39m 36s·analyzed·Mar 28, 2025
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.033

TL;DR

Street Cleaner 3 dev interview: creative philosophy, music collaboration, cabinet design, and platform strategy.

Summary

Brooks and Jesse from indie game developer Creaky Lantern discuss the development of Street Cleaner 3, their upcoming release for PC (Steam) and Nintendo Switch. They explain their creative decision to skip Street Cleaner 2 (inspired by classic NES sequel philosophy), detail the music composition process blending chiptune with expanded instrumentation including live musicians, and discuss plans for a collapsible arcade cabinet to promote the game at live shows.

Key Claims

  • Street Cleaner 1 was released three to four years ago

    high confidence · Brooks and Jesse directly answered Joe's question about Street Cleaner 1's release timeline

  • The decision to skip Street Cleaner 2 was inspired by classic NES sequels (Castlevania 2, Zelda 2, Mario 2) that experimented with radical changes before returning to core mechanics in the third installment

    high confidence · Brooks provided detailed explanation of design philosophy referencing specific NES games

  • Street Cleaner 3 will be released on Nintendo Switch and PC (Steam), with no current plans for PlayStation or Xbox

    high confidence · Brooks explicitly stated Switch was always in the plan and explained time investment rationale for excluding other platforms

  • The original Street Cleaner arcade cabinet was built from a 1983 Kung Fu Master arcade cabinet skeleton

    high confidence · Jesse and Brooks directly confirmed the base cabinet model

  • Jesse collaborated with live musicians for the final track: Animal Cannon (guitar), Chop Daddy from Zoth/Hyperstrike (bass), and Robbie Whiplash (drums)

    high confidence · Jesse detailed specific musician names and their backgrounds

  • Street Cleaner 3 features dialable pay phones as save points with hidden celebrity voicemail cameos, including Joe from Indie Arcade Wave

    high confidence · Jesse explained the phone booth mechanic and the Easter egg recording process

  • Brooks plans to build a collapsible/modular cabinet for Street Cleaner 3 that can be transported in a car, learning from hauling the original cabinet across regions

    high confidence · Brooks explicitly described plans for a collapsible pedestal-based design

  • Street Cleaner the music project evolved from Jesse creating a fictional 1980s action movie soundtrack and has morphed from synth wave into heavier dark synth with blast beats and moodier elements

    high confidence · Brooks described the project's origin and musical evolution

Notable Quotes

  • “We looked at that and we thought you know we're just gonna skip 2 and make the best Street Cleaner game, the best sequel, and that's where 3 comes from.”

    Brooks@ 6:56 — Explains the core creative philosophy behind the naming decision

  • “You've cleaned the streets and now it's time to clean the oceans”

    Jesse@ 7:54 — Example of humorous made-up backstories for the non-existent Street Cleaner 2

  • “I feel like if I'm given full range to do whatever I want, then my output's going to be sloppy and weird. But if I feel like, okay, so Jon Hey, here's these parameters, we want A, B, and C, then as I'm producing the music for that, I can dial this in”

    Jesse@ 16:39 — Reveals Jesse's creative process and preference for structured constraints

  • “When it gets 30 years old, even if it doesn't have water damage, it becomes very brittle... you could just feel it flexing and moving”

    Brooks@ 24:45 — Describes material degradation challenges with vintage arcade cabinets

  • “They are not made to withstand moving into a trailer and being hauled around every couple weeks and set up in a bar and taken away after that.”

    Jesse@ 27:23 — Lessons learned about arcade cabinet durability vs. portability demands

  • “I want to have my CRT. I want to have my cabinet. I want to dial in, you know, my everything, you know, I want to own it.”

    Jesse@ 29:21 — Expresses authenticity preference for personal arcade ownership

Entities

BrookspersonJessepersonJoepersonCreaky Lantern GamescompanyStreet Cleaner 3gameStreet Cleaner 1gameStreet CleanerpersonIndie Arcade WaveorganizationAnimal CannonpersonChop Daddyperson

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Easter egg mechanic using dialable pay phones with recorded voicemail cameos from community figures (e.g., Joe from Indie Arcade Wave) designed as discovery reward after beating the game

    high · Jesse: 'We figured while we have that uh put together we would uh go ahead and add some cameos... phone numbers are hidden all over in the game for people that are paying attention'

  • ?

