It was definitely a lot of hard work, but there was never a time in the game’s development where we felt “It’s hopeless. We’re never going to sign this. It’s all over.” Every time we went to publishers, even if they were like, “This isn’t quite for us,” they really liked the game. So that gave us confidence to keep going. And we actually got a ton of advice from publishers even if they did turn it down. Some of the best advice we got early on was from Konami, and they were like, “We like this, but this is the kind of game and new character that you need to launch with a new platform. We don’t want to get this and launch it on PS2 and have it be lost mid-way through the console’s life cycle.” So we made the decision after PSP was announced to develop exclusively for PSP. We were able to go back to Konami, and they were like, “Now it’s a peanut butter and chocolate situation.” In the whole 18 months or so that we were working on it before we signed the game, there was a lot of work to do but we always felt like, “There’s a cool thing we can do, and it’s almost in our grasp.” We never felt like we were getting rejected by publishers.

What was your experience like developing a game for the PSP?

It’s been great. It’s always really fun to develop for a new platform, just because it’s cool that you’re getting to do stuff nobody’s ever seen before. You’re finding graphics modes that no one’s ever really done before—you’re finding bugs that no one’s ever seen before. It was definitely tough. The PSP is awesome system to develop for, and it’s pretty easy to get up and running—but to get a lot of performance, it gets a lot harder. There are a lot of dead-ends and mines you can fall into, and we found most of them the hard way because it was a first-generation game. But that said, now that we’ve finished it, we know where all those things are, and as the development went on it got a lot easier. Obviously, with new hardware, there are always some challenges.

Since Death, Jr. has been touted as a potential “killer app” for the PSP, did you feel any added pressure?

No, we put ourselves under a lot of pressure at all times, so I don’t think we ever felt any extra pressure. Like, we’re already at “11,” so we couldn’t go to “12.”

How did the stylized look of the game get developed?

The original look was very simple, and kind of like hand-drawn—that was what the original concept art looked like. As we moved forward, we experimented with a couple of different looks, but we always wanted to keep it cartoony—not in a cel-shaded way, but stylized. The game happens in the real world, but it’s a slightly tweaked version of our real world. You’ll probably need a psychologist to explain the exact mechanics of what made us come up with Meat World, or setting a third of the levels in a children’s insane asylum. But it was just a desire to make it look unique.

Now there’s talk of making Death, Jr. its own franchise, with more games and possibly a movie. How are those plans shaping up?

When we developed the character, one of the first things we did was to make a comic book to help flesh out the world. That was received very well and got us into a lot of Hollywood discussions. The comic is actually out now on Image, and the first story arc is two-thirds done. That led to discussions with Madhouse, who is working on an anime version of it. And then there’s the feature film—I can’t really say exactly where it is in the production process, but it’s near the beginning.

Are you planning a sequel?

We would love to do a sequel. Absolutely. That’s all I can say!