Videogame Characters Who Appear in Ralph
If you’re a transnational entertainment conglomerate—like, say, Disney—you might expect to have trouble enticing characters from a totally different transnational entertainment conglomerate—like, say, Sega—to appear in one of your movies. But when Rich Moore set out to direct Wreck-It Ralph, he knew the story of his eponymous arcade-game bad guy needed Frogger, Q*bert, Bowser, and Sonic. And hey, it couldn’t hurt to ask.
Moore, an Emmy-winning director of The Simpsons and Futurama, took the task seriously. To lock in Dig Dug and Pac-Man, he pitched game publisher Namco in Disney’s makeshift office on the floor of the massive E3 videogame convention. He brought storyboards to the meeting, along with an avowed love of the classic 1980s games. “It’s one of those moments in my life when I thought, I’m doing what I was built for,” Moore says. Namco bought it—as did execs from Nintendo, Warner Bros., and Sony.
Ralph features cameo appearances by more than 20 characters—not surprisingly, some of them took a little tinkering to get just right. “Before we showed Bowser’s scenes to Nintendo,” Moore says, “he didn’t really feel like Bowser.” But the game companies gave the Disney animators notes to help ensure that characters stayed true to the spirit of the original games while still fitting in with the Wreck-It Ralph world. The whole thing is so warm and fuzzy, it’s almost like a Disney movie or something.
Also in this issue
- Inside the Mansion—and Mind—of the Most Wanted Man on the Net
- Google Throws Open Doors to Its Top-Secret Data Center
- How Virtual Pop Star Hatsune Miku Blew Up in Japan