    event_signal: Street Cleaner live show circuit with playable arcade cabinet successfully recruited new game audience members and drove awareness through live performance venue integration

    high · Jesse: 'An arcade cabinet as far as like a promotional device for you know our game... We've had people that that are converts, you know, or or recruited from live shows'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Music composition process constrained by intentional design parameters (stage aesthetics, difficulty scaling, boss mechanics) producing superior creative output versus unrestricted composition freedom

    high · Jesse: 'I feel like if I'm given full range to do whatever I want, then my output's going to be sloppy and weird. But if I feel like... here's these parameters, we want A, B, and C, then... I can dial this in'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Street Cleaner 3 design approach inspired by NES classics (Castlevania 2, Zelda 2, Mario 2) that experimented boldly in second installments before consolidating innovations in third games; deliberately skipped Street Cleaner 2 to jump to the 'quintessential' third entry

    high · Brooks: 'We looked at [NES sequels] and we thought you know we're just gonna skip 2 and make the best Street Cleaner game... You've got Mario 3, Castlevania 3 that end up being kind of like the quintessential versions'

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.119

0:00
Heyo, welcome everyone to Today in the Scene by Indie Arcade Wave. I'm Joe, your host, and here on In the Scene, we dive into what's happening in the arcade space from new indie arcade developers, arcade owners, and operators, and just news in the space in general. If you're looking to bring an indie arcade game to your collection, the website is live. We've got 13 games on there you can hit the buy now button if that doesn't work and take you directly to a website scroll down go to the contact section fill in the information and you will get in touch with me and we will get you the game that you want now we've got some indie developers coming back on the show we've already had them on a few times to talk about like uh the early indie games from the xbox 360 as well as street cleaner one and now they're releasing their newest game street cleaner three we got brooks and jesse from creaky lantern games how you guys doing hello hey doing great
0:57
i'm i'm happy to have you guys back on i'm excited to talk uh i haven't played street cleaner 3 yet i did just download it i bought it on steam and downloaded it onto my computer so i'm playing after this but just introduce yourselves who's brooks who's jesse and uh kind of how did you guys start making games?
1:16
Alright, well, I'm Brooks. I'm kind of the developer, artist, programmer at Creaky Lantern. I'm kind of just the brains idea guy. Get the stuff together.
1:31

  • Jesse drew inspiration from spaghetti western soundtracks and anime composers like Joe Hisaishi for Street Cleaner 3's music

    high confidence · Brooks mentioned these influences and Jesse confirmed the western track required 4-5 attempts and extensive study of Italian western soundtracks

  • Jesse created an original video game magazine as a promotional item for Street Cleaner 3

    high confidence · Joe mentioned seeing Jesse's magazine work as a promotional tool

  • “From different corners of my life, I don't think any of these people have ever met each other, other than the fact that all four of us are on this one track together to create this full epic heavy metal synth wave dark synth song.”

    Jesse@ 22:33 — Describes the collaborative dream of assembling musicians for the final track

  • “The timpani is, you know, and I was like, there's timpani all over on this in this stuff. So once I figured that out, I started finding out how to match that in it, and it really gave it that you know kind of like feel, that that western feel”

    Jesse@ 19:54 — Reveals the specific compositional breakthrough for the spaghetti western track

    • Robbie Whiplash
    person
    Sunsoft Batmangame
    Castlevania 2game
    Legend of Zelda 2game
    Super Mario Bros. 2game
    Super Mario Bros. 3game
    Castlevania 3game
    Nintendo Switchproduct
    Steamplatform
    Steam Deckproduct
    Agroundgame
    Jake Kaufmanperson
    Joe Hisaishiperson
    Shane Black Forge Coffeeorganization
    ?

    licensing_signal: Street Cleaner 3 final track features collaborative arrangement of live musicians (Animal Cannon, Chop Daddy, Robbie Whiplash) representing Jesse's long-term creative partnerships across different music communities

    high · Jesse: 'From different corners of my life, I don't think any of these people have ever met each other, other than the fact that all four of us are on this one track together'

  • $

    market_signal: Steam Deck has emerged as unexpectedly popular platform for Street Cleaner 3 community engagement, validating PC-focused release strategy for indie action games

    high · Brooks: 'We're really grateful that so many people have embraced the Steam Deck because it seems like a really popular way to play the new game'

  • ?

    community_signal: Jesse's musical composition approach for spaghetti western track required extensive research (months of Italian western soundtracks) and iterative restarts (4-5 complete attempts) before discovering timpani instrumentation as key aesthetic element

    high · Jesse: 'I made about four or five different attempts... trying to pick out... what part of the song is giving it that feel... I hadn't considered that they were using timpani... once I figured that out, it really gave it that feel'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Arcade cabinet design evolved from modified vintage hardware (1983 Kung Fu Master skeleton) experiencing brittleness and material degradation during touring; next generation planned as collapsible/modular design transportable in standard vehicles

    high · Brooks: 'When it gets 30 years old... it becomes very brittle' and Jesse: 'I've got plans for making just kind of like a collapsible cabinet... we can just actually stick it in the back of a car'

