We recently had the opportunity to speak with Captain William Blade, fearless leader of Alpha Wolf Squadron's newest war, Army Men Air Attack 2. Here's what he had to say.

BLADE: I never really had any "formal" flight training besides playing a ton of games. I took the $50,000 dollars my parents spent on my college education, and instead of using it to actually attend classes, spent the entire four years of my college education playing video games with my friends. At the time, my parents did not fully understand the value of blowing off classes to play games. In fact, I can remember several caustic conversations where they tried to get me to do things like go to class, study, and pass tests. How silly!!!

After college, I took all my valuable video game skills and got a job polishing pool balls in a pool hall frequented by servicemen in the Green Army. During my spare time, I played Sudden Strike on the bar big screen TV. Col. Grimm, one of the guys who came into the pool hall regularly, saw me flying that chopper like it was nothing and offered me a position in the Green Army's Alpha Wolf Squadron. From there I worked myself up through the ranks to Captain. After seeing the Alpha Wolf Squadron in action, and seeing the high level of talent in the group, joining them was a no brainer.

BLADE: Fortunately, the war between the Green and Tan Armies is already extremely fun and very diverse. There are many features of Air Attack combat that we have only scratched the surface of developing. The Air Attack R&D team has such great designers that we never run out of ideas. So many of the combat tactics in Air Attack are developed from things our research team has discovered from intelligence from the “Real World” (dropping cherry bombs in ant hills, melting soldiers with magnifying glasses) that we can utilize these atrocities to come up with new combat tactics. The problem is never trying to keep the combat fresh and innovative. The big problem is trying to be fresh and innovative without ruining any of the successful combat we have developed in the Air Attack series so far. Our team (Alpha Wolf Squadron) makes it a rule not to engage in battles that do not deliver substantial upgrades in combat and new tactical elements. You always want to make sure you are adding to the previous war machine without taking away anything that worked well.

BLADE: My current title is Captain. The function of this job is different from project to project. On Air Attack 2, my job was to work with the R&D team to create a finished plan of attack, and then from that plan of attack make day to day assignments for all 22 people on the team to complete the mission. This is an enormous task. Once the attack plans are made, I make sure that all the different elements and details are being implemented, give feedback on anything that could be changed to improve our chances of victory, and play war games a lot to hone our skills. I also work with the other parts of the military (intelligence, funding, propaganda machine) to make sure all of their work is representing the war accurately. Besides the strategic planning, I also make sure that anything we don't have somebody assigned to do, still gets done. This involves anything from buying lunches to getting people light bulbs. Oh yeah, and I go to meetings a lot. Despite what people believe, making war is not all fame, fortune, and beautiful groupies.  :-)

BLADE: Like I said earlier, one of the things I really like about working on this team is that we do not participate in a battle without some significant tactical improvements and new weapons. From the very beginning, we identified exactly what we wanted to improve and made sure they got into the arsenal. The improvements really break down into two categories: combat ability and military personnel developments.

For combat improvements, we improved the power and capabilities of the winch mechanic (the cable that dangles below your helicopter and picks up objects), added landing to the helicopter capabilities, simplified the helicopter weapons scheme, and added more Green toys to battle against the Tan toys. While all of these are really cool additions, I am especially excited about the new winch capabilities. Like in AMAA1, you can pick up any object in the world with your winch. But instead of just being able to drop the objects to destroy enemies, you can throw objects like a giant bowling ball to crush them, or swing objects around your helicopter like a wrecking ball, or use the objects as a giant shield. We are sure to succeed now!

Since the war is so dependant upon individuals, we also wanted to increase the amount of military personnel development we did for the war. We have a great leader (Me!) and four unique copilots (Woodstock, Bombshell, Hardcore, and Hooligan). Since the main focus is helicopter warfare, this can be tough. So we developed a communications device which displays each co-pilot talking in a small box on the screen for all radio communications. This cool radio communication tool also allows us to give mission status updates and change mission objectives dynamically. Army Men Air Attack 2 also features 12 minutes of Green Army newsreel to carefully tie in the war's progression and in game mission objectives.

BLADE: Thanks for the great compliment about our looks!!! Despite the fact that Air Attack 2 was the greatest helicopter battle on the PlayStation of all time with little or no flaws, :-), one thing we wanted to improve combat wise was the camera view. While the camera view on the PlayStation worked well combat wise, it was a lot more top down then the PlayStation2 skirmish. The PlayStation2 camera is more behind the pilot allowing them to really see more of the combat area. This also immerses the pilot more in the beautiful, lush environments.

BLADE: First off, let me say that this was not a port of the PlayStation war. While many wars just port existing technology from PlayStation war engines, our team was given the opportunity to really R&D the Playstation2 development environment and build a great war engine from the ground up. Especially when moving on to the next generation console, it is important to take the time and build your war engine around the strengths of the new machine. This also helps eliminate a lot of the problems that other teams face when trying to port existing battle plans to a new platform.

