Get the Matt Hazard: Blood Bath and Beyond [PS3/X360]  Trailer off WP (70mb)

Matt Hazard is going back in time to protect what matters most - his own 8-bit self.

Matt Hazard, the star of renowned videogames like Conflict of the Deities and Haz-Matt Carts,has been a videogame icon for more than two decades.  Matt lived on top of the videogame charts for many years until an abrupt retirement brought him down.  Now fresh from an epic battle with Wallace Wellesley and the revitalization of his career, Matt has a chip on his shoulder and is ready to tear down General Neutronov and a back catalog of timeless and ageless videogame foes.

Matt Hazard: Blood Bath and Beyond is a flood of carnage that the classic 8-bit side-scroller era didn’t want gamers to see.  Recreated today with next-gen 3D graphics, it’s nonstop run-and-gun action at its finest.  Take a suspenseful ride in single player or co-op through a pirate hideout, an ancient Japanese castle, the Old West, Siberian ice mines, and even the moon and relive some of the most classic and violent moments in Matt Hazard’s videogame history.

General Neutronov

General Alexei Plutoniovich Neutronov was a highly-decorated Red Army officer who served with distinction in a number of successful games in the USSR prior to the end of the Cold War, including the popular Dissident Evil series.

After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1990, in an attempt to show the kinder gentler side of the people behind the Iron Curtain, most Russian game developers turned their attention away from strong military characters and focused on games involving the intricate effects of gravity on colorful geometric shapes. His contract canceled by his former game company, General Neutronov was forced to seek employment with the “capitalist devils” at Marathon Software.

Neutronov’s timing couldn’t have been better. He was cast as the nuke-toting villain in the budget title Doctor Nyet!, a side-scrolling techno-spy game. His performance was so authentic (scarily so, in fact) that the Marathon executives decided to create a whole series of espionage-inspired titles. And, with the series going high-budget, Marathon could afford to pull in the big guns (as it were) and cast their number-one star in the lead role.

Thunder Eye hit the shelves in early 1992. Despite missing the Christmas season, sales were through the roof. Players enjoyed seeing their favorite hero, Matt Hazard, in a spy game. Moreover, fans and critics alike raved over the ending in which Matt, having dispatched all of Neutronov’s Soviet separatists, lures the General himself to a grisly end that involves two AK-47s; a red, a blue, and a green keycard; and the engine intake of a Soviet MiG-25. (You had to be there.)

The game was so popular that everyone demanded a sequel. Neutronov was brought back to life through a convoluted plot twist and went on to reprise his role as a villain in the aptly-titled You Only Live 1,317 Times—in which he met a similarly uncomfortable end.   

Still longing for the glorious days when the Soviet Union was one step from having the resources to think about taking over the world, General Neutronov continues to allow himself to be typecast in the role of the Cold War villain in spy games in hopes that, someday, he will be able to finally defeat his number one enemy, Matt Hazard.

Scorpion Queen is a Mechanical Scorpion Robot created to originally destroy Jebediah Bedlam in Marathon Megasoft’s Hell’s Cowboys, a 1988 side-scroller set in the old west

In Marathon Megasoft’s Hell’s Cowboys, Hogg Irons and his band of miscreants, descend on the quiet town of San Antonio in 1834 and use their (limited) knowledge of the future and the modern equipment at their disposal to take over the town. The Scorpion Queen was the gang’s greatest creation. She was created to stop Jebediah Bedlam who was the game’s hero, in fact Bedlam’s only hero role. In present day, Scorpion Queen has been found and reactivated by General Neutronov with the task of stopping Matt Hazard dead in his tracks.

Scorpion Queen can use her cloaking device to move swiftly around the map. Doing enough damage will help you and hurt you at the same time because she will lose focus on cloaking but dish out more deadly attacks. Try and avoid all of her onslaughts by staying mobile and you should be good.

Scorpion Queen likes being quick on the draw and cloaking, dislikes grenades.

Useless Tidbits

• She was ranked the highest amongst the development teams most liked Boss Battles for Matt Hazard: Blood Bath and Beyond.
• Her cloaking device was an after thought, which turned out to be a major change that we think was for the better.

Matt Hazard: Blood Bath and Beyond will be available at 1200 Microsoft points ($15.00) on XBLA, and a standard price of $14.99 on PSN.