  • ?

    product_concern: Original Street Cleaner arcade cabinet (modified 1983 Kung Fu Master cabinet) required continuous structural repairs during regional touring (MD/particle board degradation, breaking pieces, flexing frame) necessitating permanent installation rather than ongoing transport

    high · Brooks: 'Multiple times where I had to just cut a piece out... for the next outing for another part to break off... at this point, you could just feel it flexing and moving... this is not traveling anywhere anymore'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Street Cleaner 3 planned for Nintendo Switch self-published and Steam PC release; no PlayStation/Xbox ports due to disproportionate time investment relative to expected ROI

    high · Brooks: 'Nintendo Switch was always in the plan... As far as going to other consoles like PlayStation or Xbox, it's just, it doesn't really seem like the investment, time investment into getting it onto those platforms'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Street Cleaner 3 shifts from chiptune-only (Street Cleaner 1) to full orchestral instrumentation with live musicians, reflecting design philosophy to avoid repeating the previous game's sound palette

    high · Jesse: 'Street Cleaner the video game, that was all chiptune... it would be kind of weird to go back and do chip again with the sequel now that we've broken that layer'

    • I am Jesse. I'm a musician and a video game enthusiast to a crippling degree. And I write and perform music under the name Street Cleaner.
    1:52
    It was a project that Brooks helped me start a while back. And we've joined forces in Creaky Lantern Games along with another friend of ours.
    2:03
    And I think we're like a three-way yin and yang that between the skill set of each of us complement each other pretty well. And we decided to all start working on games together.
    2:18
    Yeah, and I loved the first Street Cleaner game. Played it a bunch. Super, super fun. And speaking of Street Cleaner, the musician, all of the music on the channel is Street Cleaner. That's everything that I'm using for the walkthroughs and the outros and everything. So shout out to you for having awesome music and letting me use it in the first place. Thank you. Let's dive into the game. I have to write you an original song is what I have to do. And I think I had to have done it like a year ago. So it's coming. The game's out. The game's done now. So I can actually work on something else now.
    2:55
    Perfect. Original music for the outro and intro video. I'm ready for that. You guys already have a game out. You released Street Cleaner one, what was that, like two years ago about?
    3:08
    Three or four years ago. Wow, okay. Okay, so now you've moved on to Street Cleaner 3. You skipped 2. I don't really know the story on that. But let's just dive into, like, what did you learn from the first release to the second release? Well, actually, I can start with the Street Cleaner 3 thing if you want. Okay. Okay, so, you know, Street Cleaner, the first game, is kind of, well, we'll go a little further back. So Street Cleaner as a musical project is Jesse deciding that he liked 80s vigilante movies, 80s classic 80s action movies, you know, like your your Death Wish kind of stuff and in your Terminators and all that, all the good stuff. and he wanted to write the soundtrack to an 80s movie and didn't have a movie to write, so he ended up just writing a soundtrack to an 80s movie that didn't exist, and that became the Street Cleaner Project.
    4:12
    So we were talking after that, and I was joking around that back in the 80s, if they'd had this summer blockbuster movie series that was super popular, they totally would have sold off the video game rights to make a quick buck, right? And that's how you end up with your LJN stuff.
    4:31
    So we decided, well, let's just actually make the video game. So we ended up with a video game that is based on a fake movie series that is based on a real musician. That's the whole thing that I tell everyone.
    4:45
    So that's the genesis of the first game, Street Cleaner 1. So when we were doing that, of course, since it's 80s, we decided, well, we're both big original Nintendo fans. So it's just a perfect fit to make the Street Cleaner game a Nintendo throwback.
    5:03
    So we kind of took stock of what our favorite Nintendo games were. And one of the odd ones among them ended up being the Sunsoft Batman game that we kind of ended up agreeing on. and that was like the base inspiration for the original street cleaner game but then we just kind of cribbed from everywhere we could so you know there's a bit of ninja game in there there's a bit of of uh mega man there's a bit of duck tales just all stuff that we love so there's the first game so coming out of that after we finished it we were thinking about what to do and it's like well easiest thing would be like just continue riding this wave and do the sequel but we were thinking in the nes days we look back and we're thinking about sequels of those games that we love and you know and you start thinking about you know legend of zelda castlevania super mario brothers and there's a weird thing where a lot of those first sequels the devs went and they just tried something crazy out there right like castlevania 2 they went away from the stage-based stuff and you know that's the genesis of the metroidvania exploration thing you've got legend of zelda 2 same deal just expand it and it's a big weird open world and then you know mario 2 of course the famous story of taking a different game that existed and and just dropping mario on it so that ended up being weird but then you get the third game in those series like mario 3 castlevania 3 that end up being kind of like the quintessential