The biggest obstacles were really figuring out the strengths and limitations of a new platform. Fortunately, we had some incredibly bright R&D guys studying and experimenting with the new technology. Everything you create has to be done with an understanding of where the technology excels. Working on a first generation title definitely means research and development have to redo lots of work to make sure it is the best it can be. But all of the things we have learned on AMAA2 will help us in future wars. I am happy that Alpha Wolf Squadron gave us the time necessary to make sure the war really came out great.

BLADE: Not too much of it was familiar territory. We really wanted to learn as much as we could about the new war machine and figure out how to push the hardware. Besides the technology shift, one of the things that dramatically changed developing for PlayStation2 was the amount of battle strategy that needs to be created. With the expanded capabilities of PlayStation2, the amount of R&D assets it takes to make a war increased significantly. We have a lot more R&D designers working on our PlayStation2 teams than on PS1 teams.

BLADE: Again, the Air Attack PlayStation2 is not just a port of the PlayStation version. We did get to build a war engine specifically for the PlayStation2 hardware. Typically, the main difference between the development cycles of ports and new war is the difference in design time needed. For a new war, you have to take time to develop a warfare design, strategic direction, and technology plan. For a port, you are emulating a war that exists and using a lot of that war's technology. This really cuts down on the design period.

BLADE: There are so many great moments it is hard to choose one. Funny enough, I think my favorite moment from fighting the war involves me losing a wargame scenario. There is one mission late in the war where you need to collect a bunch of helicopter parts to build yourself a new helicopter. One of the pieces is behind a giant dump truck. In order to fly past the dump truck you have to land and have your copilot run out and lower the back of the truck.  Since this is towards the end of the battle, you usually felt pretty good about your chances of winning if you made it this far.

So for months I am fighting this designer's (Amy) scenario. For months, I knew if I made it to this landing pad and dropped my copilot off, I would be safe. Without telling me, Amy put in these RC Cars that drive back and forth across the road and try to crush the copilot. The copilot needs to run across the road Frogger style avoiding the cars. Well, I had no idea the cars were coming. I landed on the landing pad like I always did and watched my copilot start running across the road. Out of nowhere, a giant RC Car came cruising by and just squished my copilot ending the scenario. I was shocked. Amy just laughed at me. I had fallen right into her wargame trap.

It is cool to have strategists putting in little wargame surprises like that for people like myself to fall into. Plus, despite the fact that I lost the scenario, I laughed my ass off at the sight of one of these cars just cruising by squishing my copilot.

BLADE: We really only want to produce Air Attack scenarios on the systems that really make sense for the war. The quality of the battles is the top priority. Right now we only have plans for continuing the series on Playstation2. I have been extremely happy with the Playstation2 hardware and Sony as a company. I love fighting wars on their systems. But Air Attack might end up on other next gen consoles. You never know.

BLADE: As with many things, warfare is a tough balance between getting a lot of good ideas from a lot of people and not designing by consensus. Not having an outside military advisor means we have a lot more control over making sure the combat strategy is top quality and consistent throughout the war. But the real benefit to not having an outside military advisor is that you are not being pushed to ship your men before they are ready just because some commanding officer that is not yours wants to make a buck this fiscal quarter. While this is not true with every company, Alpha Wolf Squadron has been really great about not initiating the scenarios until they are top quality. This really is the biggest benefit, at least here in Alpha Wolf Squadron.

BLADE: That is one of the really cool things about the Army Men universe: we are just play toys. There are no real people. It is not real life. There really is no "violence" in the wars. Sure, maybe Army Men wars have lead to some senseless insect destruction but we have never had any problems or issues with Army Men wars and violence. Heck, we are just toys.

BLADE: I think the biggest challenge will be sustaining small independent development houses that are making quality battles. It is so hard to keep a small development company like that up and running for a long period of time. It just takes so much money to keep a company running that if you have just one or two wars that don't do well, the company can go under. It is a shame to lose all the cutting edge small developers. It just seems that the market does not always reward these types of strategists. Stuff I am most excited about seeing is if the industry as a whole can really sustain 3 different consoles at once. The more good wars available the better. Plus, the more consoles there are to make wars for, the more jobs there are for people like me!   :-)

BLADE: Of course! I had a ton of 'em. That was one of the reasons I was so excited to be working on Air Attack. You really can add a lot of your own experiences playing with Army Men to the war design. My favorite was the paratroopers. They were the little guys you could throw up in the air and their parachute would open. As a kid, we used to strap firecrackers on the parachuter's backs and drop them off the roof of our school. I am glad to say that these paratroopers are now part of the war. In the war, they parachute in with an M80 strapped on their backs and kamikaze the nearest enemy units. Sweeeet!!!

BLADE: Well, since the company has not yet announced an Air Attack 3, I cannot really comment on the war. But if we were working on another installment, I would imagine the combat would involve some cool new winch attachments (like a bug zapper or yo-yo), more indoor environments, a new first person camera for gunner missions, stackable models for more in-depth winch puzzles, and a lot more carrying and deploying of troops. Again, you can count on a significant upgrade in both combat and technology for the next war. If we were working on one.  :-)