    6:49
    versions of those games so that's a long way to say that we we looked at that and we thought you know we're just gonna skip two and make the best street cleaner game the the best sequel
    7:03
    and that's where three comes from yeah she cut out the the weird one yeah i mean that makes perfect sense you're right you know they kind of like experiment on two and then take the elements they liked from two but they basically remake one and just make it better than the first one yeah so yeah if you just cut out that that weird game in between right yeah so whenever like everyone everyone looks and they see three and they start like freaking out and going like what happened to two did i miss two or people that have never seen the game before it's like they start looking it up and they're like where's two kind of what so what we decided we do is anytime anyone asks where street cleaner 2 is we make something up so someone asks you street where's street cleaner 2 and i say oh that was a that was an open world fishing game and uh
    7:54
    and it had the tagline of you've you've cleaned the streets and now it's time to clean the oceans right that kind of thing yeah or like it was uh it was a vmu game or something like that or you know anything nothing is too ridiculous i think my favorite so far is that it was a uh a waffle house placemat uh puzzle uh you know like for kids to like yeah that was the official licensed street cleaner too um and uh we so like we'd made up enough of them where i was thinking like we should create like a document where we just have a list of all the ones we made up but uh rethinking it i think that we should just leave them all in the comments of the shattered rift video on youtube and just just blow it up you know like 900 different stories of street clear 2 on there why not man just just do do whatever you want to do i mean just have fun with it right that's the whole idea like we're we're here to make and play games because they're fun and we want to have fun with them so whatever whatever you do in the space to have fun with it why not like so one other thing that i love about the game and i'm excited about was back when i saw you live jesse and you were playing in saint paul you asked me to record a soundbite basically on your phone for the game this was this was years ago before i even knew what you guys were going to do with this and so you threw all these easter eggs in on the phone booths which are save points but now you can actually call in so tell us a little bit about how that idea came to be and how can you call me in the game so the phone booths the pay phones uh they're they exist in street cleaner one as checkpoints and uh we carried that over to street cleaner three as well only now the phones are dialable but that's not that's not immediately explained hopefully what the hope is that people will play through the game normally vanilla you know and beat the game because once you do that um man am i giving away too much um you can hold up on any pay phone you can dial a number and uh so when i had a uh and it's for a myriad of different reasons but we figured while we have that uh put together we would uh go ahead and add some cameos we would have some some people that we know record like voicemails like sorry i can't get to the phone right now or something And so you're actually the very first person that I had recorded to do one of those. And yeah, we did it in person. I held my phone up to you and recorded your voice there. And I think one take improvised an amazing like answering machine, incoming answering machine thing. And so phone numbers are hidden all over in the game for people that are paying attention or who are treasure hunting looking for them. But your phone number is not. you are the master of your phone number so the only people that are going to be able to find you are people who we can redirect over here or people who you want to tell what the phone number is so I don't know if you wanted to tell the listeners right now what your phone number is in the game but yeah let's tell them alright so if you go to any phone in the game hold up you'll be presented with a keypad and you dial go ahead 555 as all the phone numbers start with as you said but then it's 4888 which is a little shortened version of what the pizza hut phone number was from when i was a kid so i always remembered it was whatever your area code was then 488888 and that was that was how you called for delivery so that was why i thought it was kind of funny to just throw that in there right yeah so anybody listening uh you can go up to any phone dial that up and uh yeah you're gonna hear joe with a hey yo you'll you'll get the intro and uh you will have reached the voicemail of indie arcade wave so that's that's a cool little thing you guys slid in there and i know there are more easter eggs to be found you guys always have stuff like in the first one you could pet the dog which i thought was awesome um and there will be there will be so much more let's let's dive Jesse, I got a question for you specifically for the music. What's your creative process? How do you make this music? And what inspiration do you draw from the most?
    12:17
    So what's really neat about Creaky Lantern is that it's definitely like being able to create art with my friends. and being able to like see not just like we understand each other like when when brooks comes up with something there's nothing that's that's like too like oh no that's don't use that or oh no that's not good or anything like that it's like it's like okay well let's see where this goes that kind of thing and to that same extent you know uh brooks trusts me to kind of like take the reins when it comes to the trajectory of what the music's going to be for different parts of of of the game he did that with Aeternum as well and uh and so like it's always starting off it always starts off with like several bad ideas or things that that are end up being placeholders or whatever but in the end it all ends up being cohesive and comes together and that's like I think the process is just being able to have a team and have people that you could workshop stuff with, bounce stuff off of, and hear that kind of feedback. As for this game, like Street Cleaner, the video game, that was all chiptune, that was all made in Damatracker, because Brooks had adhered so strongly to the NES restrictions that I felt that I had a duty to do that as well. And we were creating kind of like an authentic NES game. So, you know, I was inspired a lot by Jake Kaufman Vert with the Yacht Club games with Shovel Knight and other projects that he'd done where he'd used family tractors. So it was pretty neat to go in and pick apart his tracks and see what he did and then try to kind of like make my own.
    14:16
    And that worked for that project. That was great for that project. And then with this one, it was it was decided that we should just go full blast full board i mean because if you haven't played the first game the the game the chiptune aspect of it kind of breaks at the end of the game and reveals like you know a full spectrum kind of like you know soundtrack to the game and then uh so it would be kind of weird to go back and do chip again with the sequel now that we've broken that layer and so with this game each stage has a theme brooks has been really great at like designing an aesthetic per stage um if there are assets that go from stage to stage they're used in a way that continues to keep that aesthetic so i had a duty to write music that that complemented that aesthetic to kind of like feel the vibe of the stages and kind of like see how they felt and how I could write music that would improve that. And so there are some times where like, one stage wasn't a fast run and jump and kind of stage was a more of a meticulous choose your path kind of stage. So it was like, okay, so we got to bring this tempo down a little bit. We got to kind of ramp up the tension because it's dangerous now. Our health is to the point where you know the fourth hit kills you so you know we've gotten to there at that point as far as um the scaling of the difficulty of the game and stuff so it was kind of like more important to like make a more dangerous song meanwhile they're uh the boss for that same stage is aesthetically very fast and there's things going by and and things just um sorry there's something floating you know things that are they're going by just like whizzing by you and stuff and so it was like okay so now we have to jump the tempo up but then how to make that transition from a slow kind of like a sinister like dangerous song into a oh holy crap you know we got a fast boss fight going on and then at the same time matching the stage aesthetics of you know the boss and the surroundings and stuff it was a really fun challenge and i think i excel by having challenges put in front of me, parameters and stuff like that. I feel like if I'm given full range to do whatever I want, then my output's going to be sloppy and weird. But if I feel like, okay, so hey, here's these parameters, we want A, B, and C, then as I'm writing the music for that, I can, okay, well, I can dial this in, and then that aha moment will happen where like, oh, okay, so all right, so here's what I'm going to do here. but then to get it to match this we're gonna you know kind of hard to explain i guess but hopefully i did that that explanation justice well so i'd kind of like to add uh that street cleaner as a music project like i said it started out as the the 80s action movie you know synth wave kind of at the dawn of what we now know as synth wave as a genre like street Cleaner was kind of at the forefront of that. And since then, it's morphed more towards like, like heavier dark synth stuff, you know, with a lot of like blast beats and, and, and moodier synth and stuff. But I also know that Jesse's got like a lot of influences that go beyond that.
    17:49
    And I thought this was really neat, because it was an opportunity to kind of take Street cleaner as a music project and branch it out into those other influences that he hasn't really been able to like explore before so a big one is that i know he's a huge fan of of old like western movie soundtracks like spaghetti western stuff that kind of thing and uh so you'll notice one track in the street cleaner 3 soundtrack is like a a synth western mashup that i think is really cool and a thing that i've been kind of on him to do like as a whole album for a while so this is a cool way to like start getting into that kind of stuff and there's a lot of now uh asian influences too because we're also big anime fans so pulling in like like uh joe hisaishi kind of stuff a lot of new opportunities here for the project as as on the music side yeah and then like as far as like the western that was actually probably one of the more challenging if not the most challenging part is is getting getting a good driving gamey synth wave song going with that arpeggiated bass and and you know in that production but having that feeling of of a spaghetti western specifically a spaghetti western that that um uh in yo moda kone kind of like feel to it it really I think I made about four or five different attempts starting fresh every single time, trying to find, like, click into that vibe and click into that feeling. And going through and listening to Italian Western soundtracks for months, trying to pick out, okay, what is it that's giving it, what part of the song is giving it that feel? And then when it clicked and the light went off in my head I realized that I hadn considered that they were using timpani you know the timpani is you know and i was like there timpani all over on this in this stuff so once i figured out figured that out i started finding out how to match that in and it really gave it that you know kind of like feel that that western feel without you know having whistles and harmonicas and and you know all the stuff that we kind of associate with like the more you know uh clowny western kind of stuff i guess you know no no mouth harp stuff but keeping it authentic to myself and and and also making a good track that people can hear i would love to do a full album or an ep like that but it was also the most challenging track i had on there so um yeah uh the mall was another one that was really fun to do because i don't always want to make serious music sometimes i want to make happy fun stuff you know like and uh and so that was a real big uh opportunity i like doing that uh that one in the boss fight for that one as well a really really fun tracks to put together with all the orchestra hits and the uh the 808 uh drum kits and stuff like that um the vocal samples um was really fun uh but yeah yeah um And then the final track, if I can talk about that for a second, was really neat because it was like I got to assemble like a dream team and get these various musicians that I had wanted to work with to all. So in the first game, we went from chiptune and at the very end of the game, it blew up into a full spectrum thing. And I was trying to figure out this whole time how I'm going to do that again. and so to to achieve that this time it was like okay so i'm gonna get animal cannon who is one of my favorite musicians i've had the luxury of playing a show with him in uh in pittsburgh actually at a place called black forge coffee but it's a cool venue and it was really neat to be able to finally play a show with him and even better that i finally got to work with him that He did the guitar work on the final track. The bass is done by the bass player from the band Zoth. He's also in a band called Hyperstrike. And he goes by the name Chop Daddy. And he does these tutorial videos on Instagram where he's just like doing some of the most heinous slap bass. And then the drums, that's all live drums recorded by Robbie Whiplash. He's in a handful of bands. the Megatronics Hansel and Gretel he was the drummer for Hansel and Gretel so from different corners of my life I don't think any of these people have ever met each other than the fact that all four of us are on this one track together to create this full epic heavy metal synth wave dark synth song so that's what we were able to pull off that which is cool yeah i love that i mean there's there's so much to unpack from that like just the the collaboration between you and your team and then collaborating with other musicians you've wanted to collaborate with for so long it's just like a dream come true within the game it's like i feel like the music aspect of of a lot of these games like are it's kind of overlooked you know not a lot of people talk about the music and i i think the music that you're making is great which is super cool and it's awesome to be able to collaborate with all these other musicians and kind of bring them into the video game space.
    23:21
    That's just one aspect of the development, let alone just actually making the game and bringing it to whatever you bring it to, which kind of leads me into the next thing is, you guys made a one-of-one for an arcade cabinet for the first Street Cleaner. Are you going to do that again for Street Cleaner 3? And if you are, what route are you going to take? Are you going to get another skeleton, or are you going to actually build your own cabinet?
    23:45
    Okay, so we've learned a lot. think we learned a lot with that was that was a fun experience with that first cabinet because the first cabinet was I don't know Jesse remember what it was a master there's a Kung Fu Master, Daddy East Kung Fu Master 1983, I think. 1983.
    24:10
    Yeah, so yeah, okay. So go ahead. All right, I'm gonna go. So the thing I learned about arcade cabinets was in the 80s. They made them out of amazing press board uh the um it's not quite uh that it's not a osb it's not oriented stranded board it's it's this mdf micro density fiber board stuff and that stuff's great and all but when it gets 30 years old even if it doesn't have water damage it becomes very brittle and so there were multiple times where i had to just cut a piece out you know they had broken off cut it out square and replace that and then kind of like relaminate it and get it looking good just for the next outing for another part to break off the other side, just part pieces on the top break off. And now at this point, you could just feel it flexing and moving. And so we realized like this is not traveling anywhere anymore. This is not going anywhere. It needs a forever home. And it's probably four feet away from where Brooks is sitting right now. So that's a forever home.
    25:28
    So I think we had discussed doing a cabinet for three and exactly how that would work. And Brooks has a really good idea on how the button layout would be. You know, having these almost dedicated character switching buttons and that kind of thing. Where there's obviously going to be a lot more buttons. The first one was just a joystick, three buttons, and a start. and so this is going to have quite a few more because the actual game itself will has shoulder buttons as well as all four of your buttons with your right thumb but brooks had said if we were going to do another one that he was going to make it from scratch and he's pretty good at it if you look in the background right there he made that from scratch so you can see back there my candy cab that is that is i made that because i really wanted a candy cab you can probably tell it's shallower than a normal candy cab because it doesn't need to fit uh fit a crt in it so i mean it's just a just a pc running some stuff but i love the aesthetic and uh learned a lot on that and learned also a lot from us hauling around this this actual big standing cabinet because Because for the people that don't know, the street cleaner cabinet actually went to street cleaner shows.
    26:52
    And so we hauled it around in his trailer. We trucked it all the way from San Diego all the way up to San Francisco once. We trucked it everywhere. I bought a trailer just to move this thing around. Yeah. I was going to say, the thing I learned about arcade cabinets is they're nice, they're constructed, and materials are picked for an arcade cabinet to stand there and withstand kids beating on it. They are not made to withstand moving into a trailer and being hauled around every couple weeks and set up in a bar and taken away after that. so I've got plans for I've actually got plans for a new cabinet for the for Street Cleaner 3 and probably like just for stuff going forward because I want to make I don't want to do like a full stand-up cabinet because the whole point is that like we needed a whole trailer to haul this thing around so I've got ideas for making just kind of like a collapsible cabinet so it'll mostly just kind of be like the like you can imagine the candy cab just slice the top off of that and to kind of do like a big stand-up bar top and then like a like a pedestal yeah yeah a collapsible pedestal so that we can just actually stick it in the back of a car and take it around yeah yeah doing a sorry go ahead i mean an arcade cabinet as far as like a promotional device for you know our game and you know and bringing it so playing shows is neat because you know we have people that already want to be there you know that are familiar with street cleaner or even if they're not hopefully after the set they will be and there are so many people that were that are like whoa there's a street cleaner video game you know we've had people that that are converts you know or or recruited from live shows and stuff but you know that's a it's a great tool for that um and it's it's fun to have but you know i have a level of of love for authenticity um i having owned a handful of arcade cabinets in my life i still have my uh neo geo four slot right behind uh kenny loggins there he's on the other side of the wall um but i have this thing where like no i want to have my crt i I want to have my cabinet. I want to dial in, you know, my everything, you know, I want to own it. But as far as bringing stuff out for promotional things, people don't really give a crap too much about the authenticity when they are interacting with something outside of an arcade environment And that something that I definitely learned bringing you know a big giant data east arcade cabinet with me everywhere yeah and lugging those things around is it no small feat i mean we we took galactic battleground to 12 arcades in 14 days taking it from minneapolis to dallas and back and holy cow man like taking we had both the konami and the tabletop so we were taking two cabinets out every single place we went and putting them back in and it was it was nuts like to to do that again i mean i would do it again it was super fun but man like moving those things around is not that enjoyable so making like a modular pedestal that you can take apart and just have a stand would be excellent that would that would really make it a lot easier so we've got we talked about the game we talked about the story of how it all became we talked about the music and the new cabinet that you're going to build for it. So what is your next step with the game? You're going to console, like Switch? What does that process look like? Yep. So Nintendo Switch was always in the plan because the first game, we managed to get that on Switch self-published, which was really cool. And so since I've got all the hardware and I've got the access, we've been building for the Switch from the start. So it runs on it. I just got to go through all the whole process to submit and test and we'll get it up on there.
    31:05
    Yeah, that's that's that's it was pretty much, you know, understood from from inception that, you know, this is a switch game. And and we're really grateful that so many people have embraced the Steam Deck because it seems like a really popular way to play the new game. and obviously, you know, PC is, you know, those are our two, there are two areas that we really want to, you know, publish on that we want to be on. As far as going to other consoles like PlayStation or Xbox, it's just, it doesn't really seem like the investment, time investment into getting it onto those platforms, not just financial, the time investment would be something that we should probably do when we could use that time to maybe work on another project, work on other things, you know, make progress on things that are a higher priority to us.
    32:10
    Yeah, I think, I mean, I think you guys are on the right path with that. Like, I'm just thinking of Armden Gelatinous. They, you know, they started in the arcade space and they released onto console. They did Steam, Switch, Xbox, and PlayStation, and they said by far switch was the easiest to work with the easiest deck to get um the least amount of hassle to like actually get the game published and it doesn't have a lot of stuff that like xbox and playstation require you to have achievements and like all this extra stuff that just eats up more development time and they basically were like if we ever released another game it would only be switched like we wouldn't mess with the other consoles it's just not it's not worth the time so it seems like you guys are on the on the right path with that and i'm glad that Switch is the plan.
    32:53
    I mean, I know you guys just released the game, but what are future plans? Like, what else do you guys have kind of cooking right now?
    33:01
    Well, I mean, every game developer has a thousand game ideas, right? At least a thousand unfinished projects, right? Yeah.
    33:11
    Brooks has a thousand playable unfinished projects in some one form or another. I just want to point that out. So, in fact, as a promotional thing for Street Cleaner 3, Jesse made a completely original video game magazine.
    33:30
    He wrote a whole bunch of articles and there it is right there. It started as just kind of a joke. I asked him to say, yeah, it would be really cool if you did a two-page spread that was a fake video game spread as just an advertisement thing that we could put up on places. That would be really cool. and he went off and did that and then he just started making more
    33:55
    i i have a i have a hyper fixation problem where when i get excited about something i have a tendency to just run with that thing you know and so well yeah what started out with like okay well yeah i'm gonna do this two-page spread thing but i'm also gonna make like a fake little fluff page in the beginning and then it just kept going and going and going and going and Before long, we had pretty much a small magazine's worth of stuff. But yeah, keep on going. But part of the point of that was that while he was working on this, he started asking me, okay, what can we put in the magazine? And finally, he hit on the idea of, okay, send me stuff from your old projects.
    34:37
    So if you get the magazine, you will see that there are a bunch of promotional stuff for games that are projects that I started and did not finish.
    34:52
    Yep. Although one of those Glory Gunner there is a thing I'd like to do. That's one I do want to complete, which is a shoot-em-up that I was going to do before we moved over to Street Cleaner. But in addition to that, I've also got, I think, a frontrunner for our next project is I've got an idea for kind of more like a top-down Zelda-like kind of thing, but we've got some interesting inspirations for that one. And then my long-term goals are... the reason I got into video game development to begin with is because I've got an RPG, like a story that I want to tell through Japanese-style console RPG. But it turns out, if you ask anyone who's ever tried to do this, Yes. RPGs are the hardest thing you can try to do.
    35:41
    So advice to anyone out there, if you've got an RPG you want to make, don't get into game development and do that as your first thing. Do other stuff first, because you will never finish an RPG at the start. But that's a long-term thing.
    35:55
    That's good advice. I mean, you're right. Those are the games that have the most depth and need a team of people to build it out. It takes a lot of time. I mean, there's nothing quick about those games.
    36:08
    That's pretty much all I have for you guys. I'm chomping at the bit to write the soundtrack to an RPG. Like, I would relish the opportunity to just really get into the weeds and make just, I'm talking like an interwoven leitmotifs and like, oh man, like, it's going to be like, you know, Charlie Day with the, you know, planter on the wall with all the strings attached to everything. like I'm gonna I'm gonna get in there I'm gonna get in the weeds it's gonna be awesome that's yeah it's a big project it's definitely could be something super fun to take on um yeah you that's that's pretty much all I have for you guys like I really appreciate you coming on telling the story of street cleaner and just hyping up the new release I'm excited to play it so shout out social media is where can people follow along and where can people play the game right now it's on steam uh we can access everything through creakylander.com that'll get you to the links to the game to our social stuff we're on blue sky we're on youtube we're on facebook uh so like i said yeah steam place to get it right now coming to switch pretty soon as fast as we can you can check out street cleaner at uh um anywhere where there's music just type in street cleaner uh two words um if you type in one word you're gonna get a godflesh album from the 80s um but yeah so two words street cleaner you'll probably you'll probably know which one's me and uh yeah that's that's where you can find music that but uh yeah right now I'm just pushing the street cleaner 3.com URL you need to go to I'm gonna throw all those links down in the description so people can check you guys out definitely go get the game play the game if you haven't played the first one you guys have a bundle on Steam right now don't you for both of them there's actually two bundles there is one bundle that get you both games with a 10% discount and And there's a bundle that includes both games and both soundtracks for a 15% discount. And those are the Steam complete the set bundles. So if you own the first game, you can still take advantage of the bundle and get everything else for the reduced price.
    38:29
    That's awesome. I mean, that's what I did. I already own Street Cleaner 1, so I bought three with the bundle and totally worth it.
    38:36
    Again, thank you guys for coming on. don't forget to like share and subscribe if you're still watching the way we'll continue to grow and we can all ride it together go grab street cleaner on steam right now and switch in the near future and if you're looking to bring an indie arcade game to your collection jump on the website scroll through the 13 games we have on there hit the buy now button if it's not there go down to the contact me and we'll get in touch there but until next time peace
    39:07
    Outro Music